Great Persons of
History
Introductory Thoughts
Alexander's importance cannot be compared with Plato's. Both had
enormous impact over the centuries, but in entirely different ways and
it is best to consider separate categories. My list is based, of
course,
on my subjective appreciation, limited knowledge and a rather arbitrary
cut-off; it is not necessarily what experts in their fields might
select as the top names. The absence of a name in the list reflects
more likely my ignorance or bias, and must not be taken as an absolute
value
judgment. On the other hand, I am listing these persons with deepest
gratitude and admiration in my heart for their tremendous efforts,
courage, example, and lasting achievement.
I believe, the judgment of greatness must take into consideration the
person's
lasting effect on the human community. While Napoleon clearly
deserves to be held a great man, Attila, Hitler, Stalin, Pol
Pots, and similar personalities cannot by any measure be included. They
have left behind only suffering and bottomless hate without making
contributions to offset their immense guilt for the horrific human
misery. On the other hand, the overall effect of their actions, because
they "were not the right thing" to do, is surprisingly quickly wiped
out in the realities of the chaotic events of human history - as I
believe history shows, in less than one century. Lenin's creation, the
Soviet Union, disintegrated after 74 years (1917 -1991). Hitler's
"Reich " that he intended to last one millennium, was destroyed after
twelve years (1933-1945). However, the work of the truly great people does
persist for millennia because it is not grounded in delusions but is in
conformance with reality.
As we know, the importance of mere individuals for human progress is
being denied by some circles with the reasoning that it is the
circumstances that bring about the changes, and individuals are just
executors of a development that is in the air. I believe that this is very wrong. It is undeniable that
the circumstances exert an enormous influence and it is also clear that
great persons appear when they are most urgently needed. While this
reasoning is applicable for political developments and war, it still
neglects the role of personal initiative and responsibility. Its is a
one sided view that leaves out the most important component, personal
motivation. How could we ignore this, if all of us experience the
sometimes overpowering desire to rest and do nothing? There has been no
pressure
to generate the need for great poems, great music, beautiful art, great
thought, understanding of nature. Perhaps it is best to distinguish
more clearly the motivations
for a higher culture of man from the material exigencies with their
pressures and motivations, and to say that in those areas where no pressing need has been the motivation, the
individual accomplishment is greater because the motivation has been
more noble. But beyond all this, personal courage, initiative and
energy are traits and a virtue which is not appreciated among the
believers in equalitarianism.
In this regard, I must mention the noted work of K. R. Popper (1945), The
Open Society and its Enemies.
(Routledge & Kegan). Popper is one of the leading thinkers of the
20th century, but my central point of disagreement is that he is
mistaken in putting down the importance and role of leadership. This is
likely due to Popper's background and the fact that his life was only
spent in academic environments and never in an executive role,
or as leader of men in war.
This way, he could afford leaning toward equalitarianism. Nobody who
has absorbed Ortega's great work The Revolt of the Masses, or who has an extensive life experience
should
have doubts about the decisive importance of superior people to lead
their fellow beings. Voltaire and Bertrand Russell take the same
position. Still, the critical benefits of good leadership will be
doubted again and again by all those who have never seen a great leader
in action even though, it should be obvious.
It is ironic that we can even summon the noted Italian Antonio Gramsci
as a witness in support of the crucial importance of leadership. In his
The Modern Prince, Notes on Machiavelli’s Politics, G
deals with the problem of building a capable political party, the
Italian Communist Party, and he discusses the crucial importance of the
Generals of an Army. It is, he writes, easier to create an army than to
create generals. While an army is destroyed if the generals disappear,
a group of competent generals without an army will not be slow to form
an army where none exists! The great importance of leadership is so
obvious (except for equalitarians) that we only need to point at a few
towering examples: of Churchill as leader and savior of liberal
democracy in Europe; or Gerstner as a successful top executive in the
commercial world who saved his company IBM from collapse. Great leaders
of the recent past with a decisive effect are Adenauer, DeGaulle,
Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King,
and Nelson Mandela. Without Mandela's admirable strength of character
it is very likely that a bloody upheaval in South Africa would have
been unavoidable, instead of a peaceful transition. Similar critical
contributions have been made by each of the above mentioned examples,
all outstanding in their character. Of course, Popper is not alone in
his opinion, because equalitarianism must hold that leaders are like
other people and in no way more important. But this is just one more
wrong idea that is promoted by this doctrine. It weakens leadership and
it leads to a low expectancy that the people have of their leaders
which reduces the benefits that we need to derive from them. For
additional aspects see the work by Huxley, Brave New World
Revisited.
