For some time now, I have been claiming that what we are likely to get, and probably need, whether we like it or not, is a Man of Destiny. The original man called that was, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte. Neither my claim nor Napoleon is popular nowadays. We have gotten used to hearing that individual men don’t matter—that history is instead, take your pick, a matter of struggle for economic advantage, or of the opinions and actions of the masses, or of blind and random fate, or of group politics of one type or another. This book, Andrew Roberts’s generally positive take on Napoleon, shows the falsehood of those claims, and proves that what matters is men. Not men in general, but a tiny subset of men who make, and have always made, the world what it is, and what it will be, good and bad.
This is obvious. We are today made to pretend it’s not obvious because it offends two shrill and culturally dominant sets of ideologues: egalitarians, who think that somehow it is humiliating to mankind that the mass of people does not matter at all in history; and self-appointed leaders of groups from whom great men have never arisen, who likewise find it humiliating that reality excludes them from prominence. But it’s still obvious. I should note, too, that I keep saying “men” not as a verbal tic, but because women in this sense, of individuals who directly and sua sponte change the course of history by reaching out and bending the world to their will, don’t exist in any significant number. Certainly, the sum total of such women who have ever existed can be counted on the fingers of one hand, if there are any at all. Now that I mention it, in fact, I can’t think of any. Thus, of course, “feminists” are prominent among the latter set of offended ideologues. It’s not that women are not very important to history, but in the nature of things their influence tends to be indirect—the essential differences among men and women make it unlikely that any woman has ever wanted to be like Napoleon, or his forerunners such as Alexander and Julius Caesar, since megalomania is a nearly exclusively male trait.
And it’s Napoleon’s megalomania that comes through most in this biography, along with the extremely rare ability to lead and inspire men in good times and bad, and a variety of other traits, including off-the-charts charisma and charm, an inexhaustible capacity for work, an insatiable desire for knowledge (often gained by rapid-fire questioning of whomever he was with), a wry sense of humor and a limited sense of vanity, a practical approach to solving all problems, excessive loyalty to family, and the timing and sparkle of the showman. An additional characteristic I found particularly fascinating about Napoleon, to which Roberts recurs several times, is his ability to compartmentalize his life. “He could entirely close off one part of his mind to what was going on in the rest of it; he himself likened it to being able to open and close drawers in a cupboard.” Coupled with a prodigious memory (like Bill Clinton, he could remember people he had met briefly many years before) and a trap-like mind that excelled in mathematics and absorbed history, this allowed Napoleon to focus on what he chose to do, and not to be distracted. In effect, he was able to accomplish more than other men, because of the combination of talents with which he was blessed.
Finally, Napoleon had that most important personality characteristic for a winner—he was decisive, so he got things done. We are often told that large organizations and bureaucracies defeat those who are putatively at the top of the hierarchy. This is false, or rather it doesn’t have to be that way, if the man at the top has actual power and the will to use it. Donald Trump can’t effectively defeat the Deep State, even if he were disciplined and focused, because he lacks the necessary power—the structures of the American system don’t permit him to accrue such power (though Trump would be happy to change those structures to his benefit, I’m sure). On the other hand, in the modern world, there are some leaders with that power—a good example is the Pope. Supposedly, Pope Benedict quit because he couldn’t exercise his power because of the bureaucracy, which opposed him. But Benedict, unlike Trump, was an absolute monarch, with limitless financial resources. If he had had the will, he could have burnt out the malignancy at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, starting by simply firing the entire Curia—it only has three thousand people, and as John XXIII responded, when asked “how many people work in the Curia?”, “about half.” I guarantee that if I were Pope (admittedly an unlikely possibility), within a week I would have solved the institutional problems of the Catholic Church. (Napoleon would have done it in two days.) I would have a lot of new problems as a result, but those can be dealt with in order of priority (another thing as which Napoleon excelled). The career of Napoleon proves that things like that can be done—but they need the right person to do them.
