"Great Man Theory": Truly Great or Merely Mediocre?

[linkhyrule5]

But large parts of the process didn't happen via the kind of gassing you're thinking about. There was a lot of old fashioned just lining people up and shooting them, and weird experiments that were somewhat successful in having a car and driving people around while gassing them to death, and--

Okay, I could keep on going, but it's all horrible, but that didn't all come from Hitler's fetid brain. The idea of killing all the Jews? Well, sorta-yes, but others had said and advocated for the same things.

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Fair. Nevertheless, like... did it have to be Hitler in particular, probably not, but the list of people that were sufficiently extremist anti-Semite that either they or their subordinates would go that far off the moral cliff, who would essentially end up running on an explicitly "genocide the Jews" as a platform once in office, is still significantly smaller than merely the set of German fascist possible-Chancellors, or even the set of potential Nazi Chancellors.

If we imagine running 1930 Germany in simulation a bunch of times hoping for a better result, I think it'd be... very hard to get a timeline that didn't end with Germany waging World War II; very hard to get a timeline that didn't result in Jews suddenly facing a lot of organized persecution; and honestly probably pretty damn hard to get away without an awful lot of Jews dying. But my amateur/armchair historian's opinion is, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get away without the Holocaust, a timeline in which both the sheer numbers and the sheer ridiculous sadism that made the Holocaust exceptional didn't exist. You might even be able to get away with just killing off Hitler (and maybe his top two most-radical subordinates.)

 

[Ms. Effy]

Fair. Nevertheless, like... did it have to be Hitler in particular, probably not, but the list of people that were sufficiently extremist anti-Semite that either they or their subordinates would go that far off the moral cliff, who would essentially end up running on an explicitly "genocide the Jews" as a platform once in office, is still significantly smaller than merely the set of German fascist possible-Chancellors, or even the set of potential Nazi Chancellors.

If we imagine running 1930 Germany in simulation a bunch of times hoping for a better result, I think it'd be... very hard to get a timeline that didn't end with Germany waging World War II; very hard to get a timeline that didn't result in Jews suddenly facing a lot of organized persecution; and honestly probably pretty damn hard to get away without an awful lot of Jews dying. But my amateur/armchair historian's opinion is, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get away without the Holocaust, a timeline in which both the sheer numbers and the sheer ridiculous sadism that made the Holocaust exceptional didn't exist. You might even be able to get away with just killing off Hitler (and maybe his top two most-radical subordinates.)

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I think that World War 2 is actually extremely contingent. Eg a right-wing military dictatorship under Kurt von Schleicher or a plausible successor might fight a war with Poland for the Danzig Corridor, but that wouldn't necessarily spark a broader conflagration without the context of the Rhineland, the arms race, Czechoslovakia, and Austria to present a clear trendline of German aggression and intent to fight. Nor would such a government sign a pact like Molotov-Ribbentropp, because it wouldn't have the interest in the total annexation of Poland that the Nazis did.

And, say, a DNVP-centered government isn't going to be as confrontational, so it'll be more likely to back away after doing provocative things where Hitler consistently pushed for greater international tension to try and provoke a war while Germany was at its point of maximum strength.

And of course Hitler coming to power in 1933 was extremely contingent, as the Nazis had already started to receded from their electoral high-tide, the factors that would lead to an initial bout of popularity for the Nazis had emerged under the Schleicher government, and January 1933 was largely dependent on the personal relationships of Kurt von Schleicher, Franz Papen, Oskar von Hindenburg, Paul von Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner.

Now, could Weimar have negotiated the 1930-33 period and survived as a democracy? That's somewhat more unlikely, as it would demand someone less hidebound than Bruning as chancellor. Once the NSDAP+KPD reached the point of being able to shut down the Reichstag, democracy would only be survivable if the KPD suddenly abandoned Comintern doctrine and aligned with the SPD and minor left parties. Which is very unlikely, as the notion of the "Popular Front" which directed Comintern-aligned parties to ally with liberals, social democrats, and other socialists only emerged due to the annihilation of German communism in the early years of Nazism.

