THE HERO IN HISTORY

 

THE HERO IN HISTORY

            History is undoubtedly replete with the stories of kings and warriors who are remembered as heroes and strike awe in our hearts whenever we read about their mighty adventures in which they demonstrated their skill and valour as warriors motivated by personal ambition or inspired by national aspirations. Some of them like Alexander the Great or Tamerlane wished to become world conquerors.

            In this context, Sidney Hook has an interesting view point.  According to

him no individual makes history de novo.  He is always limited by his times and his culture. energy and intelligence may be unique but what he wants and what he sets  himself to do , are rooted in what Hegel calls “objective mind”, and what anthropologists today call culture – the super-individual institutions of speech,  family, religion, art and science.

            In a sense the activities of the hero in history, like Maharaja Porus and Alexander the Great, must be understood not as the actions of an individual versus the environment but as the interactive operation of one aspect of a culture in relations to others. 

            The point to be noted is that the great man whom we call a hero can do only what his culture permits but ----and this is crucial - the culture permits of only one direction of development and there are no genuine alternatives.

Sidney Hook contends that there is a difference between what men, even great men called heroes, imagining they are doing and the objective meaning or significance of what they do.  The meanings of their acts must be understood primarily in terms of historical trends that have begun in the past, embrace the present and point to the future.  Moral righteousness before the stern deeds of history is the easy privilege of those who judge events one by one.  But it is an illusion of finite perspective.

            To say it briefly, the world-shattering deed or thought which testifies to the presence of greatness is possible only when the culture is prepared for it.

            Sidney Hook rightly believes that a great man is an “expression,” “a representative”,” a symbol,” “an instrument” of historical and social forces on whose currents he rides to renown and victory.  This critic of history goes on to add, “If we want to grasp the course and reason of his greatness, his biography or purely personal traits are relatively un-important.  It is to the society and culture of his times that we must turn.

            The present study on Maharaja Porus is based on the above-mentioned assertions and much more.

  DR G R KANWAL