Is "Great Man" history still considered valid in academia? If not, why not?

Is "Great Man" history still considered valid in academia? If not, why not?

Other urls found in this thread:

slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>Is "Great Man" history still considered valid in academia?
No, anything but historical materialism will get you thrown out.

Great Man History fell out of favour when the marxists took over academia. It is the best form of history though.

>i'm an idiot

Great man theory was ridiculed long before Marx was even born.

Not an argument.

Why is mary sue history so popular here?

Great Men aren't necessarily Mary Sues.

No, it has not been considered a tenable position for 300 years.

Also considering most historians openly ridicule Marx's interpretation of history as well I'm a bit confused by the other replies in this thread.

Marx was born in 1818 and Carlyle's book came out in the 1840s.

I said it fell out of favour in academia when Marxist historians took over.

I didn't say it wasn't criticised but it was part of 19th and 20th century history, hence why periods like the Napoleonic Wars are named after one great man, Napoleon.

Learn to think before you fly into autistic rage and call other people idiots.

So what is the dominant theory of history today?

>Also considering most historians openly ridicule Marx's interpretation of history as well
Yeah, one just needs to see how unpopular Zinn's histories are in american classrooms.

Self-Hatred and Historical Cynicism and Nihilism.

Name one that isnt.

>historical theory
There's no such thing. Critical thinking and the historiographical method are the only real constants among the different fields of history.

I work in my university's Irish department researching medieval Irish law, and the methods that we employ and the conditions we have to consider are vastly different from someone studying, say, secular clergy in 16th century Central Africa.

Hitler
Stalin
Mao

Critical theory, like all liberal arts.

>Hitler
>Stalin
>Mao
>Great men

>not knowing what great man theory is
You could at least google it before posting...

How are they not "great" men? They fit all the criteria. It doesn't mean they are good people, just that they did "great" things.

Jefferson
Lincoln
FDR

Great doesn't necessarily mean good. They are all Nietzschean Ubermenschen as you know who each of them is and they all heavily affected history.

Isn't a Mary Sue a perfect individual?

They all had minor influence since everything they has essentially been reverted.

Look at Germany, do you see swastikas on the Bundestag?

Look at modern China, they're extremely capitalistic.

Yeah and eventually the sun will die out and kill off any trace of humanity's existence on this planet. What point exactly are you making? That nothing lasts forever so nothing matters despite certain people having huge impacts on the course of history in their own times?

>certain people having huge impacts on the course of history in their own times

They didn't, though

>They all had minor influence since everything they has essentially been reverted.
Of course not you stupid nigger. Just look at the current boundaries of Germany, and compare them with pre-war Germany. Same for the whole of Eastern Europe. And China is still a continuation of Mao's regime.

I guess Napoleon didn't have any impact according to your moronic logic, since his empire didn't last very long.

KYS

Absolutely fucking ridiculous

"Greatness" does not exist in some kind of vacuum. All of these men existed in a society which had developed into a state, independent of the man himself, which allowed for this "greatness" to occur.

Even besides that, the sheer amount of human activity happening at any time makes the idea of condensing any period of history into the figure of one person completely fucking absurd

>implying WWII would have happened the way it did without Hitler, Churchill, and FDR

>Is "Great Man" history still considered valid in academia?

No.

>If not, why not?

It's not really useful for the interests of revolutionary communism.

These people are not the singular manifestations of the ideologies which allowed for their popularity. Even if their existence allowed for the application of these tensions resulting in WWII, this didn't happen BECAUSE of them

Nowadays its all about Great Woman and such.

Was this supposed to be a joke? Because I'm not fucking laughing.

Patriarchy and racial oppression.

>"Greatness" does not exist in some kind of vacuum.
Nobody claims it does you stupid faggot. Are attacking strawmen all you're capable of?

Name 5

Cleopatra
Elizabeth I
Jeanne d'Arc
Marie Antoinette
Mother Teresa

cleopatra was greek actually and therefore a man

/thread

Philosophy of History is actually in kind of a mess at this point. That seems to be working out pretty well actually, because at least you can't do anything overtly stupid anymore.

As a result, this guys perceptions are typical
History has thrown out grand theories and laws, and just relies on the method.

Focusing solely on great men will lead you to the wrong conclusions, but I don't like how modern academia seems to completely shut them out of discussion/curriculum.

I hated taking history courses in college and sitting through an important figure of the timeframe we were learning about only get a passing mention.

>Hitler
>minor influence
Stupidest post of the year goes to....

It was never disproven.

arguing with liberalist idiots should be banned on this site

>Mother Teresa
Really?
slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html

>I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the "beatification" of the woman who styled herself "Mother" Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.

>As for the "miracle" that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)

Yeah, influental in the way that she and her minions has ruined Calcutta's reputation.

NEVER EVER LINK TO SLATE AGAIN YOU FUCKING NIGGER

All the replies in this thread by people who claim historical theory isn't literally just Critical Theory at this point must go to garbage nothing burger universities. I'm at one of the top universities in the US and it's literally all they teach: everything is Critical Theory.

I'm not exactly happy about this but it's the way things are.

Link to whatever I want to. Here's something for your ocular nerves.

So if Great Man Theory is discredited because the men are products of their time and figureheads of their society, does the imply that they are unimportant? That if Napoleon wasn't born a similar man would've taken his place and did basically everything that he did? That seems a bit unlikely. Or am I misinterpreting the theory? Is it saying that great men are entirely responsible for everything and the criticism comes from the idea that the society had to be in the right place from the great men to do anything?

> Great Man theory
More like lucky man theory. Hitler could be killed in WWI by random bullet and nobody would even find his name.