 

[Max Sinister]

People might say things like that at Einstein's time, that the theory of relativity was true, but even among smart and educated people (who ARE interested in physics), most of them wouldn't be able to invent relativity from scratch. Hell, most people wouldn't even understand it with a good popular science book.

According to you, any soldiers who have been forgotten about did nothing of significance, even if actually they defeated the greatest army of an age and forever altered the course of a war, and changed the fates of thousands. It's not in a book so they did nothing significant.

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If they really did influence so many thousands, why didn't anyone bother to write it down? There are some people who are silenced, and even some heroes who prefer to stay unknown, but if they influence so many people in a strong way, it becomes hard to keep the secret down.

Did alexander the great go out there and fucking fight his battles alone in his loincloth or something?

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At least he actually joined the battles and didn't stay behind in a safe general's quarter while other people were doing all the fighting.

(Yes, many people say that in today's wars generals should stay way behind the front in a safe place, but how do we know that? - Maybe because cowardly generals say that?)

 

[The Laurent]

If they really did influence so many thousands, why didn't anyone bother to write it down? There are some people who are silenced, and even some heroes who prefer to stay unknown, but if they influence so many people in a strong way, it becomes hard to keep the secret down.

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You don't even know that this didn't happen. You know how many books and documents and etc we've fucking lost over the centuries? Hell, the Nazis/Fascists burned many of our most important medieval records in Southern Italy out of spite, and up until some of it was found in Spanish archives (since Spain was involved in the region) an entire generation of historians were basically just making guesses and inferences about what happened down there.

Even today, we mostly spend a lot of time assuming that because they were Norman for part of the time, their culture and way of living and system was "Norman" whatever that means.

 

[Vyslanté]

If they really did influence so many thousands, why didn't anyone bother to write it down? There are some people who are silenced, and even some heroes who prefer to stay unknown, but if they influence so many people in a strong way, it becomes hard to keep the secret down.

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Most influential acts aren't the sort of thing that get widely noticed.

 

[Telamon]

A mass of angry, clueless people don't bring about social change. They need organization and ideas.

History has always been shaped by Great Men and Women. We know Alexander, but name one of Alexander's soldiers.

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Ptolemy? Seleucus? Cassander, Antigonus, Antipater, Cletius, Cleander, Lysimachus — your example was spectacularly flawed. We know many of Alexander's generals, officers, and soldiers, many of whom rose to become warlords after his death. Alexander was famous for having essentially no understanding of large-scale logistics, and so relied on these faceless and unimportant men to keep his armies fed, keep his supply lines intact, and to maintain his sprawling empire while he warred endlessly. Alexander's success was the confluence of multiple factors, including dynastic instability in Persia, the actions of his father and the generation of loyal officers he feared, and the rise of virulent anti-Persian sentiment in the Greek homelands.

Napoleon also famously did not do it alone — his Marshals and officers, oftentimes men hailing from peasantry or even poverty, were some of the most celebrated military minds of their time, acting in his stead across the European theater and making his victories possible, and their names are legend to this day — Davout, Murat, Massena, Berthier and Ney, to name but a few.

It is almost certain that Napoleon could not have become Napoleon without the many many talented Frenchmen who supported him, from the diplomat Talleyrand who facilitated his rise to power and ruthless expansion to the officers who fought in his name. Napoleon did not do it alone —indeed, no 'great man' has ever done it alone.

It is ridiculous to think that Alexander might have succeeded without the trained and loyal Greek phalanxes who followed him to the ends of the earth, or Napoleon without the French legions that marched across Europe for half a lifetime. Both these men, indeed, loved their army and their soldiers more than anything — Napoleon's last words were of his wife and the army, and Alexander's last of love for his soldiers. Every phalangite and hetairoi in the armies of Macedon, every pikeman and cannoneer in the Grande Armee, are as important to history as the men they chose to follow.

