The article "The Great Man Theory" at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/01/10/mclemee
can't really be
considered using W as a model can it?
It states "Is George Bush one of the Great Men of History?
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's grand and profoundly confusing book "The Phenomenology of Spirit" - an event that's led, however indirectly, to wondering just what GWFH would make of
GWB....
Reduced to its simplest possible terms, Hegel's belief is that history is the steady (if conflict-strewn) development of humanity's capacity for reason and freedom....
They are the men (his examples are, no surprise, all men) who do what must be done for the sake of progress, no matter what the cost. It isn't that they decide to do so. They are driven to it.
"They may be called Heroes," says Hegel, "inasmuch as they have derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing order; but ... from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question."
In short, they do what they have to do. If that means abandoning multilateral diplomacy or treating the right of habeas corpus as something that belongs in a museum of quaint ideas, so be it.
"They are men," the philosopher continues, "who appear to draw the impulse of their life from themselves; and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a complex of historical relations which appear to be only their interest, and their work."
Well, it's a matter of time before we know whether Bush's "object is attained" in Iraq, and the course of human history thereby guided safely into a new stage of progress. That looks like a very long shot indeed. And Hegel is pretty clear about success being the criterion for judging these figures. "They are great men," he writes, "because they willed and accomplished something great; not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but that which met the case and fell in with the needs of the age."
A little earlier in his lectures, Hegel refers to history as "the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized." And he well describes what a lot of us have felt over the past few years: "emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sadness, counter-balanced by no consolatory result." It is a state of "mental torture," of "intolerable disgust."
The tendency, he says, is then to retreat "into the selfishness that stands on the quiet shore, and thence enjoy in safety the distant spectacle of 'wrecks confusedly hurled'"- which sounds to me kind of like all those painfully unfunny bits on "The Daily Show" about the situation in "Mess O'Potamia."
There you have it. An author can use the one of the originators of the Dialectic and "The Daily Show" to skewer big bro 43. We've already seen W cast as an Orwellian tyrant, with a propaganda master, Karl Rove. Soon, someone will compare W's economic policies to those of Karl Marx' who used his offshoot of Hegel's concept to arrive at Dialectical Materialism and therefore Communism. We already have the first name of Karl, W's "political brain", in the mix.
Big bro 43's redistributes income, but not to those that which they need, but to the top 1% all they can steal.
And wars have historically been cash cows for the top 1% of the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about. W likes to pretend he reads history. If he had read Ike's warnings about the military-industrial complex and his father's about the danger of region-wide de-stability as a result of taking Hussein out, then the Halliburton's of the world would have less blood-stained booty on their hands and the world wouldn't have an idiot screeching "GWOT" mimicking his truest role
model-not "Tricky Dick", nor the great communicator, Ronnie Reagan, whose failed cash cow, the Star War, Strategic Defense Initiative W has revived, nor even Poppy 41, but Chicken Little! Yes, with big bro 43 the sky is always falling with extremist Islamic terrorists his policies have perpetuated.
Related
articles:
"The Rush for a Legacy" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501054.
html
"The Great Man T
heory" at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/01/10/mclemee
"Iraqi Crisis Deepens as 5 More Ministers Quit Cabinet Meetings"
at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080700360.
html
"Outbreak of truth-telling to Congress on Iraq" at
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18631.html
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/01/10/mclemee
can't really be
considered using W as a model can it?
It states "Is George Bush one of the Great Men of History?
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's grand and profoundly confusing book "The Phenomenology of Spirit" - an event that's led, however indirectly, to wondering just what GWFH would make of
GWB....
Reduced to its simplest possible terms, Hegel's belief is that history is the steady (if conflict-strewn) development of humanity's capacity for reason and freedom....
They are the men (his examples are, no surprise, all men) who do what must be done for the sake of progress, no matter what the cost. It isn't that they decide to do so. They are driven to it.
"They may be called Heroes," says Hegel, "inasmuch as they have derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing order; but ... from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question."
In short, they do what they have to do. If that means abandoning multilateral diplomacy or treating the right of habeas corpus as something that belongs in a museum of quaint ideas, so be it.
"They are men," the philosopher continues, "who appear to draw the impulse of their life from themselves; and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a complex of historical relations which appear to be only their interest, and their work."
Well, it's a matter of time before we know whether Bush's "object is attained" in Iraq, and the course of human history thereby guided safely into a new stage of progress. That looks like a very long shot indeed. And Hegel is pretty clear about success being the criterion for judging these figures. "They are great men," he writes, "because they willed and accomplished something great; not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but that which met the case and fell in with the needs of the age."
A little earlier in his lectures, Hegel refers to history as "the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized." And he well describes what a lot of us have felt over the past few years: "emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sadness, counter-balanced by no consolatory result." It is a state of "mental torture," of "intolerable disgust."
The tendency, he says, is then to retreat "into the selfishness that stands on the quiet shore, and thence enjoy in safety the distant spectacle of 'wrecks confusedly hurled'"- which sounds to me kind of like all those painfully unfunny bits on "The Daily Show" about the situation in "Mess O'Potamia."
Big bro 43's redistributes income, but not to those that which they need, but to the top 1% all they can steal.
And wars have historically been cash cows for the top 1% of the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about. W likes to pretend he reads history. If he had read Ike's warnings about the military-industrial complex and his father's about the danger of region-wide de-stability as a result of taking Hussein out, then the Halliburton's of the world would have less blood-stained booty on their hands and the world wouldn't have an idiot screeching "GWOT" mimicking his truest role
model-not "Tricky Dick", nor the great communicator, Ronnie Reagan, whose failed cash cow, the Star War, Strategic Defense Initiative W has revived, nor even Poppy 41, but Chicken Little! Yes, with big bro 43 the sky is always falling with extremist Islamic terrorists his policies have perpetuated.
Related
articles:
"The Rush for a Legacy" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501054.
html
"The Great Man T
heory" at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/01/10/mclemee
"Iraqi Crisis Deepens as 5 More Ministers Quit Cabinet Meetings"
at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080700360.
html
"Outbreak of truth-telling to Congress on Iraq" at
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18631.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
