Please explain Hegel's Theory of Heroes.?

Question

How would one "apply" it to a ruler?

Answer 1

After Hegel, who insisted on the role of "great men" in history, with his famous statement about Napoleon, "I saw the Spirit on his horse", Thomas Carlyle argued that history was the biography of a few central individuals, heroes, such as Oliver Cromwell or Frederick the Great, writing that "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." His heroes were political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states. His history of great men, of geniuses good and evil, sought to organize change in the advent of greatness. Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position have been rare in the late 20th century. Most philosophers of history contend that the motive forces in history can best be described only with a wider lens than the one he used for his portraits. Nonetheless, the Great Man approach to history was most popular with professional historians in the 19th century; a popular work of this school is the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) which contains lengthy and detailed biographies about the great men of history. For example to read about (what is known today as) the "Migrations Period", one would consult the biography of Atilla the Hun.

After Marx's conception of a materialist history based on the class struggle, which raised attention for the first time to the importance of social factors such as economics in the unfolding of history, Herbert Spencer wrote "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown....Before he can remake his society, his society must make him."

The Annales School, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, were a major landmark on the shift from a history centered on individual subjects to studies concentrating in geography, economics, demography, and other social forces. Fernand Braudel's studies on the Mediterranean Sea as "hero" of history, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's history of climate, etc., were inspired by this School.

Answer 2

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the immensely influential German philosopher, in his Aesthetik (1820-29), proposed that the sufferings of the tragic hero are merely a means of reconciling opposing moral claims. The operation is a success because of, not in spite of, the fact that the patient dies. According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, the conflict is not between good and evil but between goods that are each making too exclusive a claim. The heroes of ancient tragedy, by adhering to the one ethical system by which they molded their own personality, must come into conflict with the ethical claims of another. It is the moral one-sidedness of the tragic actor, not any negatively tragic fault in his morality or in the forces opposed to him, that proves his undoing, for both sides of the contradiction, if taken by themselves, are justified.

Answer 3

I took a class on Kant, Hegel, and Marx and got a B+. Funny thing is I still have no clue as to what they are talking about but I spoke in a manner nearly as vague and confusing as theirs in order to complete my theses. I know from much experience that if 10 people read one paragraph of Kant they will have ten different interpretations of what the hell he was talking about. My advice is to get the Cliff notes and paraphrase heavily. I say this with absolute sincerity and well meaning. I'm sorry but thats the way to get good grades in college. If you would like to stimulate your own thought on the matter then by all means read up. Personally there is too much lost in translation for me to comprehend fully.