 

[Reveen]

Great man theory as an idea is basically just a philosophical continuation and echo of monarchy. Under monarchies or any system that involves blood inheritance, so many 'great men' end up smooth into positions of people where they achieve that greatness. And because a system based on blood inheritance requires rationalization, that greatness is often treated as the result of that royal blood or that he was put there by destiny or god.

At no point are you expected to consider the contributions of the people around the king to this. Whether they had some veteran warrior advising them in warfare, or scholar essentially feeding him ideas. Just like pop history forgets all of Einstein's teachers, colleagues and contemporaries they contributed to his final conclusions.

 

[Chehrazad]

It is ridiculous to think that Alexander might have succeeded without the trained and loyal Greek phalanxes who followed him to the ends of the earth, or Napoleon without the French legions that marched across Europe for half a lifetime. Both these men, indeed, loved their army and their soldiers more than anything — Napoleon's last words were of his wife and the army, and Alexander's last of love for his soldiers. Every phalangite and hetairoi in the armies of Macedon, every pikeman and cannoneer in the Grande Armee, are as important to history as the men they chose to follow.

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Even the army of Alexandros ho Megas, the greatest in Europe and Asia at the time was not of his own making but of his father Philipos'. Who defeated Athenai at Khaironea? Philipos. Who forged the army Alexandros would use to conquer all of Iran? Philipos. Who fought the Third Sacred War and successfully raised Makedon to the great power it would become? Also Philipos. Without the Third Sacred War and the actions of the Phokians and Thebans, there would not have been any room for Alexandros ho Megas to lead his conquests. For that sake, the entire reason the Achaemenid Empire collapsed in the first place during Alexandros' conquests was that an eastern xshassapavan betrayed Darayavaush III and had him killed. If that had not happened, judging by the closeness of the battle at Gaugamela, you might well have seen the Achaemenids repel Alexandros and come back into Greece with a vengeance. Had Memnon not died earlier - note, Memnon was a random Rhodian Greek mercenary who had ended up working for the King of Kings, he was in no way special beyond this - there would not even have been such a successful campaign because he would have been raising hell in all of Makedon. To say that history is driven by great men when it is clear that the actions of these so-called great men themselves are driven by such fickle fate and randomness is laughable and bordering on absurd. I have still yet to see a single convincing argument that these great men drive history, or a definition of what it means to "drive history" for that sake.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I like to think of it not as 'Great Men', but 'Great Group' instead.

Hitler was just a product of Germany being a clusterfuck. Remove Hitler, and another crazy takes power instead, if another group doesn't manage to claw their way in instead.

Ghengis Khan was an effective leader, to be sure, but he was not the first nor the last great nomadic conqueror, just unusually successful. The basic setup of the horse nomads allowed the conquerors to be created and flourish.

 

[Gears]

At least he actually joined the battles and didn't stay behind in a safe general's quarter while other people were doing all the fighting.

(Yes, many people say that in today's wars generals should stay way behind the front in a safe place, but how do we know that? - Maybe because cowardly generals say that?)

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....

How is this remotely relevant to my post?

 

[Bullmoose]

It is ridiculous to think that Alexander might have succeeded without the trained and loyal Greek phalanxes who followed him to the ends of the earth, or Napoleon without the French legions that marched across Europe for half a lifetime. Both these men, indeed, loved their army and their soldiers more than anything — Napoleon's last words were of his wife and the army, and Alexander's last of love for his soldiers. Every phalangite and hetairoi in the armies of Macedon, every pikeman and cannoneer in the Grande Armee, are as important to history as the men they chose to follow.

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I really don't think this is true though. I mean, how? Collectively maybe, but by themselves that doesn't make sense. No human is an island, and thus both Napoleon and Alexander relied on capable subordinates during their lives and owed much to the society and circumstances they encountered. However, this idea that every single member of either's army were by themselves in just as much a position to influence events is rather absurd. I mean you seem to be implying that possessing power is meaningless?

