Hegel’s World-Historical Man: Julius Caesar

Hegel says that the world-historical man is firm, decisive, and blessed with a sense of history, and through his words and deeds, he gets recognized as the great hero of his epoch. He holds Julius Caesar as an exemplar of a world-historical man. Caesar fought and conquered his rivals, and destroyed the constitution of Rome to gain a position of supremacy in Roman politics—and with such actions, Hegel says, Caesar became the world-historical man. He says that Caesar’s autocratic and violent political methods were necessary for unifying the Roman Empire and driving history in the right direction.