Great Man theory

>Great Man theory
Y/N?

M

sometimes.

Mostly no.

There are a few exceptions. Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and Alexander come to mind.

But for the most part, no.

I wonder why this theory fell out of favour after the second world war.

/

In all seriousness I'm a big fan of the theory.

Carlyle's book on the subject is fantastic and I particularly like what he has to say about the theory being "profitable" or advantageous to living one's own life - in that by believing in the theory and studying the lives of those strange demigods, you start to reveal similar things in yourself and this allows you to climb higher.

Of course societies and cultures and the rest are undeniably influential, but there is something to be said about the few people who, for one reason or another, remain in the memory of the planet hundreds and thousands of years after their deaths.

/

Off the top of your head, who would you include in a list of great men?

I suppose I'd have to include Jesus, Hitler, Mohammed, Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, Washington, Buddha...

I'm not even sure if I like the theory as a genuine quantitative answer to the study of the history of the world so much as I like it as a comfy, fantastical, philosophical exercise in imagination. I just enjoy it.

>people who think great man theory is dismissed by saying a single person can't change the course of history

It's dismissed because it removes agency from everyone around the great man. Life isn't a video game.

It's difficult to prove or disprove since history only ever happens the one way it happens. I personally suspect it's true since there are many people with similar backgrounds / resources to "great men" who don't become great themselves. I don't think it's just the environment that produces a random actor to fill each given role it needs filled at each point in history. It seems to me more like these "great men" were legitimately special in their talents and vision and if they were taken out of the picture I doubt someone else would fill in for them.

>People post in Great Man threads without reading Campbell first

Wew

>It's dismissed because it removes agency from everyone around the great man. Life isn't a video game
Life isn't your safe space either. 99.999999% of all people who ever lived were useless biotrash that never contributed to anything

^This, "it makes me feel bad" isn't really an argument against a claim.

that's just a blatant generalism, not reality

Claiming retroactively something would've never developed because of one man is silly, logically it makes no sense

You're assuming .000000001 of the population are some demigod beings and not just individuals in an ocean of them

>still not getting

The theory was not challenged to disempower acknowledged historical great men but there is more to reality than that.

Great man theory does not mean there were people that changed course of history. Great man theory is specifically saying that history is a sum and chain of great men and nothing else.

>support a theory without knowing what it is

This board was a mistake.

>Campbell

>Great man theory is specifically saying that history is a sum and chain of great men and nothing else.

That's exactly what the post you're responding to is saying too:

>99.999999% of all people who ever lived were useless biotrash that never contributed to anything

Learn to read.

The poster boy of great man theory, Napoleon, would disagree with that statement.

maybe sometimes, once in a great while

Name at least 5 anachronistic great men who weren't fostered by their times and by their conditions, and then we talk.

>Alexander
>Inherits the world's most powerful country
>Conquers an Empire in terminal decline and large swathes of nothing
>His legacy is an immediate balkanization of his Empire

Great af

Never lost a battle

>who weren't fostered by their times and by their conditions
This is impossible, people aren't just spawned into existence, they are moulded by their environment and genetic inheritance. Some people win the genetic and historic lottery by being born into an influential family at a opportunistic time. 99% of people are born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Remove his men and he is nothing.

One could also argue that one main attribute of Great Men is noticing trends and needs in a particular point in time and injecting themselves into the course of history. Rather than the times bringing Great Men to the fore. Great Men notice needs of the time and take the helm.

Lost the battle against the AIDS his boyfriend gave him

Yes

Muhammad (PBUH) (SAW)

/thread

Commies hate it because they base their entire revolutionary worldview on a materialist interpretation of history, but we are in 2016, and we know commies are wrong about most things.

>anachronistic

Great men don't need to be anachronistic to be great men. They're still different from all the non-great men even though both have attributes specific to their times and places.

do you even read mongol history?

yes. Although there are other things that impact the course of history, from time to time great men have come around and changed dramatically the world as we know it today

Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan Napoleon, Washington, even Hitler. Imagine the course of history without these names.

Why the fuck is Hitler considered a great man? He was only great in the extent of his failure.

Any shmuck leader could have taken the remnants of the German Empire and taken them on one final chimpout before getting vanquished.

Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad, Shakespeare, Einstein

There is some truth to it, but only as a conveyance of ideas.

Sometimes it's enough for one man to change a society, or even the course of history, such as for example Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, or even Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

>Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad, Shakespeare, Einstein
Please explain how any of these men were anachonistic and in what sense?
>Socrates
Grew up in a culture that cultivated knowledge and made it prestigious. Where was Sparta's own Socrates?
>Jesus
Jesus was entirely unremarkable leader of a small cult, and the myth surrounding his death became his greatest influence
>Mohammad
Generic warlord #6078078373. Just as with Jesus, his mystified and canonized death became his greatest contribution
>Shakespeare
???????????????
>Einstein
There's nothing about Einstein that looks anachonistic to me. He lived in the era of great scientific revolution, fostered and surrounded by many other geniuses.

>arguing about theories in a field where use of the scientific method is impossible

People on Veeky Forums don't know anything about history beyond pop history and so don't really understand the Great Man theory.

The Great Man theory is baloney, because it holds that Great Men are the ONLY thing that effect the course of history, and the machinations of others don't matter in any way at all. It's just demonstrably false, and a product of historiography in its infancy.