My observation of leaders in various kinds of action (over more than
70 years) has
convinced me of another point that has been ignored or insufficiently
covered in discussions: The real superiority of a very few
gifted individuals who can see more clearly the situation and the
various
arguments, compared with the reigning confusion (McNamara's fog of war)
during critical situations. Without doubt, the great majority of
leaders lead with success more because of their energy and firmness of
character than because of superior vision. (I ignore here the pseudo
leaders
whose only talent has been their charisma because most of them have
been disasters). But among the great leaders, quite a few have
shown a vision that bordered on divination. This allowed them to
anticipate their adversaries or coming developments. Or, among
the intellectual leaders, those gifted few who have shown an insight
that
was penetrating the general confusion and allowed them to teach their
associates and followers how to solve the problem, even if those failed
to have a similar insight. For this reason, I think great persons have
been of crucial importance
for the
advance of the human race.
An important point is made by Paul Fussell in his moving
self-biography in which he recounts his life as an American Infantry
Lieutenant in the battles of WWII against the Germans in France (Doing
Battle : The Making of a Skeptic).
The crushing experience of battle in which he was wounded and almost
lost his life, in major part due to insufficient training and poor
leadership, caused him to mistrust forever all authority. The book
ought to be read by all who talk loosely about war, but have no valid
idea about how terrible it is. But Fussell stops short with his
conclusion. To be a skeptic is not enough. We do need capable
leadership, the best we can get because chaotic anarchy is worse. These
experiences only strengthen the argument that leaders must be selected
with utmost care, be trained, and be held accountable.
Regarding these leaders of the public and of armies, it is important to
consider the virtues and capacities that are needed to develop for
being able to play the role of the rare ideal type of leader, the
classical hero. Heroes in the ancient legends usually belonged to a
princely class, hat a special education, and they transcended ordinary
men in strength and courage. They excelled in war and dangerous
adventures. The ideal hero is magnanimous and is a man of action, but
noble action, rather than thought. His important characteristic is that
he lives by a personal code of honor with predictable responses (Eugene
E. Jennings (1960), An Anatomy of Leadership). The very
opposite of the genuine leader is the pseudo leader who gains great
influence by his charm or charisma, but other than words, has really nothing to say. He
has a disastrous effect unless he can be unmasked in time. Of
course, if a real leader has charisma, this will give him extraordinary
power. Alexander the Great is an example.
Thomas Carlyle’s classical work (1840), On Heroes, Hero Worship
and the Heroic in History,
is famous, if somewhat exotic because C in his spirited, lofty, and
nearly Miltonic tone includes even the old Norse mythical figures.
Anyway, it is best to overlook such details and concentrate on the
unique value of his work. He paid tribute to the decisive influence of
the great person in history (history has great women, too!). C’s
world view differs radically from the views today, many of which are
extremist equalitarian aberrations and, therefore, reading Carlyle is a
useful
corrective experience: The one thing needful for a man is to be brave
and his first duty is still that of subduing his fear. We cannot act,
and we cannot lead until we can get rid of fear. Until we do, our acts
are not true, our very thoughts are coward and false. The root of the
hero's strength is the unshakable self-confidence that he gained
in the successful execution of great deeds. He is the ideal opposite of
an ineffective timid chief in a bureaucracy. As far as this hero
concept is
realistic, it suggests an important and neglected factor for today's
executive selection and preparation.
Many people think mistakenly that every executive is necessarily a
"power" type. Moreover, "power" has become a catchword with a wrong
meaning. Naturally, no program can be executed if the leader can be
deposed at the next opportunity. For this reason and in this sense,
every competent
executive and leader must be power conscious. The important question is
whether this concern is his primary motivation, or a tool in the
service of a mission which goes beyond the power aspect. One has to be
honest and critical in making this completely clear in his own mind.
The destructive effects of the behavior of the "power" type who has no
ulterior motives are not all
obvious. The difference in motivation causes vastly different
priorities, and this is why we must be concerned about these types. The
power type tends to focus on short-term goals: he needs quick results
because his standing is not influenced by an uncertain future. Beyond
this, his influence distorts, even poisons, the interpersonal relations
between his associates. And finally, with his excessive concern about
his own standing, he is unable to be objective which will prevent his
organization to find the objectively best approach.
Many of the greatest advances of the human species are due
to
unknown authors. We do not know the inventor of the wheel (ca 4000 BC
?) who has
caused the greatest advance of man. But, although it
is possible that the wheel would have been invented sometimes anyway,
it was unknown in America, even in highly developed civilizations such
as the Inca, and that must mean that this invention is
much more unique and a much greater accomplishment than we might think.
