Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a Victorian essayist and social critic who championed a romanticist vision of literature, society, and politics against the enlightenment, scientific, and prudential view that gradually came to dominate Victorian England. His early work introduced to a British audience German idealist and romantic philosophers and writers such as Goethe and Schiller. It is this combination of romanticism and idealism that informs his critique of society and his interpretation of literature. Carlyle's major works range over a wide number of topics: His first book is a work of philosophy (Sartor Resartus); he wrote numerous essays and commentaries, an important work of historical interpretation (The French Revolution), and a collection of lectures on the place of the heroic in society (On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History).

In Sartor Resartus, Carlyle sets out his understanding of reality as essentially spiritual rather than material and his diagnosis of society's moral misfortunes as coming from a combination of unbelief and mechanism. These messages are clothed in the literary device of a fictional German professor, "Teufelsdrockh," whose character and pronouncements capture not only Carlyle's opinion but also his sense of humor and satirical tone. Carlyle's deep misgivings concerning the calculating, pleasure-based, prudential morality of his time is best exemplified in his opposition to the doctrine of utilitarianism formulated by his one-time friend John Stuart Mill. He described Mill's utilitarian morality as "pig philosophy."

Carlyle's contribution to political theory is contained in his work on the French Revolution and in his theory of the heroic. The former contains his view of history as an essentially moral and spiritual progress, expressed in an account of the French Revolution from the execution of Louis XV to the rise of Napoleon. Here, as in the latter, Carlyle argues that history is biographical, a story about the decisions and actions of great individuals. It is not the social and economic circumstances of a people that drives history forward, but the spiritual as exemplified by heroic figures such as Napoleon and Cromwell. Toward the end of his life he argued for an elitist politics and against democracy, "which means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you." This understanding of great individuals as both moral and historical ideals prefigures Nietzsche's fuller and more sophisticated philosophy.

Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan in Scotland and attended Edinburgh University. He had an important influence on Victorian society, in particular in the areas of literature and politics. His antidemocratic views, his biographical view of history, and the rhetorical rather than argumentative character of much of his writings has diminished his attraction for contemporary scholars. Nevertheless, Carlyle remains a persuasive and articulate antienlightenment advocate.

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