- Five singles whose legacy lives on
Among men who have had an overwhelming impact on the course of mankind, there are many lifelong-bachelors. Of course, there have been influential married men too who have had equal, or more, effect on the world. Whether these men soared to such heights because of their marital status or in spite of it is open for debate. The Encyclopedia Britannica says about Kant that ‘as he never married, he kept the habits of his studious youth to old age.’ Bertrand Russell, who was married four times, wondered whether the author of these immortal lines was a bachelor or a married man. Leaving that debate for another day, here’s a cursory look back at five bachelors who changed the world by their work.
Jesus Christ (c. 4 BC – c. AD 30). The year of death is debatable — according to some accounts Jesus was alive till he was well into his forties. What is beyond debate is that he is the most influential bachelor of all time. How many men, after all, get to have a calendar to coincide with their birth (well, give or take an error of four years)? And how many of those calendars go on to get universally adopted? Such has been his influence that civilisations have fought over his legacy, and nationalism has kicked in on the question of who he ‘belongs’ to. It’s a pity that he predated the invention of the camera by 1,800 odd years. For in movies and portraits he is invariably depicted as a blond with blue eyes; when judging from his ancestry it is extremely unlikely he had those qualities. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jesus’s political influence on the coming centuries was ensured. Most Christians today consider him deity, Muslims revere him as a prophet, many atheists respect him as a wise, noble man. A whole industry of healers and spiritual leaders are prophesying, driving out demons, and performing ‘miracles’ in his name (charging a small fee, of course). Probably it is these ‘workers of iniquity’ that Jesus will tell on the Last Day to depart from his presence (Mathew 7:23 and Luke 13:27).
Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (810 – 870): Imam Bukhari’s never marrying ought to have shattered the myth of holy matrimony being compulsory for all Muslims. While there were some notable exceptions after him (Imams at-Tabari, Nawawi, and Ibn Taymiyya), not too many Muslims to-date have opted out. Sahih al-Bukhari (entitled ‘The abridged collection of sound reports with chains of narration going back all the way to the Prophet regarding matters pertaining to the Prophet, his practices and his times’) is the fruit of Imam Bukhari’s extensive travels and painstaking research over the best part of two decades. Enthusiastic Muslims sometimes put forward astronomical figures as the number of narrations that he is supposed to have put to his exacting standards of scrutiny before selecting a tiny fraction for his compilation. Amounting to hundreds of narrations per day, these figures are obviously incorrect. There’s no denying the exclusiveness of the book however, which is considered the most authentic by Sunni Muslims after the Quran. The book provides invaluable history of the 7th century Arabia, although there inevitably are many who try to understand the Quran in its light, when it should be the other way around. Imam Bukhari’s influence on Sunni Muslim learning right up to this day is undeniable.
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jesus’s political influence on the coming centuries was ensured
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1926): What can be said about a man for whom Alexander Pope said: ‘Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! and all was light’? When Newton wasn’t busy in discovering a law, he was worrying about the Biblical problem of the Number of the Beast; and such was his genius that after doing first-rate science and somewhat suspect theology, it still left him time and energy to mercilessly hound his enemies, as Robert Hooke found out, for instance. As a private person he was vindictive, judgmental and petty minded, but we owe much of the scientific age to his unmatched intellect.
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804): For a man who never went forty miles out of Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), Kant has had an amazingly wide influence on Western thought. He is sometimes referred to as the greatest of modern philosophers for his supposed forging of a mid-way between the Empiricist and the Rationalist streams of philosophy. He dominated the Western thought till the early part of the twentieth century, and is still influential with academic philosophers. Socrates had recommended marriage on grounds that a man would either be happy or become a philosopher, depending upon the sort of wife he got; but like other philosophers Kant proved to be not very good at following the advice of a fellow philosopher (Nietzsche, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Bentham, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein were all bachelors). By his own admission, Kant was roused from his dogmatic slumber by David Hume, who he supposedly replied to in Critique of Pure Reason, his most important work. You may therefore reasonably hold Hume responsible for Kant’s philosophy. Well, take your pick – David Hume never married either.
Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943): His genius as an inventor, engineer and futurist arguably eclipsed even that of Edison, but his lack of business acumen – some call it his good nature – prevented him from becoming more successful. Still, his influence on the modern world is immense: AC current, induction motor and remote control to name but three. In his letters he indicated his reasons for not getting married: that an ideal woman was too good for him, and the specimens he encountered in real life were way beneath him to contemplate marriage. You can’t get more logical than that! Considering that he was germophobic; feared pearls, overweight women, and ear-rings; and was obsessive-compulsive in his work habits, his decision to stay a bachelor was probably a wise one. He went on to live till 86 and kept working right till the end.