I mention in essay #1 the problem of overcoming the error of Aristotle
regarding inertia - that it took almost 2 millennia, for thousands of
thinkers until they could see it finally with Galileo the right way.
What I am trying
to express here is that the individual mental capacity for real advance
is much more limited in the vast majority of us than we
might think. The tremendous advance in the West during
the last 500 years of history is almost completely due to the greatly
improved potential of collective improvements. Two events come to mind
as triggers:
the invention of print (and now of electronic data storage and
transmission), and the relaxation and removal of the intellectual
suppression by the church in the West - which signaled the beginning of
the modern age.
Where this removal of intellectual suppression has not yet
taken place, people are still in a medieval frame of mind, and until
the minds can be freed, the backward state of the culture in
these areas will change only spot wise. In summary, I think that
the
individual genius and personality of a great person play the decisive role in
human affairs, because
we others can only do the equivalent of regurgitation of the original
thoughts of the select few. This is not the feared "elitism" when
the so called
elite is only in a leading position, but they cannot
really lead. A genuine elite is superior and important,
not because of intellectual superiority, or the display of money, or of
the
parents; - but because of the culture, tradition, and development of
a superior character. This is a very old insight, Confucius
and Hsün-tzu repeated it
over and over again. We must conclude, that if a genuinely superior
individual can be
identified, he should be aided and encouraged, not held back by
envious, little minds who cannot stand any seemingly superior
individual. For a proof, one has only to
listen to the gloating, sneering comments made in ordinary gossip. It
is not only a sin, but becomes the cause of a problem in politics since
it
hinders the finding and selection of good people. How can we find
them? See (How to meet) !
-----------------------------------
Thinkers and Teachers of Mankind:
Lao-tzu, Confucius, Hsün-tzu, Buddha; Pythagoras,
Heraclitus,
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicuros; Lucretius; Paracelsus, Montaigne,
Giordano Bruno, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Locke,
Pierre Bayle,
Montesquieu, David Hume, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Kant, Goethe,
Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Albert Schweizer . . . .[4]
Drama & Literature:
Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes . . .
.
Military Excellence:
Miltiades, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Julius
Cesar, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Lord Marlborough, George
Washington, Nelson, Napoleon; H. von Moltke, Robert Lee, Wm. T.
Sherman. U.S. Grant, Rommel, Douglas MacArthur . . . .
Explorers:
Erik the Red, Marco Polo, Prince Henry the Navigator, Christopher
Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, John Cabot, Father Eusebio Kino, S.J., James Cook,
David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Fridtjof
Nansen, Shackleton , Robert Peary, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen,
Alfred Wegener. . . .
Statespersons:
Solon, Pericles, Augustus, Machiavelli,
Empress Catharine II the Great of Russia, Empress Maria Theresa of
Austria, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Burke, Talleyrand, Metternich;
Bismarck, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Churchill, Truman, Reagan,
Adenauer,
DeGaulle, Mrs. Thatcher, Gandhi, Mandela, Deng Xiaoping , Martin Luther King . . . .
Science & Engineering:
Thales of Miletus, Aristarchus of Samos, Eratosthenes of Cyrene,
Archimedes, Euclid,
Leonardo [1], Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Gauss,
Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac (Gutenberg, James Watt,
Diesel) . . . .
Art, Architecture, Music:
Pheidias, Praxiteles, Vitruvius, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Bramante,
Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Alberti, Palladio, Raphael,
Titian, Dürer, Veronese, Rubens . . .
- Palestrina, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Corelli, Scarlatti, Vivaldi,
Couperin, J.S. Bach, Händel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert,
Chopin, Rossini, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Bizet, Puccini . . . .
Founders of a major Religion: [5]
Ikhnaton, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammed.
Notes & References
[1] Listing Leonardo as an
exceptionally great person, but not Martin Luther is contrary to
the judgment of Jacques
Barzun,
the Doyen of the Literary Intellectuals in our time, in his magnificent
work, From Dawn to Decadence. 1500 to the
Present. His review of the last 500 years of Western
Cultural Life is almost indispensable for gaining an understanding of
our roots. But it is more. B’s essay on the importance of the
Reformation is, to mention one example, the most insightful description
of the roots and essence of any true revolution. The essay A
Digression on a Word (pp. 82) is the clearest and most objective
explanation of the problems that are caused by tampering with language
for political purposes. The whole work is the crowning achievement of a
long, illustrious residence in the "House of Intellect". Regarding
details, it is to be expected that persons with different
background, such as natural philosophy, will see them differently.
