Oldal 107 [107]
It is inconceivable to Brabantio that Desdemona should fall in
love with a Saracen, or at least that this should happen without
her being deceived into giving herself to him. But the Moor wants
the same as the Jew. Shylock expresses his hopes in The Merchant
of Venice thus:
Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer...?
(Act III, scene I)
It is as though we were hearing Antiphon speaking on equality ac¬
cording to natural law based on natural similarity: because people
have their noses, usually, under their eyes and above their mouths.
Of course, this in itself is contradictio in adjecto, because equality
does not follow from the simple fact that I have one head and two
legs, I hear with my ears, and I eat with my mouth. This was by
no means true for the Greeks, nor in the German Constitution,
for example: ,,Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich” — which
is to say that all people are equal before the law. (Grundgesetz für
Bundesrepuklik Deutschland. Art. 3. (1) (my emphasis) Not in
general, but before the law. Anyway, it is obvious that they are
not equal, certainly not in the empirical world. In the ideal world,
maybe. It is no coincidence that if the concept of equality comes up,
it is used to discuss discrimination, to describe those who deviate
from the equal, which disguises that what is really at stake is the
masses. That is why the idea of equality is so despised. Because
the person of the crowd is despised by every wise thinker. The
Sophists thought so, Nietzsche, often referred to as the modern
Sophist, even more so. As we previously quoted Plato expressing,
equality was invented by the weak, since for them it is enough to
reach that level.