Thomas Carlyle PDF

Dr. Hagar Eltarabishy Culture 2024/2025 Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle, (born December 4, 1795,—died February 5, 1881), is a Scottish historian and essayist, whose writings were highly influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strictly Calvinist fa...

Dr. Hagar Eltarabishy Culture 2024/2025 Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle, (born December 4, 1795,—died February 5, 1881), is a Scottish historian and essayist, whose writings were highly influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strictly Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to enter the ministry. However, while at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith. Nevertheless Calvinist values remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order. As a very romantic thinker, Carlyle attacked industrialism, feared political radicalism and liberalism, and did not appreciate utilitarianism or democracy (rule by the people). Being a very pessimistic writer about subjects concerning Enlightenment-era thinking, Carlyle was extremely critical of the two main classes involved in ruling, the aristocracy and the proletariat (working class), were equally at fault for unsatisfactory government. He thought that the first group, the millocracy (moneyed class), was insensitive to the suffering of commoners and superficial in livelihood and lifestyle. On the other hand, the "second group" (or working class) was merely comprised of "fools full of beer and nonsense," referring specifically to it's lack of intellectual capacity to participate in any form or government. Carlyle believed that there were only a handful of people in the world who were in some way predestined to lead, a sort of early elitism. The main theory that Carlyle advocated was that the rule of all life was that life was ruled by inequality. Because of this, he believed that ruling should be left to the most competent members of society, most of which came from the aristocracy. The embodiment of this ruling class would be in the hero, the great man of insight ready to lead society, which he wrote about in his lecture Heroes and Hero Worship (1840). The hero would customarily receive normal acceptance from the masses, according to Carlyle, but could resort to violence when necessary to obtain approval. It was these heroes which defined humankind, and history was but a great biography of heroes. For Carlyle, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism were undermining communal human and spiritual values. While recognizing political, economic, and social factors, he believed that these forces were essentially spiritual and needed to be directed by leaders with boldness and vision. His increasing hostility to modern egalitarian democracy would influence the development of socialism, while insistence upon the need for heroic leadership, paradoxically, contributed to the later emergence of fascism. A late, notoriously racist essay suggesting that slavery should never have been abolished lent support to the American slave system and contributed to his break with liberal reformers such as John Stuart Mill.  Dr. Hagar Eltarabishy Culture 2024/2025 In all aspects, Carlyle could be considered an "anti-liberal" reactionary. He was vehemently opposed to the universal right to vote or any form of popular participation in "public" affairs, thereby advocating strong government control of society to avoid the "anarchy" which he equated to the liberalization of government. Carlyle was invariably a racist, completely anti-Semitic " in much of his writing, believing in the "Teutonic superiority" of the Nordic white race. Thomas Carlyle is notable both for his continuation of older traditions of the Tory satirists of the eighteenth century in England and for forging a new tradition of Victorian era criticism of progress. The great man theory is an approach to the study of history popularised in the 19th century according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities, or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect. The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, in which he states: Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these. This theory is usually contrasted with "history from below", which emphasizes the life of the masses creating overwhelming waves of smaller events which carry leaders along with them. Another contrasting school is historical materialism. Carlyle stated that "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men", reflecting his belief that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and divine inspiration. In his book Heroes and Hero- Worship, Carlyle saw history as having turned on the decisions, works, ideas, and characters of "heroes", giving detailed analysis of six types: The hero as divinity (such as Odin), prophet (such as Muhammad), poet (such as Shakespeare), priest (such as Martin Luther), man of letters (such as Rousseau), and king (such as Napoleon). Carlyle also argued that the study of great men was "profitable" to one's own heroic side; that by examining the lives led by such heroes, one could not help but uncover something about one's own true nature. Dr. Hagar Eltarabishy Culture 2024/2025