The Origin of Logic

There have been two main theories of the origin of 'Language'--1. It is the medium of biological, intra-species communication, or 2. It is a supernatural visitation into otherwise isolated, perhaps inert, entitities.  Correspondingly, there have been two main theories of the origin of 'Logic'--1. It is an abstraction from some patterns of 'Language', or 2. It is the supernatural, pre-Christian, Logos itself.  Now, what is often conceived as 'Logic' in contemporary Philosophy, e. g. 'Predicate Logic', conflates the two theories.  For, while it generally functions as a useful tool, e. g. to expose and clear up misleading 'ordinary Language', it is frequently simultaneously revered as sacrosanct, e. g. when it is touted as the 'essence of Philosophy'.  The resort to a Meta-language is a common response to the former being turned on the latter, i. e. to the tool being turned on the premises of its usage.

Reasoning and Insularity

Perhaps the most influential moment in the trial of Socrates is one to which Plato can only allude--the failure of Socrates to influence the jury.  For, constituting that failure is the discrepancy between the Ideal and the Real, i. e. between the validity of an argument, and its efficacy, or lack thereof.  It is also the origin of the insularity of much of the subsequent tradition, including, for example, the extraction of 'Language' from actual communication, and the Proposition from 'propositional attitudes'.  While some advocates of that insularity go so far as to insist that the aforementioned discrepancy is outside the purview of what they call 'Philosophy', critics of the withdrawal regard it as un-Socratic tacit complicity with the status quo that has trivialized the social function of Reasoning.  Similarly trivialized is Tenure, which has degenerated from the protection of innovation from ideological repression, to a career milestone tantamount to guaranteed retirement from productivity.

Philosophy, Dialogue, Monologue

One respect in which Whitehead's observation--that Philosophy has been a "series of footnotes to Plato"--is incorrect is that with a few minor exceptions, those 'footnotes' have been monological, whereas not only is the original dialogical, but the initial one reports actual events.  Now, in much of that subsequent tradition, the monologue is at least implicitly recognized to be a part of an ongoing exchange with peers, and, hence, part of a dialogue.  However, others more stridently insist that the monological 'argument' is the essential self-suficient philosophical expression, thereby tellingly implying that Socrates' courage in the face of death is extrinsic to what they consider to be 'Philosophy'.  So, perhaps the closest contemporary approximation to the Socratic/Platonic dialogue is the sometimes only ceremonial dissertation defense.  Still, the more egregious divergence from that exemplar is Heidegger's thesis that Socrates begins a 'history of the forgetting of Being', a thesis which attempts to codify the abandonment of Philosophy as a mode of social communication, a divergence that becomes two-fold with his cowardly refusal after 1945 to publicly defend his earlier writings.

Signal, Sign, Logic

While Associationism might explain the connection of Sign and Signified, it inadequately characterizes the understanding of a Signal.  For, an occurrence of the latter entails more than an expectation that something else will follow; rather, it requires actualization, and, hence, instantiation, to 'understand' a green light is to move one's car.  Thus, the adequate response to a Signal entails Reasoning, i. e. the connection of something general with am instance.  But, so, too, does referring to the family pet as "dog", on the basis of acquaintance with the definition of 'dog'.  Hence, Frege's Sense-Reference relation is one of Universal to Particular, i. e. to refer is to subsume an object under a general concept.  Thus, Logic is more than the inner structure of Language, as some interpret it.  Rather, Language functions as a middle term in an extra-linguistic process, a role that is clearer in the case of a Signal than in that of a Sign.

Symbolic Logic and the Logic of Symbols

In Logic, 'Validity' is defined as defining a certain concatenation of symbols.  Now, each of those symbols is conceived as potentially representing some range of objects.  But, that representative relation is one of Universal to Particular.  Thus, the very existence of a 'symbol' involves Reasoning that is independent of that which is characterized as 'valid'--a distinction that is at the basis of Kant's response to Hume, i. e. that there is a Reason that is independent of that which functions as a 'slave to the passions' by constructing a concatenation of means and ends.  So, 'Symbolic Logic' presupposes a Logic of Symbols that has generally gone unnoticed by Logicians, Semiologists, and Philosophers of Language.