Not that Napoleon didn’t have faults. Like Julius Caesar, he was fond of generously pardoning his enemies and those who betrayed him, and also like Caesar, this harmed him in the end. He had a lot of bad character traits, too. He was an inveterate liar, compulsively unable to admit the magnitude of defeat, or any defeat. He was sometimes brutal, though in some cases he was willing to admit it, and admit the error. He cheated at cards, because he could not face losing (although he paid the money back afterwards). But what Napoleon was not, most of all, was a prototype of the mass killers of the twentieth century. This, apparently, has been a very common comparison for decades, although it is transparently silly. If anything, Napoleon was more like a megalomaniac Eurocrat, desperate to create a new system and indifferent to the human cost to the little people. The dictators of the twentieth century killed for ideology, and killed a vastly greater number of people, both absolutely and in relative numbers. Their progenitors were the men of the Committee of Public Safety, of whom Napoleon was the heir in time, but not in thought. He had no ideology at all, other than wanting glory for himself and for France, between which two he didn’t distinguish much, and he didn’t kill anyone deliberately except soldiers and others directly opposed to him. Unlike Robespierre and Saint Just, he was no totalitarian, and he had no interest in dictating how people lived their daily lives or in ruling their thoughts, though he was happy to assist in making those lives a little better. Napoleon did not even want to dictate the details of how conquered countries and territories were to be governed. Rather, like all such conquering men before the twentieth century, he was driven by an internal spring wound around his ego, and not given to overmuch self-analysis as to how or why he got that way, or to who had to bear the costs of his choices.
I have to admit that my knowledge of Napoleon before reading this book was pretty basic. It appears that Roberts goes against the grain of quite a bit of scholarship about Napoleon, in that the English-speaking world has traditionally viewed him as aggressive monster, and Continental scholars have either agreed or, on the Left, (accurately) seen him as betraying the principles of 1789. Perhaps drawing my conclusions about Napoleon from reading one book is a mistake. Still, Roberts apparently had access to fresh resources, including all of Napoleon’s letters, many published recently for the first time, so at a minimum this book is unlikely to be completely wrong in its views and conclusions. Time travels fast, though, as Napoleon would be the first to say. Perhaps this biography, published in 2014, will be superseded—it is, for example, prominently noted on the inside cover that “it has been optioned by The Weinstein Company for a TV series.” Sic transit. For now, this book seems to set the modern gold standard. But this book isn’t for the weak of heart. It’s engagingly written, but still very long. Names of people and places are endless (though the excellent maps help with the latter). So it’s a commitment—but a worthwhile commitment. And it has other highlights—for example, Roberts appears to have personally visited nearly all, or perhaps all, of the scores of Napoleon’s battlefields. References to such visits are only occasional, but they add a lot—both flavor, in how a site looks today, and insight, in how a battle proceeded and why it went one way or the other. The author is, for this reason and because of his writing, outstanding at giving the feel of battles—a very difficult, and hard to pin down, ability in an author, but one which makes this book much more than a dry recitation of the facts of battles, even though battles take up many of its pages, just like they took up most of Napoleon’s life.
Napoleon was born in Corsica, as everyone knows. Corsica is beautiful, though not a place of wealth, then or now. It was 1769, so Napoleon was only twenty when the French Revolution began, a young military officer, in the artillery (an occupation that required mathematics knowledge—it was, of course, the Europeans who turned artillery into an actual science, even if artillery was invented by the Chinese). He generally sympathized with the Revolution, liking some of its ideals, such as meritocracy and that it promised more autonomy for Corsica, though ideology as such was totally unimportant to him. As seems to have been the case for officers in many pre-modern militaries, he sometimes showed up for duty, and sometimes didn’t, spending many months on Corsica dealing with family business matters. Napoleon was a reliable Jacobin in his concrete actions, though, and was instrumental in recapturing Toulon from the British for the (nascent) Republic in 1793, the first major battle in which he personally participated, and where he showed his customary personal bravery. So, at twenty-four, he was made a general.
