No Humpty Dumpty

According to one prominent theological system, by virtue of merely being born, every human is a sinner, because of the actions of their original ancestors. While there are many who distance themselves from the specifics of this cosmogony, its vestigial influence is to this day discernible in many spheres of everyday life. What reinforces the staying power of that story is that its general pattern is chronic and prevalent throughout all cultures. That pattern begins with some perfect condition, which is then destabilized by a massive fragmentation, a 'fall' into multiplicity, such that it could be called the 'Humpty Dumpty Genesis'. Under those conditions, the task for humanity can be nothing other than one of making like all the king's horses and all the king's men, etc. Likewise, Philosophy for the most part has treated the particularity of a human being as a problem that needs to be resolved, the solution of which is formulated in Ethics or Political Philosophy. The philosophers, notably Descartes, Fichte, and Kierkegaard, who have attempted to buck that tradition by positing the individual human as the starting point of their systems, merely duck the question of the ontological status of the individual qua product of an original diversification. Instead, the most serious challenge hitherto to this Humpty Dumpty tradition comes from some branches of Darwinism, in which some humans serve a progressive function, by being the bearers of traits that conduce to the survival of the species in general. Now, that constructive role of particular humans is played only by select ones, in contrast with what my System proposes, namely, that particularity per se is an essential phase in the Evolvemental process. To Evolve is to increase in Complexity, which entails an increase in Multiplicity without loss of Unity. Hence, Multiplicity, and the particular humans that constitute it, have progressive value.