Editing Hero (section)

== Historical studies ==<!-- This section is linked from [[Philosophy of history]] -->
{{Further|Philosophy of history|Great man theory}}
[[File:Simo hayha honorary rifle.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Simo Häyhä]], a Finnish military sniper during the [[Winter War]], achieved the reputation of a pioneering war hero,<ref>[https://theculturetrip.com/europe/finland/articles/story-simo-hayha-white-death-finland/ The Story of Simo Häyhä, the White Death of Finland - The Culture Trip]</ref> despite his modest nature.<ref>[https://www.is.fi/suomi100/art-2000005409481.html IS: Simo Häyhän muistikirja paljastaa tarkka-ampujan huumorintajun – "Valkoinen kuolema" esittää näkemyksensä ammuttujen vihollisten lukumäärästä] (in Finnish)</ref><ref>[url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R948DQAAQBAJ Tapio Saarelainen: The White Sniper]</ref>]]

The philosopher [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]] gave a central role to the "hero", personalized by [[Napoleon]], as the incarnation of a particular culture's ''[[Geist#Volksgeist|Volksgeist]]'' and thus of the general ''[[Zeitgeist]]''. [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s 1841 work, ''[[On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History]]'', also accorded an essential function to heroes and great men in history. Carlyle centered history on the [[biography|biographies]] of individuals, as in ''[[Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches]]'' and ''[[History of Frederick the Great]]''. His heroes were not only political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states, but also religious figures, poets, authors, and [[captains of industry]].

Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position were rare in the second part of the 20th century. Most in the [[philosophy of history]] school contend that the motive forces in history may best be described only with a wider lens than the one that Carlyle used for his portraits. For example, [[Karl Marx]] argued that history was determined by the massive social forces at play in "[[Class conflict|class struggles]]", not by the individuals by whom these forces are played out. After Marx, [[Herbert Spencer]] wrote at the end of the 19th century: "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown...[b]efore he can remake his society, his society must make him."<ref name=Spencer>Spencer, Herbert. ''[https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96277756 The Study of Sociology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120515130355/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96277756 |date=2012-05-15 }}'', Appleton, 1896, p. 34.</ref> [[Michel Foucault]] argued in [[Philosophy of history#Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse|his analysis of societal communication and debate]] that history was mainly the "science of the [[Sovereignty|sovereign]]", until its inversion by the "historical and political popular discourse".

[[File:Raoul Wallenberg.jpg|thumb|right|150px|The Swedish Diplomat [[Raoul Wallenberg]] saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during World War II.<ref name="thomas.loc.gov">{{Cite web|title=The Library of Congress: Bill Summary & Status 112th Congress (2011–2012) H.R. 3001|url=http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3001:|date=2012-07-26|access-date=2013-07-28|archive-date=2012-12-15|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121215215111/http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3001:|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url = http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/wallenberg/tributes/philately/3368.htm | title = Holocaust Hero Honored on Postage Stamp | year = 1996 | publisher = [[United States Postal Service]]}}</ref>]]

The [[Annales school]], led by [[Lucien Febvre]], [[Marc Bloch]], and [[Fernand Braudel]], would contest the exaggeration of the role of [[Subject (philosophy)|individual subjects]] in history. Indeed, Braudel distinguished various time scales, one accorded to the life of an individual, another accorded to the life of a few human generations, and the last one to [[civilization]]s, in which [[geography]], [[economics]], and [[demography]] play a role considerably more decisive than that of individual subjects.

Among noticeable events in the studies of the role of the hero and [[Great man theory|great man]] in history one should mention [[Sidney Hook]]'s book (1943) ''[[Sidney Hook#Hero in History|The Hero in History]]''.<ref>Hook, S. 1955 [1943]. The Hero in History. A Study in Limitation and Possibility. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.</ref> In the second half of the twentieth century such male-focused theory has been contested, among others by feminists writers such as [[Judith Fetterley]] in ''The Resisting Reader'' (1977)<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Resisting Reader|last = Fetterley|first = Judith|publisher = Indiana University Press|year = 1977|location = Bloomington, IN}}</ref> and literary theorist [[Nancy K. Miller]], ''The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782''.<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782|last = Miller|first = Nancy K.|publisher = Columbia University Press|year = 1980|location = New York}}</ref>

In the epoch of [[globalization]] an individual may change the development of the country and of the whole world, so this gives reasons to some scholars to suggest returning to the problem of the role of the hero in history from the viewpoint of modern historical knowledge and using up-to-date methods of historical analysis.<ref>[[Leonid Grinin|Grinin, Leonid]] 2010. The Role of an Individual in History: A Reconsideration. Social Evolution & History, Vol. 9 No. 2 (pp. 95–136)  http://www.socionauki.ru/journal/articles/129622/</ref>

Within the frameworks of developing [[counterfactual history]], attempts are made to examine some hypothetical scenarios of historical development. The hero attracts much attention because most of those scenarios are based on the suppositions: what would have happened if this or that historical individual had or had not been alive.<ref>Thompson. W. The Lead Economy Sequence in World Politics (From Sung China to the United States): Selected Counterfactuals. Journal of Globalization Studies. Vol. 1, num. 1. 2010. pp. 6–28 http://www.socionauki.ru/journal/articles/126971/</ref>