[未归类] issue36 wish help from others... [复制链接]

wstcwstc
UID：201563

寄托新兵

Rank: 2

声望: 0
寄托币: 311
注册时间: 2005-3-19
精华: 0
帖子: 1

电梯直达

楼主

发表于 2005-12-12 14:00:11 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

Issue36:

The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries.

Note-- Great: 1, Superior in quality or character; noble
            2, Of outstanding significance or importance

提纲：
   人们关于谁来决定伟大之一问题有两种说法，但是单纯说哪一方决定了一个人的伟大是过分简单的
   1，认识一个人的伟大需要将他放在一个全面的历史背景中去
   2，但即使做到了在历史中评价一个人仍不保证看出他的伟大（由于有关该人的大量信息随着时间流逝而丢失）
   3，综合1，2提出issue本身的缺陷，提出只有人对历史尤其人类发展的影响决定一个人的伟大
   4，综合全文，重申3中的观点

正文
  Among the qualities of people in the long history, greatness is the most brilliant. Therefore, a interesting question arise: what or who decide their greatness? Some people tend to think that, the greatness of a person can be decided by his contemporaries, while others contended that only the people who leave after him can decide his greatness. However, as to me, such a problem concerning the origin of greatness should not be so simple.

If we examine human history closely, we can find many people whose greatness are either overemphasized or unwarrantedly depreciated. Such a deviation from the right judgment can be traced to a lacking of adequate historical context. For example, no serious individual in our times will ignore the greatness of Galileo. Nevertheless, such a “real” great man was in his times so disparaged by numerous so-called authorities that his true greatness was completely shadowed. His invention of telescope and his discipline of free-falling objects are considered heretical by churches and even many scientists. Because his contemporaries were so deeply influenced by what is regarded as orthodox and were never able to see what great influence on future generation Galileo’s theory would have, these people certainly can’t accept Galileo’s achievement. It is thus only through putting a man into a great range of historical context can the fully appreciation of his greatness become possible.

  However, even if we succeed in putting a great man into a proper historical context, we may also can’t recognize his greatness fully. Consider our great ancestors, many of them are the most brilliant leaders. By putting them into the historical context, we are able to see their greatness. However, lacking further information about them, we can form no futher perspective about them, therefore we can only ambiguously say that they are “great man”, but we can’t answer the question about how they become great in their times. In many cases, because we can’t see the full aspects of their lives, such “greatnesses” or even the great man may be only a imagination at all. We can see no further about our legends. There are many great characters in it, and we can’t deny their greatness even we put them in a context of long history. But is their existence are true? How many of their stories is real? These problems may be easy to our ancestors, but no easy ones to us.

  Therefore, as illustrated above, present people can put their ancestors in a right historical context, but they may lost many important information about the past; their ancestor’s contemporaries hold in control many important information, but they can’t see their greatness in a large picture of historical context. In many cases, a man’s greatness can be recognize adequately either by his contemporaries or the people who lives after him. Notice that, here I use the word “recognize”, not “decide”. In fact, whether a man is great or not is decided not by human beings, but by the influence he exert on the development of human. In short, a man’s greatness is decided by the history and may even unstable. Thinking about Isaac Newton, we will easily find that his greatness was unchallenged before the theory of relative but to some extent abated after the publish of relativism. However, even such a abatement exists, we still consider Newton the most great man because his theory’s contribution to the development of human beings. In fact, many dispute about a individual’s greatness occurs because his/her contribution to human development is inconspicuous or not recognized by us.

  In conclusion, to say that a man’s greatness is decided by someone is fundamentally wrong. Greatness is indeed a historical quality of someone, therefore, it only can be decided by the history itself.

[ Last edited by 11yaoyao on 2005-12-12 at 14:42 ]

i get all