(December 6, 2023 at 7:28 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: Of course, bel. That's the Great Man approach, as far as I understand it (from that wiki). It doesn't discount the influence of the environment/context all the impersonal forces of society and nature, but it does highlight and say that these forces are concentrated through the lens of peculiar people whose rare qualities bring about radical changes that wouldn't likely have occurred without them. That rare individuals and their lives are what makes the final most definitative difference.
I guess in one sense its the genetic approach to history - saying that individual genetics are vitally important as to how history turns out. I tend to agree. Human history seems largely driven by 1% of humans, and the rest don't so much make history as follow in its wake.
The lens metaphor makes a lot of sense to me.
I used to read a lot about William Blake, and often thought of him as a kind of focussing lens. He took in so many varied influences, including the dissenting Christianity of his day, and Neoplatonism that had long survived semi-secretly, all kinds of philosophical and literary ideas, an early awareness of the ills of the Industrial Revolution, etc., and re-focussed them into something that stayed startling and modern for 200 years.
He may not qualify as "great" in the social sense, since his influence remains within the arts. But he sure as hell accomplished something that no one else could have. And we would be much the poorer without it.
