What do you think?
Rate this book
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History - The Annotated Carlyle
On Heroes is Carlyle’s most striking and influential work, the key statement of Great Man history. In some of the most dazzling English prose since Shakespeare, Carlyle shows how the hero appears as god, prophet, poet, priest, writer, and king, with vivid sketches of such great men as Muhammed, Luther, Napoleon, and others. Praised by Thoreau as bettering even Plutarch’s Lives, this book at a single stroke cuts down “trends and forces” histories such as Marx’s dialectical materialism. Carlyle’s hero is “a fiery mass of Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To kindle the world; the world’s Maker had ordered it so.”
Thomas Carlyle was one of the greatest writers in the English language and a titanic figure of the Victorian age, an arch-reactionary while also a forward thinking trailblazer.
In the Annotated Carlyle Series, the editors of Imperium Press present his major works with extensive commentary. Now, every word of his kaleidoscopic writing, all his obscure allusions and Carlylisms, are accessible even to the lay reader with comprehensive annotations.
Thomas Carlyle was one of the greatest writers in the English language and a titanic figure of the Victorian age, an arch-reactionary while also a forward thinking trailblazer.
In the Annotated Carlyle Series, the editors of Imperium Press present his major works with extensive commentary. Now, every word of his kaleidoscopic writing, all his obscure allusions and Carlylisms, are accessible even to the lay reader with comprehensive annotations.
388 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1841
263 people are currently reading
3905 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Carlyle
1,723 books515 followersThomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, critic, and sociological writer. was born in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, eldest child of James Carlyle, stonemason, and Margaret (Aitken) Carlyle. The father was stern, irascible, a puritan of the puritans, but withal a man of rigid probity and strength of character. The mother, too, was of the Scottish earth, and Thomas' education was begun at home by both the parents. From the age of five to nine he was at the village school; from nine to fourteen at Annan Grammar School. where he showed proficiency in mathematics and was well grounded in French and Latin. In November 1809 he walked to Edinburgh, and attended courses at the University till 1814, with the ultimate aim of becoming a minister. He left without a degree, became a mathematical tutor at Annan Academy in 1814, and three years later abandoned all thoughts of entering the Kirk, having reached a theological position incompatible with its teachings. He had begun to learn German in Edinburgh, and had done much independent reading outside the regular curriculum. Late in 1816 he moved to a school in Kirkcaldy, where he became the intimate associate of Edward Irving, an old boy of Annan School, and now also a schoolmaster. This contact was Carlyle's first experience of true intellectual companionship, and the two men became lifelong friends. He remained there two years, was attracted by Margaret Gordon, a lady of good family (whose friends vetoed an engagement), and in October 1818 gave up schoolmastering and went to Edinburgh, where he took mathematical pupils and made some show of reading law.
During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."
For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.
In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.
Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth
During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."
For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.
In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.
Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews
February 24, 2015
Carlyle reads like a good scotch: divine in small sips; nauseating in large gulps.
February 27, 2013
On a writer's e-mail loop I once mentioned something about Thomas Carlyle. Another member then wrote that he liked Carlyle, and that a copy of Hero Worship stayed on his nightstand for occasional re-reading. So when I felt a hankering to return to some Carlyle reading, this was the book I chose. The version I read was an e-book for the Nook, by B&R Samizdat Express.
I'm glad I read it. I don't feel that I understood it as well as I wanted to, but I chalk that up to reading too often with distractions. It took me a while to find what Carlyle's definition of a great man was: a sincere man. He discusses that in clear language in chapter 2. Maybe it was in chapter 1 and I missed it. Yes, Carlyle's premise is that a Great Man, a hero, is a sincere man—a man who believes what he is doing is right. One who isn't a "quack", that is, a charlatan, a man who knows what he is doing is wrong but does it anyhow to cheat or abuse people, or even for his own entertainment.
The hero isn't like that. Carlyle seems less concerned with what the hero actually accomplishes than if he is sincere in his pursuits. For sure all the men he picked had accomplished much, so maybe significant accomplishments is a precursor to making the sincere/quack evaluation. So he counts Mohammed, the Moslem prophet, as a hero, because although Carlyle called his religion erroneous, at least he was sincere in his belief of it and in how he spread it. He called Napoleon a hero even though he obviously disagreed with his pursuits and outcomes.
In fact, Napoleon comes out worst of all the heroes in the lectures/book, while Oliver Cromwell comes out best. Both of these men are in the final chapter, the Hero as King. Carlyle had been researching Cromwell and planning to write about him for years, and would have that book to market less than five years after he prepared these lectures. So Cromwell was much on his mind. At that time Cromwell was consigned to the ash heap of English villains. Carlyle thought differently, and sought to rehabilitate him. Cromwell could do no wrong in Carlyle's eyes. It was his critics, against whom Carlyle stood pretty much alone (at that time) who were blind or biased.
The book is fairly easy to read. Although 170 years old the language is modern enough. A good reader should have no problem with it. It is an obvious must for anyone wanting to study Carlyle. It is useful for anyone wanting to investigate the "great man theory" of history. And, it is a good read for anyone who wants to know more about the men discussed in the book. This isn't biography, but it has biographical elements to it. You learn something of the lives of Dante, Shakespeare, Luther, Johnson, etc. The one hero I wish he had given more biographical information on was John Knox, his fellow Scott. Alas, I will have to look elsewhere for that.
Why four stars, not five? I'm not quite sure. The book disappointed me a little, perhaps because of Carlyle's fawning over Cromwell and Mohammed. Perhaps because his premises were not, to my mind, clearly stated at the beginning. Perhaps it's because I don't fully subscribe to the "great man theory" of world history. Perhaps it was a few formatting errors in the e-book. All of these have combined to cause me to take a star away. But again I say the book does not disappoint.
I'm glad I read it. I don't feel that I understood it as well as I wanted to, but I chalk that up to reading too often with distractions. It took me a while to find what Carlyle's definition of a great man was: a sincere man. He discusses that in clear language in chapter 2. Maybe it was in chapter 1 and I missed it. Yes, Carlyle's premise is that a Great Man, a hero, is a sincere man—a man who believes what he is doing is right. One who isn't a "quack", that is, a charlatan, a man who knows what he is doing is wrong but does it anyhow to cheat or abuse people, or even for his own entertainment.
The hero isn't like that. Carlyle seems less concerned with what the hero actually accomplishes than if he is sincere in his pursuits. For sure all the men he picked had accomplished much, so maybe significant accomplishments is a precursor to making the sincere/quack evaluation. So he counts Mohammed, the Moslem prophet, as a hero, because although Carlyle called his religion erroneous, at least he was sincere in his belief of it and in how he spread it. He called Napoleon a hero even though he obviously disagreed with his pursuits and outcomes.
In fact, Napoleon comes out worst of all the heroes in the lectures/book, while Oliver Cromwell comes out best. Both of these men are in the final chapter, the Hero as King. Carlyle had been researching Cromwell and planning to write about him for years, and would have that book to market less than five years after he prepared these lectures. So Cromwell was much on his mind. At that time Cromwell was consigned to the ash heap of English villains. Carlyle thought differently, and sought to rehabilitate him. Cromwell could do no wrong in Carlyle's eyes. It was his critics, against whom Carlyle stood pretty much alone (at that time) who were blind or biased.
The book is fairly easy to read. Although 170 years old the language is modern enough. A good reader should have no problem with it. It is an obvious must for anyone wanting to study Carlyle. It is useful for anyone wanting to investigate the "great man theory" of history. And, it is a good read for anyone who wants to know more about the men discussed in the book. This isn't biography, but it has biographical elements to it. You learn something of the lives of Dante, Shakespeare, Luther, Johnson, etc. The one hero I wish he had given more biographical information on was John Knox, his fellow Scott. Alas, I will have to look elsewhere for that.
Why four stars, not five? I'm not quite sure. The book disappointed me a little, perhaps because of Carlyle's fawning over Cromwell and Mohammed. Perhaps because his premises were not, to my mind, clearly stated at the beginning. Perhaps it's because I don't fully subscribe to the "great man theory" of world history. Perhaps it was a few formatting errors in the e-book. All of these have combined to cause me to take a star away. But again I say the book does not disappoint.
February 5, 2013
كتاب يناقش ترقي البشرية في تصورها عن الشخصيات المميزة "الأبطال".. وهو يتدرج منذ كانت البشرية تعتقد فيهم آلهة ثم أنبياء ثم محاربين ثم أدباء وهكذا..
هذا التدرج منطلق بالأصل من الفلسفة المادية الإلحادية التي لا تؤمن بنشأة الكون مخلوقا من إله، ولا بنبوات أرسلها هذا الإله لإصلاح حال البشر
غير أني أعطيت هذا التقييم المرتفع لعدة أسباب أهمها عمق الفكر ومتانة العرض والطرح والمحاججة عنها لدى توماس كارلايل.. ثم إن الفصل الذي عقده عن محمد (صلى الله عليه وسلم) كنموذج لمرحلة النبوات فصل عظيم وإن شابته بعض أخطاء
* الترجمة الأدبية التي كتبها محمد السباعي للنص الإنجليزي جعلت الكتاب وكأنه قطعة من الأدب العربي الأصيل، وهي لغة ارتفعت بشأن الكتاب كثيرا، ولعلها ذات نصيب قوي في انتشاره باللغة العربية
هذا التدرج منطلق بالأصل من الفلسفة المادية الإلحادية التي لا تؤمن بنشأة الكون مخلوقا من إله، ولا بنبوات أرسلها هذا الإله لإصلاح حال البشر
غير أني أعطيت هذا التقييم المرتفع لعدة أسباب أهمها عمق الفكر ومتانة العرض والطرح والمحاججة عنها لدى توماس كارلايل.. ثم إن الفصل الذي عقده عن محمد (صلى الله عليه وسلم) كنموذج لمرحلة النبوات فصل عظيم وإن شابته بعض أخطاء
* الترجمة الأدبية التي كتبها محمد السباعي للنص الإنجليزي جعلت الكتاب وكأنه قطعة من الأدب العربي الأصيل، وهي لغة ارتفعت بشأن الكتاب كثيرا، ولعلها ذات نصيب قوي في انتشاره باللغة العربية
July 6, 2017
Carlyle is, and always has been, a man without a country: An Scotsman at odds with the materialism of his native 19th Century Britain; a idealist nonetheless too British to happily fit among his Prussian cobelievers. He is a rabid anti-modernist, but in the most modern way. Carlyle is a hero to a new generation of reactionaries, but the failings of his thought—very clearly on display in On Heroes and Hero Worship—show the limits of this movement, and stand testament to the fact that admiration of the past is no remedy for the pains of the present and future.
