Is the Great Man Theory debate one giant mistake? From Wikipedia:>The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in HistoryI've read two works of Carlyle - Of Heroes and Hero Worship and Past and Present. I've also read fragments of Dr. Francia, Chartism and some other essays I don't even remember. I may not be a Carlylean scholar but I do consider myself as a person who understands his view of history. The tldr of it is that there exists a sort of spirit of history and it's just pure entropy but from time to time a Great Man capable of shaping the entropy the way he wants it appears. The actions of this Great Man can be very limited in scope mind you, in Past and Present he mentions Abbot Samson of Edmundsbury who we know about from a single written text and his actions seemingly have only influenced the Abbey and its fiefs, hardly radiating outside of it. He must have been the Little Great Man, but Carlyle saw him as one for certain.Most of the time the discussion however goes down to Alexander the Great and Philip(and the Macedonian generals). Ok On Heroes and Hero Worship dot pdf ctrl+f Alexander. The foreword to the hastily downloaded edition(pic related) contains ONE instance of it and let me copy the bit "His(Carlyle's) brother Alexander managed...". No Alexander the Great in Of Heroes and Hero Worship. Past And Present "Pope Alexander"(mentioned 3 times in one paragraph). No Alexander the Great in Past and Present. So why are people endlessly debating Alexander the Great and his source of success instead of debating Olivier Cromwell that he does actually write about, extensively if we're at it?Fundamentally I think it is because both the "supporters" and "opponents" of the GMT haven't read Carlyle and are debating some kind of degraded version of the theory deducted from its name alone.
>>18109956You're probably right in supposing that people are debating a "degraded" version of the thesis. That's often the case with most debate over most theories and subjects that more educated men have devoted years of time into developing only for people to borrow the Cliff's Notes summaries from and run with to agree/disagree.I'll preface that I'm not an expert on Carlyle's writing, nor did I read his "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History" until only recently. I too received a Wikipedia-styled breakdown over my life and just digested that to use in conversation of GMT. To first answer your question: it goes back to the point made that people are arguing with likely zero direct exposure to Carlyle's work. If we're being generous, I'm confident that many subsequent historians synthesized works off of it referencing figures such as Alexander the Great. GMT is a "school of thought" as it were, a loosely-defined one at that. While I think it's vital to engage with a key thinker's writings on a subject (e.g. you can't reasonably discuss cultural identity being the throughline for conflict between peoples without reading "Clash of Civilizations"). But then, these are ideas that are kind of intuitive to our traditions in the first place.Comparing the two: Huntington takes a concept and makes it a focal point of research and study for conflict. That concept is: people around the world have strikingly different cultures and value-systems, ergo when those ideas meet, they bump heads...not the most novel idea, even to someone who lived pre-publication. Likewise, with Carlyle, his conceptual thesis boils down to: significant events have been shaped, largely, by significant individuals...again, nothing insane about it, even for the time or before publication. If anything, I would even argue that it falls in-line with the historiography popular at the time among the literate and even highly-educated. 1/2
>>18109956>>181099792/2But before I get needlessly long-winded, to me this is a question of substance. I agree that Carlyle is arguing that there is an "energy" of a kind in our world that some individuals, far, FAR more than others can influence.But what is there to substantiate this? That people of popular acclaim are at the center of major historical events and transitions? Well...no shit? Some leaders are lucky, others less-so, but they are remembered in large part for taking credit for the work of dozens, hundreds, in many cases thousands of others who did "their" bidding. And I put "their" in quotations because even that is a stretch. Many will reference the enigmatic character of Adolf Hitler, how he alone managed to lead Nazi Germany out of economic stagnation and revitalized it into a mobilized military power capable enough to rival the rest of the world. But while Hitler was, in my view, ruthless, resourceful, and charismatic enough to accomplish what he did (love him or hate him, this is the fact), it oversimplifies so much more of the equation. That dozens of other high-brass Nazi officials managed the Reich and hundreds more made possible what the party envisioned writ-large. That, while yes Germany was a capable foe to be sure, none of Europe wanted a repeat of the Great War and were more open to diplomacy to begin with. It ignores the countless circumstantial and environmental factors made possible what Nazi Germany accomplished in the near-decade of control it had over the continent before it inevitably fell. It's not lost on me that Hitler seemed to have miraculously survived not one or two but 42 plots and assassination attempts against him...but backwater dictators have survived the same. How many times did the CIA attempt to kill Castro or other tin-pot dictators in Africa to no avail? How many more did it succeed in suffocating in their proverbial cradle?
>>18109956>>18109979>>181099993/2To conclude, GMT is a wildly maligned lens to look at history through, whether you read Carlyle and other scholars on the subject in-depth or just gloss over it. It's overly-reliant on a deterministic narrative that supposes that because major events were solely (unsubstantiated) shaped by major individuals...major events will continue to be shaped solely (again, unsubstantiated, just somehow) by major individuals.
>>18109956Hitler and Stalina are fine examples of the Great Man theory