For example, While there are many different forms power, neither you or I are as able to direct the America's policies addressing climate change as Donald Trump is at the moment.

Great man theory is dumb, but some in this thread really are going a bit too far in the other direction.

 

[Ms. Effy]

People might say things like that at Einstein's time, that the theory of relativity was true, but even among smart and educated people (who ARE interested in physics), most of them wouldn't be able to invent relativity from scratch. Hell, most people wouldn't even understand it with a good popular science book.

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So in the majority of physics curricula around the world, there's a class that can be seen as a kind of capstone to the first half of your undergraduate years, which is where you get your first mathematical engagement with special relativity.

One of the basic mathematical tools you use is called the "Lorentz transformation". Hendrik Lorentz discussed it extensively about 30 years before Einstein's 1905 paper, and it carries much of the bizarreness of special relativity- length contraction, local time- within itself. And in turn, it is derivable from the Maxwell equations for electromagnetism.

Einstein didn't invent special or general relativity from the aether.

 

[xa na xa]

Great man theory is dumb, but some in this thread really are going a bit too far in the other direction.

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It's not only going too far in the other direction, there is also quite a fair amount of determinism going on.

 

[linkhyrule5]

One of the basic mathematical tools you use is called the "Lorentz transformation". Hendrik Lorentz discussed it extensively about 30 years before Einstein's 1905 paper, and it carries much of the bizarreness of special relativity- length contraction, local time- within itself. And in turn, it is derivable from the Maxwell equations for electromagnetism.

Einstein didn't invent special or general relativity from the aether.

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Special relativity, no.

General relativity? ... Also no, but it's a lot closer. The math was there, but the insight, the willingness to discard almost everything we know about the oldest force under study, to identify gravity with geometry in a way that goes beyond the weirdness of spacetime and special relativity? That was all Einstein.

Again, if we didn't have Einstein, we'd still have general relativity, but we wouldn't understand it as well. Einstein was willing to follow the logic and the math wherever it led, and was also willing to then put concept and idea to those equations rather than throwing up his hands and saying "nobody understands quantum mechanics".

Quantum mechanics is the default result, when humanity is forced into accepting an unintuitive theory by overwhelming weight of evidence. Relativity is the exceptional result, when one genius is willing to just declare to the world, "I pity the poor Lord. The theory is correct."

 

[10ebbor10]

Einstein was willing to follow the logic and the math wherever it led, and was also willing to then put concept and idea to those equations rather than throwing up his hands and saying "nobody understands quantum mechanics".

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Except that he wasn't.

Most famously, Einstein added a cosmological constant to his equations, because he didn't like the idea the universe was not constant. Of course, thanks to the work of later scientists like LeMaitre and Hubble, we know that that was correct.

There's several other things were Einstein did not succeed completely or left open holes, or was simply wrong. He made important insights, but he's not irreplaceable.

 

[Telamon]

I really don't think this is true though. I mean, how? Collectively maybe, but by themselves that doesn't make sense. No human is an island, and thus both Napoleon and Alexander relied on capable subordinates during their lives and owed much to the society and circumstances they encountered. However, this idea that every single member of either's army were by themselves in just as much a position to influence events is rather absurd. I mean you seem to be implying that possessing power is meaningless?

For example, While there are many different forms power, neither you or I are as able to direct the America's policies addressing climate change as Donald Trump is at the moment.

Great man theory is dumb, but some in this thread really are going a bit too far in the other direction.

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Well, no duh collectively. Individually they're just people incapable of causing large-scale change, it's only together that they effect history. Napoleon would have been nothing without the Grande Armee, just as they were only so effective because of Napoleon.

But you can't acknowledge the actions of Napoleon without acknowledging the past twenty years of cultural and political instability in France which allowed him to rise to power, or the Revolution which preceded him, or the thousands of people who contributed both directly and indirectly to his position. Napoleon did not emerge fully formed from nothing and swallow Europe, after all.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Except that he wasn't.