On Heroes appears after of Carlyle’s fantastic history of the French Revolution, and his bizarre, mocking, adulatory Sartor Resartus which serves as a germ for his hero-worshiping philosophy. The attributes which made his history great are here used to poor effect; the attributes which made his novel fascinating yet unserious are here supercharged. The effect is a work which does not make any sense, even by its author’s own standards. It is an incoherent defense of the past which does not understand the past; it is an encomium of heroes without understanding what makes a man heroic. Where Carlyle’s argument cannot carry water, he relies on florid language and metaphor; these elements, which lent extra locomotion to his French Revolution, are here used to prod a lump.
It isn’t possible to understand Carlyle or his failures without understanding those of Hegel, whose philosophy of history has within it the rough blueprint of Carlyle’s hero worship. It runs roughly like this: Through the dialectic process of history, the spirit of the age is constantly developing, strengthening or crumbling in the smithy of experience, its axioms rising or falling by the parallel development of its own contradictions. The zeitgeist is not metaphorical excess, but the actual working of God’s spirit in the progress of generations; it is God’s own will realizing itself through the ages. The end result of this has been the propagation of freedom, arriving at its apotheosis with the German deformation of Church and State, seen in the unscrupulous but very “free” acts of Luther and Frederick II. This is not mere English whiggery, a belief in progress because each year seems to better sate our material desires. This is intellectual and spiritual whiggery; every era’s passage makes us more and more human, more and more godlike, more and more in concord with the Divine.
The German idealists made themselves more godlike than any thinkers ever have. The French and English believed they were discovering the hidden blueprints of material reality, but left metaphysics largely to a deistic God, inscrutable but for what their empiricism allowed. The Prussians not only appropriated Promethean fire, but turned its character into a mechanism which charted the course of history in its simple progression. Locke and Hume warred against the Church by plucking stones out of her walls and tossing them at her spires; the Prussians erected a meta-church over all Christendom, all belief, all mankind, and declared themselves themselves the priests. History, in this reading, is of course still progressing, and will never be at an end (Young Hegelians notwithstanding); but in a sense all attempts to search for higher Truth are in vain, for what is dictated by this year’s spirt may be eradicated by the next. The measure of truth is man, and insofar that man changes with the ages, so do the progressing ages demand higher and higher truths. Carlyle’s hero-worship is one attempt to make Hegelianism concrete.
Of course, this is lofty stuff; the heights of pure reason. But even the highest philosophic system has a human-sized mechanism. “Freedom” was Hegel’s measure of historical progress. Carlyle adopts another measure of heroism: The essential trait, the first condition, of the hero is his sincerity. Every time he repeats this phrase, I can’t help thinking to myself Wilde’s aphorism: “All bad poems are sincere.” And if there is one thread to be pulled which can show the weakness of Carlyle’s work, it is this: Neither many of his subjects nor himself is sincere!
Let us take Napoleon. In his youth, the young Corsican reviled the French, and could very well have become a terrorist against the nation he once would lead. As a general in Levant, he considered converting to Islam in order to expand his conquests to Alexandrian proportions, thereby making himself an enemy to Christendom. The man rose to power a republican, the grand culmination of the Revolution, but gladly made himself emperor when the opportunity arose. Even in his personal life, his brooding over Josephine could be set aside to marry an Austrian princess. Few men in history have ever been as unscrupulous and opportunist as Bonaparte. Of all the slanderous titles placed upon the little corporal by Enlighmen, “sincerity” may be the most obtuse!
The same goes for Mahound who, as Salmund Rushdie reminds us, gladly walked back his commitment to al-lah when to was necessary to flatter the Arabs’ lesser gods. The same with Shakespeare, who is perhaps the greatest cipher in human history. Henry V seems to promote a monarchist, while the author of Henry VI may well support the mob; his histories speak to the greatness of Christianity, but Lear portrays a deeper void than any nihilist has achieved. Shakespeare felt very deeply; he cogitated diversely and with great dedication. But insincerity is better applied to him rather than the contrary.
Sincerity fails as a mechanism to climb the heights, but Carlyle’s larger structure is similarly unsound. Many paths could get us to this point, but the central fact is this: Carlyle wants to reconnect with the greatness of the past without subjecting himself to the conditions which made the past, and his men within it, great. Carlyle the reactionary hates the present, and with good reason; but he attempts to love and honor the past without truly knowing what made it lovable or honorable. This is the greatest contradiction of On Heroes: That the great men documented in this book would be revolted by the idea that they and their beliefs were merely a realization of greatness in history.
To actually be great requires we forget, at least for a time, the idea of greatness and simply be. But how are we to go about this? Mahound, Luther, and St. Peter all had ideas, each of them mutually exclusive from one another. Carlyle and his cohort seem to think the act of choosing is as relevant as the choice; that any end is implicitly good so long as one pursues it properly. In this way he is little different a liberal, who sees as much value in free speech as what is being said; who sees as much value in free exercise without caring how or to whom this should be done. This might be called the curse of the post-Enlightenment Promethean: He knows so well the mechanics of a thing that he has wholly forgotten its function.
The only important divide in philosophy is between those who believe in a Truth unchangeable, and those who do not. Yet Carlyle expounds on “the new Truth, the deeper revealing of the Secret of the Universe.” This could well be any liberal party platform. Reactionaries of this sort may believe in hierarchy, aristocracy, the greatness of man. But real men and divinity can only be combined in deceit and mockery; the emperor Claudius might be the highest realization of this. We can believe these spurious gods to be either mythic, in which case they are not men, or frauds, in which place they are not gods. Only one man has long succeeding in convincing others he could be both.
Yet with what contempt does Carlyle treat this man! Perhaps it is piety that keeps Christ out of Carlyle's hall of heroes, but why are there no saints in these halls? Francis of Assissi, as one man, completes Carlyle’s definition of the heroic, and blows up his paradigm for understanding it. For this was a man who actually was sincere; who wrote great poetry, but which pales in comparison to the art that was his life; who reinvigorated the spirit of his age, but did so in a way that advanced the ancient cause of orthodoxy, and created nothing new. He was great before God, before man, and before the ages. Saints like Francis fit within history because they are all men and women of their times; but they are promoting the advancement of the Eternal, and are not fooled by the fact that men’s changing perceptions of the Truth mean that the Truth is changing, or can change at all.
Why is the Catholic Church, to Carlyle, obsolete? Certainly it is moribund politically and morally in the present day. But why should we not try to resurrect its greatness? What about the spirit of our dismal age rules out this possibility? If the claims made by the Church were true in 33 AD, they were just as true to Dante on Good Friday 1300, and are just as true to us now. But if the Church is a fraud, then it was and always has been a fraud.
For all his attempts at reverence, Carlyle treats all his subjects as very-sincere conmen, whose value is expressed in how many people they’ve duped. For all this inflated language, Carlyle’s true vision of history is little more nuanced than Herbert Spencer’s and other sub-Nietzschean hacks who look to strength as the only measure of truth. It has little more spiritual complexity than the epicurean, for fundamentally what Carlyle sees as being right for the age is what is pleasing to the men of that age. Says he: “Divine right, take it on the grand scale, is found to mean divine might, withal!” But why should rightness not be what is most disagreeable to men, especially the men of an evil age? Carlyle wrote this book largely because he was dissatisfied with modern man’s failure to elect great men. Are those masses the measure, or the great men who rule them? What is the measure? He wants the Kon-ning, or Able-man; but able in what?
This reduces to the fact that the thinking man must occupy either the real Church, or the meta-church of modern intellectualism. The first claims to have the rules of human life on earth; the latter claims to know the very rules of these rules, but lapses in following any particular creed or regiment itself. And why should it not? The Truth is ever changing. And because there are vague principles but no code, no disciples or flock can ever form (apart from the small brahmin caste that can endure the blather of Kant and Hegel). The masses become worse and worse; their leaders, their would-be great men, follow suit. Men are no longer sincere Carlyle complains. Sincere to what? Modernity has made men, like their poetry, too sincere; sincere to their lusts, their wants, their facebook pages, their whims. The problem is that their souls are ugly, because they have nothing beautiful or true to emulate. Goethe was wrong; the Good must precede the Beautiful. In fact, the Good must at times appear ugly, for beauty and ugliness are things of this world; but it is man’s one purpose on earth to make this Good beautiful again.
There is nothing good in the past that does not partake of eternal Goodness; there is no honor in the past aside from Honor. The artificiality of Carlyle’s construct condemns the entire modern project, but does so in the most pathetic manner. The liberal or radical can put his faith in history and receive some optimism, but the reactionary must watch the former age’s beauty die, or be rebuilt in a hollow imitation. This is the sad state of the reactionary, always looking backwards but, in confining himself to the material world, unable to understand or recreate what made the past truly great. But the past is only good so far that it can teach us about what is immortal; and that immortal strain, when applied to present conditions, may very well look nothing like what we have seen. This is the tradeoff of not being able to find our consolations in Claudius and Odin, but in cruel Truth itself.
Carlyle is admirable as historian, a field in which brute facts constrain his poetic fancy. As a philosopher, he is poetic where he should be literal, and his own fervor takes him places his methodology should not allow. Given this, it is not strange that Carlyle was a stranger in his own time and in ours. As author and thinker, he offers many great pleasures, but no method for imitators or reason for disciples. The cause of reaction is always enticing, but no inherently wiser than optimism for the future; the romance of both past and future is equally vain. Our potentialities and virtues live with us in the present.
And while a Christian can look back at the past with great yearning, at the future with dread, and the present age with tears, he must keep in mind this fact: The spirit of the ages is always the same; the problem is always himself.
