The Heroic Heart: Greenberg v. Kagan
Editor's Note: Below are contrasting reviews on The Heroic Heart with author Tod Lindberg's response.
A Grand Meditation on Heroism
by David Greenberg
Over the last century, as expertise has become narrowly specialized, the genre of the grand meditation has gone out of style. Most scholars blanch at the thought of working through the entire history of a concept from antiquity to the present, because to write confidently on even just one era, let alone dozens, requires years of difficult study. Those who attempt these sorts of books today tend not to be professional historians but amateurs armed with just enough erudition to bluff their way through—Marxist or postmodern dissertators who gamely make any facts fit a grand theory, or belle-lettristic dilettantes cheerfully oblivious to the vast literature that they’re neglecting. Occasionally an exceptionally accomplished intellectual historian or senior political theorist pulls it off with panache—I think of Leo Braudy’s The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History—but in general, for this kind of project you must either know a tremendous amount or be prepared to pretend that you do. Read more.
Heroes and Villains
by Frederick Kagan
Heroes remain among us, as Tod Lindberg writes in his new book, The Heroic Heart. We continue to recognize and honor the traditional heroic ideal, despite a century of intellectual assault on the concept. For heroism, which Lindberg defines partly as the willingness to risk death in pursuit of a greater good, is essential to any human society. Facing enemies human, meteorological, bacterial, viral, or terrestrial, some must risk all so that others may survive. A society in which everyone looks only to his or her own welfare and refuses to sacrifice for others is doomed. Such is not even a society, in fact, but rather a collection of atomized individuals, soon to die. Read more.
Author's Response
by Tod Lindberg
Thanks to both Frederick Kagan and David Greenberg for having a go at The Heroic Heart.
Greenberg asks a good question: Who is my intended reader? Well, to anyone who finds my intentions in The Heroic Heart “admirable”—and who finds “much of value” in the book, as Greenberg does—I say, “look in the mirror, my friend.” The same goes for those who find in The Heroic Heart points with which to quarrel, as Greenberg also does. I can live with Greenberg’s descriptive adjectives “sometimes-chatty,” “didactic,” and “impressionistic,” because I think I have said some things about heroism that people will find illuminating, and done so in a way that they will find accessible and informal. I’ve been struck by all of the well-read people who have told me, after reading The Heroic Heart, that they intend to give a copy to their college-age children.
Kagan has sharpened several of my points to very good effect. My favorite: “A society in which everyone looks only to his or her own welfare and refuses to sacrifice for others is doomed. Such is not even a society, in fact, but rather a collection of atomized individuals, soon to die.” Fortunately, this is not who we are, notwithstanding the misguided attempts of many to portray us as such. Confusion on this point, though expressed differently, is common to figures as diverse as Marx and Nietzsche on the philosophical side and to Hitler and Osama bin Laden on the political. It’s a pity that they won’t be able to read The Heroic Heart. I have learned a great deal from their errors and inhumanity.
