Thomas Carlyle (redirected from Gigman)

Carlyle, Thomas 

Born Dec. 4, 1795, in Ecclefechan; died Feb. 5, 1881, in London. British essayist, historian, and philosopher.

Carlyle graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1814. His world view was formed under the influence of German romanticism and classical idealism, as expressed by such representatives as J. G. Fichte and F. W. von Schelling. These ideas infuse the philosophical novel Sartor Resartus (literally, “the tailor mended”), written by Carlyle in 1833–34 (Russian translation published in 1902). According to the “philosophy of clothing” developed in the book, the whole world and all history are external transient garments or emblems, behind which there is an eternal divine essence, the sole reality.

A number of Carlyle’s works from the 1830’s and early 1840’s show sympathy for the working masses and at times combine a radical critique of capitalism with an idealization of the Middle Ages and appeals for a restoration of hierarchical feudal social relations; the latter tendency brought him close to feudal socialism. His work The French Revolution (1837; Russian translation, 1907) justified the overthrow of the absolutist structure by the masses, but it also contained the extremely subjective idealistic conception of the “cult of the hero.” This concept was further developed by Carlyle in a series of lectures between 1837 and 1840, which was published in 1842 as On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Russian translation, 3rd ed., 1908). According to Carlyle, the laws of the world set down by providence are revealed only to “the elect,” to “heroes,” who are the only real creators in history: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” In his view, the masses are only a crowd, a tool in their hands. He noted that the heroic principle periodically weakens in society and then the blind destructive forces hidden in the crowd burst forth; but this lasts only until society again finds its “true heroes,” for example, Cromwell or Napoleon. Such, according to Carlyle, is the closed circle of history. The idea of a “cult of the hero” was widely accepted by bourgeois historiography. With the development of the class struggle of the proletariat, the petit bourgeois historical and philosophical ideas of Carlyle became more reactionary.

WORKS

The Works, vols. 1–30. London, 1896–1905.
Letters, vols. 1–2. London-New York, 1888.

REFERENCES

Marx, K., and F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vols. 1, 7. (See index of names.)
Nemanov, I. N. “Sub’ektivistsko-idealisticheskaia sushchnost’ vozzrenii T. Karleilia na istoriiu obshchestva.” Voprosy istorii, 1956, no. 4.

I. N. NEMANOV