On Heroes appears after of Carlyle’s fantastic history of the French Revolution, and his bizarre, mocking, adulatory Sartor Resartus which serves as a germ for his hero-worshiping philosophy. The attributes which made his history great are here used to poor effect; the attributes which made his novel fascinating yet unserious are here supercharged. The effect is a work which does not make any sense, even by its author’s own standards. It is an incoherent defense of the past which does not understand the past; it is an encomium of heroes without understanding what makes a man heroic. Where Carlyle’s argument cannot carry water, he relies on florid language and metaphor; these elements, which lent extra locomotion to his French Revolution, are here used to prod a lump.
It isn’t possible to understand Carlyle or his failures without understanding those of Hegel, whose philosophy of history has within it the rough blueprint of Carlyle’s hero worship. It runs roughly like this: Through the dialectic process of history, the spirit of the age is constantly developing, strengthening or crumbling in the smithy of experience, its axioms rising or falling by the parallel development of its own contradictions. The zeitgeist is not metaphorical excess, but the actual working of God’s spirit in the progress of generations; it is God’s own will realizing itself through the ages. The end result of this has been the propagation of freedom, arriving at its apotheosis with the German deformation of Church and State, seen in the unscrupulous but very “free” acts of Luther and Frederick II. This is not mere English whiggery, a belief in progress because each year seems to better sate our material desires. This is intellectual and spiritual whiggery; every era’s passage makes us more and more human, more and more godlike, more and more in concord with the Divine.
The German idealists made themselves more godlike than any thinkers ever have. The French and English believed they were discovering the hidden blueprints of material reality, but left metaphysics largely to a deistic God, inscrutable but for what their empiricism allowed. The Prussians not only appropriated Promethean fire, but turned its character into a mechanism which charted the course of history in its simple progression. Locke and Hume warred against the Church by plucking stones out of her walls and tossing them at her spires; the Prussians erected a meta-church over all Christendom, all belief, all mankind, and declared themselves themselves the priests. History, in this reading, is of course still progressing, and will never be at an end (Young Hegelians notwithstanding); but in a sense all attempts to search for higher Truth are in vain, for what is dictated by this year’s spirt may be eradicated by the next. The measure of truth is man, and insofar that man changes with the ages, so do the progressing ages demand higher and higher truths. Carlyle’s hero-worship is one attempt to make Hegelianism concrete.
Of course, this is lofty stuff; the heights of pure reason. But even the highest philosophic system has a human-sized mechanism. “Freedom” was Hegel’s measure of historical progress. Carlyle adopts another measure of heroism: The essential trait, the first condition, of the hero is his sincerity. Every time he repeats this phrase, I can’t help thinking to myself Wilde’s aphorism: “All bad poems are sincere.” And if there is one thread to be pulled which can show the weakness of Carlyle’s work, it is this: Neither many of his subjects nor himself is sincere!
Let us take Napoleon. In his youth, the young Corsican reviled the French, and could very well have become a terrorist against the nation he once would lead. As a general in Levant, he considered converting to Islam in order to expand his conquests to Alexandrian proportions, thereby making himself an enemy to Christendom. The man rose to power a republican, the grand culmination of the Revolution, but gladly made himself emperor when the opportunity arose. Even in his personal life, his brooding over Josephine could be set aside to marry an Austrian princess. Few men in history have ever been as unscrupulous and opportunist as Bonaparte. Of all the slanderous titles placed upon the little corporal by Enlighmen, “sincerity” may be the most obtuse!
The same goes for Mahound who, as Salmund Rushdie reminds us, gladly walked back his commitment to al-lah when to was necessary to flatter the Arabs’ lesser gods. The same with Shakespeare, who is perhaps the greatest cipher in human history. Henry V seems to promote a monarchist, while the author of Henry VI may well support the mob; his histories speak to the greatness of Christianity, but Lear portrays a deeper void than any nihilist has achieved. Shakespeare felt very deeply; he cogitated diversely and with great dedication. But insincerity is better applied to him rather than the contrary.
Sincerity fails as a mechanism to climb the heights, but Carlyle’s larger structure is similarly unsound. Many paths could get us to this point, but the central fact is this: Carlyle wants to reconnect with the greatness of the past without subjecting himself to the conditions which made the past, and his men within it, great. Carlyle the reactionary hates the present, and with good reason; but he attempts to love and honor the past without truly knowing what made it lovable or honorable. This is the greatest contradiction of On Heroes: That the great men documented in this book would be revolted by the idea that they and their beliefs were merely a realization of greatness in history.
To actually be great requires we forget, at least for a time, the idea of greatness and simply be. But how are we to go about this? Mahound, Luther, and St. Peter all had ideas, each of them mutually exclusive from one another. Carlyle and his cohort seem to think the act of choosing is as relevant as the choice; that any end is implicitly good so long as one pursues it properly. In this way he is little different a liberal, who sees as much value in free speech as what is being said; who sees as much value in free exercise without caring how or to whom this should be done. This might be called the curse of the post-Enlightenment Promethean: He knows so well the mechanics of a thing that he has wholly forgotten its function.
The only important divide in philosophy is between those who believe in a Truth unchangeable, and those who do not. Yet Carlyle expounds on “the new Truth, the deeper revealing of the Secret of the Universe.” This could well be any liberal party platform. Reactionaries of this sort may believe in hierarchy, aristocracy, the greatness of man. But real men and divinity can only be combined in deceit and mockery; the emperor Claudius might be the highest realization of this. We can believe these spurious gods to be either mythic, in which case they are not men, or frauds, in which place they are not gods. Only one man has long succeeding in convincing others he could be both.
Yet with what contempt does Carlyle treat this man! Perhaps it is piety that keeps Christ out of Carlyle's hall of heroes, but why are there no saints in these halls? Francis of Assissi, as one man, completes Carlyle’s definition of the heroic, and blows up his paradigm for understanding it. For this was a man who actually was sincere; who wrote great poetry, but which pales in comparison to the art that was his life; who reinvigorated the spirit of his age, but did so in a way that advanced the ancient cause of orthodoxy, and created nothing new. He was great before God, before man, and before the ages. Saints like Francis fit within history because they are all men and women of their times; but they are promoting the advancement of the Eternal, and are not fooled by the fact that men’s changing perceptions of the Truth mean that the Truth is changing, or can change at all.
Why is the Catholic Church, to Carlyle, obsolete? Certainly it is moribund politically and morally in the present day. But why should we not try to resurrect its greatness? What about the spirit of our dismal age rules out this possibility? If the claims made by the Church were true in 33 AD, they were just as true to Dante on Good Friday 1300, and are just as true to us now. But if the Church is a fraud, then it was and always has been a fraud.
For all his attempts at reverence, Carlyle treats all his subjects as very-sincere conmen, whose value is expressed in how many people they’ve duped. For all this inflated language, Carlyle’s true vision of history is little more nuanced than Herbert Spencer’s and other sub-Nietzschean hacks who look to strength as the only measure of truth. It has little more spiritual complexity than the epicurean, for fundamentally what Carlyle sees as being right for the age is what is pleasing to the men of that age. Says he: “Divine right, take it on the grand scale, is found to mean divine might, withal!” But why should rightness not be what is most disagreeable to men, especially the men of an evil age? Carlyle wrote this book largely because he was dissatisfied with modern man’s failure to elect great men. Are those masses the measure, or the great men who rule them? What is the measure? He wants the Kon-ning, or Able-man; but able in what?
This reduces to the fact that the thinking man must occupy either the real Church, or the meta-church of modern intellectualism. The first claims to have the rules of human life on earth; the latter claims to know the very rules of these rules, but lapses in following any particular creed or regiment itself. And why should it not? The Truth is ever changing. And because there are vague principles but no code, no disciples or flock can ever form (apart from the small brahmin caste that can endure the blather of Kant and Hegel). The masses become worse and worse; their leaders, their would-be great men, follow suit. Men are no longer sincere Carlyle complains. Sincere to what? Modernity has made men, like their poetry, too sincere; sincere to their lusts, their wants, their facebook pages, their whims. The problem is that their souls are ugly, because they have nothing beautiful or true to emulate. Goethe was wrong; the Good must precede the Beautiful. In fact, the Good must at times appear ugly, for beauty and ugliness are things of this world; but it is man’s one purpose on earth to make this Good beautiful again.
There is nothing good in the past that does not partake of eternal Goodness; there is no honor in the past aside from Honor. The artificiality of Carlyle’s construct condemns the entire modern project, but does so in the most pathetic manner. The liberal or radical can put his faith in history and receive some optimism, but the reactionary must watch the former age’s beauty die, or be rebuilt in a hollow imitation. This is the sad state of the reactionary, always looking backwards but, in confining himself to the material world, unable to understand or recreate what made the past truly great. But the past is only good so far that it can teach us about what is immortal; and that immortal strain, when applied to present conditions, may very well look nothing like what we have seen. This is the tradeoff of not being able to find our consolations in Claudius and Odin, but in cruel Truth itself.
Carlyle is admirable as historian, a field in which brute facts constrain his poetic fancy. As a philosopher, he is poetic where he should be literal, and his own fervor takes him places his methodology should not allow. Given this, it is not strange that Carlyle was a stranger in his own time and in ours. As author and thinker, he offers many great pleasures, but no method for imitators or reason for disciples. The cause of reaction is always enticing, but no inherently wiser than optimism for the future; the romance of both past and future is equally vain. Our potentialities and virtues live with us in the present.
And while a Christian can look back at the past with great yearning, at the future with dread, and the present age with tears, he must keep in mind this fact: The spirit of the ages is always the same; the problem is always himself.
March 27, 2025
Я кидаю читати український переклад Карлайла...
За останні кілька днів ви читали тут кілька постів з цитатами з цієї книжки, а недавно я опублікував фраґмент який мене насторожив і попросив вашого відгук на нього.
Чим далі читав, тим більше таких місць я знаходив. Неприродність словесних конструкцій, максимально дивна побудова речень, дивні повтори - все це мене наштовхувало на думку, що я читаю горезвісний ШІ переклад.
