Hegel (1770–1831) considered that "world-historical figures" played a pivotal role in human progress, but felt that they were bound to emerge when change was needed.
The German philosopher Hegel defined the concept of the world-historical figure, who embodied the ruthless advance of Immanuel Kant's World Spirit, often overthrowing outdated structures and ideas.
[2] Hegel viewed Julius Caesar as a world historical figure, who appeared at a stage when Rome had grown to the point it could no longer continue as a republican city state but had to become an empire.
[5] Hegel said of world-historical figures, It was theirs to know this nascent principle; the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their world was to take; to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it ...
[6]However, Hegel, Thomas Carlyle and others noted that the great historical figures were just representative men, expressions of the material forces of history.
[8] The Scottish philosopher and evolutionist Herbert Spencer, who was highly influential in the latter half of the nineteenth century, felt that historical figures were relatively unimportant.
He wrote, "The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any direct benefits that can possibly result from knowing them: but because society considers them parts of a good education.
[13] As an orthodox Marxist, Vladimir Lenin believed in the ideas of history that Marx had developed, including the historical inevitability of capitalism followed by a transition to socialism.
[15] The historian Isaiah Berlin, author of Historical Inevitability, also argued forcibly against this view, going as far as to say that some choices are entirely free and cannot be predicted scientifically.
[18] Talking of poets he said, That ideal outline of himself, which a man unconsciously shadows forth in his writings, and which, if rightly deciphered, will be truer than any other representation of him, it is the task of the Biographer to fill-up into an actual coherent figure, and to bring him to our experience, or at least our clear undoubted admiration, thereby to instruct and edify us in many ways.
And even they are compelled indirectly to acknowledge this commonplace truth, for they speak of historical personages as 'instruments' of Providence, Justice, Reason, Dialectic, the Zeitgeist, or Spirit of the Times.
[20]Hook recognizes the relevance of the environment within which the "great man" or "hero" acted, but asserts that this can provide the backdrop but never the plot of the "dramas of human history".
For example, Cesar A. Hidalgo and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab has calculated the memorability of historical figures using data such as the number of language editions for which there are articles for each person, the pageviews received, and other factors.
"Wisdom literature" from early middle-eastern cultures (such as the Book of Job), mainly consist of verbal expositions or discussions that must be considered the work of the author, rather than the character supposedly speaking.
[24] Great figures of the past have stories told about them which grow in the telling, and so become myths and legends which may dominate or displace the more prosaic historical facts about them.
For example, some ancient chroniclers said that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Tacitus disputed this by saying the stories were just malicious rumours.
Similarly, there is no good evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said "let them eat cake", or that Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of Coventry.
An alternative approach, favored by psychobiographers such as William Runyan, is to explain the personality of the historical figure in terms of their life history.
In France in the first half of the seventeenth century, there was an outpouring of writing about Joan of Arc, including seven biographies, three plays and an epic poem.
He felt that William Shakespeare's depiction in Henry VI, Part 1 was constrained from making her a "beautiful and romantic figure" by political considerations.
[35] Thus, Jesse Jackson has frequently evoked the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.[36] Fidel Castro often presented himself as following the path defined by José Martí.
[37] Hugo Chávez of Venezuela frequently identified himself with the historical figure Simón Bolívar, the liberator of South America from Spanish rule.
[38] Georg Hegel believed in the role of the state in guaranteeing individual liberties, and his views were therefore rejected by the German Nazi Party, who considered him dangerously liberal and perhaps a proto-Marxist.
[40] In classical Rome, students of rhetoric had to master the suasoria — a form of declamation in which they wrote the soliloquy of a historical figure who was debating a critical course of action.
The monumental approach describes the glories of the past, often focusing on heroic figures like Elizabeth I of England, King Robert the Bruce or Louis Pasteur.
When modern US schoolchildren were asked to roleplay or illustrate historical stereotypes, boys tended to focus upon male figures exclusively while girls showed more varied family groupings.
In order to determine the popularity of the commercialisation of historical figures, a study was conducted at the beginning of 2014 on the number of trademark protection applications filed with the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland as a measure of entrepreneurs’ interest in this activity.
The greatest number of trademark protection applications were recorded for Mieszko (295), followed by Nicolaus Copernicus (250), John III Sobieski (94) and Chopin (81).
[59] More recently, however, starting with works such as The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice by William Styron, the novelist has felt more free to introduce much larger amounts of purely imaginary detail about historical people.
[62] For example, the time traveler The Doctor has encountered numerous historical figures such as Marco Polo and Queen Elizabeth I in his adventures.