Universal Language and Communication

Modern Philosophy of Language begins not with Frege and Russell, but two centuries earlier, with Leibniz' efforts to develop a "Universal Characteristic", i. e. a universal language, in the course of which he also pioneers Symbolic Logic, and the cross-breeding of Logic and Mathematics.  Now, as he explains in the 1677 piece 'Towards a Universal Characteristic', by means of a "universal language", it becomes "possible for people of different nations to communicate their thoughts to one another".  Implicit in that thesis is a two-fold criticism of Russell's attempt to isolate Language from Communication, i. e. his 'Propositional Attitudes' from Propositions--1. The mistaking of 'impersonal' as 'non-personal', rather than as 'universally personal'; and 2. The lack of recognition of the possibility of universal motives, e. g. the desire to communicate.  Derived from Leibniz, that challenge to Fregean-Russellian Philosophy of Language cannot be as easily dismissed as 'misologistic' as some practitioners of that technique seem to assume.

Rogative and Declarative

Russell isolates the Proposition from what he calls 'propositional attitudes', i. e. from the 'psychological' states that motivate the utterance of a proposition.  On that basis, it seems to follow that the Proposition does not reduce to the Proposal, or the Declarative sentence to the Rogatory sentence, contrary to what has been previously discussed here.  However, the very expression of thoughts in accepted symbols and structures can only be motivated by a desire to communicate them.  Hence, the very existence of a Proposition demonstrates that it is fundamentally a Proposal, and, likewise, that a Declarative sentence is essentially a Rogatory one.  So, regardless of his motives for publicly formulating it, Russell's distinction is like that of a hand from a wrist--analytically useful in some contexts, but insufficient as the basis of the thesis that a hand has autonomous existence, or of a critique of Biology. 

Rogative and Imperative

A crucial impediment to Kant's attempt to systematize Morality emerges with his discovery that even a 'categorical' Imperative does not suffice to override the essential independence from it of an addressee, prompting him to acknowledge a 'freedom of choice' in the latter that is distinct from the Rational 'freedom' that is the source of the imperative.  However, he does not go further and recognize that even a potential neutralization of the force of a Command exposes it as a Request, and, hence, likewise, an Imperative as fundamentally a Rogative.  Thus, the introduction of the latter classification has not merely grammatical significance, but Moral import, as well.

Proposal and Rogatory Sentence

While the classification of the Proposition as a 'declarative' sentence is easy, the Proposal belongs to no obvious class.  The difficulty is well-illustrated by the status of the marriage variety, which is unarguably characterizable as a 'request'.  Now, requests are conventionally classified as 'imperative' sentences, which seems inaccurate, because a request is crucially not a command, even when the latter is tempered by the 'hypothetical' qualification, or as Searle's less forceful 'directive'.  For, what is lost in those classifications is the questioning dimension of a request.  On the other hand, 'interrogative' sentences seek information, not action.  However, there is an alternative--the obscure, but precise, 'rogatory'.  Put otherwise, communication is rogatory because, regardless of content, it fundamentally seeks a response, beginning with simply being attended to, and the Proposal is the basic sentential signal.

Having Meaning and Irony

According to the Semantic theory typically characterized as 'Platonist', words 'have meaning' because they are copies of self-subsisting Forms.  However, one shortcoming of that theory is one that Plato himself would have to acknowledge--its applicability to those situations in which Socrates communicates to Plato and others meanings that are the opposite of those possessed by the words that he utters, i. e. applicability to 'irony'.  Furthermore, such examples suggest a different genesis of the attribution of Meaning to Words: 1. The 'meaning' of words is their utterer's hoped-for response from an addressee; 2. The entire scenario is generalized as--a hypothetical generic utterer, projected as using words to elicit a hoped-for response, from a hypothetical generic addressee--resulting in the meanings of those words being conceived as 'generally accepted'; and 3. The abstraction of the those words and their acquired meanings from any interpersonal, purposive context.  That Plato himself illustrates a Semantic theory different than the one typically associated with his name is, of course, ironic. 

