Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Will, Necessity, Evaluation

One type of entity that is sometimes described as 'beyond good and evil' is one that functions out of Necessity, thereby precluding the possibility of choice, and, hence, precluding an occasion for evaluation. Spinoza's 'rational automaton' is construable as such an entity, as is Schopenhauer's Individual, the behavior of which is always an inevitable expression of immutable character. So, insofar as Nietzsche inherits this concept from Schopenhauer, his 'beyond good and evil' is interpretable as referring to that necessity of behavior. Now, Sartre's 'condemned to be free' thesis, while seemingly overcoming the Necessity-Freedom antithesis, still does not yield a concept of Evaluation that is compatible with Necessity, in part because of his ambivalence regarding the nature of that Freedom. For, in Nausea, Freedom is 'de trop', an absurd superfluity that provides no ground for a meaningful Axiology, while in Being and Nothingness, Freedom is a 'lack', and, hence, is no more than constrained to fill that lack. In contrast, here, Will is a principle of Excession, and, hence, is analogous to the former of Sartre's two interpretations of 'Freedom'. More generally, it is a principle of Diversification, and because 'Diversification' entails indefinite possibility, the exercise of Will is the occasion for choosing between alternatives, and, hence, of Evaluation. Furthermore, Diversification is a dimension of the general systematic Conatus of Evolvement, so the exercise of Will is an expression of the 'necessity' of personal nature. Hence, on this model, Necessity of function does not preclude significant Evaluation.

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