І ось - остання крапля переповнила чашу.
на 78 сторінці Магомет воює з... корейцями, а в контексті Корану згадується еякуляція...
Ну що ж, я не полінувався і таки знайшов цей фраґмент в оригіналі, а окрім того, поцікавився, як його переклали кацапи.
Є дві новини - український переклад робився таки з оригіналу, а не з російського, але робився він точно машиною, або з максимальним недбальством.
Звісно, що в оригіналі корейцями і не пахне, йдеться про курейшитів (Koreish) (які згадувались на попередніх сторінках і якби це перекладала людина, то точно б помітила). Те ж саме стосується еякуляції (ejaculation), текст Карлайла як і його мова дещо архаїчний, звісно він тут не мав на увазі сім'явиверження, а просто "викрик, вигук, викид".
Було б смішно, якби не так сумно, бо за книжку я заплатив 390 гривень.
Зазвичай я собі тихенько сміявся у вус, коли в інтернеті читав скарги на ШІ переклад популярного зараз порно-фентезі і жіночих романчиків, але коли, вже ця практика добралась до високої полиці, стає не так смішно...
За останні кілька днів ви читали тут кілька постів з цитатами з цієї книжки, а недавно я опублікував фраґмент який мене насторожив і попросив вашого відгук на нього.
Чим далі читав, тим більше таких місць я знаходив. Неприродність словесних конструкцій, максимально дивна побудова речень, дивні повтори - все це мене наштовхувало на думку, що я читаю горезвісний ШІ переклад.
І ось - остання крапля переповнила чашу.
на 78 сторінці Магомет воює з... корейцями, а в контексті Корану згадується еякуляція...
Ну що ж, я не полінувався і таки знайшов цей фраґмент в оригіналі, а окрім того, поцікавився, як його переклали кацапи.
Є дві новини - український переклад робився таки з оригіналу, а не з російського, але робився він точно машиною, або з максимальним недбальством.
Звісно, що в оригіналі корейцями і не пахне, йдеться про курейшитів (Koreish) (які згадувались на попередніх сторінках і якби це перекладала людина, то точно б помітила). Те ж саме стосується еякуляції (ejaculation), текст Карлайла як і його мова дещо архаїчний, звісно він тут не мав на увазі сім'явиверження, а просто "викрик, вигук, викид".
Було б смішно, якби не так сумно, бо за книжку я заплатив 390 гривень.
Зазвичай я собі тихенько сміявся у вус, коли в інтернеті читав скарги на ШІ переклад популярного зараз порно-фентезі і жіночих романчиків, але коли, вже ця практика добралась до високої полиці, стає не так смішно...
November 30, 2020
The 18th Century, with its calamitous French Revolution and the unquenchable advance of Industrialisation, plunged the world into a haze of scepticism, as people started doubting the values and beliefs of their predecessors and embraced the artificial, offered the ideal backdrop to Thomas Carlyle's search for valor, as he saw through the all-pervading illusion and went on to deliver the six lectures collected in “On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History" in 1840, 50 years after the Bastille crumbled under the fury of the mob.
Stepping on the debris of the tumultuous past, Carlyle sought the catalyst of the events and ideals fallen into the realm of the legendary, and defined History as “the Biography of Great Men", the earthly and the celestial joined through the pursuit of authenticity, awareness of a higher purpose than mere hedonism, all heroic figures united under the mark of earnestness, loyalty to their cause and obedience to Natural Law. Each of his lectures is consecrated to archetypes of the Heroic Ideal: Divinity, Prophet, Poet, Priest, Man of Letters, and ultimately, King: “the summary of all the various figures of Heroism", reminiscing of Plato's Philosopher King; he does not shy away from exploring the underlying aspects of Paganism, Christianity, Islam nor Atheism, also depicting controversial figures, displaying the very traits he revered.
Given the two centuries that have passed since the lectures saw the light of day, one might expect them to be somewhat dull, as the Victorian Era is noted for its rigidity, yet his speech is imbued with a burning passion I have rarely encountered elsewhere, his ideas are highly empowering and can inspire anyone who feels lost in the present age to find clarity through the fog of modern commodities and chronic indoctrination, conquer their own minds and bodies, lead by example and strive for excellence.
Stepping on the debris of the tumultuous past, Carlyle sought the catalyst of the events and ideals fallen into the realm of the legendary, and defined History as “the Biography of Great Men", the earthly and the celestial joined through the pursuit of authenticity, awareness of a higher purpose than mere hedonism, all heroic figures united under the mark of earnestness, loyalty to their cause and obedience to Natural Law. Each of his lectures is consecrated to archetypes of the Heroic Ideal: Divinity, Prophet, Poet, Priest, Man of Letters, and ultimately, King: “the summary of all the various figures of Heroism", reminiscing of Plato's Philosopher King; he does not shy away from exploring the underlying aspects of Paganism, Christianity, Islam nor Atheism, also depicting controversial figures, displaying the very traits he revered.
Given the two centuries that have passed since the lectures saw the light of day, one might expect them to be somewhat dull, as the Victorian Era is noted for its rigidity, yet his speech is imbued with a burning passion I have rarely encountered elsewhere, his ideas are highly empowering and can inspire anyone who feels lost in the present age to find clarity through the fog of modern commodities and chronic indoctrination, conquer their own minds and bodies, lead by example and strive for excellence.
November 9, 2024
Thomas Carlyle is one of the most renowned intellectuals. His idea, which criticised modern society and ideologies, tugged at many people's heartstrings.
In this book, the concept of the "ideal hero" is not limited to the image of a strong warrior. Rather, it emphasizes the spiritual aspects and emphasises the importance of ordinary people in becoming heroes. Carlyle lists historical figures that align with his definition of a hero across different eras, praising the values they share. Courage, truthfulness, and justice are among the virtues that these heroes venerate. The author highlights the importance of an enduring and lasting inner beauty over superficial and temporary external traits. This classic is essential reading for modern people who, due to crude egalitarianism, struggle to revere superior heroes.
In this book, the concept of the "ideal hero" is not limited to the image of a strong warrior. Rather, it emphasizes the spiritual aspects and emphasises the importance of ordinary people in becoming heroes. Carlyle lists historical figures that align with his definition of a hero across different eras, praising the values they share. Courage, truthfulness, and justice are among the virtues that these heroes venerate. The author highlights the importance of an enduring and lasting inner beauty over superficial and temporary external traits. This classic is essential reading for modern people who, due to crude egalitarianism, struggle to revere superior heroes.
September 24, 2020
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History is a series of lectures given about a decade after Sartor Resartus was written, and presents a similar thesis in non-fictional form. It is one of the worst books I have ever read. Carlyle is again attacking the modern world for "materialism", "mechanism" and of course "utilitarianism", and assuming without argument the same Idealist philosophy as in the first book. He maintains (I would usually be using the word "argues" but he again doesn't give any arguments, just invective) that the proper attitude for all decent people is "Hero Worship", uncritical admiration of some "great man", and complete unquestioning obedience to him. It's hard to read this without a shudder after the twentieth century with its Führerprinzip and its "cults of personality", especially in the context of praising everything "Teutonic".
The first lecture is on the hero as God, which presents a euhemeristic account of Odin as a "great man" who was promoted to godhood: "We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom the race had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst up into boundless admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great things; the fruit of him is found growing from deep thousands of years, over the field of Teutonic Life." and so forth. He saw Nature as a reflection of Divinity; i.e. he was a precursor of German Idealism as interpreted by Carlyle. His achievement was to instill "Valor" and lead his people to conquests.
The second lecture is on the hero as prophet, and focuses on "Mahomet" and the founding of Islam. What is his greatness? "He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and factual Manifestation of God's power and presence, -- a shadow hung out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more." In other words, a precursor of German Idealism as interpreted by Carlyle.
The third lecture is on the hero as poet, and treats of Dante and Shakespeare. A lot of superlatives and idolatry of both as "Great men"; he doesn't in my opinion understand either one of them. Of course, they saw through the world of phenomena to the divine noumenal world behind it. . . The fourth lecture is on the hero as priest: Luther and Knox. The fifth lecture is on the hero as Man of Letters: Johnson, Rousseau and Burns.
The final lecture is on the hero as king: Cromwell and Napoleon. What he sees as greatest about Cromwell is that he ruled without Parliament; what was greatest about Napoleon was that he made himself Emperor.
The first lecture is on the hero as God, which presents a euhemeristic account of Odin as a "great man" who was promoted to godhood: "We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom the race had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst up into boundless admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great things; the fruit of him is found growing from deep thousands of years, over the field of Teutonic Life." and so forth. He saw Nature as a reflection of Divinity; i.e. he was a precursor of German Idealism as interpreted by Carlyle. His achievement was to instill "Valor" and lead his people to conquests.
The second lecture is on the hero as prophet, and focuses on "Mahomet" and the founding of Islam. What is his greatness? "He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and factual Manifestation of God's power and presence, -- a shadow hung out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more." In other words, a precursor of German Idealism as interpreted by Carlyle.
The third lecture is on the hero as poet, and treats of Dante and Shakespeare. A lot of superlatives and idolatry of both as "Great men"; he doesn't in my opinion understand either one of them. Of course, they saw through the world of phenomena to the divine noumenal world behind it. . . The fourth lecture is on the hero as priest: Luther and Knox. The fifth lecture is on the hero as Man of Letters: Johnson, Rousseau and Burns.
The final lecture is on the hero as king: Cromwell and Napoleon. What he sees as greatest about Cromwell is that he ruled without Parliament; what was greatest about Napoleon was that he made himself Emperor.
January 28, 2011
I Just wish the Carlyle hypothesis that in the next 100 of years Man will be smart enough not to acknowledge other man as GOD come true. But more than 100 years have past from his writing, till today still there are still a lot of Human that believe other human as GOD. How tragic where did all those brain and knowledge that they have gone to.
Carlyle really has big hopes for his own species (Human) to develop their ideal potential intellectual in next 100 of years, but clearly those hopes are just hopes till today.
Carlyle really has big hopes for his own species (Human) to develop their ideal potential intellectual in next 100 of years, but clearly those hopes are just hopes till today.