I
find his comparison of Luther and Leonardo simply shocking. It is true
that Leonardo designed fortresses, but this is nothing compared with
the century of bloody wars of religion to which Luther’s teachings have
inadvertently contributed the fuze. Or take the debates on theological
subtleties (in my view about nothing) which have brought only hate and
dispute into the world and sapped its cultural strength. Hold these
against the genius that is revealed in Leonardo’s Notebooks on art and
technology - man’s highest activities. Leonardo and Galileo are
spiritual fathers of the new age, not Luther, Calvin, and consorts. To
disagree with Barzun is
significant, but it does not detract from the immense value of his
work. I like to say more because it also reveals a most important
fact.
In his very first paragraph B states that Western culture is coming to
an end, when we can claim that we have not yet reached the peak of
understanding and control, the essential drives of Faustian man.
Undoubtedly, one half of C.P. Snow’s "Divided Culture" [2] has
disintegrated with dire consequences (Patrick Buchanan, The Death of
the West), while the other, the scientific - technical - medical core,
achieves huge triumphs. Decadence
in the elite is not new, it has been noted by Voltaire; it is an error
to take the sick part for the whole and declare an end of Western
culture tout ensemble. The sorry cultural state that B notes (with all
justification) involves a non essential part, while B overlooks the
significance, value, and role of the vital part. What for B is The
Culture is not at all at the center of Faustian man’s drive, and it has
indeed been reduced to a decadent residue. The core culture of the West
is as successful as ever, it evolves, is now global and has moved
beyond the Earth! Is this terminal illness? The time is now to ignore
the bad part as now meaningless and renew the vigor (following Math.
18, 8 - 9) of the true Faustian culture, trusting
that eventually a new spirit of genuine humanism of a transformed
culture, now the Global Culture, will return. This hope is justified
because exactly this has happened before - in the great Renaissance!
[2] C. P. Snow (1964), The Two Cultures: And A
Second Look.
Mentor. See p. 36 ff. CPS was in charge of British scientific research
recruitment in WWII. A scientist by training, he became a noted
novelist, in addition to his successful management career. He was
uniquely qualified to write about the cultural and communications gaps
between the scientists, including the technologists; and the literary
intellectuals (artists and those who control the tone of society which
we take as culture in the narrow sense). The text was written quite a
while ago, but it is as pertinent today as it was then. The gap has
widened and one can even say that we face a cultural collapse on the
artistic-literary-cultural side, while the scientific - technical -
biomedical part is gaining unprecedented triumphs. An ignorance of the
intelligentsia regarding nature and science is now even less excusable.
This ignorance is displayed by some as an ornament, instead of it being
admitted as a disgraceful deficiency, especially because the core of
the culture, the Faustian Side, has made Western
culture the dominant culture on the globe.
It is tempting although risky to speculate about the reasons
for the collapse of the “Liberal arts” sector (see also Essay #4). That
the decay of this part of culture affected the tone of the whole, is
obvious. But it did not stop the progress. Amazingly, a decline has
been predicted in the 19th century
by Arthur Schopenhauer. A neglect of the classical, Greco-Roman
heritage would, in his opinion, inevitably bring about a return to
barbarity. The beginning of this process has been the unbelievable
misuse of concepts and words in Hegel’s philosophy which has nearly
fatally corrupted philosophy; and it is a major reason for a shameful
confusion in basic concepts even today. Moreover, since the learning of
the old
languages and the familiarity with their literature and concepts has
declined, the civilizing and disciplining influence of the classics has
receded and some
of the barbaric heritage of the wild past has returned in everything:
customs, style, taste, values and entertainment. One might smile about
all this as mere coincidence, but when we hear of the scandalous
conduct of a huge mob in London in May 2000, or the notorious violence
of British visitors at foreign football scenes, we are inevitably
reminded of the holocaust in Germany, and of all the
earlier horrors committed by the Vandals, the Goths, the Vikings, and
other migrating Germanic and Nordic tribes which, before they were
civilized and integrated into the Roman and Medieval world, senselessly
destroyed everything that fell into their hands. Exactly this
appearance of a new Vikingism was described by John Lukacs as
the New
Dark Ages. What Julian Benda has to say about the failure of modern
intellectuals to stem this return to cultural backwardness merges
exactly with the above.
Again, the Faustian culture has brought about
the greatest human advance of all times, with unimaginable progress in
all material ways. Where it has not held up is in keeping the
standards
that made it great.
