World Spirit
What is it that drives historical processes? It's easy to dismiss the idea of the Great Man (or the Great Woman, for that matter) when clearly so much is determined by resource distribution, pre-existing political structures, and the randomness of the universe itself.
But is there no space at all for the individual in all this? Are there not moments when, in Hegelian fashion, an individual may represent the world-spirit itself? Was Napoleon "history on horseback" or not? Or is that itself another form of determinism?
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