Ideology, Individuality and Groupthink

jackelgull · Oct 10, 2014

Traitorfish isn't arguing against that as far as I can see. He is simply arguing that other individuals matter too. And that they created the forces that made ALexander's conquest's possible.

schlaufuchs · Oct 11, 2014

Mouthwash said:
If Princip had decided to eat at another cafe, would a world war have been kicked off? No? Then what criteria are you trying to satisfy? Wring this out enough and it becomes tautological: the universe isn't completely different from the way it is because of everything that's happened in it. We're taking an interest in this particular segment of events because we can relate to it.

Yes but you're looking at things from a very teleological standpoint. The way you're seeing this is: 1) Archduke Ferdinand alters route towards the café Princip is at, 2) Princip assassinates Ferdinand, 3) ??? 4) WWI while ignoring literally everything else that goes into it. History doesn't occur in a vacuum, nor is it a singular chain of events. It's a continuously flowing stream with literally billions of actors all interacting with one another. You have Princip, yes, but Princip doesn't exist without the hundreds of years of history between Austria and Serbia and Bosnia, without the thousands of actors before Princip who created the identity of the Bosnian in conflict with Austria. You don't have the War without the thousands of other parts that also had to click in just the right way for the war to kick off. By looking at things through the lens of one actor, you remove the agency of all the others. Austria acted because Austria wanted to, and had their own selfish reasons for doing so. You don't have assassination...WAR! Austria's back was to the wall by 1914, between their eroding influence in the grand political arena, their disastrous and embarrassing defeats in the Balkans and, absent some exterior political influence, the fact that they were almost certainly going to lose the Dual Monarchy in 1916.

Then there are the other actors present too. You have Russia, still rankling from the embarrassment of 1905. The plans on the Balkans, the Black Sea, and Istanbul. You have Germany, whose entire political system was built around the preeminence and strength of the German people and its military. Again embarrassments abroad with Morocco. France had the context of 1871, and a whole mess of domestic political issues. Britain had the home rule crisis which, absent some foreign distraction, would have torn the entire Empire in half.

And even here I'm making the mistake of generalizing these massive states with large bureaucracies and multitudinous individual players into singular, authoritarian entities. Germany in 1914 was not of one mind. The Kaiser was at odds with Bethmann Holweg who was at odds with von Tirpitz who was at odds with von Schlieffen.

The point I'm getting at here is that your argument is a teleological one. We view Princip as important and the actions he took as important because 1) we can trace a line of actions back to him, and 2) people have and have written in the past about that importance. But there are a ton of problems with doing this. 1) Who is to say Princip is what sparked things. If Princip doesn't shoot Ferdinand, who is to say someone else doesn't, or that he does, but the miscommunication about the "carte blanche" doesn't happen and Austria doesn't commit to war, or commits without the backing of Germany. Or some other Bosnian nationalist shoots Franz Ferdinand instead. Or some other crisis entirely kicks the war off. We view Princip as important because to us he seems important, but it doesn't have to be that way. And 2) Calling Princip the instigator of the conflict is a very narrow lens through which to look at the history of WWI and it eliminates the agency of literally every other actor in the event. Princip killed Ferdinand, but the various players in the Austrian, Russian, German, French, and British governments and military apparati, literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people also made their own, individual, personally motivated, contextual, and deeply impactful decisions to act, to go to war. They did not have to. In fact there were just such crises in the past which did not result in war. But yet in this case they did and without these actors, we don't have World War I. Princip's blow was important, but it was not the only one, and in fact it probably wasn't even the most important. To say "Princip started WWI" would be the equivalent of saying "Franz Ferdinand's decision to alter his parade route started WWI" or "Hans the Bodyguard's decision to stay up late having sex with prostitutes which caused him to be tired the next morning which caused him to be inattentive during the parade which ultimately led to Ferdinand's assassination is what truly sparked WWI". You can play these games all day long. Princip seems important, but only if you frame that way and throw out literally everybody else in existence. Everybody and everything is connected. "Butterflies, mang" is silly and cliché, but really, "Butterflies, mang".

