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Some Names You Do Not See On This List, and
Why
Some famous and influential historical figures were
omitted from my list
of Greatest Individuals in
History, and there are several reasons why.
First, many historical events were put in motion by people whose names are now lost. Countless inventions, artworks, crafts,
buildings, and institutions are also unattributed. Even many of the greatest works of literature are anonymous – the
Rig-Veda, the Chinese Book of Songs, the Greek myths, books of the Bible, medieval epics. (Some would add the works of
Homer and Shakespeare.)
Second, some figures, especially scientists, didn't make the cut because their contributions can't be easily separated from those
of others, or because their breakthroughs
would likely have made by other workers if they had not made them first. I could have filled up the whole list with "brick-layers,"
i.e. experimental scientists and discoverers whose data collection formed the basis of scientific theories –
such as Cavendish, Priestley, Scheele, Schwann, Fischer, Wöhler, Becquerel, the Curies, Michelson, Morgan,
Crick and Watson, etc. etc. I preferred to include thinkers and theorists. I wasn’t totally consistent in applying this rule, however, because timely discoveries can
have tremendous world-changing benefits. For example, Fleming's discovery of penicillin was accidental but I included him anyway, mostly to
honor Florey and Chain who made penicillin into a practical drug in time to save millions of lives. I included a few pure
discoverers simply because their discoveries immediately and profoundly changed the way we think – Leeuwenhoek, Harvey and the
biochemists and geneticists showed the complexity of living organisms; Hubble demonstrated the
size of the universe; Rutherford and Thomson illuminated the atom; and most recently, Edward Lorenz helped
drive the final nail in rigid determinism.
Other scientists, inventors, artists, and
writers didn't make the cut because their achievements (in my opinion) did not have the unique
world-changing importance of those I included. Some of these were tough calls. There were inventors it was
hard to leave off, and if I ever revisit the list I'll probably add some more of them. It was also hard to
choose which artists to include, but the evolution of the arts is a continuum and only a few innovations are associated with specific people
(in the way that, for example, Cervantes is associated with the development of the novel, Aeschylus with tragedy, Brunelleschi and Masaccio
with perspective, etc.). It was
hard to justify excluding Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, Kalidasa, Imru' al-Qays, Tu Fu, Labid ibn Rabia, al-Mukhtal, Ronsard, Montaigne, Racine,
Bashō, Pope, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Chekhov, or the first modernists (Eliot, Yeats, Tagore), but also hard to pick among them. Fan Kuan,
Durer, and Velazquez produced great works, to say nothing of anonymous artists and craftsmen, but they couldn’t all make the list. Similarly, too many figures steered the evolution
of music – medieval balladeers and American bluesmen, Palestrina and Chopin and
Miyan Tansen, Amir Khusrow and Pixinguinha and Chuck Berry – to include them all.
Finally, some big
names were omitted not because their influence can be slighted, but because I
believe that their influence on history was on balance negative and produced mostly destructive or harmful consequences. Many
individuals have helped to steer the
course of history in the wrong direction. They were influential, sure, but can
a person be "great" without doing good?
Not that everyone on
the list was a saint, of course. Shi Huang Di, Caesar, Timur, and even Charlemagne were ruthless warlords, but they founded
empires or cities with lasting importance and greatness. (Timur sometimes culled the best artists, craftsmen and scholars from
the cities he sacked.) Paul of Tarsus was a saint of course, but he was also an apocalyptic dualist and possibly a
fantast (or charlatan) who preached that everyone who didn't share his faith would suffer for eternity. Constantine was a
paranoid murderer of his own family and an anti-Semite. But the messianic death cult that Paul and Constantine proselytized
for was transmuted by the Catholic Church into the dominant religion of the West; Christianity has shaped the world in
countless good and bad ways, and is inextricable from the last 1,500 years of history.
Many other questionable characters enriched the world in ways they never intended,
simply as a consequence of their vast influence. A number of these ambiguous figures were
included on the list, ranked (more or less) according to the positive change that resulted
(directly or indirectly) from their lives.
But some influential
figures shaped history without leaving any obvious constructive legacy. Their good deeds,
if any, are outweighed by actions or ideas that did not benefit
humanity. As with the main list, some are household words, others are not. Here
are a few individuals who cannot be ignored because their
influence was so sweeping, but who I do not feel contributed positively to human knowledge
or prosperity.
1.
Zoroaster (Zarathustra) (
Some of these concepts were also part of early
Judaism but they were relatively unimportant, except belief in a personal God (and the Hebrews' Yahweh was concerned only with
the tribal destiny of the Jews, not the immortal souls of all mankind).
Full-blown dualism and apocalypse entered biblical literature in the books of the Prophets, especially Isaiah, Ezekiel
(written by unknown authors) and most of all the Book
of Daniel (Judah?), which was later plagiarized by the author of the Book of Revelation, traditionally
believed to be John of Patmos. The Book of Revelation demonstrates the extremely radical, apocalyptic nature
of some Christian and Jewish sects in the first century
AD (like many Jews at the time, the book's author virulently hated Rome, a prejudice which has been redirected to
Roman Catholicism by some modern fundamentalist Protestants). The introduction of dualism to Judaism probably occurred
after the Persian conquests of Cyrus II (Medea?) ended the embittering
Neo-Babylonian captivity, which had seemingly vindicated the rants of the Prophets and caused a crisis in Jewish faith.
These beliefs fostered schisms within Judaism, which led to the birth of Christianity. Zoroastrian ideas are central
in the New Testament: eschatological humanism and messianism, supernatural dualism, and in particular
salvation and apocalypse (as a religious scholar,
Albert Schweitzer was criticized for pointing out the apocalyptic essence of Christianity, but it's hard to miss). The
"good news" of the Gospels was the promise of immortality and the alleged imminent end of
the world, which would bring bodily resurrection. (Not only Christ but others are resurrected in the New Testament,
with many more predicted to come, obviously.) This was
a departure from earlier, less fantastic, religious beliefs in the West. While Greeks and Romans were open to the possibility of immortality
of the soul – Socrates and Cicero professed to believe in judgment after death – their ideas about
the hypothetical afterlife did not contradict their empirical beliefs about moral living. But the New Testament departed from prior ethical precepts in asserting
that people are to be judged "mercifully" and thus somewhat independently of their actions, a problematic basis for
moral theory (it seems to require supernatural judgment as a condition). Dualism took even stranger forms with the
Gnostics and the followers of Marcion (Pontus, Roman Empire), whose churches spread across western Asia. The
Gnostics and Marcionites argued that God (meaning the Platonic demiurge, or the creator of the world) and the material world are evil
(they cited some canonical texts of the New Testament, e.g. the First Letter of John 2:15-16) but that Jesus (especially as
portrayed in the Gospel of Luke, see #2 below) was an emissary from another, merciful god whose existence was previously unsuspected.
These ideas were spread by leaders of Gnostic sects such as Valentinius (Egypt, Roman Empire) and Constantine-Silvanus
(Eastern Roman Empire) and claimed adherents among Romans, Jews, and nominal Christians from the second century onward. Mani
(Persian Empire) founded a Gnostic world religion, Manichaeism, which lasted for centuries; St. Augustine talked himself out of it,
but millions of others didn't. The Gnostics claimed special knowledge (gnosis) allowed them to reject the
material world as evil and immoral; only a mysterious aspect of the human spirit was considered potentially good.
(Note the radical humanism of this thought – the whole world is fallen, not just human beings, and in fact only humans
can be redeemed through divine intercession. It is a complete inversion of Old Testament-based theology, which holds
that God is good and man is fallen.) Some Gnostics were absolute dualists who believed that matter itself was evil,
so they embraced vegetarianism, asceticism, and/or celibacy to avoid contact with the flesh. Needless to say,
adherents of these sects were not all interested in worldly
accomplishments, but they still attracted legions of followers; in the early Christian era, radical dualistic
and apocalyptic beliefs contested for mainstream acceptance.
Eventually the Christian Church labeled these ideas as heretical and they were suppressed in remnants of the Roman Empire, but Gnosticism and Manichaeism
continued in the Near East; dualistic ideas flowed back into Western Europe during the Crusades and were widely
adopted by sects such as the Albigensians. The Church finally instigated a bloody crusade against the Albigensians,
stamping them out. But by that time, a dualistic disapproval of the material world was entrenched within
the Church through the teachings of the mendicant orders, who equated virtue with poverty and worldly success with
sin, and the influence of reformers (see #13) who decried the
Church’s wealth and influence. (The Dominican order, for example, was created in response to Albigensian criticism
of the worldliness of the Church.) Meanwhile, apocalyptic fervor regained popularity in Europe.
The shapers of Catholic doctrine (unlike Christians earlier
or later) used logical arguments when possible, downplaying apocalyptic themes and borrowing heavily from Greek and Roman
ethics and philosophy; the resulting synthesis controlled Europe for a millennium. Islam took its early inspiration from
Jewish and Christian scripture but underwent a similar maturation, allowing it
to form the underpinning of empires until the modern era. Judaism largely reverted to Old Testament orthodoxy after
Christianity split from it. Unfortunately, the biblical literalism of
Protestant movements (which aimed to lessen the power of the Church and replace it with the authority of scripture,
see #9) and the long development of Islamic fanaticism (see #20) allowed
apocalyptic and dualistic ideas to regain central importance in both religions. Of course, another result of the
disunity of Western thought has been the spread of atheism, but secular liberalism has retained many themes from
Christianity, including mistrust of material things and an obsession with social reform which
arguably is merely a modern form of the Gnostic impulse. Religious dualists are the antecedents not
only of today's cults, but of vast numbers of mainstream Christians and Moslems who eagerly await
apocalypse and judgment. And their ideas survive in the prejudices of modern religious people and
atheists alike who view the world with disapproval
and consider the conditions of society or life to be unjust – including the liberal reformers who have dominated
recent centuries of social and political thought (see #2 below).
2. Luke (Syria, Roman Empire?). The four canonical Gospels (and associated
Apocrypha) are a primary source of subsequent social and political ideas in the West, in spite of their
inconsistencies in representing the teachings of Jesus. In general, the New Testament is an
extension (at times simply plagiarism) of the Books of the Prophets in the Old Testament – steeped in dualism and apocalypse
(see #1), asserting that God created a world in which good and evil are supernatural forces and
the souls (and even bodies) of human beings will be preserved after death. However, passages in the Gospels
and especially in the Gospel of Luke – assumed to be the work of an evangelist who traveled with Paul of Tarsus
(Cilicia, Roman Empire) and followed his direction – portray Jesus' words and actions in a subtly different way,
anticipating what has become modern liberal moral dogma. For example, Luke's
"Sermon on the Plain" (though not the parallel Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew, which is pure otherworldly
dualism) implies not only that the virtuous should favor spiritual goods over material
things of the world (the fundamental assumption of ascetics of many faiths) but that the virtuous must be poor and the wealthy
are sinners. He does not state that the obverse is true – that the poor are necessarily virtuous – but that inference
was quickly drawn. This bias does not originate with Jesus but is presaged in the rants of the Old Testament "prophets
of social justice" (Micah, Amos, and Hosea); however, it contrasts markedly with earlier Jewish thought, which assumed that
personal virtue often led to worldly success. (For instance, Job is rewarded with wealth
after his trials.) The later Prophets and the New Testament are the sources (at least in the West) of the central bias
of modern liberalism – the belief that the rich and powerful are immoral and culpable for social inequality. This idea has
had vast, and often destructive, consequences. While it is good to help the poor, it's far from true that all who achieve
worldly success are sinners unless they
give away their possessions, and simply inaccurate to blame the rich for all the intrinsic problems of the world. But this
is the fundamental idea of the so-called Social Gospel and has led to countless other intellectual mistakes, unresolvable social conflicts, and
seemingly laudable reforms with unintended consequences. One of the first offspring of the idea was Christian anti-Semitism; early
Christians castigated Jews because they were often prosperous, lent money at interest, and decidedly did not embrace the
ideal of poverty. Another result was communism. As early as the 12th century, religious fanatics in Europe cited the Acts (also
written by Luke, according to tradition) to argue that property should be held in common to ensure social equality. These ideas
were first espoused by members of dualistic religious sects (see #1) but soon inspired reform movements within the Church (see #13),
fanatical anti-clericalism, and eventually polemics by secular French philosophes such as
Rousseau (see #3) against the wealthy classes and the institution of property, leading to modern revolutionary
politics, socialism and communism (see #4).
