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How great are "Great Men"?
Introduction
Thomas Carlyle, the great 19th-century Scottish historian, once wrote that the "history of the world is but the biography of great men." Karl Marx, the great 19th-century German philosopher, frequently wrote that individuals didn't matter. What did they mean?
Carlyle meant that individuals have--and have always had--a dramatic effect on the course of history. If there had never been a Muhammad, a Carlyle disciple might say, there may not be an Islam today.
Muhammad's tomb
History Study Center
© Getty Images
Marx meant that underlying economic or material factors (not individuals) determined history. This theory of historical change, often called determinism, is the polar opposite of Carlyle's "Great Man" theory. Whereas "Great Man" theorists may see two great women--Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--as the primary reason American women received the vote in 1920, determinists would likely point to economic factors, notably the politically empowering entrance of hundreds of thousands of wives and daughters into the workplace during World War I.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
SIRS Decades
© Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Check out the rest of this month's History Happenings from ProQuest and--with reference to both modern politics and 19th-century science--find out whether you're a determinist or a "Great Man" theorist at heart.
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