December 30, 2022
أعجبتني فكرة الكتاب العامة، وأعجبتني بعض مواضعه ذات المعاني الشريفة، ويعيبه كثرة الإنشاء والقصور في التعريف بأبطاله، وبعض الاستطرادات وبعض الإطناب
ولو سلم منها الكتاب لكان بديعاً
وأفكار الكتاب بين الجيد والردئ، تعرف منها وتنكر
ولغة الترجمة أدبية جزلة عالية
وفي الكتاب فصل عن النبي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم، وهو أجدر من أطلق عليه لفظ البطولة، وهو أفضل فصول الكتاب
مما اقتبسته من الكتاب
عن إنكار وجود الأبطال
عن رفع الأبطال الزائفين
ولو سلم منها الكتاب لكان بديعاً
وأفكار الكتاب بين الجيد والردئ، تعرف منها وتنكر
ولغة الترجمة أدبية جزلة عالية
وفي الكتاب فصل عن النبي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم، وهو أجدر من أطلق عليه لفظ البطولة، وهو أفضل فصول الكتاب
مما اقتبسته من الكتاب
عن إنكار وجود الأبطال
عن رفع الأبطال الزائفين
October 19, 2023
There's a lot of hate for this book now since the leader as hero is not necessarily the most accurate in explaining history or politics.
But for a piece of writing for its time, it should be way more famous
In the modern introduction to the Yale edition:
"In a striking example of what Thomas Carlyle called a 'conflux of two Eternities' (Signs of the Times [1829], Works 27:59), the fate of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) has closely paralleled that of his own reputation in the twenty-first century.
Today neither Carlyle nor his book is widely known among students of English literature.
However unfairly, both have been tarnished by their association with the authoritarian and totalitarian personality cults that brought European civilization to the brink of destruction in World War II and that left what Michael Burleigh has called a 'dystopian stain'."
........
Fragments
LECTURE I. [TUESDAY, 5TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology [page 21]
We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world’s business, how they have shaped themselves in the world’s history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did;— on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic; deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of...
LECTURE II. [FRIDAY, 8TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam [page 51]
From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men!
The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellow-men; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship: the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any...
LECTURE III. [TUESDAY, 12TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakspeare [page 77]
The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of...
LECTURE IV. [FRIDAY, 15TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism [page 104]
Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,—the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I understand it, is a kind...
LECTURE V. [TUESDAY, 19TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns [page 132]
Hero-Gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more shew themselves in this world. The Hero asMan of Letters, again, of which class we are to speak today, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art ofWriting, or of Ready-writing which we callPrinting, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is,...
LECTURE VI. [FRIDAY, 22D MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism [page 162]
We come now to the last form of Heroism; that which we call Kingship. The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is practically thesummaryfor us ofallthe various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, furnish us with constant practical teaching, tell us for the day and hour what...
.............
Essays
The Tone of the Preacher: Carlyle as Public Lecturer in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History [page 199]
Thomas Carlyle’sOn Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) holds a unique place among his works, and perhaps in modern literature. The book consolidated his conquest of London, evangelized listeners and readers effectively enough to distance competitors, and thundered literary and historical judgments that won its foremost intellectual responses from the social sciences. Heroes and Hero-Worshippreached a doctrine enshrining schoolboy adulation and elevated it to a British creed. One Carlylean “Fact” needs to be kept in the ascendant here: the book originated in a series of public lectures, delivered from 5 to 22 May 1840, and its...
.....
In Defense of Religiosity: Carlyle, Mahomet, and the Force of Faith in History [page 209]
Were he alive today it is safe to assume that Carlyle would have regarded the emergence of radical Islamism as a threat to civilization, both Eastern and Western. But he would also have insisted that the motives of its leaders, however violent and destructive, had to be gauged in relation to larger “affinities with the higher powers and senses of man” (Heroes 98). There is a Carlylean familiarity to the pattern of events in the late twentieth century. In the sanguine aftermath of the Cold War, latter-day “Progress of the Species” (106) philosophers such as Francis Fukuyama too confidently assumed...
---
There's a great review on here by David which had a few neat lines:
a. Carlyle's premise is that a Great Man, a hero, is a sincere man—a man who believes what he is doing is right. One who isn't a "quack", that is, a charlatan, a man who knows what he is doing is wrong but does it anyhow to cheat or abuse people, or even for his own entertainment.
Well how about the sincerity of Cromwell?
It might be true to a point according to Carlyle....
yet there is this:
........
Why did Anne Boleyn not like Cromwell?
'She was also opposed to Cromwell's plans for how to use the money from the dissolution of the monasteries. Anne wanted the cash to be used for charitable purposes, rather than to fund the King's lavish lifestyle.'
.........
b1. Carlyle seems less concerned with what the hero actually accomplishes than if he is sincere in his pursuits......
b2. So he counts Mohammed, the Moslem prophet, as a hero, because although Carlyle called his religion erroneous, at least he was sincere in his belief of it and in how he spread it.
b3. He called Napoleon a hero even though he obviously disagreed with his pursuits and outcomes.
c1. Napoleon comes out worst of all the heroes in the lectures, while Oliver Cromwell comes out best.
c2. At that time Cromwell was consigned to the ash heap of English villains. Carlyle thought differently, and sought to rehabilitate him. Cromwell could do no wrong in Carlyle's eyes. It was his critics, against whom Carlyle stood pretty much alone (at that time) who were blind or biased.
d. It is an obvious must for anyone wanting to study Carlyle. It is useful for anyone wanting to investigate the great man theory of history.
d2. It is a good read for anyone who wants to know more about the men discussed in the book.
e. The book disappointed me a little, perhaps because of Carlyle's fawning over Cromwell and Mohammed..... the book does not disappoint
..........
But for a piece of writing for its time, it should be way more famous
In the modern introduction to the Yale edition:
"In a striking example of what Thomas Carlyle called a 'conflux of two Eternities' (Signs of the Times [1829], Works 27:59), the fate of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) has closely paralleled that of his own reputation in the twenty-first century.
Today neither Carlyle nor his book is widely known among students of English literature.
However unfairly, both have been tarnished by their association with the authoritarian and totalitarian personality cults that brought European civilization to the brink of destruction in World War II and that left what Michael Burleigh has called a 'dystopian stain'."
........
Fragments
LECTURE I. [TUESDAY, 5TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology [page 21]
We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world’s business, how they have shaped themselves in the world’s history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did;— on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic; deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of...
LECTURE II. [FRIDAY, 8TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam [page 51]
From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men!
The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellow-men; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship: the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any...
LECTURE III. [TUESDAY, 12TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakspeare [page 77]
The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of...
LECTURE IV. [FRIDAY, 15TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism [page 104]
Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,—the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I understand it, is a kind...
LECTURE V. [TUESDAY, 19TH MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns [page 132]
Hero-Gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more shew themselves in this world. The Hero asMan of Letters, again, of which class we are to speak today, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art ofWriting, or of Ready-writing which we callPrinting, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is,...
LECTURE VI. [FRIDAY, 22D MAY, 1840.]
The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism [page 162]
We come now to the last form of Heroism; that which we call Kingship. The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is practically thesummaryfor us ofallthe various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, furnish us with constant practical teaching, tell us for the day and hour what...
.............
Essays
The Tone of the Preacher: Carlyle as Public Lecturer in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History [page 199]
Thomas Carlyle’sOn Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) holds a unique place among his works, and perhaps in modern literature. The book consolidated his conquest of London, evangelized listeners and readers effectively enough to distance competitors, and thundered literary and historical judgments that won its foremost intellectual responses from the social sciences. Heroes and Hero-Worshippreached a doctrine enshrining schoolboy adulation and elevated it to a British creed. One Carlylean “Fact” needs to be kept in the ascendant here: the book originated in a series of public lectures, delivered from 5 to 22 May 1840, and its...
.....
In Defense of Religiosity: Carlyle, Mahomet, and the Force of Faith in History [page 209]
Were he alive today it is safe to assume that Carlyle would have regarded the emergence of radical Islamism as a threat to civilization, both Eastern and Western. But he would also have insisted that the motives of its leaders, however violent and destructive, had to be gauged in relation to larger “affinities with the higher powers and senses of man” (Heroes 98). There is a Carlylean familiarity to the pattern of events in the late twentieth century. In the sanguine aftermath of the Cold War, latter-day “Progress of the Species” (106) philosophers such as Francis Fukuyama too confidently assumed...
---
There's a great review on here by David which had a few neat lines:
a. Carlyle's premise is that a Great Man, a hero, is a sincere man—a man who believes what he is doing is right. One who isn't a "quack", that is, a charlatan, a man who knows what he is doing is wrong but does it anyhow to cheat or abuse people, or even for his own entertainment.
Well how about the sincerity of Cromwell?
It might be true to a point according to Carlyle....
yet there is this:
........
Why did Anne Boleyn not like Cromwell?
'She was also opposed to Cromwell's plans for how to use the money from the dissolution of the monasteries. Anne wanted the cash to be used for charitable purposes, rather than to fund the King's lavish lifestyle.'
.........
b1. Carlyle seems less concerned with what the hero actually accomplishes than if he is sincere in his pursuits......
b2. So he counts Mohammed, the Moslem prophet, as a hero, because although Carlyle called his religion erroneous, at least he was sincere in his belief of it and in how he spread it.
b3. He called Napoleon a hero even though he obviously disagreed with his pursuits and outcomes.
c1. Napoleon comes out worst of all the heroes in the lectures, while Oliver Cromwell comes out best.
c2. At that time Cromwell was consigned to the ash heap of English villains. Carlyle thought differently, and sought to rehabilitate him. Cromwell could do no wrong in Carlyle's eyes. It was his critics, against whom Carlyle stood pretty much alone (at that time) who were blind or biased.
d. It is an obvious must for anyone wanting to study Carlyle. It is useful for anyone wanting to investigate the great man theory of history.
d2. It is a good read for anyone who wants to know more about the men discussed in the book.
e. The book disappointed me a little, perhaps because of Carlyle's fawning over Cromwell and Mohammed..... the book does not disappoint
..........