If people complain about the state of the
world,
they must put the blame where it belongs, the failure to keep the
standards. With Irving Babbitt and others, I blame foremost J. J.
Rousseau and the surrender to the soft spirit of Romanticism for this
failure. Could a
cultural turn around be attempted, and how? An
excellent answer has been given by Albert Schweitzer (Essay #14 and
#12). Man needs an optimistic philosophy that is not in conflict with
science. Benda, however, is more pessimistic (Essay #10). I would
add that the most urgent effort seems to be (after population control
and education) to work toward a broad consensus to reduce animosity,
hate, and violence.
[3] A curious article, "A Crisis In Leadership",
has appeared in the new
google service KNOL (knol.google.com). I think, it is completely
mistaken. Or, perhaps, its merit is to show us why and where the
problem is, if it is
really a totally new problem in history. See
http://knol.google.com/k/angelo-mastrangelo/a-crisis-in-leadership/6sf9ph9pw3md/9#H3-Leadership-101-Model
I do not think that one can explain the present situation as the result
of poor leadership. People and their talents have not changed, while
the culture of the West has changed profoundly since WWII. The
situation is not yet sufficiently serious to allow capable
persons to
take effective control and this gives rise to complaints about missing
leadership, when the fact is that we have no good followers in times of
luxury and extreme expectations. On the day we elect a new leader,
we oppose him and demonize him at every step. Of course, I can also be
mistaken, but the
appearance to me is one of a growing chaos due to the cultural changes
mentioned above, while we still have enough blocks in our political
system
to prevent most measures to be taken by resolute persons. Such
leaders lose
control
quickly because any effective action to affect change must, by nature,
be against the
desire of many people. Not one of the great heroes of the past could
have succeeded under the present conditions of the current American
and other Western democracies. Real change will quickly come as the
result
of a major catastrophe when a shocked population will be ready to
accept severe
emergency measures. Remember the effect immediately after the 9/11
attack, when two
buildings were destroyed. What would happen when a whole city
is
destroyed? Or a severe mass epidemic arises? One can perceive
here why great leaders appear more in very hard times.
[4] Doubts: With the great Benjamin Franklin I have
the problem that
I
cannot decide whether his contributions in science, as a popular
writer, or in politics are the most important and far reaching, which
deserve to be listed. He certainly was one of the most
outstanding persons of his time. -- A very different case to
argue is
Mao. He has caused untold suffering for his people and one cannot
possibly accept this. He faced a huge nation
with an explosively growing population that could not be
supported with the traditional primitive agriculture and execute his plans. By
forcing them through anyway, he created a tyranny and effectively
caused the death of tens of
millions of Chinese. Yet he is the only one of the
revolutionary
leaders of the last century whose thinking went beyond the "doctrine".
His "little red book" with excerpts of his speeches has ideas that
sound great (e.g., that communists must tell the truth) which in
practice, however, he replaced with "consequences" and ruthless
power. Nevertheless, at
an extremely high price of national suffering, real progress became
later possible for Deng who removed the most essential features of
communism and restored at least economic freedom. I believe it is
justified to list Deng, but certainly not Mao. -- With great scrouples,
I deleted Nietzsche
from my list because I am convinced that his view about power as an
ultimate value is
fundamentally harmful. True, without the old metaphysical basis, we
are left also without our old values (but see essays #14 and 11). But to see
power as a value for an advanced humanity, power that is to be
cultivated as such is senseless. Power to do what ? To rule over
others? This is the wish of world "reformers" who ignore the all
important insight that the human fate can only be improved by
individual efforts in freedom and not in a slave societiy. But power over
oneself is not, as I read it, what Nietsche meant. Moreover, his
fundamental error as a philosopher is to think on the basis of his
strong emotions. Tbey must not be left out, but thinking must give the
first importance to objectivity which is impossible as long as we are
under the command of our feelings.
[5] An extensive "List of Founders of a Religion" can be found in the Wikipedia.
In contrast to its aims to be comprehensive, the aim with my list is to
give those names that in my information and judgment have had the
greatest impact on human culture. I have included Buddha,
Confucius, et al. as Teachers of Mankind because they have not created
a religion but a philosophy. Buddha specifically is reported to have
instructed his followers not to make a religion of his teachings, a
wish that was clearly not effective and with time, he was given divine
status with a vast amount of stories added. We know very little about
Zoroaster, but his influence has been apparently enormous. He
recognized the supreme importance of truth.
Copyright
© 2007 Gernot M. R.
Winkler,
Last Correction 09/24/2009.