He ended up in Paris, as the Terror concluded and power was solidified by the central government, a process Napoleon helped by scything down rebellious sans-culottes with grapeshot in the autumn of 1795. His success there enhanced his public profile, and benefited both himself and his family. The new Directory gave him command of the Army of Italy, fighting the Austrians and the Italians (the latter playing second fiddle, like always) and conquering the entire peninsula (although Italy was only one of the many fronts on which France was then fighting). Then he partially defeated the Ottomans in Egypt, discovering the Rosetta Stone and causing a fashion sensation for things Egyptian in Europe. (All the scientific documents he left behind, hundreds of thousands, were burned in 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring uprising, showing why the West should never return anything of value to the Third World countries from which they stole them—after all, for example, the Elgin Marbles wouldn’t exist if the British hadn’t taken them, since the Ottomans used the Parthenon as a powder magazine.)
After returning to Paris in 1799, Napoleon seized power from the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire (the annoying French revolutionary calendar was, thankfully, retired a few years later), becoming (shades of Augustus), “first consul,” backed up by (somewhat fraudulent) plebiscites confirming his new role under a new constitution. That was supposed to be for ten years, but by 1802 Napoleon had had himself declared consul for life, then in 1804 had himself declared emperor, accompanied by another plebiscite, whereupon he famously crowned himself, with the Pope standing by. Although the vote totals were altered, there is no doubt that the mass of French, high and low, were happy to have Napoleon in charge. Anarchy becomes tiresome after a few hours, much more so after a few decades. Occasional conspiring grumblers, whether Jacobin terrorists or Bourbon restorationists, had to be executed, but at this point Napoleon, an unalloyed success, was pretty much on top of the world.
Following some more fighting in Italy, in 1802 the wars of the Revolution had already formally come to an end through the Peace of Amiens, signed with Britain. It wasn’t much of a peace, though, since by 1805 the Third Coalition had been formed to combat Napoleon, combining Britain, Austria, and Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, and a few others, against France. This set of campaigns contained many of the most famous Napoleonic battles, such as Ulm and Austerlitz, as well as Jena, where Hegel saw him riding through town and maundered on about his “world soul,” a phrase that was used a little too much at times in the twentieth century. Following that (I should speed up, or this review will never end) came the disastrous Peninsular War, the even more disastrous invasion of Russia, the loss of the Battle of Leipzig, abdication and exile to Elba, the return and the Hundred Days, final defeat at Waterloo, and exile to St. Helena, where after nearly six years, Napoleon died at fifty-one (not apparently poisoned, something Roberts totally rejects—rather of stomach cancer, of which his father also died, at thirty-eight).
During all these incessant wars, Napoleon managed to do a lot of other things. Some of that was having affairs with a wide variety of women, but he also managed to oversee the creation of the Code Napoléon, replacing the hodgepodge of customary law and Roman law that applied in different places in the Empire. To Americans, or at least Americans until a few years ago, codified statutory law on the Roman model was inferior to the common law model of organic development that we inherited from Britain. On the other hand, the Code Napoléon didn’t purport to have a rule for everything, but rather laid out general principles within which judges could work, thus it had elements of the common law as well. To us today, groaning under tens of thousands of pages of unreadable and ever-changing federal statute law and hundreds of thousands of pages of (mostly unconstitutional) administrative law, the light touch of the Code Napoléon can only seem like the greatest beneficence, and to the extent it created more certainty and equality before the law among Frenchmen, it was certainly a great accomplishment. Along with the Code Napoléon, other codes (such as civil procedure) were promulgated, as well as standard coinage, weights and measures, and so forth—all worthwhile modernizing programs. He also engaged in a wide variety of Colbertist economic practices, heavily subsidizing and protecting by tariffs French industry in an attempt to catch up to Britain.
