Claiming historical figures as "over rated" is silly.
Silly because you know defenders will hit back twice as hard. Leaving us going in circles.
Funny. I picked the BBC History Magazine up at a book store and read the article mentioned in the link.
I was left unconvinced on a couple of people.
I guess Mary Queen of Scots, Malcolm X and Oscar Wilde (the blurb pasted, for example, Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism without explanation. I was curious as to why it was "ridiculous?" Did Wilde's decision to be an anarchist offend people? etc.) may get more attention than they deserve, but I don't see a fair argument against Napoleon (military gaffes notwithstanding) and Darwin (sloppiness notwithstanding).
The whole exercise seemed superficial to me.
The latest guy to get hyped up? Steve Jobs. Saw four books on him today.
Which only goes to show that history is subjective and not a science. It is not truth, it is "truth" as the historian(s) see it. And it is always subject to change according to the current socio-political climate of the culture and the historians involved.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Douglas. Lots of brainwork goes into sorting things out and crosschecking sources so as to end out with «some» fragments of truth but never all the truth.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's true and the historians work is a cross between art and science but...
ReplyDeleteWas it not true there was a Revolution in 1776? That Plato existed? Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace?' Can we not trace back some artifacts with precision to its origins?
Where it gets subjective is the 'why' of things follow: Why we go to war, the origins of mysterious peoples like the Minoans and Etruscans, etc.
There are some truths rooted in facts. I reckon.