History as a discipline has moved away from the Great Man View of history because it's imprecise and teleological. It throws away context. I believe I mentioned this a while back, but political history has moved away from what the "great men of history" (do note: "men") and more towards how they did it and why they were able to do it. It's fine to say "Alexander forged an Empire from the Hellespont to the Indus" but there are so many problems with this statement. Alexander did this alone? Don't think so. Surely he had an army to help him along the way. So then you might say "Alexander, through his effective command of soldiers was able to forge an empire..." Except that's not so good either. Did he personally order his troops around? No, he had captains and subgenerals who he gave orders to and things filtered down from there. Moreover why did people follow him around? He could have said WE GO TO GAUGEMELA and his troops could have said "nah, I think we'll stay here". In fact this does happen at one point in the "story", doesn't it? Alexander wanted to push on beyond the Indus and his troops forced him to turn back. So there we see not the great man dictating history, but the collective decision of thousands of "not so great men" telling the great man to kindly sod off.

The fact of the matter is that history isn't about telling a story. Not at first blush, anyway. History is context. History is about looking through various lenses and contexts in order to form a picture of what happened in the past. Often the picture is murky and incomplete. History is complex. But life, and people are complex. Things are rarely if ever straightforward, and if the answer you find is straightforward, you're probably overgeneralizing. The problem was that for so long history was tied at the hip to, well, history, historia, a story. The role of a historian is to take the past and mold it into a story that other people can understand, often to illuminate some moral truism. But a story requires a protagonist, and I am the protagonist of my life, just as you are the protagonist of yours, just as Alexander was the protagonist of his and von Schlieffen was the protagonist of his. We all have our own contexts, backstories, and motivations. In the mists of time and large numbers it's easy to lose sight of this, especially when we've been doing so for so, so long. It's easy to think of things in terms of "Alexander and his army" rather than "Alexander and 40,000 other people who ate and breathed and dreamed and willed and fought and died and had ideas and aspirations about a future "Macedonian Empire" just as Alexander did, much in the same way that it's easy to think of things in terms of "just 30 years" rather than "a generation of people being born, growing up, marrying, having children, and dying" or "more time than I have been on this earth".

Ugh, if I had more motivation now I'd go into a rant about how games like Civ and EU3 and Total War reinforce the emphasis of the Great Man to the detriment and abstraction of everybody else who were equal and cognizant actors, but that's probably a rant for another thread.

Anyway, tl;dr: check yo teleology and agency-stripping at the door because it makes for flawed history. You'll get this stuff once you go to college and profs start giving you the scoop on historiography and post-modernism though.

ParkCungHee · Oct 11, 2014

Flying Pig said:
Would you mind summarising the relevant parts for those of us who haven't? (Incidentally, would you recommend him?)

Will do as soon as I'm feeling better.

Mouthwash · Oct 11, 2014

Owen Glyndwr said:
Yes but you're looking at things from a very teleological standpoint. The way you're seeing this is: 1) Archduke Ferdinand alters route towards the café Princip is at, 2) Princip assassinates Ferdinand, 3) ??? 4) WWI while ignoring literally everything else that goes into it. History doesn't occur in a vacuum, nor is it a singular chain of events. It's a continuously flowing stream with literally billions of actors all interacting with one another. You have Princip, yes, but Princip doesn't exist without the hundreds of years of history between Austria and Serbia and Bosnia, without the thousands of actors before Princip who created the identity of the Bosnian in conflict with Austria. You don't have the War without the thousands of other parts that also had to click in just the right way for the war to kick off. By looking at things through the lens of one actor, you remove the agency of all the others. Austria acted because Austria wanted to, and had their own selfish reasons for doing so. You don't have assassination...WAR! Austria's back was to the wall by 1914, between their eroding influence in the grand political arena, their disastrous and embarrassing defeats in the Balkans and, absent some exterior political influence, the fact that they were almost certainly going to lose the Dual Monarchy in 1916.

