Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Evaluation, Measurement, Relativism, Subjectivism

'Relativism', according to which the locus of a value is an individual, is not to be confused with 'Subjectivism', according to which the individual is the only one qualified to determine its values, i. e. the former denies that one necessarily is the best judge of what is good for oneself.  Now, the grammatical subject of 'Man is the measure of all things', is not an individual man, so Protagoras' dictum is not easily classifiable as either 'Relativist' or 'Subjectivist'.  Instead, it expresses the thesis that values are indigenous to the human race, i. e. they have no independent existence--cosmological, ontological, metaphysical, supernatural, etc.  So, Nietzsche can be interpreted as continuing the Protagorean tradition, by providing the act of measurement with a ground, i. e. the Will to Power, which is the source of the criteria of evaluations.  In its implementation, the Will to Power is Relativist, but not Subjectivist, i. e. what is 'good' for a strong person is not necessarily what is 'good' for a weak one, while such weakness disqualifies the latter as a worthy evaluator of anything, starting with their own 'good'.  However, Protagoras might argue that Nietzsche overreaches, perhaps when extending the Will to Power as an explanatory principle of all biological phenomena, and certainly as one of mechanical events.

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