issue36 后人评价伟人

FrostmournUID: 2179616

TOPIC: ISSUE 36 - "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
WORDS: 726          TIME: 0:43:00          DATE: 2006-8-8

Among the vicissitude of history, we can find numerous heroes and great men exerting profound influence on the future of human beings. Since one of the major concerns of history is the judgment of one individual's greatness, there is a hot debate on whether one's greatness should be judged by his/her contemporaries or those who live after them. As to this issue, I largely agree with the speaker that in many cases, those people who live in another era may better realize the greatness of individuals in history, however, I'm not to deny that sometimes contemporaries can recognize an individual better because they can observe that individual in depth.

First of all, it is common that an individual's influence is so profound and deep that it can hardly be identified during the time when that great man lives on earth. That is to say, only the people who live after him/her can really recognize his/her greatness. In the music field, Beethoven is now considered as one of the greatest musician in history, many of whose symphonies exerted profound influence upon other genre of music, and the musician himself is now merited for his outstanding talent and perseverance. However, in 18th century when Beethoven lived, he was not considered as great as today, and what's more surprising, most of his life he lived in destitution and even sometimes cannot survive without borrowing money from his friends. That is because the people live in that era failed to realize the creativity and initiative of this eminent musician, so few people was ready to pay money to listen to his music, let alone donate anything in order to better support the living of the musician. From this we can see that, when a great man’s influence is too profound that it can hardly be understood by his/her contemporaries, it is impossible for the contemporaries to correctly access the greatness of that individual.

Further, the contemporaries of an individual may not judge him/her wholly objectively, since it is inevitable that they probably judge an individual's merit by the influence that individual brings to their era, not considering the long-term influence of that individual. A case in point is that we can easily see the rapid pace of development of Japan and its power on both economic and technology. Chasing its underlying reason, we can reach a consensus that the powerful support on education by the government contribute a great deal to the skyrocket of its status on the global arena. This is largely a credit of katsurada, Premier of Japan, whose tenure is after the WW2. After the WW2, as a loser, Japan had to pay a large amount of money to compensate other countries involved, so its own economic is at the verge of collapse, and its people lived in destitution. Many politicians advocated that Japanese government should firstly concentrate on improving the quality of life of its people, however, the perspicacious Premier dismissed these advices and insisted on supporting education at all costs. The consequence didn't disappoint him: Japan experienced a significant increase in economic due to its advanced education and high-quality of its people. However, the contemporaries of the Premier complained for this program since their live was not improved. So we can conclude that the contemporaries of an individual may be confined by their own interests and therefore cannot make an objective judgment for that individual.

Nonetheless, I do not deny that in some cases the contemporaries can better access and judge an individual. For instance, we all know the legend of King Arthur, who was the leader of Romano-British, leading his people to fight against that aggression of Saxon. We modern people don't have enough records to identify the true identity of the hero in this legend, and hence cannot make a comprehensive judgment of that man. However, it is not difficult to imagine that the people live in his age can easily recognize the merit and shortcomings of Arthur since they can understand that hero in depth and detail.

To sum up, an individual's greatness can only be understated by those people who live in a later age of that individual since they can judge the merit and profound influence more objectively; while in some cases, especially the individuals lived far from our era, maybe the contemporaries can better realize the greatness and shortcomings of that individual.