Yeah and then the course of history would be completely different. How does luck figure into it?

The idea behind it is that history is shaped by great men, rather than a variety of things

Different, but not entirely different.

There were many far-right groups being formed without the influence of Hitler post-WW1

Pretty sure that most historians would agree that great men did play an important role in certain periods, they would just point to a more nuanced interpretation that factors in various social, political, economic, environmental, etc. variables that allowed the great man to be so great.

Yeah, there was this Consoul-organization that wanted to provoke a military coup.

No, because obviously that's a very simplified view of history

what's with all the /pol/ shitposting itt?

>"Greatness" does not exist in some kind of vacuum

Obvious and irrelevant.

>WW2 didn't happen because of Hitler

You really are a dumb bastard.

"Great" does not mean "good". Stalin was a "Great Man" even tho he murdered tens of millions.

Poland literally started it, user.

What, by refusing Hitler's outrageous and illegal demands? HOW DARE THEY!

From what I know, Great Man history was never a comprehensive theory.

Oddly enough I have never seen a proponent claim that any Great Man existed independently of their surroundings, outside of oponent-constructed strawmen. I have, however, seen people unironically claim that, if Napoleon had died as a cadet, the conditions of the time would have vomited out an equivalent and history would have progressed essentially unchanged. To me, this seems on par with religious belief.

This. If history were re-run, it would turn out different and people would point to "Great Men" who were nobodies in our history or who weren't ever born. The "Great Man" is what the myths and legends of an event settle on, but he's often just some schmuck who rode the spirit of his age.

>muh critical theory boogeyman
>muh marxist boogeyman

which one is it then? the former tends towards a more postmodern approach very dismissive of historical materialism, whereas the latter...uses historical materialism.

equivalent? probably not, but along a lot of similar lines almost certainly, society produced napoleon as well as him influencing society

though i haven't really seen great man theory taken seriously outside of 'popular' history books which are always far more reductive and simplistic than academic work, it doesn't help that as broader society we tend to give figureheads more importance than they probably deserve - often ignoring the hidden machinery behind the likes of obama, putin, thatcher, hitler, stalin, churchill, steve jobs etc etc etc and history books appealing to that simple narrative are understandably more popular and ignore broader and more detailed analyses of difficult social understanding

this probably suggests that 'great man theory' is...simplistic, although appealing

t. Dumbshit

Examining history through the lens of "oppresed" people such as dindus womyn (especially PoC womyn) and jews

Is childish, reductionist, and dishonest

t. Dumbshit

Social history

Marxist critical theory,

Although its on the way out. A society can't survive with a negative history of itself.

>which one is it then? the former tends towards a more postmodern approach very dismissive of historical materialism, whereas the latter...uses historical materialism.
Clearly the former. The problem is that too many people use the word "Marxist" to mean "anyone meaningfully to the left". Just like people describing Obama as a socialist.

"...he's often just some schmuck who rode the spirit of his age."

"society produced napoleon as well as him influencing society"

That's just it - I haven't really seen a single person claim that external conditions have no effect (or have a negligible effect) upon the actor in question. This entire issue seems similar to people lamenting the "Dark Ages" when the actual driving motive is to make a later period appear better in comparison.

Also, I would be careful with these "along similar lines" statements. While the playing field, so to speak, is provided to the actor in full, outcomes often rely on single personal decisions, where one's unique qualities are key. Of course one could argue, that even personality is ultimately largely a cultural product but that seems like a semantic refuge. As a rule, schmucks rarely ride spirits of the age.

>Great
>Man
>Theory

All the same triggered Cultural Marxist I bet.

This, viewing all of history's struggle as class struggle is much more plausible and sound

>So if Great Man Theory is discredited because the men are products of their time and figureheads of their society, does the imply that they are unimportant?
No. Without getting too far into the other stupid end of things (WWI wouldn't have happened if the Archduke's driver could follow a map!) obviously individual persons decisions and beliefs make a huge impact on the outcome of events. But they do that only as actors within a larger system.

>That if Napoleon wasn't born a similar man would've taken his place and did basically everything that he did?
That depends on what you mean by 'everything he did'. Someone becoming emperor seems very unlikely, for example. However, France would have still been the supreme military power on Continental Europe, even as it was before he took command. It still would have probably been brought into a series of conflicts with European powers due to their inability to conquer Britain, for example. Napoleon is certainly important, but the contours of the Napoleonic wars are bigger then him.

>Or am I misinterpreting the theory? Is it saying that great men are entirely responsible for everything
Great Man theory is that certain figures literally show up and pull along the course of human events just by dint of their greatness, which was of their inherent quality.

Let's take Napoleon again. Let's not separate Napoleon from his historical circumstances. Let's imagine that there's a flux in weather patterns, there's not a series of bad harvests, tax revenue is better, and the finances of the French state are better. Louis XVI does not call the Estates-General, and political stability is upheld.

Is it really likely the Napoleon would become Emperor and conquer the better part of Europe? That seems unlikely. But that's not what Great Man Theory tells us.

It's very rare to see explicit great man theory these days, because, as most reasonable people in this thread have pointed out, there's a lot of good reasons it was thrown out.

The only time you really see it noticably these days, is bad alternate history. The Confederate States of America win their independence, but 70 years later are menaced by the threat of Huey Long's demagoguery. Because 70 years of history, in radically altered social, political and economic landscape, doesn't change the fact that Huey Long is a Great Man, and he will become governor of Louisiana no matter what, and will agitate on behalf of populism, no matter what.

But it is tho
Retards like you have driven that meme into the ground.