Today, both mainstream Christian denominations and secular intellectuals promulgate
the pseudo-moral dogma of political liberalism – that the poor and powerless are morally superior than those who have achieved
(earned) wealth and worldly influence. Many people now believe that "liberal"
means everything good – compassion for the poor, opposition to the powerful – but that is a distortion of history. The
great innovations of modern times, and the betterment of social conditions worldwide, have resulted mostly from
technological and economic innovations, moral behavior, and individual aspiration; only occasionally has opposition
to social or religious traditions been decisive or necessary. In reality, liberal ideology through the ages – beneath its pseudo-moral mask of
doctrine and opinion – has never been far distanced from simple envy of wealthy and propertied social groups (whether Jews, priests,
monarchs, aristocrats, "bourgeoisie", or white male Europeans). Self-righteous rejection of
social hierarchy, usually inspired by demagogic intellectuals, has been a source of war, instability and mob violence for centuries,
from the religious wars that followed the Reformation to the ugly and destructive revolutions in England,
France, Russia, China, and many other countries worldwide. Meanwhile, social and political reform has taken a central place
in the modern mind, crowding out traditional ideas about morality and in fact most other ideas (for example, today's intellectual class
is often little interested even in science unless it is perceived to have social implications).
While struggles between factions, nations, or individuals are as old as humanity, conflicts based on ideology or class warfare
were rare or unknown before the rise of religions such as Christianity, which posit systems of moral
values that are not based on real-world social relations. Today's world is full of wars big and small,
and their ultimate justification often stems from
the words of St. Luke, one of the first social radicals.
3.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Geneva). If you admire
people who walk the walk – whose personal lives are consistent with their
beliefs – Rousseau is your guy. An itinerant bum, occasional petty
criminal and paranoiac egotist, Rousseau was personally as unlikable as his ideas were antisocial. (Bad
people often adopt bad ideas, and both can be known by their association.) It's possible to be clever without being right about anything,
and Rousseau is perhaps history's greatest example – he thought he knew everything, and everything he knew was wrong. Much
of what is immoral or simply wrong in modern thought, belief, and opinion
was pioneered by Rousseau, who had a genius for espousing new, destructive,
and often contradictory ideas. Unfortunately Rousseau’s ideas and all their
contradictions are enshrined in left-liberal thought today; they
contributed heavily to socialism, Romanticism, nationalism, and authoritarianism along the way.
Rousseau was a misfit and an egotist who successfully promoted himself by
rejecting the current beliefs of his time. He rightly decried love of status (ironically, for an egotist) but prescribed that its only
cure was social equality; Rousseau was probably the first widely known writer to elevate equality (or
more accurately, flattering the poor to salve their wounded pride) to its modern status among left-leaning
intellectuals as the central moral problem of humanity. He was also among the first to identify "injustice" as a social problem and
justice merely as the absence of "injustice", another modern liberal inversion of the more accurate
traditional view that justice is positive right action. Rousseau
argued that equality, previously a goal only of religious fanatics (such as the medieval
dualists and leaders of the Radical Reformation, see #1, #4 and #9), was the highest social good, invalidating
not only religious and political objectives but science, technology and the arts. He described society as a voluntary "social contract" (which it isn’t)
that protects the powerful. (The modern history of the social contract idea originates with
Thomas Hobbes (England), though Hobbes was a pessimist about the fictitious human "state of
nature"; as such, he saw strong government as a good thing. A far less influential figure than
Rousseau, Hobbes was an early defender of some bad ideas – he was a proto-utilitarian – but his defense
of monarchy places him and Rousseau in far different camps. Rousseau's pretense that human nature is not corrupt
in the absence of social institutions
owes more to John Locke, see #7.) Rousseau argued that human beings are innately moral and equal, and
that laws and culture are responsible for criminal behavior and inequality. None of that is true, but it gradually became
popular belief because it provided justification for revolutions and because it restated in high-sounding terms the fundamental prejudice of
liberalism, that simple people are innately moral and wealthy people are inherently corrupt (see #2 above). At the same time,
Rousseau argued that individual rights should be subordinate to a society’s "collective will" (an illogical concept), because
imposing equality is more important than freedom. Of course, the wants of the people (and even the preferences of an individual over time)
are not consistent; but Rousseau used this fact to argue that some of our wants must be suppressed by government to allow others to flourish.
(Similarly, Marxists later used the unreliability of popular will to justify authoritarianism, blaming it on so-called
"false consciousness" created by social institutions – which is pure Rousseau.) This led Rousseau to assert that people should be "forced to be free," the basis of
the modern welfare state and totalitarianism, though Rousseau naïvely held out hopes for absolute democracy. Rousseau's insistence that
government must improve humanity seemingly conflicts with his mistrust of social authority; but the same inconsistency survives in
liberalism today.
Rousseau’s call for equality imposed by force inspired the pseudo-intellectual poseurs
such as Maximilien Robespierre (France) who led the French Revolution, which liberated mob hatreds, almost destroyed France,
and led to a cascade of political revolutions – populist, nationalist and socialist – that continue today. Rousseau’s
paradoxes not only inspired the Terror but its aftermath; Napoleon (see #8) hoped to carry out Rousseau's plan for a rational society
imposed by government authority. Meanwhile, Rousseau's influence was also felt in many other ways. Like the religious dualists,
Rousseau hated private property, and this bias (though not original)
was taken up by 19th-century socialists. Rousseau’s exaltation of uncivilized
freedom, emotion, and antisocial behaviors inspired the Romantic movement (a boost for music and literature, but a disaster for
philosophy). Rousseau's disrespect for science (he especially hated doctors) and logic inspired Kant's unsuccessful attempt to
reconcile rationalism and faith (see #16), and
Rousseau's affected attitude of social alienation informed Hegel, Marx, and modernism. Rousseau believed, following Locke,
that the mind begins as a blank slate (another bad idea, like the social contract, which got worse when it
crossed the Channel). However, he mistrusted state education – one of the few times he got something right, and naturally one of his
few positions which is not embraced by liberals today (the other obvious one is Rousseau's exaltation of romantic love and sexual
difference, which was probably disingenuous). Though a Christian, Rousseau followed Erasmus and Luther (see #9) in insisting that
faith, not reason or intellectual arguments, should be the underpinning of religion; this thinking has developed into the solipsistic
religious belief dominant in the West today. (Religious doctrine should be practical and general and provide a rational basis for relating to
reality, at least metaphorically; it should not be a matter of subjectivity or personal choice.) In short, there are not many bad
ideas that Rousseau is not somehow associated with. He felt that men should be ruled by their sentiments and emotions, but also
believed that the world should follow his ideas, which were invented to defend his own perversions. He is
the perfect prototype of the modern intellectual, who dislikes social conventions and judges the world but does not work sincerely
to make it better.
4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Prussia). Marx and Engels were not the first
socialists, only the most famous.
Their only innovation was inventing a secular, pseudo-scientific ("materialist")
theory to justify the aims of socialists, who were mostly religious sectarians
before Marx’s time. Communism began among radical cults in the early Christian
era which followed the New Testament's admonition against private property in ideal Christian society
(Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35; possibly written by St. Luke, see #2). Class warfare and seizure of property were called for (or foretold) by
some radical preachers before and during the Reformation, including influential men such as John
Wycliffe (England), Jan Hus (Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire) and leaders of the
Radical Reformation such as Thomas Müntzer (Thuringia). (Müntzer,
a fanatical Anabaptist and a leader of the unsuccessful German peasants' revolts, was the subject
of a hagiography by none other than Engels.) But as liberal ideas became widespread in Europe, their focus became political
(anti-monarchist) rather than religious. By the early 19th century,
European socialism was secular, but often vague and impractical; a
typical figure is Francois Marie Charles
Fourier (France), a dreamy theorizer with modern liberal preoccupations (he
also coined the term feminism). Meanwhile, British liberals bypassed the
self-righteous radicalism and utopian fantasies of European socialists in favor of an
agenda of incremental social reforms, often to the good. Interestingly, the last gasp of religious
communism was in China – the Taiping Rebellion led by messianic Christian "prophet" Hung Hsiu-ch'uan
(Ch'in China). The revolt was put down after a civil war with an almost unimaginable body count
of 20 million – presaging things to come.
Marx and Engels remedied
the formlessness of socialism by writing reams of doctrine and political manifestos; their work
was soon rejected as economic theory, and as a theory of history it is equally bogus – class identity was not a prime mover of
human history until post-Marxist thinkers made it one. But as a source of anti-moral rhetoric and fanaticism,
Marxism was and is vastly influential, instigating social upheaval and mass murder throughout the world – not only
Communist movements in dozens of countries, but also the "National Socialist" regimes of Mussolini and Hitler,
syndicalism, and other revolutionary movements that are sometimes distinguished from Communism. Marxism is
liberalism taken to its logical extreme; for liberals, the point is not to understand history or the world, but to
turn them upside down. Stripped of its secular millennialism and philosophical
window-dressing, Marxism boils down to simple envy – envy of wealth and
resentment of an entrepreneurial caste and economic system that Marx did not understand,
but which he blamed for his own poverty and all society’s imperfections. Marx’s identification with the common man, and his
insistence that historical destiny somehow favors wage laborers, was a sham: it's just wishful thinking, and boils down to "I’ll get mine in the end,"
which is not a noble ideal, much less a scientific philosophy. The same attitude – spiteful anger at a world which does not satisfy the wants of every
individual – informed religious dualism (the belief that the world is bad) and lurks behind liberalism in general, but in the Marxist era it became more murderous than ever before.
Envy (or intellectual movements that aimed to convince groups of people they should feel envy) might be the most important cause of hatred
and violence in history, but the death toll associated with Marxist utopianism is incomprehensible. Something like 70 million people may have been
killed by Communist regimes in the 20th century, more than have died for any other idea in all of history. Nor is it accurate to put
all the blame on Marx’s followers for their cruelty or authoritarian practices, or to
exonerate Marx because of his disingenuous good intentions. If you seek to destroy fundamental aspects
of society that you do not like, as socialists do, you are setting yourself against
humanity.
5.
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)
(Russian Empire). One man is more responsible than any other for setting the
tone of the 20th century – an unprecedented blitzkrieg of murder and starvation, precipitated by totalitarian social control to bring
about the illusory goal of reshaping societies. That man is Lenin,
though the later atrocities of the Nazis allowed intellectuals for many years to turn a blind eye to the horrors that Bolshevism brought
first to the world. Given Russia's history, it's not surprising that Russian socialism took an authoritarian form; but Lenin's methods soon
spread worldwide. Lenin and the other Bolsheviks – including Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) (Ukraine, Russian Empire) – introduced
the world to gulags and secret police, the ideology and propaganda that turned mobs against the upper social classes, and the dictatorship
of an ideological caste that ruled through "mass terror" (Lenin's own phrase). The influence of Lenin’s terror-state has been
almost as far-ranging as Marx’s ideology, since both inspired history's most horrifying mass murderer and torturer, Josef Stalin (Ioseb Jughashvili)
(Georgia, Russian Empire) as well as Hitler, Mao and others. Needless to say, measureless tragedy and horror has resulted. In fact, the last
century was characterized by the brutality and lack of compunction of world leaders rooted in rationalistic ideological principles.
Lenin is as influential as any figure of the last century, and not only because of the unprecedented body count of communism. Today's geopolitics
is still shaped by Lenin’s other poisonous intellectual legacies, anti-"colonialism" and the anti-American/anti-Western sentiment which the Soviet regime
promoted around the world. The Marxist-Leninist critique of European "colonialism" or "imperialism" actually originated with economist
John A. Hobson (UK) and others, but the Soviet propaganda machine spread it far and wide. Anti-"colonialism" is one of the most important biases of liberals today; it inspired the withdrawal of the European colonial
powers from the empires they exploited at an unfortunate historical moment, enabling dozens of civil wars and illegitimate governments. Lenin would be pleased to know that Europe’s retreat
from empire has become an implosion, which may be someday be comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire (but even exceeding it
in scale) with Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Europe and Europeans' populations shrinking even in their
native countries. Ironically, Russia is shrinking even faster, eviscerated by the loss of confidence in Western culture as well as
the nihilism fostered by decades of communism. When liberal ideas are taken to their logical conclusions, the result is
self-destruction. Directly or indirectly, Marx and Lenin may have caused more suffering than any other men in history, even...
6.
Adolf Hitler (Austria-Hungary).