So that’s Napoleon’s life. It is fascinating, but it seems to me that the wrong conclusions and lessons are frequently drawn from that life. For example, Napoleon is often viewed as an avatar of the Enlightenment, in contradistinction to prior monarchic darkness, but that is obviously wrong. He certainly didn’t want the Bourbons back, because they would have executed him, and he didn’t want the social structure of pre-Revolutionary France back, either. Too many encrustations and decadences make a society sclerotic, something on full display in late monarchical France. (This is something modern conservatives often fail to recognize—political systems do reach the end of the line, and there is no Burkean solution to revive them at that point.) But you wouldn’t catch Napoleon believing in the Rights of Man. He wasn’t interested in expanding liberty in the abstract, much less atomized liberty untethered to virtue. John Locke held no interest for him (his political reading tended to the Roman classics). Emancipation of the supposedly oppressed wasn’t on his list of things to do, except to achieve instrumental gain for himself. Utopia was not a goal; he would have sneered at anyone who suggested that to him. Instead, he wanted realistic glory for France, a modicum of virtue for the people, and for everyone, order and the rule of law. These are profoundly conservative, or more accurately in context, Reactionary, sentiments. That Napoleon was not an avatar of the Enlightenment is easy to prove by mere modern observation—if he really were such an avatar, the Left would love him. But they hate him, especially in France, where very little praise is lavished on Napoleon—he has two statutes in Paris, and one small street named after him.
Probably Napoleon is seen by some as an Enlightenment figure as a result of the binary choice that propagandists for the Enlightenment like to pose: modern, decayed, end-state liberalism, on the one hand, and the France of Louis XVI, on the other hand. They ask, in effect, why would you want to go back to the latter, and if you don’t, you are required to love instead what we have to offer, as nasty as that is. But you can be anti-Enlightenment and not want to go backwards at all. In fact, if you are anti-Enlightenment, like me, you know you can’t go backwards, and it’s stupid to try. As I have repeatedly said, the idea that Reaction is a return to some imagined Golden Age is wrong; rather, it is moving forward to meet the needs of the present informed by the wisdom of the past, rather than by ideology. And really, that’s what Napoleon did his whole life. Thus, the closest historical analogue to Napoleon was probably not, as is usually supposed, Alexander the Great, a pure conqueror, but Caesar Augustus (although Napoleon has parallels to Charlemagne as well). Both Napoleon and Augustus restored order after anarchy; centralized power; operated a propaganda machine; collected admirers across society; and modernized where modernization was necessary, using where possible the structures of the past, modified for the present to a greater or lesser degree. True, Napoleon was not as fortunate in his enemies as Augustus, and he had to engage in more radical change, given the situations he was handed. And Fate led him to a different end. But in a slightly different world, Napoleon might have founded a long-lasting but modernized structure of non-democratic government that could have helped avoid the twentieth century. We’ll never know, but that doesn’t mean we can’t apply lessons drawn from Napoleon to the decisions we are likely to face in the future, when history returns.
Charles,
Your discussions of the man/men of destiny are some of my favorite parts of your reviews, but I wonder whether you think the characteristics of such a man can be predicted in advance to any significant degree. On the one hand, some of your reviews and my own study suggest certain traits that reappear, such as megalomania (though I wonder whether this becomes a more dominant personality trait only after one acquires great power), some degree of military experience, and above average intelligence. On the other, it would seem that historical circumstances affect the kind of man that can rise to such a position (that’s not to say that one cannot shape those circumstances). So, to summarize, do you think that your studies of “Great Men” such as Augustus and Napoleon have provided any clear clues regarding the characteristics of the man you are awaiting —e.g., must he be non-ideological and have military experience like Napoleon? Or could he be another ideologue in a suit who just so happens to find himself in the right place at the right time?
Similarly, you seem to think that this will occur either after or near the end of your lifetime, but in our present political conditions I don’t see why it couldn’t happen much sooner. Why not?
Finally, it seems that you are focused on a man of destiny in the political realm, but I have recently been thinking about the possibility of a trans-political or supra-political “man of destiny,” if I may apply that term here, who could bring about a religious or spiritual revolution. This may be even harder to predict without prophetic powers, but the conditions may well be right for such a figure in 40 years, if not sooner.
Thank you. All great questions. In order:
1) I think the characteristics can only be outlined in the broadest sense. The Man of Destiny could be someone like Napoleon, but it could be someone like Saint Ignatius, too. The key characteristic, I think, is not megalomania as such, but the will to bend the world and the charisma to accomplish that. As it is said (a phrase of recent vintage, but a good one), “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” So while my focus may seem to be only on the political realm, that is not strictly true. It’s just that the most obvious historical examples are political men. More in #3 on this.
