Alex's theme

In my opinion, Crime and Punishment is primarily a book about suffering. However, the internal suffering that Raskolnikov endures is a direct result of the murders he committed. The most intriguing aspect of the novel (in my opinion) is the extraordinary man theory, which Raskolnikov uses to justify his violent acts. This theory states that there are two types of men in the world, ordinary and extraordinary. The extraordinary ones, like himself, are superior humans who have the right to violate the law, under certain circumstances, in order to benefit mankind. Raskolnikov’s theory even states that an extraordinary man has the right to commit murder if the act is beneficial to the less fortunate. I would really like to focus my term paper on Raskolnikov’s theory of the superhuman, which I believe is a combination of the Hegelian Superman Theory and the Nietzschean Superman Theory (I will elaborate more on these in my term paper). Part of the Ubermenshe theory that interests me is the idea that even though both Raskolnikov and Nietzsche are claiming that these "uber" and "extraordinary" men have the right to kill whoever they want, what makes these kind of people "extraordinary" in the first place? While the majority of people view Hitler as insane, others might classify him as “extraordinary” because of the way he was able to conform a massive group of followers. Obviously I will elaborate further on Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Hegel, and other theories/philosophers that contributed to Raskolnikov’s Superman theory one way or another, but this was just an initial idea for my paper. What do you guys think? I hope you like it.