The Great

I was pondering one of the things that was discussed in class earlier this week and began trying to get down to a conclusion of some sort. The question seemed easy at first, but then I began to struggle with the reality of it more and more as time passed. In talking about literature, a contradiction was posed asking whether or not a great piece of literature could exist without anyone who liked it. My initial reaction was to dismiss it immediately, that it was simply just silly that such a thing would be unanswerable, for I was thinking from the perspective of "liking" meaning specifically that it was read, not that it was thought to be good. I did not realize that the reality of "great" could very well mean great in a terrible way, and this is where I began thinking.

Despite the fact that it may be terrible in nature does not necessarily qualify it as unlikeable, but I could only phrase this in metaphor. Consider, if you will Hitler, a person that everyone in the world hated for his brutality. Even though he was very much the boon of the happiness of so many, and so greatly hated, there are still people who liked and appreciated his "greatness" even though it was a dark great in nature. Thus it is my conclusion that even if almost everyone on earth did not like something, admitting that it remained great, I believe that it would at this point be statistically impossible that someone didn't like it... But I suppose that would be something fun to try and prove wrong.