The Rationality Of History Determined By Heroes

History determined by heroes is a sort of historical viewpoint. It is an absolutely exaggeration of individual characters in history, publicizing the idealism conception of individual hero-made history. It also holds that a minority of kings, political leaders and heroes are bestowed with extraordinary personality as "endowed ability". History determined by heroes denies the fact that general people are actually the creators of history, and diminishes general people as the passive and negative "lazy material".In the Chinese traditional society, history determined by heroes has long been a mainstream of culture and character evaluation. In accordance with the historical logic "success for the king, losers for the enemy", as long as no overall national interests, losers in political and military conflicts are rarely heard for later generations, in particular, in the process of writing the "Spring and Autumn Annals of writing" and "taboos for venerable", making those losers often hard to achieve moral appreciation.However, Xiangyu is an exception. The struggle between Chu State and Han State lasted for eight years, yet he eventually failed. As Simaqian wrote for him, a defeated general would be included in the "Discipline" and given the courtesy of the emperor which enabled him to become the first failing hero in history. Following the clues of evaluation on Xiangyu in different historical periods, we could identify the status, influence, and context of history determined by heroes in traditional culture, also explore Xiangyu's penetrating power in the socio-cultural aspect from the perspective of social psychology.In the study of history, we should conduct our problem analysis and problem solving on the basis of materialistic historical viewpoint; prevent ourselves from the mistake of history determined by heroes. However, in view of the development of social history, history determined by heroes does somewhat play an active role in pushing forward the historical development under certain time and certain circumstances. Here I try to support myself with the view of the active role history determined by heroes actually plays by using the ancient Chinese historical figure-Xiangyu. During the social transition, as the increase of the competitive pressures, a great fluctuations and maladjustment appears in the psychological aspects about social culture. Social disharmony first manifested inclusive nothing in the cultural dimension. In the traditional culture, the evaluation couldn't tolerate the losers, which focus on the result not the process. The effect is to encourage people to seek success unscrupulously. Therefore, the regulation awareness is relatively indifferent. It seems that the criticism is made on his characters from the surface and shows a pity towards Xiangyu's not accessing to the throne, however, indeed it is compliance about the concepts that one who succeeds is the king and the loser is enemy. In this sense, the failure hero image of Xiangyu in the traditional culture coincides with the social culture about criticizing a hero not on a success or failure basis that we propose today, and study the cultural connotation about the criticism on Xiangyu, which will arouse some reflection about the traditional evaluation system, restrain the abuse of the secularization and cause the multiplex changes in the culture.