Issue36 Ares第四次作业

veinardUID: 2195006

ISSUE36 - "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."

When referring to the greatness of individuals, we are often predominated with the great people in the past. Seen from this prospective, the speaker's view makes sense to a relatively great extent, but he neglects that sometimes the greatness of individuals can also be decided by their contemporaries.

In history, a lot of people failed to get merited recognition by their contemporaries. Yet their ideas or activities, which had transcended the understanding of average at that time and thus been tarnished, distained and buried, finally been discovered and enriched by their descendants. Prodigies often could not receive contemporary appreciation and comprehension. Van Gogh, two of whose paintings have recently broken all records in selling for $50 million, sold only one of his paintings in his entire career. The impressionism created by him was accepted many years after he died. Emily Bronte, a British novelist and poet, best remembered for her one novel--Wuthering Heights, an acknowledge classic of English literature. But it received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was not recognized until forty years later. Such revaluation just proves that these outstanding individuals were too great to appraise for their contemporaries.

In fact, maybe time is the best judgment to decide individuals’ greatness since the ultimate correctness of some idea is out of reach or whether it brings about benefits is still unknown for the contemporaries. On one hand, in some cases the great achievement is not recognizable immediately. Consider Henry Ford’s assembly-line approach to manufacturing affordable cars for masses. Even Ford could not have predicated the impact his innovation would have on the American economy and the modern world. On the other hand, as time goes by, the actual value of the ideas and activities of a great individual have worn out, but their influence and effect in other aspects still exist. Some theories of Aristotle have been proved to be wrong or have flaws, but his wisdom and spirit is still irradiant and his greatness is indubitably significant. Even Newton's theory has been shaked by Einstein as only approximate to limited fragment. But no for these marvelous people who paved the way for those who following them, we will not able to stand where we are today.

However, there are also many people whose greatness has been identified by their contemporaries since the value or achievements they have attained are very apparent. Picasso gained great fame in life, which Van Gogh had not been able to enjoy during his short and misery life. Mark Twain became the best-selling author and household name even in his lifetime. The most prominent example is Bill Gates, who is largely responsible to for lifting America technology out of the doldrums during the 1970s to restore America to the states of ecnomic and technological leader of the world. Such contribution is readily recognizable in the contemporary time.

In sum, the greatness of individuals is mostly decided by those who lived after them, because great achievement often cannot be confirmed without the benefits of historical perspective. But we should not ignore that there are also many great individuals can be broadly recognized as great even during their life time. Therefore, whether the greatness of individuals can be decided by their contemporaries or not should be on a case-by-case basis varying with individual and time conditions.

baihe1988UID: 2203505

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