The Meaning of 'Is' and Meta-Language

In 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star', the meaning of 'is' is 'is the same as', as opposed to 'exists', and to 'has as a property'.  However, it is unclear if that meaning is a 'Sense' or a 'Reference', and, in either case, how it can have both types of Meaning, problems that are even more urgent in the cases of its alternative meanings, neither of which is as determinate as is 'is the same as'.  Now, the seeming difficulty in resolving these problems without implicating the millennia of extra-linguistic controversies that have fueled the history of Philosophy, e. g. from Aristotelian Metaphysics to Heideggerian Ontology, presents a challenge to Fregean Philosophy of Language, which is often depicted as an autonomous enterprise.  Accordingly, the pervasive response of Fregeans is to purge 'ordinary language' of 'is' and 'exists', and where a suitable alternative is not available, e. g. 'lives', to resort to meta-linguistic re-formulation.  However, one indication that such a manoeuvre is inadequate is its susceptibility to the Heideggerian interpretation of it as an extra-linguistic 'forgetting of Being', an interpretation towards which Fregeans tend to be dismissive.  But, less easy for them to shrug off is the charge that the response is tendentious, on the grounds that it is disguised Platonism.  For, as is suggested by the survival of 'is' or 'exists' in the meta-language, e. g. 'there is an x such that . . .' the meaning of 'is' is now the eternal 'exists' of a privileged realm.  Now, a Platonic Form is both a Sense and a Reference, i. e. the Form of the Good is both the Sense and the Reference of the ordinary use of 'good'.  Likewise, it is not the case that meta-linguistic 'is' has no Meaning, but, rather, that it has one, and it is both a Sense and a Reference.  So, Fregean Philosophy of Language is not as presupposition-less as its advocates tend to portray it as.

Identity and Interchangeability

According to Kant, from the proposition 'A = B', it does not follow that 'A' and 'B' are interchangeable in that, or in any other, proposition.  So, perhaps Frege's point is that from the sentence 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star', it does not follow that 'the Morning Star' and 'the Evening Star' are interchangeable in the utterance of that, or any other, sentence.  Accordingly, what that example primarily illustrates is that 'meaning' can be equivocal, i. e. can be sometimes synonymous with 'Reference', sometimes with 'Sense', regardless of whether or not the problem further serves as the foundation of a theory of Semantics.  However, a Fregean might reject this diagnosis of the example, because it relies on the term 'interchangeable', which has a practical connotation, which is not easily accommodated in the Fregean Philosophy of Language.

Name and Reference

It is not too much of a stretch of credibility to imagine Frege sitting in a chair, gazing at a fire in front of him.  Now, if he were to hear the sound "Gottlieb" coming from behind, he might turn around, or he might ignore it.  In either case, the utterance of his name functions as a signal calling for a response.  But, because at the moment of utterance, that response is non-existent and indeterminate, "Gottlieb" has no referent.  Thus, the scenario undermines the foundation of Fregean Semantics--that names 'refer'.

Synthetic Identity Propositions

As has been previously suggested, the attribution of 'informativeness' to a Fregean 'Proposition' runs the unwanted risk of exposing it as a Proposal, the personalized, purposive context of which has been suppressed. To avoid that complication, the prototypical Fregean puzzle can be rephrased as 'How can an Identity Proposition be synthetic?', the solution to which is that its referent is one and the same, but its terms are distinct, or, equivalently, e. g. in 'A = B', 'A' and 'B' have the same 'Reference' but not the same 'Sense'.  However, the attempt to generalize the favorite examples of that theory exposes a different weakness in the model.  For, 'The red object is a spherical object', has the much less puzzling explanation that one and the same object can have two different properties attributed to it, just as 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' reduces to 'One and the same object sometimes appears in the morning, and sometimes in the evening'.  So, to further purify Fregean Philosophy of Language, i. e. by better depersonalizing its Propositions, seems to only trivialize it.

The Morning Star and the Evening Star

Fregean Philosophy of Language offers a theory of Semantics, i. e. the thesis that a Proposition has both a 'Reference' and a 'Sense', as a solution to the problem, 'How is the proposition "The Morning Star is the Evening Star" informative'?  Now, since it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the utterance of that proposition is not stilted, at best, it is equally difficult to not classify that question as what some of the school's practitioners call a 'pseudo-problem', based on an analytical contrivance, not on an exemplary case.  Regardless, that the proposition is conceived as 'informative', is a tip-off as to its implicit purposive character, and, hence, that it is an abbreviation of "Consider that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are one and the same', which might be uttered as a means to stimulating further interest in Astronomy.  Hence, the school's concept of 'Proposition' is derived from that of 'Proposal'.  Likewise, the central thesis of the doctrine, the proposition 'A Proposition has both a Reference and a Sense', abbreviates the proposal 'Consider that a Proposition has both a Reference and a Sense', which exposes the inapplicability of the thesis to discourse about it.  So, Fregean Philosophy of Language is self-falsifying, a difficulty which, as has been previously discussed, the introduction of a 'Meta-linguistic' device either confirms, or compounds, perhaps infinitely, as has been previously discussed.

