There were “isms” aplenty claiming that individual effort made no difference in the great game of history, but so many of those who seemed fueled by Napoleonic ambitions - Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin - were more noted for their murders, destruction and failures than for their ability to convey what Keats called “the genius above my grasp.” But the 20th century was not a happy time to be a partisan of Great Men. On the whole, Carlyle’s group of military and political leaders is a little more worldly than Emerson’s Emerson’s list inclines to writers and thinkers, although he does include Napoleon, just as Carlyle has a place for Dante and Shakespeare in his pantheon.Ĭarlyle and Emerson may have inspired their audiences to imitate or at least admire these grand figures. Carlyle called his book “On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History” (1841), and Emerson’s was “Representative Men” (1850). In the wake of the Napoleonic wars and the gigantic European convulsions caused by one man on horseback, first Thomas Carlyle and then Ralph Waldo Emerson opted for the Great Man theory. How do we manage to live in proverbially dreaded “interesting times”? Do we fashion a system of moral precepts for ourselves and follow them down the line, or do we look to Great Men and Great Women and somehow try to model ourselves and our actions after them?
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