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Reflection Questions 1. What is the difference between the "eventful man" and the "event-making man" according to the passage? 2. Is Mao an eventful or event-making individual in history? Is Hitler? Be sure to explain vour answer

Reflection Questions 1. What is the difference between the "eventful man" and the "event-making man" according to the passage? 2. Is Mao an eventful or event-making individual in history? Is Hitler? Be sure to explain vour answer

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In this passage, Sydney Hook, a contemporary philosopher, addresses the concept of the Great Man (Individual) theory in history: The key distinction... is the distinction between the hero as the eventful man in history and the hero as the event-making man in history. The eventful man in history is any man whose actions influenced subsequent developments along a quite different course that would have been if followed if these actions had not been taken. The event-making man is an eventful man whose actions are the consequences of outstanding capacities of intelligence, will and character rather than of accidents of position... The merely eventful men in history play a role that may be compared to that of the little Dutch boy who kept his finger in the hole of the dam to save the town. Without meaning to strip the legend of its glamour, we can point out that almost anybody in the situation could have done it. All that was required was a boy, a finger, and the lucky chance of passing by. The event itself in the life of the community was of tremendous significance. It saved the town... But the qualities required to cope with the situation were of a fairly common distribution. Here, so to speak, one stumbles upon greatness just as one might stumble on a treasure that will ransom a town. Greatness, however, is something that must involve extraordinary talent of some kinds and not merely the compounded luck of being born and of being present at the right place at a happy moment. Both the eventful man and the event-making man appear at the forking points of history. The possibility of their action has already been prepared for by the direction of antecedent events. The difference is this. In the case of the eventful man, the preparation is at a very advanced stage. It required a relatively simple act-- a decree, a command, a common-sense decision – to make the decisive choice. He may "muff" his rule or let someone steal it from him. But even if he doesn't this does not prove him an exceptional creature. His virtue or vice is inferred from the happy or unhappy consequence of what he has done, not from the qualities he has displayed in the doing of it. The event making man, on the other hand, finds a fork in the historical road, but he also helps, so to speak, to create it... At the very least, like Caesar and Cromwell and Napoleon, he must free the path he has taken from opposition and, in so doing, display exceptional qualities of leadership. It is the hero as an event-making man who leaves the positive imprint of his personality upon history-an imprint that is still observable after he has disappeared from the scene. The merely eventful man whose finger plugs a dam or fires the shot that starts a war is rarely aware of the nature of the alternative he faces and of the train of events his act sets off. It is easy to make a sharp distinction in analysis between the eventful man and the event-making man, but there are few historical figures that will fit snugly into either classification. We must leave to historians the delicate task of ascertaining whether any particular “hero" of human history is, in respect to some significant happening, an event-making character --- or merely lucky. (Excerpt taken from "The Hero in History", first published in 1943) Reflection Questions 1. What is the difference between the "eventful man" and the "event-making man" according to the passage? 2. Is Mao an eventful or event-making individual in history? Is Hitler? Be sure to explain your answer.
Transcribed Image Text:In this passage, Sydney Hook, a contemporary philosopher, addresses the concept of the Great Man (Individual) theory in history: The key distinction... is the distinction between the hero as the eventful man in history and the hero as the event-making man in history. The eventful man in history is any man whose actions influenced subsequent developments along a quite different course that would have been if followed if these actions had not been taken. The event-making man is an eventful man whose actions are the consequences of outstanding capacities of intelligence, will and character rather than of accidents of position... The merely eventful men in history play a role that may be compared to that of the little Dutch boy who kept his finger in the hole of the dam to save the town. Without meaning to strip the legend of its glamour, we can point out that almost anybody in the situation could have done it. All that was required was a boy, a finger, and the lucky chance of passing by. The event itself in the life of the community was of tremendous significance. It saved the town... But the qualities required to cope with the situation were of a fairly common distribution. Here, so to speak, one stumbles upon greatness just as one might stumble on a treasure that will ransom a town. Greatness, however, is something that must involve extraordinary talent of some kinds and not merely the compounded luck of being born and of being present at the right place at a happy moment. Both the eventful man and the event-making man appear at the forking points of history. The possibility of their action has already been prepared for by the direction of antecedent events. The difference is this. In the case of the eventful man, the preparation is at a very advanced stage. It required a relatively simple act-- a decree, a command, a common-sense decision – to make the decisive choice. He may "muff" his rule or let someone steal it from him. But even if he doesn't this does not prove him an exceptional creature. His virtue or vice is inferred from the happy or unhappy consequence of what he has done, not from the qualities he has displayed in the doing of it. The event making man, on the other hand, finds a fork in the historical road, but he also helps, so to speak, to create it... At the very least, like Caesar and Cromwell and Napoleon, he must free the path he has taken from opposition and, in so doing, display exceptional qualities of leadership. It is the hero as an event-making man who leaves the positive imprint of his personality upon history-an imprint that is still observable after he has disappeared from the scene. The merely eventful man whose finger plugs a dam or fires the shot that starts a war is rarely aware of the nature of the alternative he faces and of the train of events his act sets off. It is easy to make a sharp distinction in analysis between the eventful man and the event-making man, but there are few historical figures that will fit snugly into either classification. We must leave to historians the delicate task of ascertaining whether any particular “hero" of human history is, in respect to some significant happening, an event-making character --- or merely lucky. (Excerpt taken from "The Hero in History", first published in 1943) Reflection Questions 1. What is the difference between the "eventful man" and the "event-making man" according to the passage? 2. Is Mao an eventful or event-making individual in history? Is Hitler? Be sure to explain your answer.
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