Proposal, Proposition, Meaning

The meaning of a green light is for a car to go.  Similarly, the cry of a hungry baby is a signal to its mother to feed it.  More generally, an utterance is a signal, to an addressee, for a response specified by its content--to act, to speak in return, to absorb the content for future use, etc.  Furthermore, a well-articulated Signal is a Proposal.  So, a Proposition is a Proposal that has been abstracted from its interpersonal purposive context.  Similarly, the 'meaning' of a Proposition, e. g. its 'Reference' or its 'Sense', is abstracted from the Response that is meant in a Proposal, more so in the case of a Sense than in a Reference, which retains some of the components of a concrete purposeful context.  For example, if "It is raining" is a proposal to an addressee to bring an umbrella, as a proposition, its 'referent' is weather conditions concurrent with its utterance, and its 'sense' is presumably general to all such utterances.  So, as a Proposal is de-personalized into a Proposition, the concept of 'Meaning' is abstracted from it original concrete practical character in Communication as the execution of what is proposed, an abstraction that is codified in Platonistic Philosophy of Language, pioneered by Frege.  Dewey, notably, in works such as Logic:Theory of Inquiry, typically ignored by many practitioners of the Fregean tradition, re-grounds Language in Communication, but without doing likewise to Sign in Signal, or to Proposition in Proposal.

Communication and Meaning

Perhaps the most primitive occurrence of Communication is a baby crying to its mother out of hunger.  So, the context is fundamentally causal, i. e. the baby cries in an attempt to effect its getting fed.  Now, since a 'sign' is typically correlated with some co-existent that it represents, the rubric mis-characterizes the crying, which seeks something not yet existing.  Instead, 'signal' is the more accurate characterization of the crying, with respect to which the mother feeding the baby is a subsequent 'response'.  Thus, in this example, 1) Communication occurs in a causal context; 2) 'Meaning' in Communication is primarily a relation between a Signal and a Response; and 3) that relation is diachronic.  So, it is only upon further abstraction that a Signal is converted into a Sign, the meaning of which is a contemporaneous object, e. g. the proposition 'The baby is hungry'.

Communication, Language, Meta-Language

Insofar as Philosophy is a mode of Communication, and a study requires distance from its object, a Philosophy of Communication is problematic.  Unhelpful to such a project is a device employed in seemingly similar enterprises--the 'Meta-Language'.  For, while the 'meta-' might suffice to connote distance, 'Language' is an inert abstraction from 'Communication', e. g. typically a representation of the Vocabulary and the Grammatical patterns of the latter, which distance alone does not reanimate.  Indeed, that shortcoming afflicts those contexts in which the device is most frequently used--many varieties of 'Philosophy of Language', as evidenced by the susceptibility of the involved 'meta-language' to infinite further objectification, i. e. to a 'meta-meta-language', etc.  So, the Philosophy of Language, as typically conceived, is an inadequate exemplar for a Philosophy of Communication, and, may be less sound an enterprise than its practitioners seem to appreciate.

Communication, Privatization, Language

Modern Philosophy goes astray from the outset.  What Descartes is doing at the beginning of his Meditations is not sitting in a chair, gazing at a fire, as he describes it, but, quite plainly, sitting at a desk, and writing.  So, if he had conducted his search for Certainty more rigorously, he might have arrived at the discovery that "I am writing this" must be true whenever it occurs.  Accordingly, his foundation would be "I write, therefore I am".  Analogously, Locke's original tabula rasa is not the locus of Secondary Qualities, as he proposes, but the surface on which he inscribes the words "tabula rasa".  Now, from that axiom, Descartes could have proceded to classify Writing as a species of Communication, and then argue that his self-evident ability to write proves the existence of others, which demonstrates that his concept of Meditation is an inherently social procedure.  On that basis, the sundering of the 'I' from that procedure is exposed as privatizing Philosophy, and as concomitantly abstracting 'language' from Communication, and reifying it.  So, his Meditations begin as a portrayal of Descartes as Humpty Dumpty jumping, with respect to which the more recent 'private language argument' is one more problem for king's horses and king's men.