May 16, 2025
This book is composed of a series of lectures given over the course of several weeks by Thomas Carlyle, the great conservative Victorian man of letters. He speaks of Great Men and their influence on society and history. Modernist ideologies like egalitarianism and meritocracy reject such a concept, but if one accepts the Darwinian view of mankind, it is clear that Carlyle's argument is valid. Some men naturally stand above the rest. Though some of the men he deems worthy of the designation 'hero' are debatable, it also stands to reason that (differing from the author's romantic view) superior characteristics are morally neutral. They can be used for good or ill. Carlyle describes different types of Great Men appearing in various stages of a society's development, which is compatible with Oswald Spengler's organic conception of civilizational lifespans. The Great Man as a man of destiny or man against time also resonates with the leadership principle of fascist thought.
February 13, 2019
I abandoned this at the 40% mark. I do not care for Carlyle's ugly, bloated, prose. I don't like that he uses more exclamation points than a teenage girl texting a friend to tell her she just saw Zac Efron at the mall. I don't like that he seems to assume that Odin, the Norse god, was an actual person and I also don't like that he says stupid and manifestly untrue things like "quackery" could never give birth to a religion. This book was originally a series of lectures, and I think a charismatic speaker could maybe make it work a little, but the prose is bloody, dead mess on the page.
March 30, 2016
Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History is a defense of the Great Man perspective, the view that history is the result of great men doing great deeds. Carlyle lays out many different incarnations of the hero as seen through our historical and mythological lenses. There is the hero as God, as Prophet, as Priest, as Poet, as Man of Letters, as King. All are supposed to be ways in which we can get a clearer picture on the way that great men have shaped our understanding.
As with all versions of the Great Man theory, there are a number of distinctions that would be helpful to make, which are not made here. Minimally, I think it's true that thinking about history in terms of a person or group of people acting like a person making decisions and implementing ideas is a primary way in which human beings process information. It is easy, for example, to think of the replication of genes in terms of a "selfish gene" with the strong desire to make more of itself. Even if there is no actual, real agency to genes, this is a useful way to think about it. The same goes for any number of things. But it does not follow from this that great men make history.
Another distinction to be made is a factual claim--that yes, historically, major figures throughout history, with the implicit consent of others, have brought about major changes, and sometimes for the better. It is true, for instance, that Korean president Park Chung Hee quickly improved the Korean GDP through running Korea as a more-or-less command economy. But if it were not for the weak conditions of the people to thwart this authority--if not for the people's consent--he or any other major leader would have been able to do nothing.
And we all know that people are able to motivate other people. Jesus became a major figure around which other people could rally, for instance, and around which one of the major religions was created. But again, it must be remembered that it was through the people's support that this occurred at all.
No one doubts that there are exceptional people born into this world. And no one doubts that they revolutionize our histroy. But what is just factually untrue is that history is only made by great people. History is made through the work of many different people, sometimes acting in support and rallying around major figures.
As with all versions of the Great Man theory, there are a number of distinctions that would be helpful to make, which are not made here. Minimally, I think it's true that thinking about history in terms of a person or group of people acting like a person making decisions and implementing ideas is a primary way in which human beings process information. It is easy, for example, to think of the replication of genes in terms of a "selfish gene" with the strong desire to make more of itself. Even if there is no actual, real agency to genes, this is a useful way to think about it. The same goes for any number of things. But it does not follow from this that great men make history.
Another distinction to be made is a factual claim--that yes, historically, major figures throughout history, with the implicit consent of others, have brought about major changes, and sometimes for the better. It is true, for instance, that Korean president Park Chung Hee quickly improved the Korean GDP through running Korea as a more-or-less command economy. But if it were not for the weak conditions of the people to thwart this authority--if not for the people's consent--he or any other major leader would have been able to do nothing.
And we all know that people are able to motivate other people. Jesus became a major figure around which other people could rally, for instance, and around which one of the major religions was created. But again, it must be remembered that it was through the people's support that this occurred at all.
No one doubts that there are exceptional people born into this world. And no one doubts that they revolutionize our histroy. But what is just factually untrue is that history is only made by great people. History is made through the work of many different people, sometimes acting in support and rallying around major figures.
December 26, 2014
Carlyle’s book looks at the different forms of heroism he considers to have existed in the world. I found it very interesting that in the second chapter where he talks about the hero as a prophet he picked the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as the prime example. Very interesting coming from a Scottish Christian I thought. the book got a bit boring in the middle and near the end but worth a read for his lectures (the chapters were a series of lectures) on the hero as a prophet as I mentioned and the hero as a priest where he talks about Luther and the revolution he bought in Christianity and the creation of Lutheran Protestantism and his 95 theses. Carlyle also talks about the hero as divinity, hero as a man of letters and hero as a king which has an interesting section on Cromwell and Napoleon.
Want to read
August 16, 2020Carlyle then goes to explore, “Well, where does this religion come from?” And again — by religion he means “systems of thought, culture, beliefs, etc” — something like that.
His argument: they come from heroes.
Carlyle’s definition of a hero, more-or-less, is someone that formalizes a system of thought for a large group of people. Now, the word “hero” in English is often just a synonym for “person I like a lot” — but that’s not what Carlyle is talking about. Under his definition, all sorts of people who we’d call good or call evil are heroes. They’re simply people who lead the creation of a new system of thought for a large number of people.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1...
from: https://medium.com/@sebastmarsh/the-b...
His argument: they come from heroes.
Carlyle’s definition of a hero, more-or-less, is someone that formalizes a system of thought for a large group of people. Now, the word “hero” in English is often just a synonym for “person I like a lot” — but that’s not what Carlyle is talking about. Under his definition, all sorts of people who we’d call good or call evil are heroes. They’re simply people who lead the creation of a new system of thought for a large number of people.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1...
from: https://medium.com/@sebastmarsh/the-b...
November 28, 2023
Woah, having read Mill and Carlyle consecutively and reading such opposing philosophies of life from such great friends is so incredibly interesting. However, I don’t understand how Mill remained friends with someone so wrong.
April 3, 2020
Parti com elevadas expectativas. Afinal a obra relata a faceta épica e ética de certos homens tido como heróis: Dante, Shakespeare, Lutero, etc.
Uma prosa com demasiados adjetivos e parcialidade.
Uma prosa com demasiados adjetivos e parcialidade.
June 7, 2020
،كتاب الابطال وعبادة البطولة من تأليف توماس كارليل وترجمة المترجم العظيم محمد السباعي
الاستاذ محمد السباعي لم يكتفِ بنقله للعربية بل ارى انه اعاد تأليفه بصياغة عربية
حتى اصبح وكأنه قطعة فريدة من الادب العربي، فتراه زاخراً بالمحسنات البديعية كالجناس والطباق
،وفيه الاشعار وبعض الآي��ت
واعتقد انه تجاوز حد الترجمة المسموح، فأنا لم اعدْ اعرف هل حقاً هذه العبارات من وحي الكاتب الاصلي
،ام من إضافة المترجم، خصيصاً ان الكتاب بلغة مؤلفه اقل من نصف الكتاب بعد الترجمة
،ولهذا فاني لا استطيع اعطاء تقييم واحد لكتابين ممزوجين
!!تقييم للمؤلف وتقييم للمترجم الذي اعاد التأليف
،ولكن على العموم
،المُؤلَّف الذي بين ايدينا يُقدّم افكاراً واطروحات جميلة جداً ومبدعة
يناقش مفهوم الابطال وحقيقة الفكرة وغريزة تقديس الناس دائماً وابداً للابطال
ومن ثم يضرب امثلة على ابطال حقيقيين وقد اُتخِذوا اشكال عدة
.(إله، نبي، شاعر، قسيس، كاتب، ملك)البطل كـــ
والبطل المقصود هنا ليس بطل السيف والمعركة بل هو شخصٌ حباه الله بقدرات فيرى حقائق الامور الباطنة
ويرى سر الله الجلي في الكون فيدعو الناس الى تلك الحقائق الكامنة في الوجود
فهو مُستَنقذ عصره على حد تعبير الكتاب، وعبادة الابطال الغريزة الفطرية التي تعني
.تعظيم وتبجيل البطل وطاعته من قبل الناس، لينهض بهم وينهض بعصره
اختار الكاتب الرسول محمد -عليه الصلاة والسلام- مثالاً على البطل كــ نبي، وتحدث عن مقومات بطولته
،وعن النظرة الغربيّة للاسلام آنذاك ووصفها بالمشينة وبالعار
. وكيف ان النبي محمد انقذ الله به اعراب الصحراء ليقودوا العالم بعد ان كانوا خاملين خامدين
البطل في مذهب الكاتب يختاره الله ويرسله الى العوام لينقذهم
،ويعتبر ان البطل هو من الادلة على الله
طبعاً اختيار الله للبطل ليس عن طريق وحي السماء
بل تكون عن طريق القدرات التي يعطيها الله له
فيرى حقائق الامور الخفية والاسرار الجلية
.فيدعو اليها الناس ويقودهم الى الصلاح
----
مما ورد في الكتاب
ان تاريخ العام -تاريخ ما احدث الانسان في هذا العالم-انما هو"
"تاريخ من ظهر في الدنيا من العظماء..وكل ما تراه في هذا الوجود كاملاً متقنا فاعلم انه نتيجة افكار اولئك العظماء
"ليس تاريخ العالم الا مجموع سِيَر ابطاله"
اذا انحدرنا من قمة الدين الى منازل احط وادنى"
وجدنا في جميعها احترام الوضيع للشريف وولاء الحقير للجليل والصغير للكبير، فعبادة الابطال هي اساس المجتمع
"والرتب والدرج الذي يقوم عليه اساس كل دين
انه ما كان عصر من العصور ليخرب ويتلف "
"لوقد اتيح له رجل كبير يجمع بين العقل والتقوى، بين عقل يعرف به حاجة عصره وعزم يمضي به
حال الشعوب الضعيفة اشبه بحال حطبٍ يابسٍ ميت"
ينتظر من السماء شهاباً يُشعله
وما الرجل العظيم مرسلاً من قوس الله
يجيش في صدره العزم ويغلي في عروقه البأس
"الا ذلكم الشهاب
لقد اصبح من اكبر العار على اي فرد متمدن من ابناء هذا العصر"
ان يُصغي الى ما يُظن من ان دين الاسلام كذب وان محمداً خدّاعٌ ومُزوّر وآنَ لنا ان نحارب
"ما يُشاع من مثل هذه الاقوال السخيفة المخجلة
اذا خرجت الكلمة من اللسان لم تتجاوز الآذان"
واذا خرجت من القلب نفذت الى القلب
والقرآن خارج من فؤاد محمد فهو جديراً
"ان يصل الى افئدة سامعيه وقارئيه
"خير جامعة في هذه الاوقات هي مجموعة كتب"
"انك ان تأتِني بالمَلِك القادر الكفء لأجعلنّ له عليَّ حقاً مُقدسا"
"قيمة المرء بقدر بصيرته"
.
