Great man theory

The great man theory of history was initially proposed by Scottish philosopher and essayist Thomas Carlyle in 1840 in a series of lectures, which were collected into a book in the following year.On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History: Six Lectures by Thomas Carlyle (1841) James Fraser. The examples that Carlyle gave fell into six categories, one for each lecture:
#The Hero as Divinity: Odin
#The Hero as Prophet: Muhammed
#The Hero as Poet: Dante Alighieri and William Shakespeare
#The Hero as Priest: Martin Luther and John Knox
#The Hero as Man of Letters: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and 
#The Hero as King: Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte
Carlyle's great man theory posits that history is shaped by singularly great individuals whose uncommon abilities have a decisive effect on the course of events. To a less-enamored and more-dispassionate eye, some of these figures are not so heroic, e.g.: Luther was an antisemite, Cromwell's army killed many Irish people, and Napoleon was a dictator and imperialist. In terms of leadership, the theory rests on two primary assumptions: that great leaders are born possessing certain traits that enable them to rise and lead and that great leaders can arise when the need for them is great.The Great Man Theory. Villanova University. Additionally, this excludes great women throughout history, including in the time of Carlyle. The use of 'man' rather than 'person' was characteristically misogynist for that era.
Carlyle was an antisemiteThomas Carlyle: A Biography by Fred Kaplan (1993). University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520082007. who was also a white supremacist in the form of believing in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority.Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950 by Robert Frankel (2007). University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299218805. With the British Empire ascendant during Carlyle's lifetime, there would seem to have been a certain confirmation bias in Carlyle's worldview.
A prototype of Carlyle's great man theory was Plutarch's sloppy biography, Parallel Lives, which compared important figures in Greek and Roman history.Plutarch’s Exemplary Lives: An ancient Greek wrote the book on biography then and now by Lance Morrow (July 2004) Smithsonian Magazine.
"People's history", or "history from the bottom", which attempts to describe the history of common people and marginalized groups, as well as the elite, is sometimes contrasted with great man theory, though it is not entirely antithetical to it.
==Some philosophers' arguments==
Herbert Spencer , a polymath and social Darwinist, who was a contemporary and significant critic of Carlyle, argued that people are products of the social environment from which they originate.The Study of Sociology by Herbert Spencer (1880) C. Kegan Paul & Co. 8th edition.
Philosopher and psychologist defended Carlyle and criticized Spencer, by fleshing out a nature vs. nurture comparison of the two sides and himself coming down in favor of of nature, that it is the unique physiological characteristics of great men that make them so.Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment by William James (1880) Atlantic Monthly (archived from March 7, 2015).
Novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy argued against both free will and the great man theory in his War and Peace ("Book IX, Chapter I. The year 1812. Rulers and generals are "history's slaves'").War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1997) Penguin Popular Classics. ISBN 0140622691.
Similar to James, philosopher argued against determinism and supported the great man theory.Hero in History: A Study in Limitation and Possibility by Sidney Hook (1943) Martin Stecker & Warburg.
==Falsifiability==
Is the great man theory scientific, can it be falsified? This is a question that Spencer alluded to, albeit in a racist way,Hero Myths, edited by Robert A. Segal (2000) John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0631215158. but did not firmly answer because the concept of falsifiability as a benchmark for science did not exist until the 20th century. So, the philosophers of 19th century and the first half of the 20th century were left with arguing about nature vs. nurture or some combination of both, without coming up with any convincing answer. The problem with looking at historical figures with regard to the great man theory is that each person appears to be in a unique position in space and time, and hence it is difficult to come up with parallel examples, and the theory would seem to be unfalsifiable.
Fortunately, Carlyle's theory was very broad, and though he himself did not include scientists, at least one of the theory's defenders, Hook, has included scientists and mathematicians. Hook even noted that it was commonplace for scientists to make the same discovery simultaneously, and Hook considers the likelihood of discovery had not the great man lived:
Similar to the great man theory vs. people's history argument, in science there has been an argument of the vs. 
Hook knew that he was weakening his own argument for the great man theory by this explanation, but a fuller examination of multiple discoveries comes very close to discrediting the theory. Both fundamental inventions of civilization (plant and animal domestication, writing systems, and metallurgy) and many advanced scientific discoveries have been discovered independently by different people.
Regarding Hook's specific examples, it is true that special relativity and transfinite numbers were not discovered independently, but several of Einstein's other discoveries were also independently discovered ( [E=mc2], the and the ), and while Cantor's transfinite numbers were counter-intuitive at the time, the concept is not particularly difficult to understand and it is taught in undergraduate mathematics classes.Math M114S: General Course Outline UCLA Department of Mathematics (archived from August 29, 2018).
So, the frequency of multiple independent discoveries argues against the great man theory. It is instead supportive of the idea that past inventions and knowledge plus current problems lead to discoveries from multiple people working on the problems and sometimes discovering the solutions independently.