Will to Power, Writing, Communication, Analytic Philosophy

The Will to Power appears in Nietzsche's oeuvre variously as a theory, a principle, and a doctrine, but, it functions primarily for him as a method of interpretation.  Its implementation consists in a harbinger of what later comes to be called 'psychoanalysis', in which any event is conceived as a product of the motives that generate it.  Consequently, the fundamental locus of the evaluation of an event is its generating motives, so that, two apparently identical events, e. g. two uses of the term 'good', can be distinguished  on the basis of their contrasting motivations, e. g. strength vs. weakness.  Now, unexplored by Nietzsche is one of the more general implications of the method--that encountered, seemingly fixed, entities, are the products of a process of generation, a significant example of which are books.  The Will to Power is thus a reminder, perhaps discomforting to some, that most of what is categorized as 'Philosophy' is written, so, is generated by a process of writing, and, hence, is, fundamentally, a mode of Communication.  In other words, Writing as an artifact encourages the abstraction, from the communicative context, the reification of analytical procedures such as 'theory', 'language', and 'logic', not to mention, 'philosophy' itself, thereby facilitating the reduction of Communication to 'Language', and the study of it to a 'Philosophical Theory', the criterion of which is 'Logic'.  So, one unexamined premise in much of what these days appears under the Analytic Philosophy rubric of 'Philosophy of Language' is not its content, but, the pretension of some of its practitioners that it is a privileged self-subsistent entity, rather than a useful tool.  Likewise, it may be to avoid self-examination that some Analytic Philosophers are dismissive of Nietzsche.

Will to Power and Communication

Given that Nietzsche is a prolific writer who is rarely shy about challenging entrenched dogma, it is surprising to read his assertion that "We 'free spirits' are not exactly the most communicative spirits", in Beyond good and Evil #44.  Perhaps he is here alluding to his advocacy of Miscegenation, a far-sighted, provocative, concrete proposal that he withholds from his official publications.  In any case, also unclear from the passage is his concept of 'Communication'.  Now, on the basis of his Will to Power principle, Communication can be classified as either a medium of Empowerment, e. g. as benefiting others, or as one of Overpowering, e. g. as manipulating others.  In contrast, not easily reducible to either of these varieties is the concept of it expressed in 'The Convalescent' section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra--"Are words . . . not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated".  Implicit there is a concept of Communication that evokes some of the early passages of Birth of Tragedy--a means to fellowship, a process which seems to have no clear translation into a Will to Power doctrine.  That it is a concept cherished by a 'convalescent' raises the question of how much of that doctrine is an expression of illness.

Eugenics, Experimentation, Affirmation

A revaluation of all values, on the basis of the Will to Power, might recast Eugenics, from as 'tampering with Nature', or as 'defying God', to the noble enterprise of the generating of superior beings.  However, it is unclear if that transvaluation adequately anticipates the challenge presented by what Mengele and his associates epitomize.  Now, the history of admired self-sacrifice, in the name of a higher good, evinces that what in such experiments horrifies is not necessarily their content, but the fact that participation in them is involuntary.  Correspondingly, Nietzsche seems to implicitly endorse such practices in many of his uses of the term 'slave'.  However, that implication is not necessarily inherent in the doctrine of the Will to Power, itself, which, as the promotion of maximal Power, entails maximal voluntarism, but seems to derive only from Nietzsche's articulation of it as a 'Will to Overpowering' doctrine.  So, the better defense of Eugenics, and of Experimentalism, requires the further condition of the universal affirmation of participation, a modification that is not clearly one that Nietzsche would embrace.

Eugenics, Miscegenation, Evaluation

Possibly unbeknownst to Nietzsche is the contemporaneous emergence in England, inspired by the insights of Mendel and Darwin, of the 'Eugenics' movement. Now, since the latter promotes selective breeding, Nietzsche's advocacy of Miscegenation can be classified as 'Eugenicist'.  Conversely, that association can benefit the latter--its goal, which is vulnerable to the charge of 'tampering', either with the 'will of God', or with 'Nature', is revalued in Nietzsche's doctrine as 'good'.  Accordingly, his 'philosophy of the future' may be more present than he realizes.

