XI
THE HERO AND DEMOCRACY
If the hero is defined as an event-making individual who redetermines the course of history, it follows at once that a democratic community must be eternally on guard against him.
This simple, and to some unwelcome, conclusion is involved in the very conception of a democratic society. For in such a society leadership cannot arrogate to itself heroic power. At legally determined intervals government must draw its sanction from the freely given consent of the governed. And so long as that consent is freely given, that is, after the opposition has been heard, the policy or action agreed upon becomes the one for which the community is responsible, even though the leadership may have initiated it.[1]
The problem of leadership in a democracy is highly complex. Its importance warrants further clarification. Our reflections in this chapter, as distinct from the others, will be normative. They will involve judgments of value concerning democracy and democracy’s good.
An old Chinese proverb tells us “the great man is a public misfortune.” The sentiment aptly expresses the experience and wisdom of a peace-loving race. Were the victims of great men’s glory to speak, not only in China but almost anywhere, they would echo this homely judgment with sighs and tears and curses. For on the whole, heroes in history have carved out their paths of greatness by wars, conquests, revolutions, and holy crusades.
And yet this Chinese proverb epitomizes only past history, and not all of that. A great man may sometimes be a public fortune. His absence is far from being a sign that we shall be spared great misfortunes. Indeed, in face of calamity the people pray for a deliverer. Among the calamities they pray to be delivered from may be the rule of an earlier deliverer. If we were to conclude from the evil things great men have done that their
- ↑ For further amplification of the meaning of “freely given consent,” see Chapter Thirteen of my Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy, New York, 1941; also “The Philosophical Presuppositions of Democracy,” Ethics, April, 1942.
