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More generally, focusing on "Great People" [1] obscures actual history and prevents deeper understanding of what actually moves its cogs. [1] https://en.wikipe
by thrance 1y ago
More generally, focusing on "Great People" [1] obscures actual history and prevents deeper understanding of what actually moves its cogs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
- bigstrat2003 1y agoI disagree with the framing here. Sure, the great man theory of history is not wholly adequate to explain human history. But neither is it useless to the point that it deserves to be contrasted with "actual history". It happens often enough that history really does change based on the whims of people in power. Dismissing the great man theory of history out of hand (as I understood your post to be doing, maybe I'm wrong) isn't any better than using it as one's only theory of history.
- thrance 1y agoI subscribe to the idea that those "Great Persons" are shaped by the environment they grow in, and allowed to do what they do by the will of the "zeitgeist", for a lack of a better word. If not for Napoleon, someone else like him would have done what he did. Perhaps slightly differently, but overall history would have followed a similar path. Post-Revolution France was eager to defend against and defeat the monarchies that surrounded and threatened it. The General was only allowed to rise so high because there was a want to militarize the country.