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Napoleon, a typical great man, said to have created the "Napoleonic" era through his military and political genius. The great man theory is an approach to the study of history popularised in the 19th century according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior ...
According to Hegel biographer D. R. Forsyth, Leo Tolstoy disagreed with Carlyle's perspective, instead believing that leadership, like other things, was a product of the "zeitgeist", [year needed] [page needed] the social circumstances at the time. [7] Great Man theory and zeitgeist theory may be included in two main areas of thought in ...
The emergence of the concept of trait leadership can be traced back to Thomas Carlyle's "great man" theory, which stated that "The History of the World [...] was the Biography of Great Men". [6] Subsequent commentators interpreted this view to conclude that the forces of extraordinary leadership [ a ] shape history. [ 8 ]
Carlyle's 1840 "Great Man theory", which emphasized the role of leading individuals, met opposition (from Herbert Spencer, Leo Tolstoy, and others) in the 19th and 20th centuries. Karl Popper noted in 1945 that leaders can mislead and make mistakes—he warns against deferring to "great men". [186]
The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. The 19th-century Great Man Theory claims that historical events are the result of the actions of "heroes" and other great individuals; Tolstoy argues that this is impossible because of how rarely these actions result in great historical events.
Berlin goes on to use this idea of Tolstoy as a basis for an analysis of the theory of history that Tolstoy presents in his novel War and Peace. In the latter half of the essay, Berlin compares Tolstoy with the early 19th-century thinker Joseph de Maistre. As Berlin explains, while Tolstoy and de Maistre held violently contrasting views on more ...
One of the prominent followers of Tolstoy was the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His interest in Tolstoy began in the First World War after he read his book, The Gospel in Brief. He carried this book with him everywhere and recommended it to others. In particular, the pacifism of Tolstoy was very influential. Alexander Fodor wrote:
He was the ancestor of all the Counts Tolstoy, including the novelist Leo Tolstoy (September 9 [O.S. August 28], 1828 – November 20 [O.S. November 7], 1910) and Alexei Tolstoy the writer. His wife was Solomonida Timofeevna Dubrovskaya born 1660 and died 1722; he had two sons with her, Ivan (born 1685) and Peter (born 1680).