On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History Paperback – April 27, 2011

Carlyle is not properly a historian or a philosopher, but a moralist, a fervent admirer of excellence, and a prose-poet of the first rank. Six meditations deal respectively of the hero as: Divinity, Prophet, Poet, Priest, Man of Letters, and King. If this book can't rightly be shelved with philosophy or history, it belongs in Literature with a capital "L," and Poetry. Carlylye loved the English Language and used it masterfully, energetically, and reverentially, without a trace of the trivial overindulgence of self-conscious and self-absorbed "poets."

This is an extraordinary work, let modern liberal critics say what they will of their 'mass movements' and 'diversity'. Long after they and their productions have bitten the dust, Carlyle will continue to speak to the enlightened few, and perhaps one day, it is to be hoped, to the enlightened many.
This work is much more than just a study of various influential men in history. Carlyle has very interesting notions of the historical process itself, the spread of religions and their demise, the importance of "true belief" in things, as opposed the unbelief that merely follows rituals and procedures. For Carlyle, true belief, is the beginning of morality, all success, all good things in this world; Unbelief, scepticism, the beginning of all corruption, quackery, falsehood.Unbelief, for instance, is at the root of all materialist philosophies, eg Utilitarianism which find human beings to be nothing more than clever, pleasure-seeking bipeds. It is also at the root of all democratic theories: faith in a democratic system means despair of finding an honest man to lead us.
Whether one agrees with Carlyle or not in his appraisal of democratic and other systems, one must admit, at least, that very little good is to be gotten from "the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries." If we have no honest men in government or in business, but only a bunch of self-interested quacks, then we cannot expect any system, however ingenious, to save us. Even the most skilled architect will not be able to construct a great building, if you give him only hollow, cracked bricks to build it with. Find your honest men, says Carlyle, and get them into the positions of influence; only then will it be well with you.

Six lectures delivered by Carlyle in 1840. He classifies six kinds of heroes: as Divinity (Wotan, paganism); Prophet (Mohamed); Poet (Dante, Shakespeare); Priest (Luther, Knox); Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns); and Ruler (Cromwell, Napoleon). The trait that defines a hero is: absolute sincerity and firm belief in his principles.
In his highly rhetorical lectures, Carlyle highlights and reinforces the role of the individual in the social process, as opposed to the role of the masses. And he did that precisely when the foundations were being laid for the most influential "pro-mass" movement in History: Marxism. The tragedy of Marxism, at least one of them all, is that, when translated into action, the blind masses were also led by "heroes" of the most authocratic sort. Not properly the work of an historian, these lectures are vivid, inflamed and enthusiast. Their uselfuness for our present age is precisely that they remind us of the crucial role significant individuals play in history, to accelerate or slow down (and even reverse) the process of social change, which is usually more gradual, diffused, and diverse.

This is a fairly unfashionable book by today's standards. Don't let that put you off--Carlyle is an original thinker, one with whom we still haven't quite caught up.

He's also a master prose stylist, but the style is a little dusty for modern readers. You might sneeze once or twice. This is perfectly natural; your sinuses have been clogged with Enlightenment gunk for a long time now, and Carlyle is a full nasal rinse. With carbonic acid. Once a few layers have been stripped away and the healthy, living tissue is exposed, it actually feels great, like aloe vera on a sunburn. How that got up your nose, I'm not sure. How this metaphor got extended this far, I can't say.

In "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History," Carlyle sketches out for us exactly what the title promises. Isn't that nice? I love it when that happens. The heroes in question take various forms: prophets, poets, priests, men of letters, kings, revolutionaries... and even a god. Taking on this variety of form, it's hard to see at first what these heroes all have in common, but Carlyle tells us that there's something quite straightforward at the root of what they share: sincerity. Each of the figures discussed here is unswervingly earnest. What you see is what you get. Oh, there's more to it than that; the hero is also unfailingly natural, he often (though not necessarily) lacks ambition, he knows how to be silent.

These are of course not very modern traits. The hero might as well practice chastity and self-flagellation. We in our wisdom now recognize the "argument from nature" as fallacious; Carlyle presents the hero as such an argument made flesh. Our modern world can hardly be called "silent" (watch the recent US election coverage), nor does it seem to appreciate the virtue thereof. And while nobody actually dislikes sincerity, it has a bit of a quaint, naive tinge to it, now doesn't it? Considering that the chief conceit or expressive mode of modernity is irony, the truly genuine man seems a touch anachronistic.

But Carlyle presents him as the hero par excellence. And he makes a great case for this. Much to our reading pleasure, he does so in winning style; I've highlighted more Carlyle passages on my Kindle for sheer rhetorical brilliance than I have even of Chesterton. In this way Carlyle was a rare bird in his day, one who has become more fashionable rather than less: he's the historian who's a pleasure to read. He prefigures Nietzsche in this way, and in other important ways that I'll leave for you to discover.

He's also the precursor of a school of thought called "neoreaction." Without going into what neoreaction is (LMGTFY), the fountainhead of the movement is one Curtis Yarvin. This being my maiden Carlyle voyage, I found interestingly that Yarvin is not a particularly good Carlylean, though he styles himself as such--in fact somewhere he has said something to the effect that all he does is just point people to Carlyle. I wish they would listen; anyone who has any sympathy with neoreaction really needs to go to the source. They will find not only a superior writer (though Yarvin is no slouch), but someone who is at odds with the self-proclaimed Carlylean--I refer you to the last two chapters in particular.

This is an excellent book, worth picking up. In it you'll find a giant intellect trying his level-best to do justice to those greater than he. And this is, in it's own way, an act of heroism.

Should be required reading for those who ascribe to collectivism theories. The integrity, ethics, drive, stamina, intelligence, vision, and morals of individuals are what have shaped history, not governments or the masses.