Most famously, Einstein added a cosmological constant to his equations, because he didn't like the idea the universe was not constant. Of course, thanks to the work of later scientists like LeMaitre and Hubble, we know that that was correct.

There's several other things were Einstein did not succeed completely or left open holes, or was simply wrong. He made important insights, but he's not irreplaceable.

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Sure. In quantum. Einstein failed at quantum as hard as everyone else but, like, Feynman.

GR? Not so much. The cosmological constant wasn't really added, for example. It's a constant of integration that he assumed was zero initially. He may have motivated-cognition'd himself into mentioning it, but it was always a part of the theory. And the key insights -- cosmological constant included, the fact that his theory doesn't rule out a background energy density -- have persisted pretty much entirely unchanged from day one.

 

[Bullmoose]

Well, no duh collectively. Individually they're just people incapable of causing large-scale change, it's only together that they effect history. Napoleon would have been nothing without the Grande Armee, just as they were only so effective because of Napoleon.

But you can't acknowledge the actions of Napoleon without acknowledging the past twenty years of cultural and political instability in France which allowed him to rise to power, or the Revolution which preceded him, or the thousands of people who contributed both directly and indirectly to his position. Napoleon did not emerge fully formed from nothing and swallow Europe, after all.

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Well then we largely agree. I misunderstood you as saying each soldier was by himself just as able to effect the affairs of his day.

 

[Ms. Effy]

Special relativity, no.

General relativity? ... Also no, but it's a lot closer. The math was there, but the insight, the willingness to discard almost everything we know about the oldest force under study, to identify gravity with geometry in a way that goes beyond the weirdness of spacetime and special relativity? That was all Einstein.

Again, if we didn't have Einstein, we'd still have general relativity, but we wouldn't understand it as well. Einstein was willing to follow the logic and the math wherever it led, and was also willing to then put concept and idea to those equations rather than throwing up his hands and saying "nobody understands quantum mechanics".

Quantum mechanics is the default result, when humanity is forced into accepting an unintuitive theory by overwhelming weight of evidence. Relativity is the exceptional result, when one genius is willing to just declare to the world, "I pity the poor Lord. The theory is correct."

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I would argue that the primary difference is that Einstein was a scientific realist and Bohr was not and so the "Copenhagen interpretation" was like that because it was elaborated by people who largely existed in the context of being Bohr's students and coworkers.

And the ossification of philosophical understandings of relativity and quantum itself is a consequence of the dramatic shift in the physics environment after the 1940s.

 

[Vindictus]

It's not only going too far in the other direction, there is also quite a fair amount of determinism going on.

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It's not really determinism to say 'While Marx is credited with the formulation of communist theory, in reality Marx had built his theories off of both earlier works, and the works of contemporary thinkers; if Marx had not existed, then ideas and theories and works similar to his own would still have proliferated, though they would of course not be the exact same theories and works."

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

But you can't acknowledge the actions of Napoleon without acknowledging the past twenty years of cultural and political instability in France which allowed him to rise to power, or the Revolution which preceded him, or the thousands of people who contributed both directly and indirectly to his position. Napoleon did not emerge fully formed from nothing and swallow Europe, after all.

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Absolutely.

At the same time, Napoleon was in a position to direct the actions of millions of people. He made decisions in battles, planned campaigns, set government policy. The entire nation was directly influenced by his character, his prejudices and foibles. In short, the fact that Napoleon was in charge rather than someone else mattered.

 

[Terrabrand]

Absolutely.

At the same time, Napoleon was in a position to direct the actions of millions of people. He made decisions in battles, planned campaigns, set government policy. The entire nation was directly influenced by his character, his prejudices and foibles. In short, the fact that Napoleon was in charge rather than someone else mattered.