IDK

CYRTQ

>inherits the world most powerful country

You have no idea what you are talking about.

>implying that words don't have different meanings based on context

>Socrates
Put himself in opposition to the existing thought. Suffered for it but his legacy became greater than that of other contemporary thinkers. Ie. he was "ahead of his time" or anachronistic.

>Jesus
In a time when the Jews were expecting a violent tribal messiah he proclaim himself the one while preaching universalism. His teaching have become so ingrained in modern thinking that we take them for granted even though at the time they were revolutionary.

>Mohammad
In an area filled with superstition he proclaimed an (at the time) rationalist theology. Also, he revolutionized warfare and conquest.

>Shakespeare
Broke numerous conventions and paved the way for modern drama.

>Einstein
At a time when the understanding study of physics was considered complete he had the balls to follow up on the lead that classical theory is in fact wrong. Later he proved it and revolutionized physics.

I think our definitions of anachronism differ. It's true, all these men were ahead of their time, but that's just human nature, people try to think outside accepted status quo all the time. Like I pointed out, the sociapolitical conditions in which they were brought up favoured the emergence of such individuals. It makes them the products of their environment, not Great Men who appeared randomly and violently changed the course of history

Every man is a product of his environment. These people however opposed the spirit of the times and succeeded in changing the course of history. What are asking for is a time traveller.

>Every man is a product of his environment.
Thats pretty much the refutation of the great man theory.
You can't oppose the environment if you're its product. Being a revolutionary doesn't mean that you oppose the times, it means that the times were ripe to produce a revolutionary

Yes, but every man is great man.

My question in regards to great man theory is this: What makes a Man Great? Is there a metric? Or is it some Raskolnikovite "spirit of greatness"?

>reading books

I'm not a proponent of the theory. It's pretty dumb. I just listing out people that weren't fostered by their times.

>You can't oppose the environment if you're it's product.

You definitely can. A person disenfranchised by his environment is also a product of the environment even though he is working to destroy it.

> Some guy changed something
> He obviously was Great™
> That explains everything!
What an insightful theory...

So... Where are all the Great Men of out times? If this theory worth anything it should be able to like point them out or something, isn't it?

> Islam
> Rationalist Theology

...

good joke

AT THE TIME

One transcendent god is more rational that a thousand magical idols that all grant wishes.

How so? Seems like monotheist shilling to me.

If you mean in the present, I'd say Putin would be considered one of the great men. If we're talking relatively recent times, I'd say Churchill and Patton.

Look at it like this

- In roman republic, why wasn't there a wealthy roman intellectual who led the movement for abolition of slavery? Clearly, Rome of all places in antiquity was the place to foster lots of thinkers and rebels, and nowadays the evil nature of slavery seems obvious to almost every man. Yet roman environment simply didn't allow or favour the appearance of such man

- Why did Martin Luther appear in 16 century and not, say 12 century, when Catholic church was in its zenith? Couldn't anyone see the corrupt, unsavory nature of the establishment for 400 years?

Magical powers attributed to physical objects can be disproved. Magical powers attributed to a transcendental non-physical entity cannot be proved or disproved.

This just in, kleptocrats that exploit nationalism to distract their population are Great Men

There is a bit of a bias towards attributing events towards individuals as opposed to new technology or other changes that changed the balance of power or opened up economic opportunities.

However I think this is a bit of meme. Ultimately every event relies in part on the actions of individuals, especially rulers, or at least rulers and their entourage who encouraged the ruler to make a decision. Also most historical records are about individuals and their actions. Of course people are going to focus on individuals and there is nothing wrong with that.

This is true for literally every leader ever. It doesn't mean though that the mongol conquests happened as a logical results of the socio-economic factors at the time. No one could predict that a backwater people would take over half of the known world. The main reason they could do it is because they randomly got some (Genghis and his generals) extremely talented, ambitious and ruthless leaders.

>intentionally misusing the term "great"
Poor form, see me after class.

> Why did Martin Luther appear in 16 century and not, say 12 century, when Catholic church was in its zenith? Couldn't anyone see the corrupt, unsavory nature of the establishment for 400 years?

There were reformers before Luther, like Jan Hus for example.

> every event relies in part on the actions of individuals
Not necessary. Sometimes random shit just happens to change everything.

ITT people not understanding the great man theory

Enlighten us peasants, oh great scholar.

...

>himself the one while preaching universalism
That''s what Paul made of chirstianity. It is entirely unknown how Jesus saw himself, and it is pretty likely he saw himself as someone operating for specifically the jews

I remember reading that "turning the other cheek" was actually intended as a way to insult and provoke the Romans and not as a promotion of pacifism like it was later interpreted.

Just wikipedia it mate. It isnt about whether there have been influential men or not

Just read the thread mate. Nobody is arguing whether there were or were not influential men but rather if the emergence of these men was inevitable just due to the way society was.

>nobody is
>plenty of people actually are
ok

praise god emperor

I think it's a bit simplistic.

You do realize Einstein mostly refined Poincaré's work? He was a not a revolutionary, rather he developed the work of his predecessor. Certainly he went well beyond him but he was not the one to break with classical physics.

Poincare and Lorentz formulated the mathematical background behind special relativity. But it was Einstein that interpreted it correctly and dared to clash it with classical theory.

>what is civilization