/lit/ - Literature

A good beginning point would be to differentiate the hero and the great man, and also the last man and the golden-souled man. Plato already gives us much of the image for this, and Jünger in his study of history and myth. One may say that there is also a demigod figure which precedes the heroic, those who are not divided by worlds, by life and death, as the heroes are, and which we see in the Dioscuri.
The heroes only become demigods, their humanity elevated against the gods, whereas the preheroic exist almost anonymously, at great peace with the gods, the world, their own people, and the utmost violence of the law. There is no need to defend the golden-souled people, they live in abundance and without need of labour - what is a great man to them? They all surpass him, as the lesson of Diogenes and Alexander teaches us, in a world impoverished and falling to the shadows. Jünger says something similar in regards to Hercules, at his birth we already approach the falling world which is without end. He is closer to the image of the worker than the anonymous man of prehistory who lives beyond the laws of the shadows, and fear of the underworld. Celebration of death may even be beyond him, and one can imagine that he lives much as Er, the Waters of Lethe having no effect on him.