Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist and social critic whose influence on Victorian intellectual life was enormous, though his legacy is deeply ambiguous. His Sartor Resartus introduced German Romanticism and idealism to English readers; his lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History argued that history is driven by great individuals—a view that proved both enormously influential and, in later hands, deeply dangerous.

Carlyle was a fierce critic of laissez-faire capitalism and the "cash nexus" that reduced all human relations to market exchange. Yet his later work became increasingly authoritarian, endorsing strong leadership and making remarks about slavery that were racist by any standard. He remains a difficult figure—a genuine moralist who tipped into reaction—whose critique of liberal individualism contains insights that have not been exhausted by his worst political conclusions.