Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

His main concerns were the social questions of his time but he showed quite different ideas from his contemporary Macaulay. Carlyle did not share his optimistic vision and was called "the censor of the age" for the realistic and dramatic picture he gave of the Victorian society and for his harshcritical attitude.

Born of a humble and uncultured Scottish family, he had a difficult childhood and youth. After attending the University of Edinburgh, without taking a degree, he devoted himself to german studies and wrote essays on Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and jean Paul Richter and translated Wilhelm Meisters' Apprenticeship and Life of Schiller.

The influence of German philosophy is reflected in Carlyle's famous work "Sartor Resartus", in which in relating the life and the opinions of an eccentric German scholar, who is the author of a book on clothes. Carlyle under the guise of a semiserious debate on clothes, refers to a transcendental philosophy. He maintains that just as the body is the garment of the soul and the natural world the clothing of God, so human institutions are only the temporary mantle of the "Social idea".

In his criticism of contemporary institutions and customs, Carlyle compares them to outworn clothe which are to be dismissed as they hide and spoil the "Social idea" that consists in a true and right way of thinking, which is the base of an ideal society. The book is written in a tone of intense irony and in a refined powerful style.

In the majority of his works, "Chartism" (1840), "Past and Present" (1843), "Latter-Day Pamphlets" (1850), Carlyle attacked the materialism of the Utilitarians and other evils such as scepticism and hallow conventions and he opposed a spiritual vision of life to them.

Carlyle did not consider reality as an objective notion which exists outside man, but as lying in his own mind and spirit, and it is man' s duty to discover it.

The writer began as Radical and as sympathizer with Chartism, but in the course of the years he became more and more hostile to democracy as he had no faith in the wisdom of the masses and considered them unable to purse their true interests. He opposed the cult of heroes to equalitarian ideas. He believed that the only way to emerge from a state of political unrest and spiritual disorder was to find the proper leaders in individuals particularly endowed and capable to rule the people and to make them accept their decisions in their own interest, even by force.

Notwithstanding his aristocratic vision, Carlyle showed no respect for inherited power, his heroes did not distinguish themselves because of their birth, but on account of their effective qualities. In his work "On heroes", "Hero-Worship", and "The Heroic in History" he examined the figure of the hero and its role in society.

Carlyle's ideas were well accepted by a part of his contemporaries, and though opposed by those who believed in the nascent democracy, they revealed very influential.

Carlyle's historical works such as "The French Revolution" (1873), "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches" (1845) and "The History of Frederick the Great" (1858) are very interesting and significative as they reflect a different conception of history. According to his ideas, historical events were no longer incontrollable forces, but they were shaped and directed by the intervention of heroes.