==Thought experiment==
Another approach to looking at the plausibility of the great man theory is the thought experiment. A relevant one is the Killing baby Hitler thought experiment, which started floating around in 2015,The Ethics of Killing Baby Hitler: A moral dilemma is better understood as a historical one. by Matt Ford (Oct 24, 2015) The Atlantic. but had earlier antecedents.Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act TV Tropes. In this case, one can regard Hitler as a great man in the broad sense that Time magazine has for their person of the year cover ("for better or for worse… has done the most to influence the events of the year"). And, Hook also discussed Hitler as a great man in this sense of having great effect.
So, the thought experiment if one could go back in time to kill baby Hitler, should one do it, and would it change the course of history significantly. A strong argument can be made that it is not a worthwhile endeavor, that the historical and sociological currents of that era (anti-communism, anti-semitism, pogroms, economic depression, eugenics, irredentism, Lebensraum, militarism, authoritarianism, persecution complex within Christianity, scientific racism, and the Treaty of Versailles' unfavorable terms for Germany) were strongly supportive of someone like Hitler rising to power. One does not need to look much past the upper echelon of Nazi Germany for likely candidates who could have replaced Hitler in the early 1930s.
==Autocrats==
Dictators, autocrats, and those supporting autocracy are particularly fond of great man theory, because by definition they are great, right? Their endless hagiographic, door-stopping autobiographies are evidence of this.The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy by Daniel Kalder (2019) Picador. ISBN 1250181607.
Hitler in Mein Kampf noted the importance of promoting great men in fascist education:Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, translated by Ralph Manheim (1971) Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395083621.
Along the lines of dictators, corporate CEOs are often considered to be 'great men' or visionaries. During the pending purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, former-CEO Jack Dorsey said, "Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness. by Jack Dorsey (7:03 PM - 25 Apr 2022) Twitter (archived from April 26, 2022).Elon Musk and tech’s ‘great man’ fallacy: Jack Dorsey called him the 'singular solution’ to Twitter’s problems. But no leader can go it alone. by Will Oremus (April 27, 2022) The Washington Post. This completely ignored tech companies' reliance on a highly skilled workforce, as well as Musk's well-known toxic management style.Elon Musk Reportedly Fires Employees at Will When He's Angry, and Experts Say It's a Sign of Terrible Leadership by Shana Lebowitz (Jan. 24, 2019, 9:21 AM) Business Insider via Inc.Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell: Unfettered genius. Unpredictable rages. Here's what it was like to work at Tesla as Model 3 manufacturing ramped up and the company's leader melted down. by Charles Duhigg (Dec 13, 2018 6:00 AM) Wired.
Similarly, the "Only I can fix it." claim can be found among cults of personality, for example:
==In popular culture==
The most notable popular work that came out of the great man theory was the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), which contains lengthy detailed biographies of great men and few social histories. It is also notable for containing many articles written by living famous men (Henry Ford, Thomas Henry Huxley, Pyotr Kropotkin, Bertrand Russell, ).Immortal Encyclopedia? by Craig Stark (7 June, 2004) Book Think #20.
Time magazine's Man of the Year, and starting in 1999 Person of the Year, clearly was influenced by this idea, though it seems to have faded in later years as groups of people and non-humans were featured instead of individuals. 
Virtually every public statue depicting an historical figure is predicated upon the great man theory.Is There Still Value in ‘Great Man’ History? How important is the study of the powerful, epoch-defining individual? by Diarmaid MacCulloch (September 2019) History Today 69(9).The new Eisenhower Memorial is stunning, especially at night. But is this the last of the ‘great man’ memorials? by Philip Kennicott (August 6, 2020 at 4:00 a.m. PDT) The Washington Post. The pigeons do not understand the theory but they are grateful for the practice.
Two logical fallacies are basically predicated upon the great man theory, argument from authority (in part), and appeal to celebrity.
White nationalists sometimes make claims to the effect that most or all of the great men of the world were white.Whites that want to preserve their cultural and heritage want to gas Jews and lynch innocent blacks eh? Plus, they are 'prejudice' too unlike the haters that slander whites, right? All of the great men of the world came from the white race. by Tom Fauld (1:12 PM · Apr 10, 2019) Twitter (archived from 28 Feb 2020 08:07:07 UTC).The white race we take what we want and build what we need. The rest of the world should thank us for giving it all the Great Inventions Cars airplanes air conditioning electricity computers smartphones etc.. I could be here all day name and all the inventions we gave the world by @FrattoRealjames (10:13 AM - 21 Aug 2019) Twitter (archived from 28 Feb 2020 08:12:12 UTC). This of course ignores the contributions from elsewhere in the world.
==See also==
===Potential examples of "great men"===
*George Washington
*Abraham Lincoln
*Franklin D. Roosevelt
*Karl Marx
*Friedrich Engels
*Vladimir Lenin
*Joseph Stalin
*Mao Zedong
===Related topics===
*American exceptionalism
*Coincidence
*Eurocentrism
*Hagiography — the making of great men
**Book burning — will make our man even greater… at least for a few years
*Personality cult
==External links==
*The definitive ranking of Time's worst 'Persons of the Year' by Drew Magary
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Books
Category:History
Category:Philosophy
Category:Science