Theories of History: A survey of the "Mind drives History" theory
“...You cannot resist an idea whose time has come.”(Victor Hugo). Actions flow from ideas. That's why tyrants imprison intellectuals.That's why the Stasi monitored and controlled the spread of ideas. (Movie to see: "The Lives of Others")
Religious view of History: The ancients thought God was the prime-mover of history. It was the unfolding of His plan. For polytheists, history might be a story played out between different Gods. Man could have a role: a King or a people could make God happy or angry, driving historical reward or punishment. God might give you a promised land, or send a plague. Religious guru Pat Robertson still thinks God rewards and punishes America from time to time!
Deterministic views: Secular historians are split. Some people see little pattern and lots of accidents, while others try to integrate history more broadly, seeing either nature or man as the driver. Jared Diamond argues that geography and the availability of domesticable animals lead to certain ways of working, and to certain human institutions. Then, as way leads on to way, one society ends up rich and industrial while the other stays primitive. Marxists speak of material forces and productive relations molding and driving ideas. In this view history is driven by man, but not quite consciously -- much determinism remains.
Ideas as the conscious driver: Finally, there are historians who say ideas drive history. At the level of a particular ruler, and one generation, Emperor Ashoka might massacre many thousands, but then he turns to Buddhism and becomes an entirely different ruler. A yarn says that, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." While false, the fable reveals the thesis. Across generations, the spread of Confucian ideas can mold the culture, with historians tracing elements down to the way Chinese rulers run their country today.
Gibbons ("History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire") blamed the adoption of Christianity by Roman elites as a major factor in undermining a previously worldly culture and thus weakening the Empire. He speaks of the Christian belief in the importance of an after-life as undermining a focus on this real life.
Consider Max Weber's thesis: praising the Protestant work-ethic and the ascendancy of individualism created by the idea that the priest and church (the social hierarchy) is not the ultimate arbiter of truth, and crediting this with thriving Capitalism in Northern Europe and the British Isles (which we can extrapolate to America). Thomas Macaulay sees a deeper ideological trend, where successive generations threw off their superstitions and adopted a more secular and worldly epistemology. The Italian Renaissance is usually traced to a similar epistemological evolution, driven by the rediscovery of Roman and Greek philosophy.
Thomas Carlyle thought that hopes, aspirations and ideas of the people at large formed into ideologies, and created competing forces. Then, certain men came along and took charge of those ideologies, or helped mediate between competing ideologies, becoming leaders and shaping the political system.
John Locke: The ideology of the American Revolution can be traced to Thomas Paine's best-selling "Common Sense". While aimed at common folk and even illiterate listeners, its ideas can be traced back to John Locke. In turn, one can trace his political ideas to his epistemology ("An Essay Concerning Human Understanding") which put reason front and center as the practical fountainhead of knowledge.
Gustave Le Bon (The Psychology of Crowds - 1895) said this: "The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to be a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples." (emphasis added)
Keynes said, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”, but what he left unsaid was that economists like him would not weigh the individual versus society the way they do, except that they are slaves of some "defunct" philosopher. Keynes can channel Plato without being too conscious of the ideas that have come to him via cultural osmosis.
Summary: Regardless of what theory you support, one thing is clear: many historians draw a link from philosophical ideas, to major historical events. Many of these theories are fleshed out in great detail in their works, examining other factors that help take an idea to fruition. In this post, I do not want to praise the "mind-driven" theories over theories like Jared Diamonds. My purpose here was merely to survey some of the popular advocates of the ":mind drives history" genre.
Bonus: Enjoy this theme in the poem "We are the music makers..."
Religious view of History: The ancients thought God was the prime-mover of history. It was the unfolding of His plan. For polytheists, history might be a story played out between different Gods. Man could have a role: a King or a people could make God happy or angry, driving historical reward or punishment. God might give you a promised land, or send a plague. Religious guru Pat Robertson still thinks God rewards and punishes America from time to time!
Deterministic views: Secular historians are split. Some people see little pattern and lots of accidents, while others try to integrate history more broadly, seeing either nature or man as the driver. Jared Diamond argues that geography and the availability of domesticable animals lead to certain ways of working, and to certain human institutions. Then, as way leads on to way, one society ends up rich and industrial while the other stays primitive. Marxists speak of material forces and productive relations molding and driving ideas. In this view history is driven by man, but not quite consciously -- much determinism remains.
Ideas as the conscious driver: Finally, there are historians who say ideas drive history. At the level of a particular ruler, and one generation, Emperor Ashoka might massacre many thousands, but then he turns to Buddhism and becomes an entirely different ruler. A yarn says that, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." While false, the fable reveals the thesis. Across generations, the spread of Confucian ideas can mold the culture, with historians tracing elements down to the way Chinese rulers run their country today.
Gibbons ("History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire") blamed the adoption of Christianity by Roman elites as a major factor in undermining a previously worldly culture and thus weakening the Empire. He speaks of the Christian belief in the importance of an after-life as undermining a focus on this real life.
Consider Max Weber's thesis: praising the Protestant work-ethic and the ascendancy of individualism created by the idea that the priest and church (the social hierarchy) is not the ultimate arbiter of truth, and crediting this with thriving Capitalism in Northern Europe and the British Isles (which we can extrapolate to America). Thomas Macaulay sees a deeper ideological trend, where successive generations threw off their superstitions and adopted a more secular and worldly epistemology. The Italian Renaissance is usually traced to a similar epistemological evolution, driven by the rediscovery of Roman and Greek philosophy.
Thomas Carlyle thought that hopes, aspirations and ideas of the people at large formed into ideologies, and created competing forces. Then, certain men came along and took charge of those ideologies, or helped mediate between competing ideologies, becoming leaders and shaping the political system.
John Locke: The ideology of the American Revolution can be traced to Thomas Paine's best-selling "Common Sense". While aimed at common folk and even illiterate listeners, its ideas can be traced back to John Locke. In turn, one can trace his political ideas to his epistemology ("An Essay Concerning Human Understanding") which put reason front and center as the practical fountainhead of knowledge.
Gustave Le Bon (The Psychology of Crowds - 1895) said this: "The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to be a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples." (emphasis added)
Keynes said, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”, but what he left unsaid was that economists like him would not weigh the individual versus society the way they do, except that they are slaves of some "defunct" philosopher. Keynes can channel Plato without being too conscious of the ideas that have come to him via cultural osmosis.
Summary: Regardless of what theory you support, one thing is clear: many historians draw a link from philosophical ideas, to major historical events. Many of these theories are fleshed out in great detail in their works, examining other factors that help take an idea to fruition. In this post, I do not want to praise the "mind-driven" theories over theories like Jared Diamonds. My purpose here was merely to survey some of the popular advocates of the ":mind drives history" genre.
Bonus: Enjoy this theme in the poem "We are the music makers..."
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
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