Then there are the other actors present too. You have Russia, still rankling from the embarrassment of 1905. The plans on the Balkans, the Black Sea, and Istanbul. You have Germany, whose entire political system was built around the preeminence and strength of the German people and its military. Again embarrassments abroad with Morocco. France had the context of 1871, and a whole mess of domestic political issues. Britain had the home rule crisis which, absent some foreign distraction, would have torn the entire Empire in half.

And even here I'm making the mistake of generalizing these massive states with large bureaucracies and multitudinous individual players into singular, authoritarian entities. Germany in 1914 was not of one mind. The Kaiser was at odds with Bethmann Holweg who was at odds with von Tirpitz who was at odds with von Schlieffen.

The point I'm getting at here is that your argument is a teleological one. We view Princip as important and the actions he took as important because 1) we can trace a line of actions back to him, and 2) people have and have written in the past about that importance. But there are a ton of problems with doing this. 1) Who is to say Princip is what sparked things. If Princip doesn't shoot Ferdinand, who is to say someone else doesn't, or that he does, but the miscommunication about the "carte blanche" doesn't happen and Austria doesn't commit to war, or commits without the backing of Germany. Or some other Bosnian nationalist shoots Franz Ferdinand instead. Or some other crisis entirely kicks the war off. We view Princip as important because to us he seems important, but it doesn't have to be that way. And 2) Calling Princip the instigator of the conflict is a very narrow lens through which to look at the history of WWI and it eliminates the agency of literally every other actor in the event. Princip killed Ferdinand, but the various players in the Austrian, Russian, German, French, and British governments and military apparati, literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people also made their own, individual, personally motivated, contextual, and deeply impactful decisions to act, to go to war. They did not have to. In fact there were just such crises in the past which did not result in war. But yet in this case they did and without these actors, we don't have World War I. Princip's blow was important, but it was not the only one, and in fact it probably wasn't even the most important. To say "Princip started WWI" would be the equivalent of saying "Franz Ferdinand's decision to alter his parade route started WWI" or "Hans the Bodyguard's decision to stay up late having sex with prostitutes which caused him to be tired the next morning which caused him to be inattentive during the parade which ultimately led to Ferdinand's assassination is what truly sparked WWI". You can play these games all day long. Princip seems important, but only if you frame that way and throw out literally everybody else in existence. Everybody and everything is connected. "Butterflies, mang" is silly and cliché, but really, "Butterflies, mang".

History as a discipline has moved away from the Great Man View of history because it's imprecise and teleological. It throws away context. I believe I mentioned this a while back, but political history has moved away from what the "great men of history" (do note: "men") and more towards how they did it and why they were able to do it. It's fine to say "Alexander forged an Empire from the Hellespont to the Indus" but there are so many problems with this statement. Alexander did this alone? Don't think so. Surely he had an army to help him along the way. So then you might say "Alexander, through his effective command of soldiers was able to forge an empire..." Except that's not so good either. Did he personally order his troops around? No, he had captains and subgenerals who he gave orders to and things filtered down from there. Moreover why did people follow him around? He could have said WE GO TO GAUGEMELA and his troops could have said "nah, I think we'll stay here". In fact this does happen at one point in the "story", doesn't it? Alexander wanted to push on beyond the Indus and his troops forced him to turn back. So there we see not the great man dictating history, but the collective decision of thousands of "not so great men" telling the great man to kindly sod off.