الاستاذ محمد السباعي لم يكتفِ بنقله للعربية بل ارى انه اعاد تأليفه بصياغة عربية
حتى اصبح وكأنه قطعة فريدة من الادب العربي، فتراه زاخراً بالمحسنات البديعية كالجناس والطباق
،وفيه الاشعار وبعض الآي��ت
واعتقد انه تجاوز حد الترجمة المسموح، فأنا لم اعدْ اعرف هل حقاً هذه العبارات من وحي الكاتب الاصلي
،ام من إضافة المترجم، خصيصاً ان الكتاب بلغة مؤلفه اقل من نصف الكتاب بعد الترجمة
،ولهذا فاني لا استطيع اعطاء تقييم واحد لكتابين ممزوجين
!!تقييم للمؤلف وتقييم للمترجم الذي اعاد التأليف
،ولكن على العموم
،المُؤلَّف الذي بين ايدينا يُقدّم افكاراً واطروحات جميلة جداً ومبدعة
يناقش مفهوم الابطال وحقيقة الفكرة وغريزة تقديس الناس دائماً وابداً للابطال
ومن ثم يضرب امثلة على ابطال حقيقيين وقد اُتخِذوا اشكال عدة
.(إله، نبي، شاعر، قسيس، كاتب، ملك)البطل كـــ
والبطل المقصود هنا ليس بطل السيف والمعركة بل هو شخصٌ حباه الله بقدرات فيرى حقائق الامور الباطنة
ويرى سر الله الجلي في الكون فيدعو الناس الى تلك الحقائق الكامنة في الوجود
فهو مُستَنقذ عصره على حد تعبير الكتاب، وعبادة الابطال الغريزة الفطرية التي تعني
.تعظيم وتبجيل البطل وطاعته من قبل الناس، لينهض بهم وينهض بعصره
اختار الكاتب الرسول محمد -عليه الصلاة والسلام- مثالاً على البطل كــ نبي، وتحدث عن مقومات بطولته
،وعن النظرة الغربيّة للاسلام آنذاك ووصفها بالمشينة وبالعار
. وكيف ان النبي محمد انقذ الله به اعراب الصحراء ليقودوا العالم بعد ان كانوا خاملين خامدين
البطل في مذهب الكاتب يختاره الله ويرسله الى العوام لينقذهم
،ويعتبر ان البطل هو من الادلة على الله
طبعاً اختيار الله للبطل ليس عن طريق وحي السماء
بل تكون عن طريق القدرات التي يعطيها الله له
فيرى حقائق الامور الخفية والاسرار الجلية
.فيدعو اليها الناس ويقودهم الى الصلاح
----
مما ورد في الكتاب
ان تاريخ العام -تاريخ ما احدث الانسان في هذا العالم-انما هو"
"تاريخ من ظهر في الدنيا من العظماء..وكل ما تراه في هذا الوجود كاملاً متقنا فاعلم انه نتيجة افكار اولئك العظماء
"ليس تاريخ العالم الا مجموع سِيَر ابطاله"
اذا انحدرنا من قمة الدين الى منازل احط وادنى"
وجدنا في جميعها احترام الوضيع للشريف وولاء الحقير للجليل والصغير للكبير، فعبادة الابطال هي اساس المجتمع
"والرتب والدرج الذي يقوم عليه اساس كل دين
انه ما كان عصر من العصور ليخرب ويتلف "
"لوقد اتيح له رجل كبير يجمع بين العقل والتقوى، بين عقل يعرف به حاجة عصره وعزم يمضي به
حال الشعوب الضعيفة اشبه بحال حطبٍ يابسٍ ميت"
ينتظر من السماء شهاباً يُشعله
وما الرجل العظيم مرسلاً من قوس الله
يجيش في صدره العزم ويغلي في عروقه البأس
"الا ذلكم الشهاب
لقد اصبح من اكبر العار على اي فرد متمدن من ابناء هذا العصر"
ان يُصغي الى ما يُظن من ان دين الاسلام كذب وان محمداً خدّاعٌ ومُزوّر وآنَ لنا ان نحارب
"ما يُشاع من مثل هذه الاقوال السخيفة المخجلة
اذا خرجت الكلمة من اللسان لم تتجاوز الآذان"
واذا خرجت من القلب نفذت الى القلب
والقرآن خارج من فؤاد محمد فهو جديراً
"ان يصل الى افئدة سامعيه وقارئيه
"خير جامعة في هذه الاوقات هي مجموعة كتب"
"انك ان تأتِني بالمَلِك القادر الكفء لأجعلنّ له عليَّ حقاً مُقدسا"
"قيمة المرء بقدر بصيرته"
.
April 16, 2023
صدر الكتاب للمرة الأولى عام 1841 في بريطانيا، واسمه باللغة الإنجليزية On Heroes ملحقًا بعنوان ثانوي يوضح قضية الكتاب هو عبادة البطل والبطولة في التاريخ Hero-worship & the Heroic in History. يعظم كارليل في كتابه من دور البطل الفرد في حركة التاريخ، وهو وإن كان يقع في خطأ منهجي خطر، إذا لا يضع في مدخل عمله تعريفه لمن هو البطل، إلا أن القارئ يمكنه تخيل مفهوم كارليل عمن هو البطل فهو ذلك الشخص الصادق مع نفسه وقضيته، والتي هي التزام الحق المحض والدفاع عنه حسب ظروف زمانه ومجتمعه.
يستعرض كارليل أنماط البطولة عبر التاريخ، مؤكدًا دائمًا أن جوهر البطولة واحد، ولكن تختلف صورها باختلاف العصور والمجتمعات وتقدم الإنسانية، فيزعم أن البطولة في العصور القديمة تمثلت في المعبودات الوثنية القديمة، ضاربًا مثلًا بأودين كبير محفل المعبودات النوردية، والذي كان بطلًا أتى من خارق الأعمال ما جعل شعبه يعبده، فالوثنية القديمة في نظره في صورتها الأولى الصرفة صورة فجة لعبادة الأبطال، ثم يعرض إلى صورة أخرى من صور البطولة – في نظره – وهي صورة النبي، معتبرًا النبي بطلًا كان من الجراءة والشجاعة أن كشف الباطل الحادث عن الحق الأصيل، ثم اختار الرسول، صلى الله عليه وسلم، مثالًا للنبي البطل، مستندًا إلى أنه النبي نجح في تمام رسالته والانتصار لقضيته، بما لم يتوفر لمن سبقه من الأنبياء، وقد تناول كارليل صورة الرسول، صلى الله عليه وسلم، المتخلية في الوعي الغربي بالنقد منتصفًا للرسول من ناقديه الغربيين، وفي كلامه نظر نقف معه لاحقًا. ثم يرى أن البطولة في مرحلة تاريخية لاحقة، وأحسبها عصر النهضة الأوروبي، قد تمثلت في الشعراء، والذي اختار منهم دانتي وشكسبير، وشعراء هذا العصر قضيتهم الجمال والفن، الروحي منه والدنيوي، وهي قضية في جماليتها وخطابها الشعري العاطفي تناسب الانتقال من بربرية أوروبا، إلى أوروبا الحديثة، كما ناسبت قضية الإصلاح المسيحي، العصر اللاحق، لذا اختار كارليل بطل هذا الزمان المصلح الديني متخذًا من لوثر الألماني والمبشر البيورتاني الاسكتلندي جون نوكس مثالًا على أبطال هذا الزمان، فإذا دخل عصر العقل، أصبحت وظيفة بطل هذا العصر النضال عن العقل، وأبطالها الكتاب، والذين اختار منهم سامويل جونسون وجان جاك روسو وبيرنز، لينتهي الكتاب بمقالته حول الملك والقائد والزعيم باعتباره صورة البطولة في أنظار عامة عصره، متخذًا من نابليون وكرومويل نموذج لهذا البطل.
النسخة العربية التي قرأتها لأبطال كارليل من ترجمة محمد السباعي، وحري بها أن تكون تعريب لا ترجمة، فالسباعي أعاد أنتاج نص كارليل من جديد في ثوب عربي أصيل، حتى أن القارئ ليخال أن المؤلف ليس من أبناء الجزر البريطانية الغارقة في الضباب، بل أديب من أدباء القاهرة أو دمشق.