2) I here mean a Man of Destiny that will accomplish good, or at least neutral, things. You can imagine the opposite, certainly. The prototype is Antichrist (see, e.g., Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World, of which I have a review, and which is reputed to be a favorite of Pope Francis, whatever that means).
I don’t really have an opinion as to when this might happen. My only strong belief is that history will return, sooner rather than later. I totally agree it could be soon; to the extent I imply otherwise, it’s probably mostly to avoid looking like Chicken Little.
3) I wholeheartedly agree that the possibility of a “trans-political or supra-political” Man of Destiny exists, and in fact is probably what is needed. A political Man of Destiny might reinvigorate certain aspects of the modern world, but not to the degree necessary. The problem, other than lack of predictability, I see is that such a Man of Destiny isn’t necessary good. Again, the classic example is Antichrist, but that doesn’t mean such a figure is Antichrist. He could just be bad. And I did have a relatively scary thought the other day—-while I strictly don’t believe that strong artificial intelligence will ever be achieved, and as I’ve said I think AI in general is grossly oversold, what if I’m wrong? Given that the main selling point of Antichrist is his ability to perform apparent miracles, what would a super intelligent AI appear to be, potentially, but a miracle-worker? Perhaps Antichrist (if Revelation is not strictly metaphorical) is an AI, or the handmaiden to your “ideologue in suit,” who is himself Antichrist, and given untold power by an AI?
4) Let me know how things are in the new venue when you get there!
Thank you for your responses – especially part 3 regarding your “scary thought.” I have recently been doing a lot of thinking, usually pessimistically, about the relationship between technology (particularly AI) and Christianity and politics, and I actually had a frightening dream quite similar to the thought you mention in section 3. Unlike you, though, I haven’t thought much about whether AI is oversold, but I don’t think that it has to develop that much further in order to begin presenting situations like the one you describe. In fact, my general skepticism about how much technology can foster human flourishing and improve human lives (sustainably—that is, in the long term without destroying or dehumanizing ourselves) is based on my impressions of far less advanced technologies. And, of course, my skepticism of the goodness of modern technology manifests itself in my political thinking.
Regarding your last point, I am already at the new venue (well, not today exactly, but since last weekend), and all is well so far! In fact, one of your recent reviews was quite relevant to something I’ve been thinking about exploring while I’m here, but that is a topic for another day. I hope we can stay in touch!
Charles,
Have you read any Carlyle? I tend to take a middle position between the Carlyle “Great Man” view and a the view of Tolstoy and others that a great man is truly a slave to history (the best part of War and Peace are the long tangents on the Grande Armee in Moscow and the westward march).
I have not read Carlyle. I might, but frankly, Moldbug’s reverence for him has turned me off the idea, probably unfairly. I actually found the long tangents in War and Peace a bit tedious, a bit too much like John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. But I think you are right–the truth is somewhere in between, or rather, both things are true. A charismatic great leader can’t succeed at micromanaging complex events, such as battles, which have their own friction, as Clausewitz said. But he can optimize outcomes to some extent, through strategic planning and leadership, as well as swift and wise responses to changing situations. So a Man of Destiny can lead history; he is never a slave to it. Or, to quote a more modern thought, “no fate but what we make.”
Excellent review, I enjoyed reading it. I am hard-pressed to think of any modern leaders as candidate for “Man of Destiny” (not even the Pope). I think the world as it is today, cannot support such a person of such megalomaniac proportions, even if one existed.
On this, figured I’d just copy it out
“I should note, too, that I keep saying “men” not as a verbal tic, but because women in this sense, of individuals who directly and sua sponte change the course of history by reaching out and bending the world to their will, don’t exist in any significant number. Certainly, the sum total of such women who have ever existed can be counted on the fingers of one hand, if there are any at all. Now that I mention it, in fact, I can’t think of any. Thus, of course, “feminists” are prominent among the latter set of offended ideologues. It’s not that women are not very important to history, but in the nature of things their influence tends to be indirect/
Assuming you meant historically. Given time and opportunity and recognition, do you not think women could display the same kinds of traits as outlined below?
“lead and inspire men in good times and bad, and a variety of other traits, including off-the-charts charisma and charm, an inexhaustible capacity for work, an insatiable desire for knowledge (often gained by rapid-fire questioning of whomever he was with), a wry sense of humor and a limited sense of vanity, a practical approach to solving all problems, excessive loyalty to family, and the timing and sparkle of the showman. An additional characteristic I found particularly fascinating about Napoleon, to which Roberts recurs several times, is his ability to compartmentalize his life.
Curious re your thoughts. As a caveat, I’m not pro-or anti-feminism, and view the word “feminist” with caution as it is subject to interpretation. For e.g. I consider my father strongly feministic in how he supports my mother’s professional career and choices but if called that, he would merely pooh-pooh at the thought of it.
Thank you. I certainly see no such person around today. But then, by definition, such men are unexpected. I disagree, though, that the world can’t support such a man. Perhaps not a man who could lead the world, but one who could lead a significant subset, with world impact. (Not to mention that Antichrist is purported to be such a man–see Robert Hugh Benson’s “Lord of the World”).
Women can and do display the listed traits. Not completely–female “charisma and charm” is necessarily different, and the priorities of women are far different, and all those differences are biological. As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, in the most egalitarian societies today, such as Scandinavia, where women have the most unconstrained options, they choose traditionally female pursuits at MUCH HIGHER rates than in other countries. But still, a woman with those traits would not be Napoleon, because she would still lack megalomania and the will to conquest.
And the reason that Napoleon-esque women have never existed has little or nothing to do with opportunity and recognition. It is purely biological. So technically, it is true that in the past women would rarely have an opportunity to be such a person–but that’s not actually why there have been no such women, it’s coincidence. Note that successful female rulers, such as Elizabeth I, never showed any such traits. So it’s not true that NO women have ever had the opportunity. This can be further demonstrated by viewing behavior on a small scale–nowhere of which I am aware has ever featured women even in small, say local, scale engaging in such behavior. (I’d be surprised if there were zero local examples, though, since human diversity is great enough to allow for such behavior in some women, in a form of what amounts to mental illness in that it diverges from the biological norm so greatly.)
Recognition is not the problem at all. In this area, and others, women have not been recognized not due to sexism, but because there is nothing to recognize that has not been recognized. This relates, probably, to the fact that the standard deviation of distribution of certain kinds of genius is lower for women–thus, there are vastly more idiot and genius men than women. Probably also true for art, though that’s a bit more squishy.
So no, none of this will ever change. Women will never be like Napoleon, regardless of opportunity or recognition.
I agree. The word “feminist” is meaningless, because it is protean, and deliberately so. A typical argument from the Left is to make a wild claim (e.g., “women are no different than men, and that’s what feminist means.”). When this is rejected, the response is “Aren’t you a feminist, which I now define as saying that men and women should be equal in opportunity?” Not very useful.
Thank you for indulging my question! I agree that men and women have biological differences but that consideration often gets side-swept in various debates about what each side is capable or not capable of doing.
Just thought I would leave this here: http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html
Ah, a classic from Fredric Brown! I like that (Asimov has a similar, longer, but less aggressive story, http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html.) I like science fiction! But such a god would, as David Bentley Hart would be the first to point out, not be God in the traditional sense at all. He would merely be a demiurge, a more powerful version of us, another creature among creatures in the universe. God as conceived of by Christians has always been, as Aquinas said, “wholly other,” the ground of being. This is one reason (among many) why the so-called New Atheists are clowns.
Charles,
It was mostly a joke due to your AI conversation above (though I do like the short story, it is perfectly scaled for me). Speaking of science fiction did you read this when it became a sensation (in certain quarters): https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-gig-economy-2/
Any thoughts?
I did not read that story, though it is interesting and clever, if a bit overwrought. I am not worried though, as you know, since none of this will ever happen. (For the pedantic record, though, the coins of Croesus were made of electrum, not gold, and Crassus made his money the old fashioned way, by corruption and various forms of extortion. There is unlikely to have been an Enlgish “King Aethelstan of Saxony,” since Saxony is in Germany, though Aethlastan may have been of Saxon descent, which is a different thing, but in any case I can guarantee that no medieval English king was ever a Freemason, since they started in the eighteenth century, whatever they will tell you about Hiram Abiff or medieval stonecutters.)
I recently discovered your blog via an Amazon review you did of the new Soviet Revolution biography (that is, a “biography” of a state/political system). I am enjoying combing through your archive.
I was excited to see this review in particular. You took a very different angle from me and observed, remembered and highlighted different facts than I did. I thought I’d share mine anyway. Keep in mind, I wrote this before I had discovered Moldbug’s blog, so I am not sure if I’d look at this substantially differently or not. But whereas you explored the idea of the effect a “Man of Destiny” has on the world, I explored the idea of whether “Great Men are really Great”. Spoiler: my answer is no, in a moral sense, though I’d say typically “yes” in the sense of their unique characteristics and multiple-standard-deviation performance in terms of those characteristics, as you highlighted with Napoleon.
Anyway, here it is, you don’t have to agree with any of it but hopefully it’s at the least interesting to read. I enjoyed this book as well and have never annotated something so much!
https://ahouserises2.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/review-napoleon-a-life-history-dictators-books-review/
Looking forward to continuing the journey through your writings. Take care
Your review was very interesting! I don’t think that your analysis is wrong; as you say, it’s a different angle. I agree that what a “Great Man” is, isn’t unitary. It differs on various axes. The only commonality is that the person has to have had a dramatic impact on history, such that history would have been substantially different had he never existed. This is counterpoised, generally, who think that history is deterministic with no relation to individuals (e.g., Communism) or wholly subject to whim and chance (e.g., Tolstoy).
Some “Great Men” are very moral; others immoral, or positively evil (I might exclude the latter from being called “great,” but still, in the basic definition, there is no moral component.) And foibles are very common in Great Men, I think–it probably goes along with the personality characteristics that make the individual rise above, and be comfortable rising above. No doubt someone (Carlyle, perhaps, whom Yarvin is always banging on about) has done a comparative analysis!
I like your blog! I note no recent posts, so hopefully life has not crept up. Your most recent post, on toddlers and slow learners, remind me of something I read a few months ago that I agree with: “If you wake up in a meeting and meet a jerk, well, you met a jerk. If you meet nothing but jerks all day, well, you’re the jerk.”
Oh yes, life has definitely gotten in the way. As MacArthur said, “We shall return”. Just not this very moment. We remain prolific in other endeavors.
The jerk-idea is a good reflection on the microaggression/triggering phenomenon. If everything you come across upsets you, the easiest explanation is that you’re an unreasonable person, not that everyone around you is engaged in an irrational conspiracy to target you and make you a victim.
But that would be suggesting this is a consequence of misguided thinking, and not childhood abuse playing out as adult trauma. Which is what I think it is. Which is a much harder nut to crack and one most people aren’t interested in naming or tackling (in part because there is a bit of the “blame the victim” implicit in the solution that is necessary, namely, reaching a point where you can accept that you were abused but it’s up to you to pick up the mantle of your life and carry it nonetheless, or simply give up and be a festering social wound for all time.)
Glad you enjoyed it.
Fascinating story by Asimov. One of my favorite SF writers. Strange to read a story like that in this day of militant abortionists, flat-lining birth replacement rates, people volunteering to not reproduce, etc. etc. All those fictional future people having all those fictional future babies. I miss that sort of optimism about the future.
Apologies–this and some other of your comments got stuck in spam, for some reason. I will reply!
You may find interesting Andrew Roberts’ appearance two nights ago at the Hoover Institution (which I attended), part of his book tour for his new biography of George III. (The event was recorded by C-SPAN for later broadcast.) Roberts makes use of a newly-released cache of the king’s private documents to argue George is a misunderstood monarch in the UK, the subject of widely-believed falsehoods, and wrongly painted as a tyrant in the US.
Interesting. I plan to buy his book.