Among the pleasures of working on my new book, The Biblical Hero, was the opportunity to read some old chestnuts that took the notion of the hero seriously. One such book is philosopher Sidney Hook‘s The Hero in History. The book’s main argument opposes determinist readings of history (Marx, Hegel), which claim that individuals are unable to affect the course of events, since history is decided by sweeping, impersonal, economic-political forces. In Hook’s view, individuals matter a great deal and do indeed change the course of history, even when they do so in the name of determinist movements such as Marxism (such as Lenin).
But while Hook argues against the fallacy of historical visions that find the individual to be irrelevant, equally decisively he warns against the dangerous cult of the “great individual,” of “hero-worship,” as advocated, for example, by 19th Century Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle. (Published in 1943, Hook’s work clearly had the dangers of Nazism in its sights.) In his view, democracy ought to provide a corrective against this latter danger:
Where a democracy is wise, it will wholeheartedly co-operate with its leaders and at the same time be suspicious of the powers delegated to them–a difficult task but one which must be solved if democracy is not to become, as often in the past, a school for tyrants.
I find this formulation to be strikingly apt in a number of ways. First, just as history is not at all “automatic,” neither is a democracy. A well-functioning democracy relies on the “wisdom” of the populace. This wisdom emerges from the balanced way in which the people treat their leaders: on the one hand, “co-operating” with, rather than merely following, them; on the other, treating them with a degree of suspicion. A “wise” electorate never abandons the tools of critical thinking, and regards as essential to their role as citizens the exercise of independent judgment toward those in power. Citizens of a democracy expect their leaders to hold true not just to the needs and desires of their constituents, but to the larger ideals of their country, as embodied in the nation’s laws and guiding documents (eg, the Constitution).
A wise democracy not only tempers the way that people relate to their leaders; It also radically changes our notion of who is a hero. The hero of democracy should no longer be the ruler or the general; instead, every person should be considered as having the potential to become a hero:
A democracy should contrive its affairs, not to give one or a few the chance to reach heroic stature, but rather to take as a regulative ideal the slogan, “every man [and woman] a hero.”
Hook admires Jefferson, Holmes, Dewey and Whitman for serving as teachers “who have given the people vision, method, and knowledge.” He holds up this kind of teacher as “the true hero of democracy.”
In my book, I claim that the Bible’s vision of a hero is closer to this democratic ideal than the older model of the hero as king, general, grand historical personage. What is remarkable about biblical stories is the enormous range of characters who command the narrator’s attention, sympathy, and occasionally admiration. At the same time, the narrator exercise a “wise democratic” perspective on biblical characters, presenting a balanced portrait that never glosses over failings, shortfalls, even grievous sins and errors.
Indeed, a close study of biblical heroes can help provide the “wisdom,” the balance of sympathetic understanding and critical distance, so badly needed in our struggling democracy today.