The fact of the matter is that history isn't about telling a story. Not at first blush, anyway. History is context. History is about looking through various lenses and contexts in order to form a picture of what happened in the past. Often the picture is murky and incomplete. History is complex. But life, and people are complex. Things are rarely if ever straightforward, and if the answer you find is straightforward, you're probably overgeneralizing. The problem was that for so long history was tied at the hip to, well, history, historia, a story. The role of a historian is to take the past and mold it into a story that other people can understand, often to illuminate some moral truism. But a story requires a protagonist, and I am the protagonist of my life, just as you are the protagonist of yours, just as Alexander was the protagonist of his and von Schlieffen was the protagonist of his. We all have our own contexts, backstories, and motivations. In the mists of time and large numbers it's easy to lose sight of this, especially when we've been doing so for so, so long. It's easy to think of things in terms of "Alexander and his army" rather than "Alexander and 40,000 other people who ate and breathed and dreamed and willed and fought and died and had ideas and aspirations about a future "Macedonian Empire" just as Alexander did, much in the same way that it's easy to think of things in terms of "just 30 years" rather than "a generation of people being born, growing up, marrying, having children, and dying" or "more time than I have been on this earth".

Ugh, if I had more motivation now I'd go into a rant about how games like Civ and EU3 and Total War reinforce the emphasis of the Great Man to the detriment and abstraction of everybody else who were equal and cognizant actors, but that's probably a rant for another thread.

Anyway, tl;dr: check yo teleology and agency-stripping at the door because it makes for flawed history. You'll get this stuff once you go to college and profs start giving you the scoop on historiography and post-modernism though.

Traitorfish · Oct 11, 2014

Mouthwash said:
Fair enough. But then should Great Men be judged by ability, rather than the fact that they farted their way into the history books? It seems clear, at least, that no conceivable developments in mid-fourth century Greece would have allowed one to predict a Greek-ruled empire from the Hellespont to the Indus; it was entirely contingent on Alexander. Yes, his actions were made possible by the long arm of history, but the world he inherited was intentionally altered by his actions alone.

Well, did he? I can't really argue the details because I don't really know much about Alexander, but it's not self-evident that he acted in such heroic isolation. Were their others, within and without Macedonia, who encouraged the invasion? (Wasn't Philip already planning something like that?) As Owen said, we certainly have to acknowledge the role that his army and command structure played in the campaigns. Did even Alexander really mean to go as far as he did, or did he get swept up with events, dragged along by the logic of events like a man in a rip tide? The mythology certainly asserts Alexander's unique and deliberate ambition, but mythologies generally do, so is it any good to us?

Owen Glyndwr said:
snip

Great post.

But, my single point of criticism is the claim that Total War encourages a Great Man view of history, because this is contrary to my own experience, that Total War encourages a view of history in which syphilitic idiots blunder around in a semi-random fashion, only occasionally forming empires because the other idiot was even more syphilitic and wandered in front of his own cannon.

But I'll admit that I'm not a very good player.

Mouthwash · Oct 11, 2014

Traitorfish said:
Well, did he? I can't really argue the details because I don't really know much about Alexander, but it's not self-evident that he acted in such heroic isolation. Were their others, within and without Macedonia, who encouraged the invasion? (Wasn't Philip already planning something like that?) As Owen said, we certainly have to acknowledge the role that his army and command structure played in the campaigns. Did even Alexander really mean to go as far as he did, or did he get swept up with events, dragged along by the logic of events like a man in a rip tide? The mythology certainly asserts Alexander's unique and deliberate ambition, but mythologies generally do, so is it any good to us?

I've read Green's book on him (admittedly, it's been a long while). My impression is that the whole idea of a Panhellenic crusade was revived under Phillip for propagandist purposes. While he was almost certainly planning to actually invade Persia sooner or later, Asia Minor would have been the obvious terminal point.

'Getting swept up with events' is an adequate description of Alexander's early years. But sometime between the battle of the Granicus and and his rejection of Darius's offer to give him everything West of the Euphrates, he stops being the object of others' action and becomes a subject. He's no longer someone reacting to events, rather, he is reacted to. Surely you know that his troops eventually mutinied, or about the crossing of the Gedrosia? He is the clearest example of, and possibly the only, Great Man.