Hitler’s actions were self-evidently evil, but that observation has been made countless times; it remains only to note the less
obvious ways in which Hitler's impact damaged civilization. First, Nazism has been used ever since (mostly by the left) as a
pejorative label to discredit anything they oppose as "racism," including assertions of cultural superiority
(or even difference) as well as inquiries into ethnic distinctions and history. Such comparisons are sloppy and
misguided – most of the views which are called "racism" today by liberal "intellectuals" and opinion-makers are
unrelated to anti-Semitism or German ideology, and do not represent a single social problem (to the degree they are
even real). Hitler was a pseudo-intellectual dullard, one generation removed from the peasant class, who
was a loyal soldier in World War I; following the failed Bolshevik revolution in Munich in 1918, he became a fanatical
anti-Semite as well as German nationalist. Hitler loathed Jews, but also envied them; he launched the
extermination of Jewish (and Slavic) people apparently because he believed they were political enemies and
controlled institutions which he wanted only Germans to control, or because he believed they could not coexist
with the Teutonic culture of his imaginary utopian Reich. (Actually, Hitler claimed not to believe that Jews were a racial group, but
given his other racial preoccupations that seems implausible. He was presumably influenced by
anti-Semitic ideologues of the previous century who asserted that the Jews irreducibly lack the great "spirit" or consciousness
which Germans possess.) In any event, equating Hitler’s envious, murderous hatred of the Jews with the condescending but nonviolent
prejudice of, say, the United States is a false analogy which has politicized race in destructive ways and spurred the
left toward social deconstruction rather than positive progress. Second, Hitler’s invention of a bogus offshoot of
socialism (National Socialism, or Nazism) created a scapegoat used by postwar leftists to distract attention away from
Communists’ crimes against humanity. In reality, the Nazis preached a kind of mob socialism; the only important practical
differences between Nazism and Soviet Communism were Hitler's choice of a scapegoat and his nationalistic focus (Hitler was not
interested in any international movement; he wanted to conquer the world and avenge Germany). After the war, the Soviet
propaganda machine worked through leftist intellectuals to somehow convince the world that fascism and communism were
logically opposite ideologies, but that is specious. Third, the disgrace which Hitler’s atrocities bequeathed to
Germany was generalized to other supposedly "racist" Anglo-European cultural groups. Again, the
Soviets and their fellow travelers invoked the Nazis to foster global anti-Western sentiment after the war, and were even
involved in the radicalization of the postwar U.S. civil rights movement. Fourth, the Nazis fostered anti-Semitism
in the Middle East, perhaps a contributing factor to today’s Islamic radicalism. Fifth, Hitler chased many intellectuals
out of Europe to the U.S., where they promoted existentialism, modernism, radical politics and so on (of course, others who
fled Europe made great intellectual contributions, including ironically the development of the atomic bomb). Sixth,
and most obviously, Hitler’s embrace of technological war created the climate in which
use of nuclear weapons became thinkable (and even arguably necessary; dropping the bomb ended the war, which was
otherwise possibly far from over). World War II stands as the costliest war in history, and Hitler is probably the
worst human being in history; he does not top this list only because, being recent, he has had less time to
influence history than a few figures who preceded him. Hitler was a resentful,
ideology-addled fanatic who almost destroyed civilization (and his influence may yet). He did not exist in a vacuum,
however. The Japanese war regime led by Emperor Showa (Hirohito) (Japan) and Stalin's Soviet Union matched the
Nazis with concurrent atrocities. And German leaders and thinkers from earlier times
anticipated the Nazis’ combination of anti-Semitism and German nationalism (Marx among them, see #4).
Hitler added little that was original to the mix, except the military might to transform ideas into unthinkable
destruction. German nationalism was originally promulgated by Romantic writers such as
Johann Herder (Prussia) and more aggressively by Fichte (see #16 below).
Anti-Semitism is much older and has recurred in central Europe from the time of the Crusades (many Jewish doctors were murdered in
Germany ... in the 1340s, after being blamed for the Black Death) and, later, inspired massacres and exclusionary
policies in Germanic and Slavic countries. (Leftist agitator Wilhelm Marr called for the forced removal of Jews
from Germany in the 1870s.) On a list of bad people, earlier German anti-Semites arguably deserve pride of place.
7. John Locke (
8. Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I) (Corsica, France). An intelligent egomaniac, Napoleon wanted to end monarchy and establish Rousseau's
idealized state. He also wanted to rule it. Napoleon ultimately hindered the
success of the revolutionary ideals which he had hoped to impose throughout
Europe; if France’s honor had not already been lost in the French Revolution, it would have been sacrificed on the altar of Napoleon's wars. But Napoleon
did not discredit revolutionary ideology; if he had, he would have done humanity a great service. Unfortunately, Napoleon actually made Rousseau's
bureaucratic state practical. Napoleon was the first secular dictator, a type of leader which has since become common (especially with
the proliferation of pseudo-nations created from former European colonial
empires, with the encouragement of the United Nations). No figure of such
sweeping ambition could fail to do any good, and in between wars Napoleon began to modernize and rebuild France
after the disastrous Revolution. But such achievements of statecraft were not worth the millions of lives sacrificed to
Napoleon's megalomania.
While we’re on the subject, it's impossible to discuss the development of the modern state without
mentioning Otto von Bismarck (Prussia), who deserves a prominent place on this list for uniting and militarizing Germany, leading to the World Wars and
eventual decline of Europe. Bismarck invented the welfare state to buy off the left while he pursued
his military agenda (including the Franco-Prussian War). He also encouraged the German
nationalist mythology that was later useful to Hitler, and promoted a "culture war" against traditional social institutions which will seem
familiar to anyone following politics today.
Similarly, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt (USA), the U.S. presidents who fought German aggression, simultaneously repudiated
America's political traditions by promoting progressive-liberal and statist reforms. Wilson expanded
the bureaucracy and brought academic intellectuals into it, promoted international government, and established the Federal
Reserve, which pursued economic policies that led to the Depression and contributed to the global crisis that preceded WWII.
Roosevelt created the world's largest welfare state. Wilson and FDR won the two
World Wars, but also reshaped the U.S. into the kind of bureaucratic leviathan
it fought against. Meanwhile, the welfare state was elaborated as theory by academics like British economist William Beveridge (British Indian Empire),
and implemented even more fully in postwar Britain and Europe.
9.
Martin Luther (Saxony). The core innovations of Zoroastrianism and
Christianity are a humanistic cosmology and impractical ethical tenets founded on belief in the imminence of apocalypse.
However, when the apocalypse failed to happen, the Catholic Church abandoned literal interpretation of the New Testament, reclaimed sounder
Jewish and Greek beliefs about morality, and argued that the Kingdom of God could be enacted on Earth (through the Church) with no
apocalypse needed. Unfortunately, these more sensible doctrines were eventually repudiated by Protestant leaders, beginning
with Martin Luther. Luther was a small-minded theologian who got caught up in events; he did not understand his own motives. His revulsion toward Catholic
hierarchy was part of the larger modern revolt against authority and toward individualism that lies at the deepest level in the
evolution of modern values; it's one of the great trends of modern history, transcending contingency. Luther was only one in a
long line of critics of the Church, and his ideas echo those of earlier figures such as
Peter Waldo (Pierre Vaudès) (France?), Wycliffe, Hus and others (see #4) whose dissent and advocacy of poverty
was influenced by dualistic heresies (as well as the Bible itself, of course). Luther's way was further paved by humanist intellectuals such as
Desiderius Erasmus (Burgundian Netherlands), who anticipated many of
Luther's bad ideas – most notably, calling for a return to an imaginary "Apostolic Church." Just as the leaders of the Renaissance
preferred classical culture to medieval culture, the Northern humanists called for a return to the past – but unfortunately, they did not
want to restore classical religion, but the early Christian Church, which was Gnostic, antisocial, and steeped in
apocalyptic fervor. To this idea, Luther and the other leaders of the original Reformation – John
Calvin (Jean Cauvin) (France), Huldrych Zwingli (Swiss Confederation), John Knox – added several others
that have been preserved in modern Protestantism. These included the (foolish) doctrine of predestination, sola scriptura
(or rejection of all religious ideas not found in the Bible – an unfortunate
reversal of the Church's position that Catholic doctrine and papal pronouncements were more reliable than scripture, which was true)
and the emphasis on salvation over good works (intended as a repudiation of the Church which mediated those works, but also
consistent with embracing a less practical, more dualistic flavor of Christianity). Most of these were bad ideas which the
Catholic Church had successfully abandoned about a millennium earlier.
But the ideas espoused in the Reformation are less important than the seismic shifts in European societies
that were taking place. By Luther's time, the Church's popular support and wealth were waning, and only a
triggering event was required to unleash chaos. The Reformation was a social revolution, but its leaders didn't at first see that – they were driven by a narrow obsession
with reform, distaste for Church rituals and the power of priests and popes. Of course, the strongest lies usually contain some
truth, and Luther's criticism of Church practices and abuses was hardly unjustified. The poor leadership and depravity of some popes
certainly eroded the legitimacy of the Church – and much of the blame for the initial crisis belongs to Leo X
(Giovanni d'Medici) (Florence), whose sale of indulgences inspired Luther to air his beliefs and whose excommunication of Luther lacked
the Church's usual finesse in handling dissenters. But the Reformation was deeply rooted in rejection of the social order that the
Church upheld, a sentiment which was centuries old by Luther's time; the rise of literacy and individualism in Europe (and Gutenberg's
press) naturally encouraged the democratization of religion, giving Luther's recycled dissent fertile ground. Luther
and Calvin just happened to be at the wrong place and time to steer Christianity toward
By limiting the Church's authority, the Reformation liberated thought and encouraged civic and political activity; but it also liberated
superstitions which the Church had kept a lid on before that time, and unleashed social tensions – beginning with the German
peasants' revolt which used Luther's ideas to justify anarchism and was brutally crushed with Luther's blessing. A century of bloody
religious wars followed, resulting in more than ten million deaths; most of these occurred in places where forms of
Calvinism were prevalent (the Dutch Revolt?, the French Huguenots, English Puritanism). In the long term, Protestant sectarianism
undoubtedly weakened the intellectual influence of Christianity by emphasizing faith over reason. The new embrace of
biblical literalism almost immediately put religion at odds with science; both Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation emphasized
faith over reason, widening the gap (providing the context for Galileo's spat with the Church). It is an
historical paradox that since the
Reformation, Christian countries have contributed more to civilization than the rest of the world combined, so the Reformation
can't have been a total disaster; in fact, Protestant countries led the way, outstripping other parts of Europe economically
and technologically. But Max Weber’s superficial thesis that a Protestant "work ethic" spurred the Industrial Revolution
doesn't explain much (or even fit all the facts, since one industrial country, France, remained nominally Catholic). Logically,
sola scriptura and the other ideas of Erasmus, Luther and the rest should encourage ascesticism and unworldliness, but
the opposite values prevailed in Protestant countries. The probable
explanation is that the spirit of innovation and resistance to religious authority came from a common impulse.
One undisputed result of the Reformation that it splintered Christendom for a time,
and in the ensuing period many (eventually most) Europeans abandoned religion for good. Some Protestant sects are in
growth mode today, but they are mostly anti-intellectual, apocalyptic ones (such as American fundamentalism, which is arguably
the first truly literalist form of Protestantism – its adherents are urged to love Jesus, repent and wait for the imminent
end of the world). The beleaguered Catholic Church is the only legitimate intellectual force in Christianity (for example,
the Vatican recently made peace with
the theory of evolution, but Protestants continue to fight against it). A lesser-known legacy of the Reformation:
like some other German leaders (reaching back almost to the Dark Ages), Luther was a fervent nationalist and virulent anti-Semite –
two ideas that have long been connected in northern Europe, culminating in Hitler (#6).
10.
Mao Tse-tung (Ch'in China). History has still not taken the measure of Mao's monstrous crimes, and no
Nuremberg Trials are imminent in China – but the Great Leap Forward was the most brutally procrustean social experiment in history.
The Cultural Revolution purged or exiled countless able people and left a generation without education.
As one of the world's oldest and most stable societies, China was able to
survive communism, allowing Western intellectuals to ignore its staggering costs:
economic stasis, mass starvation, religious and intellectual suppression. (Apologists such as journalist Edgar Snow blocked
Western knowledge of these events for years.) Maoism is the ultimate example of a social program which, in the
service of total equality (see Rousseau, #3), treated human life and individuality like fodder. Mao may have caused the deaths of as
many as 50 million people.
The Chinese police
state also inspired, and backed, some of the most repressive governments in history in neighboring states. Even by the
standards of 20th-century Communist revolutionaries, Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) (Cambodia, France) is an appalling,
seemingly incomprehensible figure. Following the example of Mao's Cultural Revolution, his party slaughtered all
the educated people they could find (at least one million people were killed, many after being ordered to dig their own
mass graves). Hopefully the Khmer Rouge will stand as the ultimate example of destructive mob utopianism. (It makes an interesting contrast
with non-ideological butchers like Timur, who saved the best people from the cities he conquered and slaughtered the rest.)
Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Sinh Cung) (Indochina, France) was motivated as much by
nationalism as communism but, like Pol Pot and some Islamist leaders, he became an ideologue while
living in the West and was inspired to create a repressive regime. Less ideological but still reprehensible, Bo Ne Win (India, British Empire)
has the (unfortunately far from unique) distinction of ruining a country, his native Burma, in less than
20 years.
Not that any continent has
been spared monstrous leadership. Leopold II (Belgium), the first European colonial ruler in
sub-Saharan Africa, seized the Congo and his misrule included brutal treatment and atrocities that
left millions dead; parallel figures include Adrian Dietrich Lothar
von Trotha (Prussia), the German colonial military commander who suppressed the Boxer
Rebellion and uprisings in southern Africa by massacres, poisoning and mass killing. Post-colonial leaders like
Francisco Solano López (Paraguay) perpetrated bloody wars against
neighboring countries. Ottoman massacres of Armenians and Assyrians began during the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman
Empire), which also saw the decline of the Empire; extermination and relocation campaigns were resumed
by Mehmed Talaat (Talaat
Pasha) and Ismail Enver (Enver Pasha) (Ottoman Empire) before and during WWI and these are
considered the first modern genocides, though details are disputed. The First World War was the most horrific event in history at the time; it had many causes, but
Austrian-German militarism, fostered by Austrian foreign minister Leopold
von Berchtold (Austrian Empire) and endorsed by Wilhelm II (Prussia),
was foremost. The war marked the beginning of the end of Europe; it brought Stalin and eventually Hitler to power.
Benito Mussolini (Italy) promoted militarist ideology which he called
fascism, though giving him credit as an ideological pioneer even in that very negative sense may be a stretch.
Most disturbingly of all, led by Hideki Tojo (Japan) and Hirohito, Japan inflicted horrifying atrocities on
conquered China, dehumanizing its victims and subjecting them to sadistic "experiments" –
before the Nazis, and halfway around the world, but apparently not insulated from the ideological undercurrents
that made such unthinkable behavior possible. Like Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany, Tojo and Hirohito's regime
fostered horrifyingly evil people such as Shirō Ishii (Japan),
who led the Japanese biological warfare program – one of many.
Ideological justification for murder and warfare,
and personality cults, became typical of post-colonial leaders in the 20th century – Ante Pavelić, Ahmed Sekou Touré, Francois Duvalier, Maximiliano Martinez, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, Rafael Trujillo, Rákosi Mátyás,
Idi Amin, Yahya Khan,
Francisco Nguema, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Hafez al-Assad, Jose Efrain Rios Montt, Juvénal Habyarimana, Mengistu
Haile Mariam, Nicolae Ceausescu,
Robert Mugabe, Hissene Habre, Saddam Hussein, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, and Théoneste Bagosora – who ordered atrocities, initiated or
perpetuated conflicts, or plundered their nations' wealth. (An additional development is the rise of warlords
in countries like Somalia, Sudan, Congo and Uganda who control contested tribal areas where national identity
does not apply and perpetrate mass murder, rape and destruction.)
11. Few individuals have influenced history more singlehandedly
than Temujin (Genghiz Khan) (Mongolia), a mass murderer who made good. Well, mostly bad. His brutal conquests had vast consequences: the
invasion of the Caliphate (and the horrifying slaughter of its people by Genghiz' grandson Hulagu) was a body blow from which the Arab world arguably never recovered.
Indirectly, the Mongol empire also moved history forward by unifying central Asia and opening greater communication between China and Eurasia, but it's not clear that
civilization realized immediate benefits. (The Black Death was one result.) Kublai Khan
(Mongol Empire), Genghiz' most important descendent, attempted to successfully govern and even improve China, an almost unique example of
a ruler from a less advanced people governing one of the world's most advanced cultures. However, his rule also began with one of the
bloodiest wars of conquest in human history, earning him a spot on this list rather than the other one. And after Kublai's death the
Mongol dynasty fell apart quickly. It was succeeded by the authoritarian Ming, which restored earlier patterns of governance, but China never again exceeded the West in cultural strength.
12. Marie Jean
Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (France) was one of the first promoters of the idea of progress,
one of the worst big ideas ever. Sort of a Renaissance man of bad ideas, Condorcet also took up Locke’s doctrine of the blank slate (see #7)
and applied it to public education – a cornerstone of recent liberal ideology. Condorcet was an outspoken advocate of political equality, following the example
of earlier philosophes such as Denis Diderot (France) and especially
Claude Helvétius (France),
who asserted that all men were equal in intelligence, that education is all-important, and that the only motive of human behavior
is self-interest. (These things are not true.) An accomplished mathematician, Condorcet was one of many scientists to succumb
to the temptation to use their celebrity to promote their views on politics and religion, an obnoxious trend carried on today by the
likes of James Watson, Richard Lewontin, Richard Dawkins and others. A Rousseau fan (see #3), Condorcet was ecstatic about the French Revolution,
at least until he was imprisoned by Robespierre. He died believing all social problems would be solved after the Revolution.
Belief in human progress began with the success of Western science, but
it became an ideology during the Enlightenment, fed by the ideas of Condorcet, Turgot and others. By the mid-19th century,
thinkers across the political spectrum began to embrace progress as an ideal or a fact, unconsciously replacing the Christian
worldview which most of them (Nietzsche excepted) could not logically transcend. Faith in progress, based on a selective
reading of recent history, was promulgated by Kant and the duller Utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill (UK) and implicitly
shared by followers of Marx, though they professed to believe in a fanciful millennial view of history rather than a merely
progressive one. Comte (see #15) and misguided social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer argued that human society, mirroring
biological evolution, progresses toward greater perfection – which was wrong on both counts, since biological evolution does not
necessarily progress in a linear fashion. (Living things adapt to their environment and change when conditions change,
for better or worse.) Even after the World Wars and the failure of communism, most intellectuals still buy into the idea of
progress to some degree. Social progress is a logical prejudice for utopian liberals, since they have a narrow
humanistic view of what is good and believe that the
world is fundamentally bad (because the wrong people are rich and successful), but could be improved if societies are reformed according to their
aims. Strangely, the idea of progress is just as strong among some so-called "conservatives" – enthusiasts of technology, free markets, and democracy who see these institutions as continuing indefinitely to the ever-greater benefit of humanity. But science and technology do not need an ideology to justify them as long as there is scientific acumen, interest in learning about the world, and aspiration to improve the state of
humanity. And if those things are lost, progress is unlikely.
The truth is that
history is more generally cyclical (with certain themes and conflicts recurring) than progressive, except for the single
exceptional case that scientific knowledge and technology have advanced in Europe and English-speaking countries
dramatically and steadily since about 1200. (Before that time, virtually all Eastern and Western thinkers recognized that human progress
is cyclical. Some, including Aristotle and many Eastern thinkers, went so far as to assume that time is circular, which is untrue except
maybe at a gross cosmological scale, and was rightly rejected by Augustine.) We can hope that civilization will continue to advance
during our time and our children’s time, but no natural law says it will, nor is it a good thing for people to assume that there is.
Optimists such as the libertarian political scientist Julian Simon (USA) have built careers on rosy, utopian future predictions,
and their ideas are influential today especially in the U.S.; but some of their
predictions have already not come true, and bad things have happened that they
did not foresee. An influential voice often cited by critics of environmental conservation, the relatively obscure Simon could turn out
(posthumously) to have a significant negative impact on the world.
13. Gregory VII (Hildebrand) (Tuscany, Holy Roman Empire?). Less often remembered but as influential
as almost anyone on this list, Pope Gregory VII was the papal equivalent of a political demagogue – he
stirred up the laity against the clergy to bring about clerical reforms. This was perhaps the first
movement based on the belief which (unfortunately) has motivated liberal ideology ever since, that
moral duty requires "reforming" (i.e. abolishing and remaking) social institutions. (Note
that the same terminology was recycled in the Reformation.) Not coincidentally, Hildebrand/Gregory and
his comtemporary reformers – the most important were Peter Damian (Papal States) and Humbert
of Silva Candida – were the first public figures educated in the canon law schools which were the progenitors
of universities in Christian Europe; the reflexive dissatisfaction with society and obsession
with equality was taught in schools even then. Many of them were also Cluniac monks, influenced by the
ascetic dualism of Cluny's founders. Their reforms included mandatory celibacy for priests,
a bad idea that continues to cause trouble for the Church. An arrogant meddler in power politics,
Gregory repeatedly sought to establish the primacy of his office over the German Emperor, triggering
civil wars which ended with the sack of Rome. Like many fanatical reformers, his reforms were
undermined by his mistakes but made permanent by his more conciliatory successors
(beginning with the next pope, Urban II, who also came up with the Crusades).
14. William of Ockham (England) was
one of the first important theologians since the early era of Christianity to reinterpret scripture
and orthodoxy according to his social convictions. Like other figures, William argued for the necessity
of poverty among Christians and even charged the Pope with heresy for rejecting the doctrine of
apostolic poverty. He also rejected the rationalistic tradition of scholasticism in favor of faith
in divine omnipotence. Marsiglio (Marsilius) (Padua), an academician
and political theorist who was William's contemporary, espoused popular sovereignty in both
church and state and was also a strident advocate for apostolic poverty, anticipating the
ideological brew of later liberals such as Erasmus. Men like these were instrumental in
eroding the authority and stabilizing social influence of Christianity, though the results
would take time to be realized.
15. At the same time as the rise of
the idea of social progress (see #12), humanistic intellectuals became
interested in stealing the prestige of science to legitimate (and camouflage) their
increasingly radical ideas about society and human nature. Auguste Comte (France), an intermittently crazy
fringe figure, is associated with both developments. Comte coined the term sociology – and made bizarre claims for
the discipline which have never been fulfilled – as well as founding the philosophy
of positivism (or scientism), the idea that science is the source of all knowledge.
This is related to the later school of logical
positivism which argued that only propositions which are empirically testable,
such as scientific theories, are meaningful (critics have noted that this
thesis is not itself empirically verifiable, so logical positivism fails its
own test). Comte's works have also influenced more trivial forms of nonsense
such as business management theory.
The concept of social "science" was meant to
confer legitimacy on ideological positions, primarily liberal ones, by pretending to apply the scientific method to
human institutions or behaviors. The resulting new fields of study – sociology, psychology, anthropology – were grouped
with a few existing non-scientific disciplines (history, economics, geography, linguistics) and the so-called social "sciences" were born.
(Archaeology is a legitimate empirical science, but it is the exception.) For most of the next century, social scientists
produced overly simplistic and occasionally fraudulent theories to explain cultural or psychological
phenomena, defining fundamental axioms based on ideology rather than empirical data – such as Franz Boas (Prussia), a prominent anthropologist who became widely known outside his field for his cultural relativism and
assertions that racial differences are unimportant. While Boas' interest in non-Western languages and cultures was not a bad thing,
the pendulum swung too far in the other direction – any value judgment about cultural or racial differences became taboo. One of Boas' students,
Margaret Mead (USA), famously misinterpreted her anthropological data to support modern
ideas about gender and social behavior. More recently, Boas' denial of racial difference was given pseudo-scientific underpinning by
politically motivated biologists led by Richard Lewontin (USA), also a ruthless opponent of sociobiology. Boas and Emile Durkheim
(France), one of the leading lights in the non-science of sociology, were rigid defenders of blank slate thinking, and much scholarship
in their respective fields was rendered worthless by the underlying assumption that society can be understood independently of the
unique traits of its people. A follower of Boas, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, founded "structuralism," which attacked
generalizations about society that were distasteful to liberal ideology by reducing units of analysis to meaningless elements
(and often by appealing to the Freudian unconscious). But the discipline of sociology really fell off the cliff in the 1940s with the
invention of critical theory by Max Horkheimer (Germany) and other members of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, who asserted
that all knowledge is
permeated by prejudice and by implication, invalid (similar to Marx's "false consciousness"). Through the 20th century, the
social "sciences" aided intellectuals in misshaping popular opinion but, not coincidentally, contributed
little to human knowledge. Sociologist Irving Horowitz has summed up his field by saying, "The aim of sociology has become to
retool human nature and effect a systematic overhaul of society." The only questionable part of that statement is the word "become" –
the social sciences were corrupted by political ideology almost from their beginning.
