crime and punishment

Downfall of Superman
In the novel Crime and Punishment, the so-called "extraordinary man" theory plays an important role. Raskolnikov, downtrodden, and psychologically battered, believes himself to be exempt from the laws of ordinary men. It is this creedo that makes him believe he has the right to murder Alyona Ivanovna.

In the nineteenth century, the extraordinary man theory was widely popular. There were two main schools of thought on the subject, the proponents of which were the philosophers Georg Hegel and Freiderich Neitzsche. Both philosophers believed that there were a certain, select, handful of extraordinary people in the world. Both believed that these extraordinary people were above the laws of ordinary men and did not have to submit to their moral code. However, these philosophers disagreed on the motivation of the extraordinary man. Hegel believed that the "superman" could ignore the laws as long as his actions benefited the race of man as a whole. On the o...