A friend of mine recently asked the question: Do we live in a time where we can have great men like Winston Churchill rise up in our culture? History is written by great men. Though in their passing, and as the ages have past, history tends to limit these people’s personality, sins, and virtues. In any case, the subject of great men has been contentious for some time. Sometimes we tend to parody these men. Sometimes we glorify them, and sometimes we know little about them altogether. In light of that I think there are some interesting patterns of thought around great men and their existence in past or present.
Some narratives I’ve observed around the idea great men are that:
The men of our current generation are too soft, too weak, or too paltry of spirit to become great. The world will get much worse before such men come to fruition.
Great men are not actually great. Their virtues are overblown while their sins are actually mellowed out through the telling of history. It follows, great men have been mostly bad men.
There are no such things as great men entirely. History is Eurocentric and values masculine, Christian, or heteronormative ethics. As such, the “great men” have been overblown and are not worth elevating since they have been created post facto by a certain angle of historical thought.
If equality is an iron law or virtue, we should not recognize men as being “great,” since that would suggest that some men are greater than other men.
Great men arrive in their due time as the cycles of history wind round and round.
There are many other examples I could list on the perspectives moderns tend to take when thinking about such things. It would be unwise for me to continue much farther without explaining the “great man theory” of history. In short, it is the idea that many kinds of “Great Men” are the ones who shape the history of the world. Thomas Carlyle organized these kinds of men fall into several categories he called kinds of “Heroes.” They fall into the categories of being one of or connected to Divinity, Prophets, Poets, Priests, [Men of] Letters, or Kings.
As examples of each, Carlyle refers to Odin as an imagination of man in the divine form, Mohammed in the form of the Prophet, Dante as Poet, Martin Luther as Priest, and Napoleon as King. Odin is both god and symbol of masculine heroism in Scandinavian Paganism according to Carlyle (watch Wagner’s Ring Cycle for more clarity on this). Mohammed shows us the Prophet’s power to change the shape of the world through religious power, not as a god himself, but inspired by God. Dante is not so far above us as a Prophet or god, but rather his words belong to all people that follow him through his beautiful language and narrative. Martin Luther as Priest, is inspired as all other heroes, but is a kind of communicator between the worshippers and the “Unseen Holy” as Carlyle says. The Men of Letters (men of skilled writing talent) include thinkers like Rousseau and Samuel Johnson; these men are modern unlike the former of this list, and uniquely unlike the former, according to Carlyle, are unique in that they are often equipped in a “rusty coat” and may not ever see the fruits of their labor in any material benefit in this life. They shape the world with their ideas. Lastly, the King embodies authority and power. Napoleon is a strong example as a King figure: emperor of France and conqueror of most of Europe, shaping the history of our world through his great conquests.
Enough of Carlyle, that is rather dense. Though, I find it helpful to understand what it is that Carlyle saw as the defining archetypal generators of history. In our modern culture, we have largely dispensed with these kinds of great men, save for a handful of recent heroes of civil rights that we still hold in high esteem such as the Americans: MLK, Frederick Douglas to a lesser extent and overseas with figures like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela. These figures have a sort of secular sainthood, namely since they fulfill ironically the 4th kind of narrative of equality as an iron law of virtue. In pursuing equality, these men are treated as truly great by many.
With the recent Napoleon film, we do not get a serious or somber representation of a great man, but an assortment of caricatures of the man thrown in with several one off quotes or jokes about his stature. Contrast this with a film like Lawrence of Arabia where we get a massive spectacle that richly and dramatically displays the esoteric but charismatic man’s persona. T.E Lawrence is not presented as an utterly serious man, as he was quite odd and xenophilic of the Arabic world, yet he is shown as a man possessing great talent, intellect, and capacity.
This kind of man does not seem to possess much interest to the media generators of our modern era. He checks a lot of bad boxes for modern audiences: White, British, takes charge of Bedouins (how chauvinistic), Imperialistic. Though in his favor, he likely did not have a heteronormative lifestyle, so maybe we will see another T.E. Lawrence film in our lifetimes. I am certain that Hollywood will just brush past that (ha). However, I think most offensively, T.E. Lawrence and Napoleon possess a quality that many people find distasteful and unable to appreciate, respect, or otherwise see as important which was the capacity to conquer and engage in violence.
We have acculturated a deep sense of disgust towards violence both modern and historical with perhaps the exception of fighting the Nazis since their mustachioed leader is the secular form of Satan incarnate to the moderns. Otherwise though, we have forgotten that in order for much to be gained, much must be sacrificed and in this broken world, war is an inevitable reality rather than an aberration from the norm of life. We often fail to imagine men at war having anything other than an ugly tragedy to it. Hence the masculine virtues of courage to fight and die for a greater vision have lost their flavor.
Men of Letters, Kings, Poets, and Priests are the men who, in one form or another, we can continue to see rise into prominence in our modern age. There is a bellicose spirit that can be seen in those who embody these archetypes today. Men like Jordan Peterson, regardless of your opinion of him, has been a man of Letters who has moved hearts and minds with philosophizing and psychologizing on the modern man’s situation and desire. Trump takes on the personae of a “strong man” who will attempt to lead the Republic out of its decay as a king-like figure. Farther back in history but still relatively modern, Tolkien entertains a heroic vision within fantasy and narrative as a kind of “Poet.” We have the many great theological Priest-like figures of the 20th century. Billy Graham, arguably the most impactful Priest-Hero of the 20th century, led a Revival of Christian religion. All of these men stand or stood in favor of a vision that was/is not the norm of their or our time.
Our “great men” do exist, and they come out largely in opposition to the mainstream narratives that grip our culture and zeitgeist. It has been said that if you have no enemies, then you are saying nothing importance or meaning. We should not expect “Heroes” to rise out of polite society with all of the trim and embellishment that we expect of red carpet elitism; that is not to say these men may not be themselves of a certain elite status, but rather they do not conform to the median. It is a democratic idea that the popular opinion should dictate the moral median. This frame of thought produces mediocrity and not greatness. With a democracy you may avoid an Ivan the Terrible, but you will never have a Catherine the Great. Likewise a great person cannot fit the mediocrity of the masses (but can wield it) and will likely come bearing a vision of a life beyond the popularly imagined one.
As a clarification, “great men” does not mean “Good man.” There are many great men who have radically shaped history who are not “Good.” However, that does not mean they cannot overlap. As the Western world has come to treat equality and equity as an iron virtue, we should not be surprised when a greater vision pushes forth to overtake it which does not believe in this idea as religiously. This is not as bad as some may immediately imagine. Radical equality does not equal human flourishing, but tyranny is not a preferable alternative either.
Many Christian men and women I talk with feel a sense of hopelessness in our current cultural climate as it pertains to a path forward out of moral relativism, general apathy, and degeneracy; they wish for Jesus to return quickly (a very good and correct desire, but a kind of surrender or cop out when facing down the issues of our current time). If a great leader were to rise in our time, we should not be surprised if he or she had a somewhat revolutionary spirit in favor of religious or traditional temperaments. Our Western secular humanism has surrendered the moral ground away from religion towards cultural preferences and secular mythos. An antithesis towards this position surely exists and would likely take this flimsy worldview to town should a charismatic and powerful movement form.
So to my friend who asked if we could have another Churchill--I would not count on it. You may see someone entirely different show up.