But, my single point of criticism is the claim that Total War encourages a Great Man view of history, because this is contrary to my own experience, that Total War encourages a view of history in which syphilitic idiots blunder around in a semi-random fashion, only occasionally forming empires because the other idiot was even more syphilitic and wandered in front of his own cannon.

But I'll admit that I'm not a very good player.

Any experienced player will totally endorse this.

jackelgull · Oct 11, 2014

So all Alexander did was add a spark of ambition to the Macedonian conquests, and that is enough to call him a great man? What about the Arabs and their prophet then? They were even more unlikely than the Macedonians to become a world superpower, yet no one seems to mention them in this discussion of Great Men. Or even Ghengis Khan the Mongols, who didn't even have he benefit of a unifying religion. Why don't you include scientists some of whose discoveries revolutionized the world, even though what they did was build off of other people's groundwork? They still added more of their discovery than Alexander did to Macedonian conquests.

Phrossack · Oct 11, 2014

Traitorfish said:
Great post.

But, my single point of criticism is the claim that Total War encourages a Great Man view of history, because this is contrary to my own experience, that Total War encourages a view of history in which syphilitic idiots blunder around in a semi-random fashion, only occasionally forming empires because the other idiot was even more syphilitic and wandered in front of his own cannon.

But I'll admit that I'm not a very good player.

Due to a bug, I found that in M2TW the best kings by far are gay and severely mentally handicapped. Those traits reduce authority, and having both will lower authority so much that it resets to ten.

Logically, Charles II of Spain was the best king in history.

jackelgull · Oct 11, 2014

Both those traits could have been found in King George III too, and he lost against the Americans.

Phrossack · Oct 11, 2014

jackelgull said:
Both those traits could have been found in King George III too, and he lost against the Americans.

Yeah, well, that's Empire: Total War.

Mouthwash · Oct 12, 2014

jackelgull said:
So all Alexander did was add a spark of ambition to the Macedonian conquests, and that is enough to call him a great man? What about the Arabs and their prophet then? They were even more unlikely than the Macedonians to become a world superpower, yet no one seems to mention them in this discussion of Great Men. Or even Ghengis Khan the Mongols, who didn't even have he benefit of a unifying religion. Why don't you include scientists some of whose discoveries revolutionized the world, even though what they did was build off of other people's groundwork? They still added more of their discovery than Alexander did to Macedonian conquests.

Basically, this: could it reasonably have happened if that man had never existed? Could the Macedonian armies have reached India without Alexander? Would we have likely waited centuries more to discover what this particular inventor did? Leonardo da Vinci meets the criteria, as well as Alex.

Flying Pig · Oct 12, 2014

Probably not, but the point is that you can say the same for quite a lot of 'unimportant' events. Could the Macedonian armies have reached India had the previous Alexander fought against Persia rather than supported them? Could they have done so if the Olympic committee had accepted the claim of the one before that Macedonians were Greek? There's also a fallacy in your last sentence. We could have waited centuries more to discover what this particular inventor did, true, but we could also have waited centuries fewer if an even more brilliant one had been born - it's the argument of the goldfish in the puddle who remarks of the coincidence that of all the puddles in the world, they happened to live in one shaped exactly like theirs. All that you're saying is that the only way for history to play out the same as it actually did is for everything in history to play out exactly as it did - if you actually tried to chronicle all of that, as KG suggests, you'd end up with a mass of disconnected facts. History-writing by its very nature is about simplifying that mass into narratives.

Mouthwash · Oct 12, 2014

Flying Pig said:
Probably not, but the point is that you can say the same for quite a lot of 'unimportant' events. Could the Macedonian armies have reached India had the previous Alexander fought against Persia rather than supported them? Could they have done so if the Olympic committee had accepted the claim of the one before that Macedonians were Greek? There's also a fallacy in your last sentence. We could have waited centuries more to discover what this particular inventor did, true, but we could also have waited centuries fewer if an even more brilliant one had been born - it's the argument of the goldfish in the puddle who remarks of the coincidence that of all the puddles in the world, they happened to live in one shaped exactly like theirs. All that you're saying is that the only way for history to play out the same as it actually did is for everything in history to play out exactly as it did - if you actually tried to chronicle all of that, as KG suggests, you'd end up with a mass of disconnected facts. History-writing by its very nature is about simplifying that mass into narratives.

