Philosophy of History: Culture and Civilization

The Role of the Individual in History

The Enlightenment thinkers had reason to believe that reconstructing the goals of the participants in historical events would allow for an understanding of the meaning of history. A historian may and should question what significance historical actions and events held for the participants themselves, in accordance with their objectives, but a philosopher must not assert that this is the meaning of history, especially since the participants themselves likely did not intend to "make history." Yet, even the totality of meanings ascribed to all factors does not provide us with a meaning of history in general. The Enlightenment raised an even more crucial question regarding the fundamental discrepancy between the aims and outcomes of historical events. "Fundamental," in this context, indicates that it is not a matter of chance, nor a consequence of unrealized goals or inadequate means to achieve them; rather, it stems from a different foundational source. The philosophy of history, long before Hegel, revealed the "historical unconscious"—a typical mechanism of history where, in truth, people "do not know what they are creating."

The acknowledgment of this significant mechanism in history can already be found in Giambattista Vico, who complemented the "immanent" concept (that people create everything in history—the "matter," its "form," and themselves) with the recognition of the "fact of historical Providence," which brings order and harmony into human actions, often unnoticed by people and contrary to their desires.

During the Enlightenment, the prevailing viewpoint held that the natural laws of society were founded upon an unchanging "nature of man." Therefore, society can and must be perfected based on the understanding of this nature and the introduction of "rational principles" into interpersonal relationships. Accordingly, the Enlightenment thinkers believed that a remarkable ruler could radically alter the course of history. In the first decades of the 19th century, romanticism emerged as an alternative to this perspective. In contrast to the Enlightenment, it showed little interest in the role of the individual, preferring instead the "spirit of the people," prioritizing the collective over the individual. Outstanding historical figures may merely accelerate or decelerate the inevitable and necessary unfolding of events. In fact, this view was later adopted by Marxism.

Hegel interpreted social changes through the formula: "What is real is rational, and what is rational is real." This meant that everything existing is a moment of the self-actualization of some objectively existing regularity, which necessarily unfolds fully in material and historical existence. In this "scenario," the remarkable individual does not play a minor role; indeed, such an individual can become the "trusted agent of the World Spirit"—a conduit of its influence, embodying the Spirit's design in historical reality. For this, it is important that the individual better understands the immediate tendency of social reality's development than their contemporaries and is able to translate that awareness into action.

Hegel’s doctrine regarding the role of outstanding individuals in history is most succinctly expressed in a brief observation about Napoleon, whom he saw through his window on October 13, 1806: "The World Spirit sits astride his horse." Hegel’s thought exerted a significant influence on the thinkers of the 19th century. One of the most prominent proponents of the "heroic," individualistic version of history and human progress was the British (Scottish) publicist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881). He strongly opposed "democratic" tendencies in literature, politics, and philosophy, defining history as "the biography of great men": "... The universal history, the history of what man has done in this world, is, in my opinion, essentially the history of great men who have worked here on Earth... Everything created in this world is, in essence, the external material result, the practical realization and embodiment of thoughts belonging to the great individuals who came into this world. The history of these last is truly the soul of all world history." The heroes—politicians and military leaders, founders and heads of states—are the geniuses of good and evil, whose greatness alters the course of historical fate. They are extraordinary individuals who, guided by moral obligation, oppose the crowd, the mass, the mediocre, and subdue them with their will.

In an era dominated by the Enlightenment ideal and the extensive appropriation of colonial territories by European capitalism, this thesis was combined with the idea of Eurocentrism—the unique civilizing mission of Europe as the highest cultural community. Thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Knut Hamsun, and Gabriele D’Annunzio championed the idea of history being created by outstanding individuals. A poetic manifesto embodying this position became Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden":

Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Conversely, another trend emerged: the denial of the decisive role of outstanding individuals in societal history. The materialistic doctrine of history espoused by Marx, grounded in the idea of class struggle, significantly undermined the foundations of the concept of remarkable individuals. Marx asserted for the first time the leading role of non-individual factors—economics and social relations—in social development. For him, the true subject of history is not the individual but the so-called "popular (working) masses." This is due to the fact that they are the main productive force of society. The class struggle of the workers against historically defined forms of exploitation is the driving force of development and change in "antagonistic" socio-economic formations. An individual can influence the course of historical events only to the extent that they can represent the interests of "progressive" social groups.

The theoretical conclusion of this position was articulated by Herbert Spencer: "You must acknowledge that the genesis of an outstanding individual depends on a long series of complex influences that produce their emergence. Before they can reshape society, society must produce them."

The political cataclysms that struck Europe at the beginning of the 20th century led to a complete decline of the Enlightenment worldview, and subsequently, the notions of the decisive role of outstanding individuals in social progress. Throughout the 20th century, the apologia for the role of remarkable individuals was viewed as an intellectual anachronism. This was undoubtedly also related to the fact that the ideology of the cult of personality gave rise to the most inhumane European political projects of the 20th century: German fascism and Stalinist Soviet socialism. In the mid-20th century, representatives of the French Annales school, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, conducted remarkable theoretical investigations, exploring whether factors distant from the conscious life of society and any individual influence, such as climate, geography, and demographic processes, impact the course and direction of social change.

However, at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, the debate about the role of the individual in history gained intellectual weight in new forms. Today, it revolves around the question of whether social processes are the result of the actions of individual people or whether they develop according to their own laws, "attracting" "performers" to them. The deep underpinnings of this approach are rooted in the nominalists’ position in their dispute with realism, formed during the Medieval period.

It is worth recalling that nominalism asserts that only individual things possess real existence; knowledge captures their actual being, while universals (general concepts) are merely names for things that exist ideally, thanks to language and thought. Meanwhile, realism emphasizes the independent ontological status of universals. Later, this contradiction manifested as a methodological opposition between individualism (the view of society as composed of individual people and their actions) and holism, which posits that the laws of the social level cannot be reduced to the intentions and actions of individual individuals.

Standing on the methodological positions of individualism are such socio-philosophical doctrines as neo-institutionalism, public choice theory, and methodological individualism. Neo-institutionalism posits that people act in any sphere (business, politics, etc.) guided solely by their own interests. Public choice theory examines how individuals utilize public institutions, including government agencies, for their own interests. Methodological individualism regards individual people—not organizations or institutions—as the real actors in social processes. No collective community has an independent existence separate from that of its members. Therefore, it is appropriate to explain it in terms of the purposeful behavior of individual agents.

According to Kant, individuals who realize their goals in history simultaneously move towards an unknown historical objective, and even if they were aware of it, it is doubtful that they would be preoccupied with it.

The general philosophical antinomic formulation of this problem can be found in Schelling’s work: if something unconscious, which is present in the result, can emerge in the activities of autonomous, free, and self-conscious subjects, then that (unconscious) can also be observed in the very process of activity; thus, a historical event (result) and even the activity itself is something that no one consciously desired. If beforehand everyone knew about this, the participants in the historical drama would likely have refrained from such actions. In this, Hegel saw the "cunning of Reason."