16. The central project of modern philosophy was
coming up with a rational basis for Christian morality that did not require belief in God. It was a failure with
far-flung consequences, since every philosopher's attempt to solve the problem introduced new logical errors, which
then begged to be reconciled. Some philosophers ended up rejecting theism, others gave up on rationality.
René Descartes (France) was among the first to reject empirical (that is to say, reliable and real)
knowledge; he decided that his conceptions of mind, matter and God could be proven to exist by logical
arguments, which were ridden with holes. Baruch de Spinoza accepted ontological proofs of God's existence but
argued that mind, matter and God could not be proved to be separate, an idea which was unpalatable to Christians
and atheists alike. (Most European thinkers until recently could not imagine an impersonal God; Spinoza was
the exception.) Spinoza's naturalistic monotheism would inspire later, clearer thinkers and was famously
name-checked by Einstein, but likely also influenced the humanistic pantheism of Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer.
Spinoza was also an absolute determinist, so his philosophy lacked any logical basis for
morality. A more influential and despicable figure, David Hume
(Scotland, Great Britain) questioned both knowledge from reason and from sense experience, and in doing so, paved
the dead end cul-de-sac of modern philosophy. (His ideas were largely anticipated by the Greek and Roman Skeptics
such as Sextus Empiricus (Roman Empire), bad thinkers who lived 1,500-2,000 years earlier; the Skeptics also quickly reached a
logical point of no return, but conceded that practical experience was more reliable than any other source of truth.)
Hume concluded that nothing can be known with certainty – for
example, in contrast to Aristotle's great analysis of causality, Hume denied that
causal connections can be proven to exist. Hume's critique of inductive reasoning and all other useful mental tools
for living says more about the pointlessness of modern philosophy than about the world. (Being British, Hume wasn't too
fussed about his radical conclusions.) Immanuel Kant
(Prussia) responded to Hume by asserting that with or without God,
people are subject to a moral imperative, but he failed to prove it (though he thought he did). Kant believed he had
logically justified the validity of morality and also science and humanism; idealism and empiricism;
social order and freedom. Regardless of the merits of all those things, Kant's efforts to reconcile them did not
end any arguments, and inadvertently strengthened subjectivism (which was not his intention). Kant's ultimate
answers to the question of why one should believe in God – to encourage us to behave well, and as a symbol of what
people don't understand – were only a little less subjective than Rousseau's. For this Kant is considered the
greatest modern philosopher, which might be true by default. Kant's philosophy is mostly significant in that
it reflects the confused biases of his time (progress, rationalism).
Kant's disciples termed his philosophy "German Idealism" and quickly ran it into the ground, especially
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Saxony), Friedrich Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(Wurttemberg), extremely influential figures within German philosophy whose works are almost unreadable for anyone
else. (Fichte was also a virulent German nationalist, see #6 and #9.) Their most famous concept, the dialectic,
is naive and simplistic (ideas can evolve dialectically but textbook cases are rare – human ideas are often inchoate
associations of perceptions rather than simple propositions, and even clearly articulated ideas are more likely to displace
conflicting ideas than to merge with them in a new synthesis). Hegel's metaphysics and theory of history replaced
God with the ill-defined concept of "Spirit," which is implicitly shared by powerful and amoral human beings;
Schelling, Schopenhauer and finally Nietzsche would develop the concept of Spirit or Will along progressively
humanist and atheistic lines. (Hegel also introduced the toxic idea of the "Other" borrowed by
new-Left political radicals.) Hegel's most powerful historical influence was on Marx, and therefore bad; at the
same time, German philosophy also created the intellectual fantasy world of atheistic materialism that fostered the
aggression of the World Wars. Hegel’s works were admired because they made up a comprehensive "system"; they are
so difficult to understand that you may waste a lot of time before you realize that Hegel's ideas have the
collective value of a pile of shit. Or to use his own terminology, there is little in his system that is correspondent with
reality. If you have to read a German philosopher, skip all of the above and read Leibniz – a profound thinker
and one of the few people ever to seriously theorize about existence, though also in unreadable prose.
17.
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (Great Britain). Godwin was a radical political writer and Calvinist who espoused social revolution, anticipated anarchism, and believed in the perfectibility of society. Mary Wollstonecraft,
his wife (briefly, before she died in childbirth), was perhaps the first important feminist writer. (Their daughter was Mary
Shelley, author of the clever Romantic fantasy Frankenstein.) Wollstonecraft and Godwin were not as influential
in their own time as most of the figures on this list, but they
were early promoters of important intellectual mistakes. Both parroted the ideas of Rousseau (see #3), arguing that social
conditions were responsible for criminal behavior as well as the deprivations of women. Godwin's extreme
optimism brought him into conflict with Thomas Malthus' pessimism; neither was completely right, but
Malthus was much closer. (The concept of original sin,
which Malthus believed in and Godwin rejected, is a more accurate generalization about human behavior than
utopian optimism.) Godwin opposed criminal punishment and was skeptical of property and almost every other
traditional ethical precept; though his personal ethics were good. (For examle, Godwin did not believe
that revolutionary ideals should be enacted through violence; he was typical
of British radicals, who were always more moderate than their contemporaries on the
Continent.) Wollstonecraft was a gifted but vitriolic social
critic who was the first to publicly assert some of the inaccuracies and
distortions echoed by modern feminists, such as that men and women differ only
physically. Though tepidly received at the time, her works anticipated feminism
as it would develop in the 20th century – wedded to irrationality, and
given to exaggerated claims about gender relations in
which real injustices are difficult to extricate from formless resentment and
fantasy. Wollstonecraft’s ideology was a mishmash of justified social criticism
– most women in Europe were little educated (a holdover from earlier times of hardship) and as a
result of industrial advance, underemployed – and profound misunderstandings about the nature of
the sexes. (Most women are not servile, but neither are most women selfishly independent, as
feminists have hoped. Parenthood should not be the only calling that is open to women, but it's a
very important activity, and not abhorrent or degrading as many feminists insisted.) Later
pseudo-intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir (France) asserted that gender is socially constructed, the
postmodern equivalent of Wollstonecraft's ideas. Modern feminism surged in the 1950s and 1960s with
the hate-filled works of writers such as Betty Friedan,
Germaine Greer and Juliet Mitchell, who were greatly influenced by Marxist and/or
Freudian cant. Modern feminists have been consistently drawn to unpalatable
and extreme ideas and positions, including civil disobedience, moral relativism, false
(and insulting) attempts to equate women's rights with black civil rights,
existentialism, Freudian psychology, an exclusionary and self-indulgent
solipsism, paganism, and at worst (especially from writers in the 1960s and 1970s)
a Manichaean hatred of childbirth, marriage, personal
responsibility, and other necessities of reality. Writing almost two centuries
before feminist ideology bullied Western thought into submission,
Wollstonecraft knew little about the consequences of her radical ideas, but we
do now: they have been mixed, part benefit and part disaster. (Some freedom is
beneficial, too much freedom is not; this is always true, for individuals or societies).
The social empowerment of women has been
largely achieved, but the price was high – in Western countries, feminism exacerbated
the precipitous decline in marriage and (probably) the birth rate. Ironically, two
generations of unborn children in Western societies have given third world
countries (or the non-feminist world, if you want to look it that way) a
decisive demographic edge. Feminism may have difficulty maintaining its
influence in an increasingly non-European world.
18. Friedrich Nietzsche
(Prussia). By the mid-19th century, the decline of Christian practice and the rise of atheism was a fait
accompli in Europe. Nietzsche uncloseted this dirty secret, announcing that God was dead and exhorting
humanity to enjoy its freedom (responsibly) and seize the day. At least, that
was the thrust of the argument he developed – it's not clear to what degree
Nietzsche believed anything he wrote. In reality, of course, it’s possible for a
rationalist to believe there are limits to human action (and even in God) without being Christian, and nothing
in 19th-century science made Nietzsche's atheism logically necessary. For example, Darwin's theory of evolution
(or adaptive response to natural conditions) assumes that nature imposes limits to human freedom. Many Christian
writers have accused Darwin of inspiring modern atheism, but atheism was already strong among European intellectuals
in the mid-19th century; for example, socialists Ludwig Feuerbach and Marx peddled atheistic materialism decades
before Darwin. (Nietzsche mentioned Darwin only with contempt,
presumably because Darwinism asserted that human beings are animals rather than supermen. Nietzsche wanted to transcend biology,
while Darwin’s discoveries suggested that human beings are more constrained by biology than had been recognized before –
which is one reason Darwin is so important.)
Brilliant
but amoral, Nietzsche purported to be at least logically consistent,
unencumbered (unlike Kant) by any impulse to find a rational basis for
religious morality, since he rejected it. Nietzsche embodies what in religious
doctrine would be called the sin of pride – the erroneous belief that human will is unconstrained by God or nature. Accordingly,
Nietzsche despised Christian ethics as "slave morality," and correctly noted that its emphasis on equality fosters
injustice rather than justice. His critique is interesting (and spot-on if applied to Protestantism – he does not seem to have
distinguished between Catholic and Protestant doctrine). But Nietzsche went too far in the other direction. It's senseless to
believe that the poor and unsuccessful are inherently more moral, as Christianity implies, but that doesn't mean that the most
powerful leaders (Nietzsche's Supermen) are the most moral people. Nietzsche's critique of Christianity was not very
influential – Christians were unperturbed, and liberal ideology, the world's dominant intellectual force today, is a
secular version of Christian slave morality. Nietzsche's most interesting ideas were generally not
his influential ones; he seemingly argued for a return to morality based on rationalism, but what others took away from his
works was nihilistic materialism and skepticism of received ethics. The world would obviously be better off if Nietzsche had
never lived, but his works are entertaining madness and can’t entirely be dismissed as sleight-of-hand, unlike most modern
philosophy. Nietzsche's belief that mankind should aspire rather than despair elevates him somewhat above the nadir of
philosophy, existentialism. But his admiration for idealized
humanity led him to argue that a supreme man or men is the logical replacement of God, a big intellectual error
(later refuted in C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man). Nietzsche's ideas were
appropriated by the Nazis, though most of the ideas associated with Nazism are much older than Nietzsche. (For the
record, Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite – and Hitler wasn't much like Nietzsche's idealized Superman, though
it's impossible to know what Nietzsche would have thought of him, of course.)
The idea that, if God doesn’t exist, "all is permitted" (in Dostoevsky's phrase) is probably as old as atheism itself,
which is probably almost as old as theism. One of the earliest materialist thinkers, Epicurus (Samos), believed that the gods were
uninterested in humans’ personal lives (which is true enough) and espoused a kind of hedonism in which the aim of life is the
pursuit of pleasure through living a contemplative life and rejecting social participation. Nietzsche
and other modern philosophers followed Epicurus’ line of thought, but without
the saving grace of the Epicurean emphasis on self-restraint and contemplation. (By the way, Epicurus also espoused the
atomistic physical theories of Democritus, which were in some ways modern – the concept of "atoms" was a lucky guess – but
absurdly materialistic and deterministic, and led to atheism. One of Democritus' followers, Lucretius,
was compelled to invent a lame excuse, the "swerve," to explain why reality is not rigidly
deterministic. The determinism of the atomists was revived after Newton, leading to intellectual mistakes described
herein, before it was invalidated by 20th-century physics; atomistic concepts probably contribute to popular confusion
about quantum mechanics.)
A similar atheistic moral theory was developed in the early 19th century by Jeremy Bentham (Great Britain):
Utilitarianism, which asserts that the purpose of life is to optimize human happiness. Utilitarianism was popularized
by the anti-religious political philosopher James Mill, who also promoted some other bad ideas (such as the labor theory of value
of David Ricardo), and finally by his son John Stuart Mill, who made it pompous and fanatical. Needless to say, this is bad
philosophy – what makes people happy is not always good for them, nor
is it obvious how mass happiness or "greatest good for
greatest number" could ever be measured. More fundamentally, utilitarianism is simply a confused restatement of the
assumption from dualistic (or humanistic) religion (see #1, #2, etc.) that what is good for people is
different than what is good in general.
Nietzschean atheism,
along with the radically humanistic metaphysics of the "will" expounded by
Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer (Danzig), led to
existentialism, a
branch of philosophical literature based
on the logical problems implied by complete human freedom. Since natural laws
and limits constrain human freedom, existentialism is crap – and its
adherents quickly realized that it led to absurdity, which they embraced. Without
God, they claimed, existence is meaningless. But this did not bother them much,
since they were intellectual poseurs, not serious thinkers.
Jean-Paul Sartre (France) argued
that because there is no God, everyone must make their own choices, but he still
believed in consequences and the imperative of action, though he didn't adequately explain
the contradiction. The even more pretentious Albert
Camus (Algeria, France) reasoned that since the universe is meaningless and
absurd and will eventually end, there is no logical reason not to commit
suicide, but we shouldn’t anyway because to commit suicide would be to walk
away from the problem. His argument also seems absurd, and certainly
uninspiring, but it's hard to refute, so perhaps he was onto something.
19.
Sigmund Freud (Austrian Empire). Russia
had Lysenko, the West had Freud – an authority whose role in science was entirely
negative, stunting psychological inquiry for most of a century. Twentieth-century intellectuals
chose many strange heroes, but none were stranger than Freud, and few were bigger –
Freud was often asserted to be an equal of Darwin, Einstein, and other
thinkers whose theories were (unlike Freudian psychology) coherent, testable,
important, and not obviously stupid. A better analogy would be with other discredited scientific
theories of the past – but unlike vitalism, the ether, phlogiston and so on, Freudian theory was never the most
parsimonious explanation of the known facts. Countless quacks have combined
unscientific methods and bizarre ideas, but only Freud is routinely named with the
world's great thinkers. In the history of junk science, Freud's stature is
unique.
The most
controversial of Freud's ideas, his doctrines about sexuality and its influence
on psychological development, were unfortunately among his most influential, though
to a sensible person they suggest only that Freud was a head case. But nothing
succeeds like pseudoscience (astrology hasn't gone away either). Most of
Freud’s ideas were disputed by other psychologists while Freud was alive,
but they took on a new life in the academic humanities, popular media, and
Hollywood – institutions that perpetuate discredited ideas. While unscientific and
absurd, Freud's theories of the unconscious, repression,
and the sexual basis of human behavior were
useful to intellectuals mounting a pseudoscientific attack on rationality and
Christian morality – just as Marx purported to create a "scientific" theory
justifying envy, Freudian psychology justified lust. (Freud was an
atheist, of course – also an anti-Semite.) Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan
(France) took Freud's ideas farther outside the realm of science to attain
completely non-testable theoretical concepts of human behavior (which even Noam
Chomsky called charlatanism). Lacan's ideas had far-ranging influence on literary theory and
feminism; all of his ideas are silly, worthless nonsense. Perhaps even more demented was
behaviorism, pioneered by John B. Watson
and B.F. Skinner (USA), who "argued" that human development is completely
environmentally determined. The worst important psychologist of all was R.D.
Laing (UK), who asserted (with Lacan and others) that psychotic behavior could be a valid
response to social oppression and blamed mental illness on repressive families or societies (which is
seriously wrong). The general effect of psychology on popular culture
has been to legitimate abnormality, undermine the advance of medical knowledge, and to glamorize
pseudoscience. And Freud's influence persists. Until recently, Freudian theory continued to inspire
reams of garbage in academic publications – though not as much as Marxism.
Only recently has
rigorous work been conducted in psychology, and most advances have
come from pharmacology or neuroscience; tragically, we still don't understand the causes of mental illnesses.
If and when the physical process of consciousness is well understood, it will be one of the great scientific
revolutions and will likely settle arguments in philosophy and religion as well. When that happens, intuitive
students of human psychology in the
past – Aristotle and Confucius and Shakespeare – will likely be honored as lucky guessers (like Democritus), but
Freud will be remembered as a quack, or not at all.
20. From the 7th
century through the 11th century, the Arab Caliphate excelled in
economic might, political freedom, literature, and impressive architecture.
Today the Arab world is best known for extremists who practice economic
extortion and political tyranny, distribute anti-Semitic literature, and
blow up impressive architecture. What a difference a millennium makes. The important steps
in this transition are obscure. Throughout its history, Islam (like
Christianity) has produced ideological revivalist movements aimed at purifying (or
radicalizing) the faithful and purporting to criticize the worldliness of
state-sanctioned (and successful) religion. This fundamentalist or literalist
impulse inspired both the rise of Sufism and the codification of Islamic Law, later used to
curb the power of secular authorities. (The course of Sufism echoes the evolution of
monastic orders in the Catholic world; Sufism was initially a devotional, mystical and ascetic movement,
but following the influence of al-Ghazali and others, it became mainstream and the basis of missionary
activity – and was rejected by later radical adherents.) The Mongol conquest of
the Caliphate led to greater emphasis on ideological purity by men such
as Ibn Taymiyya (Abu al-Abbas Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Salaam ibn
Abdullah ibn Taymiya al-Harrani)
(Caliphate), who is often cited for promoting the interpretation of jihad as specifically political struggle.
In the 18th century, sectarian movements such as Wahhabism, developed
by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Hajd), pursued
violence against the Ottoman regime and eventually created a fundamentalist Islamic kingdom in
Saudi Arabia. Later, European control of the Middle East incited similar uprisings, beginning with the
Mahdist revolt led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah (Egyptian Sudan) which caused great loss of
life and ruined Sudan (relatively speaking) before ending in British takeover.
The turning against the West is a relatively recent
phenomenon which resulted indirectly from exposure to Western societies, and envy of them; the first anti-
Western Muslim leaders, like Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn a-Afghānī (Iran), were
more interested in politics than theology, but they saw the religion as the weapon for uniting Moslems against the
West. More explicit politicization of Islam was fostered by religious
fanatics such as Sayyid Qutb (Egypt, British Empire) and the Muslim Brotherhood, who became
disenchanted with nationalism where it failed to produce Islamist and anti-Western regimes. Many radical
Islamists such as Qutb had some education in the West and were influenced by Western ideology; this is also true
of the pivotal modern figure of Islamic radicalism, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (Ruhollah Mostafavi)
(Iran) (just as many third world communist and nationalist radicals and despots were educated in Europe).
The basis of all terrorist movements is envy (under the political dress of
revolutionary socialism) or pride (nationalism), but while this is more explicit in secular politics,
in the Islamic world the ideals of terrorists may be prefigured by religious beliefs
in ways which are obscure to Western analysts. (Many Western intellectuals, notably Edward Said,
are actually apologists for anti-Western terrorists; but while they may share common cause with the
terrorists, theyprobably do not understand their ideological motives.) The murderous nihilism of
terrorists and glamorization of suicide suggest that Islam is a failed religion, but exactly how
this happened has not been explained.
Terrorism, as a political tactic, is a fairly new idea; its modern roots are in Western political ideology,
specifically 19th-century European (especially Russian and Balkan) socialism and later, nationalism. These began as intellectual movements,
led by relatively small cliques of rebels who believed that society should be redeemed by a transformational event
(see #2) and who were inspired by the ideas of Rousseau and Marx (see #3 and #4); these movements had little popular support, so their tactics
focused on destabilizing actions that could be carried out by small groups. Some early terrorists such as Sergey Nechayev
and Mikhail Bakunin (Russian Empire) tried to present their ideas and
goals as novel ideologies (anarchism, Nihilism), but there was nothing new in their aims. Actually, terrorism is such an obvious idea
that its roots are probably prehistoric; but it is more important now than ever, because belief that
political action can bring about social transformation has become universal in the modern world, and also because terrorist movements have
occasionally succeeded in forcing political change. In this story there are two kinds of villains: the
terrorists themselves and the regimes that capitulated
to their demands. (Lloyd George is sometimes given the dubious honor of being the first political leader to deal with terrorists,
though of course, his partition of Ireland failed to end the problem.) Whether any end can justify terrorist means
is debatable; it is largely a moot question, since terrorist organizations have largely been driven by revolutionary
socialism and/or nationalism, and the potential benefits of the political changes espoused by the best-known terrorist
organizations – from the Black Hand and the Red Brigades to the IRA and PLO – are dubious at best. Often their claims are completely
fraudulent, which seems to be the case with al-Qaeda, a cult of personality based on anti-Western propaganda which purports
disingenuously to be a religious movement. Political revolutions can perhaps be justified as remedies for slavery
or subjugation, but insurrections or passive resistance (see #27) are more often effective (and obviously more just) than terror campaigns,
and less often associated by fanaticism or purely destructive motives.
21. Voltaire
(Francois-Marie Arouet) (
In Voltaire's
defense, he valued civilization and therefore disliked Rousseau.
However, the French philosophes’ interest in reason and culture was politically
motivated; their efforts at "Enlightenment" were aimed at undermining
the authority of the Church. The materialism and atheism of men such as Diderot and Voltaire drove them
to promote education and science, not the other way around – their minds were made up, shaped by the
false convictions of Locke. Locke, however, ignored the revolutionary conclusions of his ideas, and most
people in English-speaking countries have followed his example, which may be why Enlightenment ideals prospered in
English-speaking countries, but in France led to the Terror, Napoleon, and instability throughout
the 19th century.
22. The
development of photography naturally changed the direction of the graphic arts
– but the first results (Realism, Impressionism) were at worst decorative
and often brilliant. But since 1900 most art, with few exceptions, has been meaningless, puerile, offensive, or even fraudulent –
modern artists aim not only to reject aesthetic values of earlier artists (and often to insult their audiences) but to undermine rationality
itself, and the purpose of art. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso (Spain) opened the door to modern art, though
Picasso was genuinely inspired and challenged by reality (and by egoism, but that was nothing new). Some of Picasso's works are
captivating, but in lesser hands Cubism rapidly become egregious. Virtually everything in art since Picasso is influenced by him, and since
most of it has not been edifying, his greatness must be questioned. Most people, if allowed to give an honest opinion about modern
art, dismiss it as dishonest and do not distinguish between the merely trivial work of early abstractionists (Picasso, Matisse, etc.)
and 20th-century artistic movements, implicitly hostile to all prior artistic traditions, beginning with Wassily Kandinsky
(Russian Empire) and subsequent Futurists, surrealists, and Abstract Expressionists. A
similar attack on traditional aesthetics was effected in music at the same time by Arnold Schoenberg
(Austria-Hungary). Schoenberg's twelve-tone and atonal experiments expanded composition, but his egotistical iconoclasm
and disrespect for the tastes of audiences allowed him to write unpleasant and unlistenable music, contributing to
classical music's decline. (He pleaded artistic imperative to excuse the overwhelming unpopularity of his music, but
most of his later works do not try to achieve emotional effects or convey ideas.) In architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright and others began to
depart radically from previous styles (with the characteristic arrogance of modernists, they claimed to be introducing
theory into architecture for the
first time). Wright did not abandon aesthetics, but that step was soon taken by Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier)
(Switzerland) and the Bauhaus school led by Walter Gropius (Germany). Their works proliferated after WWII (some actually
claimed that modern architecture would help prevent the return of fascism, one of the most daringly nonsensical frauds in the
history of intellectual whoredom). The legacy of modernist anti-aesthetics is intangible but substantial; it has degraded the cultural
environment in which people are forced to grow up today. People who are raised in the presence of rationality, beauty, and
order are more likely to add to them than people who grow up inured to ugliness and chaos. I think future critics will
view modernism with ambivalence at best; interesting
ideas came to the fore, inevitably, but the entire enterprise was a disingenuous
attack on traditions which failed to cover up the artists’ lack of vision (and
their lack of understanding of the world they live in, which
modern artists have done little to illuminate). Modernism did
not win completely; not many people listen to classical music today, but even
fewer listen to Schoenberg. Some very egregious modern buildings were removed because they had become synonymous with a
failed social agenda. But today’s commercial architecture is aesthetically not
much better, and it has bred a tolerance of ugliness and mediocrity that is
almost unprecedented in history, a legacy of the irresponsibility of Western
intellectual elites that only time can erase.
23. Hernan Cortés (
24.The fecundity of 19th-century science inspired some (mostly European) social scientists and
artists to pretend that the humanities could also generate new and useful ideas at a similar rate. By the early 20th century this had
reached the level of mass psychosis, with a radical new movement or ideology (usually ending in "ism") announced, dissected and fawned over
every few years. Schoenberg's atonalism and serialism in music; expressionism, Dada, and surrealism in art; Freudian and Jungian
crackpot psychology and the endless elaborations and critiques of their fraudulent pupils; Marxist history and economics;
the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss (see #15), leading to the non-ideas
of poststructuralism, semiotics and postmodernism – all are united by their lack of real substance, their rejection of
sensible ideas and accepted traditions, and their minimal long-term influence on anything except each other.
Initially, these toxic pseudo-intellectual circle jerks were limited to a few cultural centers of
Europe, especially in Germany and Austria; fin de siècle Vienna was especially rotten, with rampant anti-Semitism and
the intellectual circles that produced Freud, Husserl and Schoenberg. A couple of generations of these people were sufficient to
precipitate Europe's decline. Later, when Hitler rose to power, many fled to the United States, where their ideas contributed to
the "countercultural" attack on society of the 1950s and 1960s, in which radical ideas from psychology and sociology (especially
concerning race and gender politics) undermined the values and beliefs that had underpinned American success. While the
individuals associated with these alleged breakthroughs have received more fame than they deserve, a few should be singled out
for their role in corroding the Western intellectual tradition. Leaders of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer,
Herbert Marcuse (Germany), Theodor Adorno, and others developed critical theory, which
anticipated deconstruction (see #29 below); they also brought radicalism to the United States and worked to update Marxism by
adding Freudian psychology (it seems almost absurd to even comment on the absurdity of this). Their influence was felt by
more militant intellectuals who provided ideas to the New Left, such as Frantz Fanon (Martinique, France), who
laughably equated destructive thoughts and writing with violence, which he rationalized with stupid (but
intellectualized) anti-colonialist, feminist hate. Similarly, structuralism was one of several non-ideas that originated in the
social sciences (in this case, linguistics and anthropology) but was used for general intellectual obfuscation – it was applied to
Freudian psychoanalysis by Lacan, to developmental psychology by Jean Piaget, and to literary theory
by Roland Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault (see #29); all of these thinkers influenced the radical Left in the postwar period.
Piaget, Boas and the others still have influence on what remains of the humanities in Western countries (including the U.S.),
though not well known by name. Other 20th-century intellectual poseurs had their time in the sun, but
with a few exceptions – Keynesianism and welfare-state socialism, feminism, anti-Semitism, and
perhaps Ayn Rand's confused Hegelian/Nietzschean libertarianism – the adulation their wretched ideas
enjoyed has waned.
25. Asceticism is a perversion of a good idea. A retiring
lifestyle, and even partial and temporary separation from society, can be
beneficial for an individual or group seeking self-improvement, discipline or contemplation,
and it is valued by many cultures around the world.
But withdrawing from society completely and permanently is not virtuous, and
if enough people are drawn to asceticism, society is obviously threatened.
Asceticism can also be self-indulgent, an abrogation of responsibility, and
egoistic, as it assumes that the ascetic is a better judge of morality than
the society that the ascetic rejects. Most ascetic movements, including the
mendicant Christian orders, have stemmed from a variety of motives; but the dualist worldview
is usually present – the renunciation of material things based on a contempt of worldly success
which, as noted above (see #1), follows from believing that the world is corrupt.
Accordingly, some ascetics starve and practice self-mortification, sacrifices etc., inspired by dualism
and vanity (the vain belief that one's personal actions can have some cosmological significance, in this case
allowing one hope of leaving the defiled world and entering a perfect afterlife). In reality, the world is
the source of all goodness and rejection of the world,
including the flesh, is morally suspect. That vanity is an inherent weakness of
asceticism was demonstrated early on by the life of Diogenes (Sinope), a
nonconformist and reprobate who took the doctrine of self-mastery to dumb
extremes, sneering at society. The Buddha rejected extreme asceticism, teaching
that living moderately is the best way to enlightenment. However, asceticism
was an element of dualistic Persian religion from prehistory and
has recurred in Christianity from its beginnings, though Christian ascetic movements have
varied enormously in their attitudes toward society at large. Great men
such as Giovanni di Bernardone (Francesco) (Assisi, Holy
Roman Empire) followed an extreme interpretation of
the New Testament (especially the books ascribed to Luke, see #2) requiring
simplicity and poverty; the orders they founded played a role in the rebirth of Europe, but also
in affirming radical ideas and encouraging dissent within the Church. Sufism, an ascetic and
mystic tradition within Islam, has been important in its later development and certainly inspired
beautiful poetry and music, but may have contributed to the fanaticism or the
politicization of Islam. Religious influence has eroded in the West, but asceticism maintains
sporadic appeal both among religious fundamentalists and among secular intellectuals.
26. Meng-tzu (Mencius)
(Zou). One of the world's most catholic
belief systems (even more than Catholicism), Confucianism has incorporated many
doctrines both good and bad in its 2,000-year history. Many ideas and thinkers
in its history have superficial parallels in European philosophy.
At the risk of over-generalizing, Confucius, Lao-tzu and followers such as Hsun-tzu developed
or taught principles of ethics emphasizing order, virtue, individual responsibility,
family, reason, contemplation, and life according to nature (not unlike the Stoic creed).
Their doctrines were revived and synthesized by the neo-Confucianists led by Chu Hsi
and lasted until the 20th century. However, almost from the beginning other thinkers
advanced seemingly incompatible or opposing doctrines which were absorbed into the overall Confucian
tradition. The earliest of these, Mo-tzu, was a critic of Confucianism and
Taoism who lived before either religion was mature or universally adopted. As against Confucius' emphasis on
family as the basis of society, Mo preached a doctrine of impersonal love for humanity.
(He was also an early proponent of the idea of a personal deity that loves all people, one of the most absurd
and most influential beliefs in human history.) Unless Moist ideas
filtered through to the West and became part of religions such as Christianity (which is speculative),
their influence may have been marginal. Historically more important is Mencius, a self-identified
Confucianist who criticized Moism, but also argued that all men are equal, goodness
is innate in human nature, and immoral behavior is the result of environment – essentially
principles of modern liberalism (see Rousseau, #3). So while some of his precepts were Confucian, his larger
moral assumptions were very different. Of course, Mencius wrote
much earlier than Western liberal thinkers and (unlike Western liberalism) his ideas were refuted, by Hsun-tzu among others,
and eventually made canonical in tempered form. Thus Confucianism was maintained as a unity for millennia.
Much later, as Western influence entered China,
writers claiming to be within the Confucian tradition introduced even more alien ideas; for example,
the radical K’ang Yu-wei (Ch'ing China) argued that the fundamental doctrine of Confucianism was social
progress (!) and called for abolition of private property and the traditional family. China
then succumbed to Marxism; whether Chinese ideas can outlast Western intellectual mistakes remains to be seen.
The philosophical schools of ancient Greece, like those of China, considered most of the possible theories
of ethics, good and bad. Most of the bad ideas were advanced by the Sophists, beginning with Protagoras (Abdera,
Delian League). They were atheistic materialists who asserted that "man is the measure of all things" and that
might is right, ideas which recurred in modern times. The Sophists also argued for something like Rousseau's idealized state
of nature and attributed criminal behavior to social strictures, like Rousseau and Mo-tzu did.
Unlike Rousseau, the Sophists eventually became unpopular; their influence is sometimes blamed for the militarism of the
Peloponesian War and it waned after Athens' defeat. Today the Sophists are best known from criticism of their ideas
by Socrates/Plato. While connecting the dots between philosophy and result may be speculative in this case, it
has certainly been true in history that bad philosophy has eviscerated cultures and probably brought down
empires; also that good philosophy can strengthen and unify states, though good
philosophers are rarer in history (Confucius and Aquinas probably qualify).
27. Utopianism is
the modern form of apocalyptic dualism – instead of hoping for a supernatural
redemption or transformation, utopians believe that
society can be made to conform to an idealized and static model through human
action. This is fundamentally misguided – societies are not rationally directed
or created, but evolve gradually and organically, and attempts to control all
workings of a society have been unsuccessful and often tragic (see #4 and #10).
The first utopian tract is Plato's Republic
(unless it is a satire on the idea of utopia) and it demonstrates the easy
association of radical social reforms – anyone bold enough to imagine any of them is likely to
embrace them all. In the boldly speculative milieu of Greek philosophy, Plato's ideas were mere
hypotheticals (and ably countered by Aristotle), but in the twilight of the Roman Empire,
Platonic idealism combined with Middle Eastern superstition to breed a climate of suspended belief
about the efficacy of society and worldly pursuits. Many of the recurring themes in modern utopianism
were present in early Christian, and especially Gnostic, movements.
For example, calls for abolition of private property are implicitly supported by the New Testament and are almost
as old as Christian worship, beginning with religious sectarians
who lived a thousand years before the modern discontents or social critics like the liberal-Christian humanist
Thomas More (England), who coined the term utopia. (It's unclear whether More actually believed
society could be restructured along communal lines; his work may have been partly satire, along the lines of
Swift's Gulliver's Travels.)
Christian utopian sects proliferated after the Reformation, but without lasting success. However, secular
reforms were an all-important part of the ideas of the philosophes;
the failure of the French Revolution did not discourage
utopian socialists, who only became more radical and ambitious. Utopian socialism led to many of the worst
events of modern history. Social reforms in English-speaking countries were more
incremental but much more immediately successful, gradually transforming
morality without destabilizing society as a whole; but later thinkers such as
Bentham and Locke demonstrate how far concepts of social morality had been
allowed to drift into confusion (human happiness is not the best test of
goodness or truth). Eventually, Marxism became the focus of utopianism on the
left, along with pacifism and denial of racial difference. Among libertarians and so-called
"conservatives," futurism based on technology and free-market capitalism is a correspondent
ideology which sometimes stops just short of utopianism.
28. The importance of men like Simón Bolivar
(New Granada, Spanish Empire) and Mohandas K. Gandhi (India, British
Empire) is unknowable – was the waning of European dominance inevitable? Both
men certainly instigated big changes. Bolivar's battles were among the first
blows against the European empires and touched off the global wave of
nationalist movements which still continues; his contradictory attitude toward
democratic and liberal ideals have been repeated in leaders of dozens of subsequent revolutions in Latin America. Gandhi's religiosity and emphasis on Indian identity (or
to put it more bluntly, his ascetic dualism and contempt for the West) put his unique stamp on
the independence of India and Pakistan from Britain. The establishment of democracy in India,
a long-standing cultural superpower, has a chance at success, and Gandhi's emphasis on nonviolence
is certainly more praiseworthy than the alternative – colonial powers were chased out of some colonies
by radical terrorist groups or separatist armies which instigated bloody civil wars. On the other hand,
Gandhi’s pacifist ideology did nothing to prevent the schism of Pakistan (or his own death). Too large
and ideologically charged to easily govern, Pakistan is a potentially dangerous factor in world
politics, and it has had a violent history so far.
How many countries are much better off
for having cast off European control is
a largely unexamined question. In many post-colonial countries, lack of good or even
legitimate government has become a chronic condition; the majority
have been ruled successively by leftist demagogues and dictators who come and go,
more or less violently, while only tiny propertied classes enjoy the social goods that European colonists
possessed. The jury is out on whether these nations can address internecine
cultural conflicts, achieve sustainable economic prosperity, or compete in
the modern world while maintaining cultural identity (and sovereignty, for that
matter). It seems probable that historical patterns of cultural dominance will continue,
at least in the short term – long-standing regional powers like China, India, Japan, and Korea
will continue to be strong – but beyond that, there are not a lot of reasons for optimism. Democracy will
likely be intermittent at best in most of the world, and self-government will continue
to produce many unfortunate results.
29. Edmund Husserl
(Austrian Empire). Husserl deserves a place of honor on any list of originators of silly
ideas – he was the founder of phenomenology and is associated with existentialism, along with his student
Martin Heidegger (and earlier thinkers, notably Nietzsche and Kierkegaard). Heidegger's influence was
even more baleful; some of his ideas were perhaps profound, but they were misunderstood by his
followers and helped to inspire trendy non-ideas such as deconstruction, semiotics and postmodernism.
However, deconstruction
was really the brainchild of Jacques Derrida (Algeria, France) made even worse by Michel Foucault (France).
Deconstruction is a kind of conspiracy theory of reality, in effect the idea
that nothing can be taken at face value – only words are meaningful, and they are
only meaningful because they betray hidden, unconscious biases of their authors. Deconstruction and critical
theory inspired some interesting manipulation of words, but as philosophy they are
smoke and mirrors, and intended either to obfuscate (a path to academic
success) or to justify adversary culture and social disruption. Foucault
asserted that social institutions are politically motivated to protect power
and subjugate the disenfranchised, who are by implication morally superior –
since even existentialist liberals illogically reflect the bias of St. Luke, see
#2. Deconstruction and critical theory are disciplines aimed at discrediting truths
rather than discovering them. These "ideas" have become influential (even
in the United States, since 1970), contributing to the trendy nihilism of very recent
culture. They take up space that could have been filled by serious inquiry, and contribute to the cynicism
about positive values which permeates Western societies. Unfortunately, bad ideas go together –
intellectuals who believe any of them tend to swallow a lot of them, and this
is true of medieval heretics and modern academics alike.
30. Oliver Cromwell (England).
A gentleman turned demagogue who led the army of the Puritans, a coalition of radical libertarian property owners and religious
fanatics (Cromwell was one of the latter). Cromwell was perhaps the first dictator – he dissolved the English Parliament
early and often, and justified mass murder by invoking egalitarian rhetoric. Cromwell was more concerned with
religious and political autonomy than social equality, but the Puritan revolt was about all of the above.
Fortunately, Cromwell's career was cut short when he was deposed by factions within his own country.
As usually happens in English-speaking countries, cooler heads effected the peaceful liberalization of British
institutions (counter-reaction to extremism seems to be a recurring pattern in English history). The
Revolution did less lasting harm than it might have, but only because the
social order and hierarchy were soon restored. Cromwell was still a bad guy – he
had King Charles I executed for no good reason (he would have approved of St. Just’s later,
absurd argument for regicide, "One cannot reign innocently"). And his army's massacre of Irish
Royalists is horrifying even in the context of England's long mistreatment of Ireland.
31. Abraham Lincoln (USA)
deserves partial credit for ending slavery in the Americas, a great achievement
(though a number of other figures, such as Clarkson and Wilberforce, were far more important in bringing about the slow
end of slavery). Lincoln was a notable orator and complex individual – rare qualities in a democratic leader even then (and
more so now). But in some countries, emancipation happened peacefully; in Lincoln's America, it required a holy war.
The American Civil War was a horrible bloodbath, and in the minds of many who fought it, the war was not simply about slavery
but about the far more dubious causes of wounded pride on one side and nationalism on the other. Lincoln (unfortunately for
his legacy) made this clear: "If I could preserve
the Union without freeing a single slave, I would." The war enabled America's
transition to modernity, but it did not make it
smooth, and it made better conditions for black Americans possible but it did not actually make them happen. Lincoln
prosecuted the war successfully; but slavery was in retreat around the world (albeit not fast enough) and it’s hard
not to wish that some method other than total war and centralization of the U.S. government could have
achieved emancipation.
32. There are far too many bad (and good) historical monarchs to recognize more than a few.
Generally in the age of monarchy the power of kings was diluted or shared with other factions, but there are
also plenty of absolutist monarchies in history, and these powerful rulers were often tempted to
lead unwise military action or, later, social and economic policies. The consequences of such actions were often transient, but
there are exceptions. Charles VIII (France) invaded Italy and buzz-killed the Renaissance,
ushering in a period of
relative decline. The prosecution of the Thirty Years' War by Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire) was
completely self-destructive – the war cost millions of lives (due in part to the pillaging of Europe by the Catholic
League's mercenary armies), eviscerated imperial power, undermined the Counter-Reformation and
greatly strengthened Protestant states.
Room on the list should also be reserved for rulers who, through negligence or incompetence,
allowed highly accomplished nations to decline or collapse on their watch. Ruling an empire or a powerful nation-state is
a difficult position no one should envy, but many leaders with mediocre abilities have successfully ruled countries
by delegating effectively and doing no harm. Not so the descendants of Charlemagne, who squandered the empire he assembled in just
one generation. Or Bahadur Shah I (Mughal Empire), whose reign coincided with the disintegration of his
empire – though the blame mostly rests with his despotic predecessor Aurangzeb (Mughal Empire), a fanatical Muslim who
deposed his own father, renounced the arts, destroyed countless temples, and exhausted the empire's vast treasury with
brutal, sadistic wars of conquest in South India. For much of its history, China weathered dramatic shifts in rule and
social order while preserving core elements of its culture, but disastrous loss of life accompanied the collapse of several
dynasties; for example, Ch'ung-chen (Ming), the last emperor of the powerful Ming, lost his throne to
revolts led by two of history's worst warlords, Li Tzu-ch'eng and Chang Hsien-chung, and Manchu
invasion which collectively killed tens of millions. The Empress Dowager Tz'u-Hsi (Ch'in China)
presided over another rapid period of decline; the last dynasty collapsed soon after her death, leading to civil strife, foreign
invasion and eventually the Communist revolution.
The Roman imperium
was seemingly foolproof (judging from the large number of emperors who were fools) but the decisions of several of its
heads of state, such as Lucius Septimius Bassianus (Caracalla) (Gallia Lugdunensis, Roman Empire), probably hastened its decline. At some point,
the empire's leaders stopped believing in Roman exceptionalism (reflecting a shift in the sentiments of their subjects); the last emperors,
such as Flavius Julius Valens Augustus and Flavius Theodosius Augustus (Theodosius I) (Hispania, Roman Empire), came to
rely on an alien military and alliances with barbarians. While the Romans are usually blamed for their own bad choices and
internal weakness that led to the fall, the barbarians were still its proximate cause. Of course, some were worse than others;
the Visigoths sacked Rome first, but left its institutions intact. It was the Huns led by Attila (Hunnic
Empire?), the Vandals, the Ostrogoths (and their wars with Justinian), and finally the Lombards who destroyed Western civilization
in exchange for ephemeral power and plunder.
33. Many public figures in the 19th and 20th centuries used their education, talent and fame to peddle bad ideas about morality, science or society –
too many for me to name more than a few famous examples. Henrik Ibsen (Norway) and Victor Hugo (France) are prominent among countless
writers and entertainers who profited from converting liberal social ideology into sentimental literature. A sadder case is George Bernard Shaw (Ireland, UK), a
gifted entertainer who wasted his talent in the service of bad ideology including socialist, feminist and progressive radicalism.
Shaw famously stated that the Russian people were
"well-fed" during the famine that followed Lenin's collectivization – while ten million people were starving to death.
Tellingly, Shaw also loved Wagner, believed Darwinian evolution was "hogwash,"
mocked Victorian morality, and befriended the terrorist ideologue Sergei Kravchinsky. American pseudo-intellectuals were, until the
European exile from Hitler began in the 1930s, limited to a few socialists and
provincial Romantics such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (USA), who turned practical naturalistic philosophy into incoherent verbal
diarrhea (unfortunately overshadowing his associate Thoreau, a brilliant naturalist and writer whose Epicurean individualism
in Walden was a stouter intellectual achievement, if personally disingenuous). More radical, though less accomplished,
artists dominated 20th-century intellectual circles. For example, Sartre and Camus are as influential for their embrace of terrorism and
radical politics and shallow criticism of the West as for any creative work. While intellectuals in
English-speaking countries were slower to embrace radical philosophical ideas, Edmund Wilson (USA) was one of many 20th-century critics and intellectuals who
placed their critical judgments at the service of socialism. The anti-moral and Marxist ideas of European intellectuals, disguised in plays and movies
by Bertolt Brecht (Germany) and Kurt Weill, Fritz Lang, and others, also gradually entered American popular culture. By the 1960s, most
intellectuals even in English-speaking countries were influenced by leftist ideas from a number of sources, except for those few that
consciously embraced a conservative tradition.
34. John Logie Baird (UK) and Philo
Farnsworth (USA). First
demonstrated by Logie Baird but invented in its modern form by Farnsworth (though others stole his achievement),
television is a sophisticated technology which has become a conduit for cultural destruction. TV entered Western households around
1955; within a few years, radical social movements had transformed political
opinion, TV coverage was influencing political elections, and other more ominous developments were on the way. Today,
almost everything good in Western culture has been trivialized and undermined, and (at the risk of blaming the messenger)
the fingerprints of mass media and "Madison Avenue" are everywhere on our cultural decay. It has provided
plenty of moments of good entertainment, but TV's negative influence is hard to ignore.
35. Not bad but overrated, Francis Bacon
(England) is remembered less for his minimal scientific achievements than as a cheerleader for science who promoted (but exaggerated
the importance of) so-called scientific method. The rebirth of European
science is one of the most important events in history, but it owed less to new innovations in method than to new emphasis on
empirical investigation and reductionism. These new ideas were anticipated by
earlier figures such as Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon (and even earlier, Alhazen and Avicenna). Francis Bacon was a
tireless booster for science and an excellent writer about a number of subjects, but I left him off
my list of great individuals because most of the people on my list actually did things. (The philosophical underpinnings
of Bacon's ideology are also suspect – the "control of nature for the relief of
man's estate" is a problematic goal on both counts.) Bacon was important as a patron saint of science, but
science shouldn't need a patron saint.
36. The unearned cult status of the creative class – artists,
writers, musicians, and even actors, graphic artists and so on – is a new
phenomenon which begins with the Romantic era’s emphasis on individuality and
sensibility. Men such as Beethoven, Goethe, and especially George Gordon
Byron (Great Britain) were the first to be swayed by the Romantic mythology of the artist as an intellectual and
independent judge of the world rather than mere craftsman. Of
course, these men also earned the adulation they received, but it quickly went too far. Richard Wagner (Saxony) was a
formidable composer, but the worship of his music unfortunately extended to his
ideas – expressions of proto-Nazi intellectual culture which included
German chauvinism, pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism (for which he was an important catalyst and sponsor),
and Romantic egoism. As creative talents, Byron and Wagner excelled;
as public figures, they stank. By the end of the 19th century, even artistic and musical styles such as Cubism,
surrealism and serialism were treated as intellectual movements though they were devoid of intellectual content.
The cult of the artist has since entered new arenas, such
as popular music – college rock bands are treated like royalty, and the
popularity of entertainers such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bob Marley has allowed rock songs to be
instrumental in advocating radical social change. Dylan, Lennon and Marley (like Goethe and Byron) are/were
exceptional talents who deserved their fame (especially Dylan, who possesses an intellectual conscience
along with prodigious creativity). But celebrity is now extended to countless ordinary and unworthy people,
while intellectuals can obtain celebrity status only by espousing radical and trendy (and thus probably harmful)
ideas. Examples include feminists, anti-Western fanatics, and other liberal intellectuals who promote
new-Left cant, as well as political libertarians who disingenuously
claim to be "conservatives," but in reality have displaced traditional moralists.
There is no place in Western public life for legitimate thinkers.
37. The Greek ideal of a
philosopher was one who inquired into the meaning of observed reality and
acquired general knowledge about nature, science and civics – a free thinker
who investigated life and shared his wit freely to the public. Today’s
intellectuals, at least in the humanities, resemble that ideal in no way – they
are often narrow-minded egotists who pass judgment on the world without showing
much curiosity about it, are poorly informed outside of their specialized
fields, and take little part in public debates. Like Voltaire, they are defenders of bad ideas which are
already universally accepted as the intellectual status quo; but they lack Voltaire's rhetorical gifts.
Academia has not produced a deservedly prominent intellectual in decades.
Much academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences is trivial. Work in the sciences continues
to be strong, but its cultural influence is generally minimal as it is too technical to be understood
by a poorly educated public (and, despite being
publicly funded, new research is often not freely accessible). A recent decline in academic
qualifications and depth in the humanities is noticeable, but academia has never consistently produced
(or even employed) the best and brightest individuals except for occasional moments in time.
Naturally, the refrain of the educated class has been that we need more
education! But the influence on public schools of educational theorists such as
John Dewey (USA) is
relatively slight and has been mostly negative – like the influence of higher academic institutions.
If your favorite
famous person does not appear either on this list or the "good" list, drop me a line.
Some of the
individuals who had the most devastating effect on history were people we do
not remember who were the first to turn against their culture, perhaps in
small ways… for instance, the first Roman who thought barbarians might make
good soldiers (the emperor Valens is a possible candidate).
A couple of final thoughts: It's easy to
exaggerate the importance of individuals in history. The Holocaust was instigated by Hitler, but
only after popular anti-Semitism had grown in influence over decades or centuries. Marx and Engels
repackaged ideas that were centuries old, and their efforts found success because socialism was
conducive to the spirit of the times. Kandinsky, Schoenberg and Gropius are culpable for the works
they created, but not for their popularity, which was arranged by an army of critics, commentators
and other "intellectuals."
While the individuals
who influence history directly are fascinating, they are few, and their contributions, even
when decisive, are often difficult to distinguish. Most really important events involve large
numbers of people – mass movements involving mass psychology, or conflicts between groups or nations.
The spirit of the times is a strong current that few individuals swim against successfully. Most of
the historical figures who are revered by historians were actually moving with the current (or helping
to move the current along by removing small logjams). The contributions of individuals, even when decisive,
are often impossible to distinguish.
It's also possible to exaggerate the
importance of ideas, even bad ones. There have been
times in history when people argued and even fought over good and bad ideas,
only to be displaced by different people who had different ideas, or no ideas at
all. We may be living in one of those times now.
