Concept
Hero
Overview
person who fights adversity through ingenuity, courage, or strength to help others
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Hero is discussed.
And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more might that of a Hero! Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
On the threshold of the heroic age, the märchen-hero changes into the hero proper. The former represents the central theme of the earlier form of myth narrative, the märchen-myth, as does the hero that of the more developed form, the saga.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing him to reverence and believe other men's truth!
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
In Homer[360], for example, every hero is the living focus of a whole congeries of qualities and traits. Achilles is the most youthful hero in the host, but his youthful exuberance is represented as quite compatible with all other entirely human qualities, and Homer unfolds before us this variety through situations which offer the finest contrast. He loves his mother, Thetis, he weeps for Briseis, when she is…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
HERMOGENES: Then I rather think that I am of one mind with you; but what is the meaning of the word “hero”? (Eros with an eta, in the old writing eros with an epsilon.) SOCRATES: I think that there is no difficulty in explaining, for the name is not much altered, and signifies that they were born of love.
Plato, Cratylus
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Hero
Related ideas
- Jesus
- Athena
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Thomas Carlyle
- Post-classical history
- Homer
- Heracles
- Sidney Hook
- Ancient Greek
- Indo-European languages
- Anna Karenina
- Joseph Campbell
- Joan of Arc
- Karl Marx
- Honour
- Immortality
- Latin
- Philosophy of history
- Leo Tolstoy
- Geist
- Geography
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Marc Bloch
- Nelson Mandela
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of history.