Saturday, May 11, 2013

Comprehensiveness, Specialization, Egalitarianism

In #212 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche identifies Comprehensiveness, i. e. "wholeness in manifoldness", with "greatness", which he contrasts with the Specialization that is characteristic of a "world of 'modern ideas'", a problem that he addresses in 'Of Redemption', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, via the imagery of "inverse cripples".  But, later in #212, the contrast of Comprehensiveness is with Egalitarianism, i. e. "equality of rights", thereby suggesting, without clarification, that Specialization and Egalitarianism are systematically related.  One systematization of them is that the fragmentation that is effected by Specialization eliminates any possible commensurability between the fragments, except for the trivial one, i. e. that they are alike fragments.  In that case, they are trivially 'equal', which entails that one Specialty has as much of a 'right' as any other.  In contrast with Specialization, Comprehensiveness, as has been previously discussed, presents a criterion for the evaluation of Rights, and, thus, for Nietzsche, serves as a corrective to Egalitarianism.

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