If you don't see the contradictions in every point you made, I no longer have the will to argue.

jackelgull · Oct 12, 2014

Please explain the contradiction to me. He has a point, a lot of less important things had to fall into place before Alexander's conquests occurred. He needed a loyal army and capable field generals, because it is difficult for an ancient army to have centralized leadership. They are important too. I am not trying to dismiss Alexander, but in the grand scheme of things he was like 10% of the reason for the conquests with thousands of other factors making up the other 90%.

And I get annoyed when people say Alexander conquered India, no he didn't. He never made it to India. He defeated independent kingdoms but never actually faced the Mauryan empire, which I define as not actually facing India and he only defeated one independent kingdom at that. And after defeating that kingdom, he was forced to limp out of Indua with a vastly reduced force.
http://in.rbth.com/blogs/2013/06/03/alexander_vs_porus_beyond_the_fog_of_war_25749.html

Tahuti · Oct 12, 2014

Owen Glyndwr said:
History as a discipline has moved away from the Great Man View of history because it's imprecise and teleological.

Yet viewing history from the lens of generalised institutions is arguably even more imprecise. Methinks that the move from Great Man theories was also to the democratisation of Western society, making it harder for a particular individual to have so much influence as to render him the sole author of many important decisions and events, even if Great Man views were indeed prone to overattribute feats to individuals.

jackelgull said:
And I get annoyed when people say Alexander conquered India, no he didn't. He never made it to India. He defeated independent kingdoms but never actually faced the Mauryan empire, which I define as not actually facing India and he only defeated one independent kingdom at that. And after defeating that kingdom, he was forced to limp out of Indua with a vastly reduced force.
http://in.rbth.com/blogs/2013/06/03/alexander_vs_porus_beyond_the_fog_of_war_25749.html

Actually, the Mauryan empire was founded after Alexander's India campaign.

jackelgull · Oct 12, 2014

Sorry, I meant the nanda empire, who had a force consisting of 4000 war elephants, 200000 infantry, 20000 cavalry and 3000 war chariots. Had Alexander defeated them, I might concede that he conquered India.

Traitorfish · Oct 12, 2014

Kaiserguard said:
Yet viewing history from the lens of generalised institutions is arguably even more imprecise.

So the Annales school isn't the be all and end all? That's been the scholarly consensus for decades.

ParkCungHee · Oct 14, 2014

Flying Pig said:
Would you mind summarising the relevant parts for those of us who haven't? (Incidentally, would you recommend him?)

Right. Doing it now that I don't have brain problems any more.

I would absolutely recommend him. Ian Kershaw hasn't just written the book(s) on Hitler, he's written a very sharp, very important book on the concept of biography, which is clearly relevant. And the other nice thing about it is he doesn't leave it to subtext. He lays out in plain writing his thoughts on historiagraphic schools and problems of historical philosophy.

Keep in mind, he is also, by earlier experience and training, someone sceptical of the entire field of biography. He cut his teeth on big picture, societal German History from the reformation to the present. So coming out with a two volume biography of a single man is quite unexpected and fortunately he lays out his thoughts plainly. I'm going to transcribe a bit of the book because these are totally worth reading.

"There is no little irony, therefore, in my eventually arriving at the writing of a biography of Hitler in that I come to it, so to say, from the 'wrong' direction. However, the growing preoccupation with the structures of the Nazi rule and with the gulf in the divides on Hitler's own position within that system (if 'system' it can be called) pushed me inexorably to increased reflection on the man who was the indispensable fulcrum and inspiration of what took place, Hitler himself. It drove me, too, to consider whether the striking polarization of approaches could not be overcome and integrated by a biography of Hitler written by a 'structuralist' historian -- coming to biography with a critical eye, looking instinctively, perhaps, in the first instance to downplay rather than to exaggerate the part played by the individual, however powerful, in complex historical processes.

