CULTURE

Beware the ‘Great Man’ Theory of History

Why we need to stop worshipping ‘geniuses’

Photo by on

Philosopher Thomas Carlyle famously claimed that “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” Given all the hero worship in our culture — especially when it comes to celebrities, or titans of business like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk — it’s clear that many Americans share Carlyle’s perspective.

But what about the opposing view? In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy wrote that “in historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself.”

On the one hand, we have a top down view of history, where events (and the great mass of people) are driven along by the ideas of geniuses like Newton, Napoleon and Einstein.

On the other hand, we have the bottom up view, where “great men” are mostly carried along like surfers on a wave. To be sure, they must possess great skill to ride it, but the wave would have come regardless, and it’s likely that in their absence someone else would have possessed the skill to have ridden it as well.

Historians like Eric Foner and Howard Zinn are good examples of the latter approach. Foner’s Story of American Freedom and his…