Does the Great Man approach to history still have use?

[FrustratedFool]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Carlyle was a true polymath, but he was dead wrong about this. A rough childhood ofttimes makes wacky adults.

Boru

[FrustratedFool]

Was he though?
Is not history made as much by exceptional people as it is by economics, disease, random chance, and general social trends?

I mean, it does seem somewhat intuitive to say the world would look very different without Newton, Jesus, Hitler, Lenin, Shakespeare, Darwin, and so on.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Was he though?
Is not history made as much by exceptional people as it is by economics, disease, random chance, and general social trends?

I mean, it does seem somewhat intuitive to say the world would look very different without Newton, Jesus, Hitler, Lenin, Shakespeare, Darwin, and so on.

Where do those exceptional people come from? They don't simply pop into existence - they are shaped by the forces you mentioned. For instance, if slavery hadn't been a hugely contentious issue in 19th century America, Abraham Lincoln might well have lived out his life as a country lawyer. Without widespread oppression and a disconnected ruling class, Lenin would be known as little more than a mouthy malcontent.

No one can sensibly deny that exceptional people have an effect on history, but it's more accurate to say that exceptional people are made by history, not the other way round.

Boru

[The Magic Pudding.]

RE: Does the Great Man approach to history still have use?

What use did it ever have, inspiration of daring do?
I played at war on my bedroom floor. Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler surely did too.
Rhodes and Clive bought in some treasure.
There's the sci-fi character, the entrepreneur who resists the restraints of the petty and gets into space, utilises all those unutilised rocks and humans have a future.
Do we need one of those? Could we get one without great man inspiration? Does it have to be Elon?

[FrustratedFool]

@Boru
Exceptional people aren't just formed by their environment, either, though. I assume you don't believe in freewill, obviously, for this argument. But even with my adherence to determinism nurture is at best half the story: nature (in terms of personal disposition, IQ, peculiar mental faculties, and so on) plays a huge role. Otherwise why didn't the same circumstances produce a million Newtons and Einsteins and Mohammeds?

I think exceptional people are both made (in part) by history, and affect history.

[FrustratedFool]

I think I'm currently siding more with William James in this (as from the wiki above):

'James' defence of the great man theory can be summarized as follows: The unique physiological nature of the individual is the deciding factor in making the great man, who, in turn, is the deciding factor in changing his environment in a unique way, without which the new environment would not have come to be, wherein the extent and nature of this change is also dependent on the reception of the environment to this new stimulus ... James argues that genetic anomalies in the brains of these great men are the decisive factor by introducing an original influence into their environment. They might therefore offer original ideas, discoveries, inventions and perspectives which "would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion ... It flashes out of one brain, and no other, because the instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction."

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm reminded of (I think) Eric Clapton's response when asked how he felt being one of the greatest guitar players in history. He said something like, 'There thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of better guitarists than me. But you've never heard of them because they didn't get the breaks I did.'

James' notion that genius ideas are unique to the individual credited with them isn't really supportable (eg, Wallace/Darwin, Newton/Leibniz).

Boru

[FrustratedFool]

I disagree. I think it very credible.

Let's take the Newton/Leibniz argument.
How many people have the intelligence and aptitude for discovering/creating calculus? 1 in a every few million. How many of those survive to be of the appropriate age, are born into the appropriately wealthy family in the right nation and era to have the time and education required? Less than a handful most likely.

The argument runs that if it wasn't Newton it would have been Leibniz. Fair enough. But that ignores three very important points: 1) both are exceptional people - whichever one did it first history would still be being made by the exceptional individual; 2) what if neither man was alive at that time - how many years would it have taken before another such remarkable individual came along? Fifty years? A hundred years? A thousand? History would be very different even if it had taken another generation or two; 3) Newton didn't just do calculus - what about all his other truly innovative work? I think it false to say that Leibniz would have done all the same scientific stuff Newton did. And it may have been some time before someone else came along who did.

And could you apply the same argument to every great individual in history? Would there really have been another Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Napoleon, Marx, Freud, Hitler, Lenin etc? Were the works of Shakespeare always going to have been written by someone at some time? I find that very hard to believe. Sometimes you have to have just the right rare person at just the right rare time do just the right rare things. It either happens, or it doesn't.

As for Eric Clapton's quote, that misses the point. Sure, there may be a thousand people with the same natural talent. But only one had exactly the right combination of talent, creativity, discipline and led just the right sort of life at just the right time to be Eric Clapton.

And all of this assumes determinism too. If you believe in freewill how much more is James' argument strengthened!

The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that history is hugely affected by the choices and deeds of peculiar people who just happen to have the right brains and the right lives and be born at the right time.

[Belacqua]

The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that history is hugely affected by the choices and deeds of peculiar people who just happen to have the right brains and the right lives and be born at the right time.

The problem seems like a false dichotomy to me. It's not either/or.

So let's say there are changes in society that have been a long time coming. Economically, politically, the situation is ripe. If Napoleon doesn't come along to institute these changes, then somebody else will. 

But economic and political trends don't enact themselves. Human beings must enact them. Social changes don't come about unless people make the changes. 

So maybe Napoleon was only carrying out the inevitable changes that had been building for a long time. Still, it was he who did it. All the contingencies came together in one individual. 

I think your example is good. Math had advanced to the point where somebody could invent calculus. But that advancement had to manifest itself in the mind of one or two very amazing people. 

And of course it seems inevitable to us after it happens. But we have no way of knowing what other changes might have occurred if some individual had had the right combination of qualities to make them happen. Societal trends are always in flux, and the contingent ways in which they get enacted make a big difference. 

The German economy needed big changes, and antisemitism had been rampant in Germany for years. But if you could go back and kill baby Hitler, those two things might not have combined in quite the way they did.