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I mean, sure, but a big part of the point I've been making all thread (retroactively with this being a thread) is that it also mattered whoever was his second in command, or maid, or whatever all. We can more directly trace what these famous people did, but there's any number of people who surely acted as a voice of reason, or incited him to act, or even just made his coffee the way he liked or whatever where replacing them also would cause changes to history based on their character, prejudices and foibles.

The point here is that those in more visibly pivotal positions likely, but not necessarily, had an outsized impact, and that even if those unknowns all indeed had lesser impacts the every detail of who they were and how they thought and what they did also mattered, and changing anything would certainly set off a cascade of changes where if you could reach into the past it's a sliding scale of whether any change would leave things broadly similar but recognizably altered at least once digging into the details to immediate radical departure.

Napoleon had highly visible effects, but replace pretty much any soldier in his army or clerk in his bureaucracy with someone of starkly different temperament, skills, or goals, and you'd see things go down a different course for sure, it's just a question of 'how much'. And replacing one of the 'little people' may well have a larger impact, if you replaced them with someone sufficiently dissimilar as compared to eg replacing Napoleon with someone who is not him but is fairly broadly similar in history and biases while still differing. They just have to have been in the right place at the right time at some point for it to alter the course of history in dramatic and unpredictable manners.

 

[Apocal]

What if, the macedonian soldier #4, was an ancestor of Hitler, Benjaming Franklin, and, let's say Catherine the Great.
We get rid of Macedonian Soldier #4, what happens?
How huge an effect people have over long periods has very little to do with how big an effect they have within their lifetimes, or how noticeable they are to history.

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How did that time travel story go?
"Why didn't you return to prevent the Holocaust and WW2?"
"We did. Shot him before he could put pen to paper and take over Germany."
"So what went wrong?"
"Some Austrian painter came out of nowhere and replaced him."

It is true that is just a story, but it no less real than any hypothesizing about what would happen in the absence of supposed Great Men in history.

 

[Vindictus]

Doesn't the butterfly effect also imply that the further back you replaced someone, the more significant the changes would be?

People would be mostly the same in the short term, but the longer term would see the flow of history change more and more significantly, until at a certain point basically everything was different.

Which would neatly negate great man theory, as it shows even the smallest change of "nameless soldier one" and his life- say, one of Alexander's footsoldiers dies, leaving one child an orphan and another unborn, and this ripples out through history, and results in a world where we live under a one world fascist like government in the present (though it would not be us, of course)

Wuldnt that, by itself, contradict the claim that great men matter more than small ones?

 

[xa na xa]

Doesn't the butterfly effect also imply that the further back you replaced someone, the more significant the changes would be?

People would be mostly the same in the short term, but the longer term would see the flow of history change more and more significantly, until at a certain point basically everything was different.

Which would neatly negate great man theory, as it shows even the smallest change of "nameless soldier one" and his life- say, one of Alexander's footsoldiers dies, leaving one child an orphan and another unborn, and this ripples out through history, and results in a world where we live under a one world fascist like government in the present (though it would not be us, of course)

Wuldnt that, by itself, contradict the claim that great men matter more than small ones?

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I totally agree with the above.

But to me this is in contradiction to what you said earlier:

It's not really determinism to say 'While Marx is credited with the formulation of communist theory, in reality Marx had built his theories off of both earlier works, and the works of contemporary thinkers; if Marx had not existed, then ideas and theories and works similar to his own would still have proliferated, though they would of course not be the exact same theories and works."

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There might have been "ideas and theories and works similar to his own would still have proliferated, though they would of course not be the exact same theories and works".

But there also might have been very different theories and ideas, in the same way that a extremely small difference in what Macedonian Soldier #4 did might change history more than any action Alexander made.

I think that uncertainty is fundamental to contra-factual history. For much the same reasons as a double pendulum is chaotic, even though it consists of in principle fully predictable parts.

You can't tell wich wing flap will lead to a storm and which won't.

Removing Marx (or just have Marx wake up late and grouchy one morning) may result in broadly the same ideological evolution, de facto functionally equivalent even, but it may also change it radically.