With that background in mind, a few pages later.

The task of the biographer at this point becomes clearer. It is a task which has to focus not upon to personality of Hitler, but squarely and directly upon the character of this power- the power of the Fuhrer.

That power derived only in part from Hitler himself. In greater measure, it was a social product -- a creation of social expectations and motivations vested in Hitler by his follower. This does mean that Hitler's own actions, in the context of his expanding power, were not of the utmost importance at key moments.

...

Hitler's own contribution to he expansion of this power and to its consequences should not be underrated. A brief counter-factual reflection underlines the point. Is it likely, we might ask, that a terroristic police state such as that which developed under Himmler and the SS would have been erected without Hitler as head of government?Would Germany under a different leader, even an authoritarian one, have been engaged by the end of the 1930s in a general European war? And would under a different head of state discrimination against Jews (which would almost certainly have taken place) have culminated in out-and-out genocide? The answer to each of these questions would surely be 'non'; or, at the very least, 'highly unlikely.' Whatever the external circumstance and impersonal determinants, Hitler was not interchangeable.

And finally, and most relevantly:

No attempt to produce a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of Nazism without doing justice to 'the Hitler factor' can hope to succeed. But such an interpretation must not only take full account of Hitler's ideological goals, his actions and his personal input into the shaping of events; it must at the same time locate these within the social forces and political structures which permitted, shaped and promoted the growth of a system that came increasingly to hinge on personalized, absolute power - with the disastrous effects that flowed from it.

So, this seems to me to be something like what Kaiserguard was trying to articulate. Though, his later posts after this seem to have gone astray into a more humanist, 'all history is biography' directions. But Kershaw still points the way to marry the concept of extraordinary men and actions to social history in a way far more sophisticated then great man history (which Kershaw rejects as not even coherent, never mind accurate) The very fact that individuals like Bismark, O'Neil, Hitler, Nobunaga, Lenin etc. could not have been transposed into different societies and achieved tremendous impact is exactly what makes them so important.

Societies, classes, nations, institutions are not something we can observe directly. Because, properly speaking, they don't exist. However, extraordinary and important individuals allow us to learn all sorts of things that would have remained hidden about societies had they never arisen.

They are catalysts, that break the expectations of the existing social structures, break them apart and let us peer at the insides of it. To go back to Hitler, could we understand German society in that era in such a way without such a malformed personality? And is Francis Ferdinand's driver making the wrong turn really in the same category?

Flying Pig · Oct 14, 2014

Kershaw's take is a bit more naunced than has been going on in the thread, though, in that he allows a lot of wiggle room. He doesn't say 'the Second World War would not have happened without Hitler' but rather 'Germany would not have been involved in a European war before the end of the 1930s without Hitler' (though personally I think the time qualification there is a weakness). Yes, Bismarck, Hitler and Lenin could not have been transposed into different societies, but that's what proves the primacy of the society over the individual in terms of history. That's the lens which one should be seeing it through, and Kershaw seems to be doing just that.

Ideology, Individuality and Groupthink

jackelgull

An aberration of nature

schlaufuchs

Break My Heart

ParkCungHee

Deity

Mouthwash

Escaped Lunatic

Traitorfish

The Tighnahulish Kid

Mouthwash

Escaped Lunatic

jackelgull

An aberration of nature

Phrossack

Armored Fish and Armored Men

jackelgull

An aberration of nature

Phrossack

Armored Fish and Armored Men

Mouthwash

Escaped Lunatic

Flying Pig

Utrinque Paratus

Mouthwash

Escaped Lunatic

jackelgull

An aberration of nature

Tahuti

Writing Deity

jackelgull

An aberration of nature

Traitorfish

The Tighnahulish Kid

ParkCungHee

Deity

Flying Pig

Utrinque Paratus

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