يستعرض كارليل أنماط البطولة عبر التاريخ، مؤكدًا دائمًا أن جوهر البطولة واحد، ولكن تختلف صورها باختلاف العصور والمجتمعات وتقدم الإنسانية، فيزعم أن البطولة في العصور القديمة تمثلت في المعبودات الوثنية القديمة، ضاربًا مثلًا بأودين كبير محفل المعبودات النوردية، والذي كان بطلًا أتى من خارق الأعمال ما جعل شعبه يعبده، فالوثنية القديمة في نظره في صورتها الأولى الصرفة صورة فجة لعبادة الأبطال، ثم يعرض إلى صورة أخرى من صور البطولة – في نظره – وهي صورة النبي، معتبرًا النبي بطلًا كان من الجراءة والشجاعة أن كشف الباطل الحادث عن الحق الأصيل، ثم اختار الرسول، صلى الله عليه وسلم، مثالًا للنبي البطل، مستندًا إلى أنه النبي نجح في تمام رسالته والانتصار لقضيته، بما لم يتوفر لمن سبقه من الأنبياء، وقد تناول كارليل صورة الرسول، صلى الله عليه وسلم، المتخلية في الوعي الغربي بالنقد منتصفًا للرسول من ناقديه الغربيين، وفي كلامه نظر نقف معه لاحقًا. ثم يرى أن البطولة في مرحلة تاريخية لاحقة، وأحسبها عصر النهضة الأوروبي، قد تمثلت في الشعراء، والذي اختار منهم دانتي وشكسبير، وشعراء هذا العصر قضيتهم الجمال والفن، الروحي منه والدنيوي، وهي قضية في جماليتها وخطابها الشعري العاطفي تناسب الانتقال من بربرية أوروبا، إلى أوروبا الحديثة، كما ناسبت قضية الإصلاح المسيحي، العصر اللاحق، لذا اختار كارليل بطل هذا الزمان المصلح الديني متخذًا من لوثر الألماني والمبشر البيورتاني الاسكتلندي جون نوكس مثالًا على أبطال هذا الزمان، فإذا دخل عصر العقل، أصبحت وظيفة بطل هذا العصر النضال عن العقل، وأبطالها الكتاب، والذين اختار منهم سامويل جونسون وجان جاك روسو وبيرنز، لينتهي الكتاب بمقالته حول الملك والقائد والزعيم باعتباره صورة البطولة في أنظار عامة عصره، متخذًا من نابليون وكرومويل نموذج لهذا البطل.
النسخة العربية التي قرأتها لأبطال كارليل من ترجمة محمد السباعي، وحري بها أن تكون تعريب لا ترجمة، فالسباعي أعاد أنتاج نص كارليل من جديد في ثوب عربي أصيل، حتى أن القارئ ليخال أن المؤلف ليس من أبناء الجزر البريطانية الغارقة في الضباب، بل أديب من أدباء القاهرة أو دمشق.
April 30, 2016
Sudah lama mendengar tentang Thomas Carlyle, namun baru berkesempatan membaca tulisannya.
Thomas Carlyle sejarawan Christian Scotland bersikap jujur apabila menghuraikan peribadi Nabi Muhammad SAW dalam Lecture 3 Hero as Prophet. Nabi Muhammad SAW dinamakan sebagai satu satunya Hero yang dikategorikan sebagai Prophet.
Sumbangan terbesar buku ini adalah dalam bab pertama iaitu Hero as Divinity, Carlyle dengan jelas mengkritik golongan yang terlalu menyanjung manusia sehingga menyamakan mereka dengan tuhan.
sumbangan kedua adalah, Carlyle dengan jujur membetulkan kesalahfahaman dan fitnah yang dilakukan orientalist lain terhadap Nabi Muhammad SAW dan Islam.
Namun bermula bab Hero as Poet ( Dante and Shakespeare) huraiannya mula terasa membosankan hingga ke penghujung bab Hero as Man of Letter (Rousseau, Johnson, Burns).
Carlyle dalam bab Hero as Divinity ( Norse Gods dan lain lain mitos kedewaan), dengan optimis mengatakan bahawa dalam tempoh 100 tahun lagi (buku ditulis pada 1840) bahawa kepercayaan penyembahan kepada manusia akan berakhir dan manusia akan bijak untuk memikirkannya.
Optimisme ini walaupun masih belum terealisasi namun menunjukkan beliau percaya bahawa betapa manusia akhirnya akan kembali kepada mengimani Tuhan yang Satu.
Thomas Carlyle sejarawan Christian Scotland bersikap jujur apabila menghuraikan peribadi Nabi Muhammad SAW dalam Lecture 3 Hero as Prophet. Nabi Muhammad SAW dinamakan sebagai satu satunya Hero yang dikategorikan sebagai Prophet.
Sumbangan terbesar buku ini adalah dalam bab pertama iaitu Hero as Divinity, Carlyle dengan jelas mengkritik golongan yang terlalu menyanjung manusia sehingga menyamakan mereka dengan tuhan.
sumbangan kedua adalah, Carlyle dengan jujur membetulkan kesalahfahaman dan fitnah yang dilakukan orientalist lain terhadap Nabi Muhammad SAW dan Islam.
Namun bermula bab Hero as Poet ( Dante and Shakespeare) huraiannya mula terasa membosankan hingga ke penghujung bab Hero as Man of Letter (Rousseau, Johnson, Burns).
Carlyle dalam bab Hero as Divinity ( Norse Gods dan lain lain mitos kedewaan), dengan optimis mengatakan bahawa dalam tempoh 100 tahun lagi (buku ditulis pada 1840) bahawa kepercayaan penyembahan kepada manusia akan berakhir dan manusia akan bijak untuk memikirkannya.
Optimisme ini walaupun masih belum terealisasi namun menunjukkan beliau percaya bahawa betapa manusia akhirnya akan kembali kepada mengimani Tuhan yang Satu.
July 6, 2012
Not exactly a typical biography. The book offers sketches of select individuals of historical significance in order to justify a neo-hegelian reading of history; basically an 'all the world's a stage' mentality and most of us are mere spear chuckers and cannon fodder for the Great Men who pop up from time to time as exemplars for the rest of us to follow. Hegel had described Napoleon in this way, riding his white horse through town just as he was finishing writing one of his books. He is seen as an incarnation of Geist, a particular finite expression of the spirit of the times, embodied in one man.
Carlyle was a great popularizer of German thought to the British people, and a contemporary of the American equivalent, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Carlyle was a great popularizer of German thought to the British people, and a contemporary of the American equivalent, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
October 11, 2014
It's many years since I read any Carlyle, probably not since my first year at university. It's great to be reminded of his wonderful prose. It's unorthodox, dynamic, kinetic, full of allusions in many languages, and yet somehow conveying something of the man himself, opinionated, warm, very human. Much of what he has to say seems simply wrongheaded these days, but the manner in which he says it is admirable.
April 16, 2010
Carlyle, you're a little nuts, but I love you very much.
August 25, 2019
For the reader of today, the first three chapters seem to be the most insightful/interesting.
August 16, 2025
A romantic view of history, which I don't mind, but Carlyle does teeter on being too sentimental. Overall, though, he presents his argument and portraits beautifully.
May 3, 2019
"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
Probably an only good thing in this god awful book.
I swear to god, point Carlye is trying to make is, great people do great things and that why they are remembered as heroes; then he stretches that over 200 pages with little cohesion or some conclusion.
There are 6 types of heroes but explanations are so broad, messy and disconnected with the subject you forget what is the point Carlyle is trying to make or why you even bother reading this book.
Furthermore, he is emphasizing how heroes must be honest and sincere but then he sais well Cromwell wasn't, Napoleon as well, when I come to think about it prophet Mohammed and his Quran are full of lies, so you as a reader have no bloody idea what the f*** is he trying to say.
Awful, god awful.
Style of writing doesn't help either.
I can appreciate his admiration of the heroes and of the great men and how extraordinary feet needs to be remembered, but I didn't need to read 200 pages of an incoherent mess.
PS That quote from the beginning is so awesome, that even I don't like this book one bit, I don't necessarily hate Carlyle.
Probably an only good thing in this god awful book.
I swear to god, point Carlye is trying to make is, great people do great things and that why they are remembered as heroes; then he stretches that over 200 pages with little cohesion or some conclusion.
There are 6 types of heroes but explanations are so broad, messy and disconnected with the subject you forget what is the point Carlyle is trying to make or why you even bother reading this book.
Furthermore, he is emphasizing how heroes must be honest and sincere but then he sais well Cromwell wasn't, Napoleon as well, when I come to think about it prophet Mohammed and his Quran are full of lies, so you as a reader have no bloody idea what the f*** is he trying to say.
Awful, god awful.
Style of writing doesn't help either.
I can appreciate his admiration of the heroes and of the great men and how extraordinary feet needs to be remembered, but I didn't need to read 200 pages of an incoherent mess.
PS That quote from the beginning is so awesome, that even I don't like this book one bit, I don't necessarily hate Carlyle.
March 11, 2021
I read this to introduce myself to Carlyle before reading "The French Revolution." This was an interesting read. Carlyle, speaking against Skepticism in his day, says that a hero is one who is filled with sincerity and valor. Sincerity, for Carlyle, is synonymous with truth or reality. I think he's right that sincerity and truth and reality are connected, but always immediately taking sincerity for truth can force Carlyle to equate two opposing religions or worldviews. In the Bible, light is connected with truth, but even Satan can present himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). His main point is important in an age of Skepticism. Skepticism does not lead to certainty in reality and truth. Sincerity is an effect of that desired certainty.
May 7, 2022
Excellent series of lectures given in May 1840. Carlyle moves progressively through the forms the archetypal hero has taken in culture, as well as the responses these characters have received over time. Extremely quotable & articulate, almost everything he covers on the subject is not only relevant today but perhaps even more so. Not much has changed it seems, with the corrosive influence of cynicism & atheism of his day simply having flowered into the postmodernism of today. The effect is the same. Reading this gave me renewed my appreciation of sincerity above all things. Carlyle’s ideas on how to look at and appreciate great men are as important & valuable today as they were back when he gave his famous lectures.
November 28, 2020
"A man lives by believing something. A sad case for him when all that he believes in is something he can button in his pocket."
Beautiful prose but I didn't think the thoughts as interesting. The first lecture (on Odin) was the most innovative to me. It managed to communicate (!) something of the awe we should all feel towards the wonder that is language, written or spoken.
The rest of the lectures I found boring, either because of the subject matter itself (Muhammad) or because Carlyle assumed historical knowledge of which I had none (Knox, Cromwell).
But it was at times a fascinating look inside a mind only a century or so old, yet so distant.
Beautiful prose but I didn't think the thoughts as interesting. The first lecture (on Odin) was the most innovative to me. It managed to communicate (!) something of the awe we should all feel towards the wonder that is language, written or spoken.
The rest of the lectures I found boring, either because of the subject matter itself (Muhammad) or because Carlyle assumed historical knowledge of which I had none (Knox, Cromwell).
But it was at times a fascinating look inside a mind only a century or so old, yet so distant.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews