[Drlee]

Its too easy to try to tease them out from history. Lord Nelson comes to mind.

As Quetzalcoatl points out, the majority of them found themselves left standing... pointed to themselves and said, "who, me?"... and did the best they could.

But who actually took it upon themselves to conceive of a historical change, engineer that change and then make it happen? Hitler is an obvious choice.

Thomas Edison. Standford Flemming. Carl Linnaeus.

Qin Shi Huang and Joseph II.

Hmmmmm

[Thunderhawk]

What was 'ubermensch' about Richard the Lionheart? Rebelled twice, both times unsuccessfully, against his father (but only with relatives' help - including his mother - how embarrassing is it that you need your mother to try rebel, and you don't succeed even then?). Went off on a crusade, in which he had to negotiate a peace treaty to end it, rather than winning outright; got captured and had to be ransomed on the way back; and then had to spend time putting down rebellions - during one of which he was killed by a common archer. He died of gangrene.

He's nowhere near the most ubermenschy of the English kings, let alone the world.

I would call his action in the Levant rather impressive given what he had and what was opposed to him (both enemies and allies). The weak(er) working to undermine the superman is expected and the norm.. or some such (its been a while since I read Beyond Good and Evil). His lack of success and outright failures elsewhere is why I put him in a Perhaps category.

[Dagoth Ur]

Jesus of Nazareth is not an overman, by definition. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"? Really?

I don't remember anyone fighting any Crusades for Old Cecil. Jesus is like Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you strike him down he will be more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

I would call his action in the Levant rather impressive given what he had and what was opposed to him (both enemies and allies). The weak(er) working to undermine the superman is expected and the norm.. or some such (its been a while since I read Beyond Good and Evil). His lack of success and outright failures elsewhere is why I put him in a Perhaps category.

He wasn't even the most successful crusader. The leaders of the First Crusade actually captured Jerusalem, and set up a kingdom. Richard retook some coastal cities, but had to agree to leave Saladin in control of Jerusalem.

To the names given so far, I'd add Qin Shi Huang (first true Emperor of China), Charlemagne and Timur.

[annatar1914]

That is an epic troll move!

Jesus of Nazareth is not an overman, by definition. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"? Really?

I appreciate the props, but....

Not a 'troll move' at all, because (and consider my words carefully), He (Jesus of Nazareth) said it, and it has been accepted by many. He claimed to be God, and to be in a position to assure the Meek that they indeed, by His Almighty Power, would truly inherit the earth.

That's 'Superhuman', by definition, whether true or false in reality.

[Brother of Karl]

A thought experiment.

You have access to a machine that allows you to access the past, make a specific change, and view the result as a branching timeline. As a controlled experiment you decide to choose specific "great men" to strangle at birth. Julius Caesar, for example, or whoever suits your fancy.

What would the cognate world you create be like? Excluding obvious minor differences of personalities, what would be the change in the general tenor of life?

I hypothesize that the great arc of history would be unchanged. It is forces that shape our world more than personalities; the longer your time perspective, the more character effects recede and forces loom large. We are persons, therefore we have a built-in cognitive bias in favor of personalities. We build a story, a narrative or history that enables us to understand our world; these narratives are built on characters, because a narrative built on impersonal forces would be boring.

Great men are at their core interchangeable. Biology constantly throws them up, like sperm. Most of the time they go to waste, because history has no place for them. US Grant is a perfect example; he was a failure in every aspect of life until an accident of history put him at the right place at the right time.

Perhaps in the case of great scientists and thinkers, you have a point. Every major discovery happens at some time after the necessary intellectual or technological groundwork has been laid before it. As Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Likewise, by the time Darwin published The Origin of Species, there were many theories of evolution already floating around, although most of them were wrong. However, at least one other person came up with the idea of natural selection by means of genetic variation before Darwin published. The discipline of biology simply had the necessary groundwork laid for the idea of natural selection to not only be discovered (I suspect that it may have been hypothesized by many individuals for many centuries), but to catch on in a big way.

In the case of powerful leaders, perhaps the differences they make are more significant. What if Constantine had never been born, and another leader picked a different religion over Christianity? Perhaps the Roman leaders would have morphed that religion into something with rules similar to Christianity for the same purposes. Perhaps not.

[R_G]

Jim Thorpe. I'm not kidding. An all-time athlete is absolutely an example of this.