Miscegenation and Master Race

In #13 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche warns against "superfluous teleological principles".  However, in #960 of the Will to Power collection, he does not heed his own warning.  For, there, he advocates Miscegenation as a means to the production of a "master race", which entails both 1. superior beings, and 2. beings, who, by virtue of their superiority, would be "masters of the earth", i. e. would "work as artists" upon inferior beings.  So, #2 is a superfluous teleological principle, not only in the specific context, but with respect to the dynamic of Self-Overcoming that constitutes the Will to Power, in general.  Furthermore, beyond mere logical superfluity, the seeking, by a being, of a being that would not only be superior to it, but its 'master', as well, seems difficult to not classify as the yearning of a 'slave', a classification that is equally difficult to reconcile with most of the rest Nietzsche's doctrine.  Instead, more consistent with the concept of Self-Overcoming is the thesis that the fundamental concern of those superior products of Miscegenation would be to, in turn, continue the ascent, via procedures that are likely unforeseeable two stages in advance.

Will to Power, Reflection, Miscegenation, Pragmatism

In #36 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche derives the Will to Power as a general principle from its original formulation as a Psychological hypothesis.  However, the passage leaves unexamined how the principle applies to his discovery of it, a moment which some characterize as 'Reflection'.  Instead, such a concept of Reflection can be derived from his later advocacy of Miscegenation.  For, deliberate interbreeding, as a means to the generation of superior beings, harnesses the Will to Power qua the procreative drive.  Thus, the advocacy of Miscegenation is a manifestation of the overcoming of Self-Overcoming, and, hence, of the Will to Power as applied to itself.  But, that harnessing is constituted by the implementation of a theory.  Thus, the Will to Power concept of Reflection can be classified as 'Pragmatist'.

Procreation, Dionysus, Bacchus

It is unclear from the brief allusions to Bacchus in Birth of Tragedy if Nietzsche would agree with the equivalence of it and Dionysus that some seem to accept.  One reason that he would not is that his Dionysian principle, like Schopenhauer's Will to Live from which it is derived, represents fundamentally the procreative drive, which is why the focus in BT is on its rhythm of the dissolution of, and the re-formation of, individuals.  In contrast, 'Bacchanalian' typically connotes mere drunkenness.  So, while the concept 'drunken orgy' can be classified as both 'Dionysian' and 'Bacchanalian', 'orgy' is essential to the former, while 'drunken' is essential to the latter.  Thus, the conflation of the two tends to abstract gratuitous individual fun from what for Nietzsche in BT is a metaphysically significant overwhelming of an individual by the species drive that first produced it.

Dionysian, Will to Power, Miscegenation

Like Schopenhauer's Will to Live principle, Nietzsche' Dionysian principle is a representation of the Procreative drive.  So, too, is his Will to Power, with the significant variation that the drive is conceived as ascending, not as merely preserving.  Accordingly, while Schopenhauer interprets the self-consciousness of Procreation as a moment of self-neutralization, Nietzsche conceives it as one of further ascent, the result of which is Miscegenation, which initiates the next stage.  So, Miscegenation completes the arc of his philosophical development--from the Dionysian, to the Will to Power, to the deliberate harnessing of Procreation, as a means to the generation of yet more superior humans.

Miscegenation and Inbreeding

Miscegenation can be conceived as a potential means to Peace, i. e. via the dissolution of entrenched enmity.  In contrast, Nietzsche's advocacy of it, in #960 of the Will to Power collection, is based on its Eugenic value.  Common to both construals is the diagnosis that Inbreeding is a weakness, an ill that can be generalized from that obtaining in the more widely recognized, often tabooed, blood variety, to that of any division, e. g. ethnic, religious, geographic, etc.  So, proponents of 'racial purity' would be mistaken in claiming themselves to be 'Nietzscheans' in that regard. 

Democracy and Genetic Engineering

Even though American Democracy has been characterized by some as an 'experiment', Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil #44, is not impressed with it.  In contrast, a better indication of the kind of political experiment that does appeal to him is alluded to in #960 of the Will to Power collection: "the production of international racial unions whose task will be to rear a master race . . . a kind of higher man, who, thanks, to their superiority . . . employ democratic Europe . . . to work as artists upon 'man' himself' . . . politics will have a different meaning."  The interbreeding that he proposes, which anticipates what has come to be known as 'genetic engineering', combines some of the cardinal features of his doctrine--it is an experimental procedure that is rooted in the Will to Power, is guided by Master Morality, and, as unprecedented, is 'of the future'.  It also clarifies his dissatisfaction with Democracy, while, notably, it unequivocally debunks the racist pretensions of the Fascist version of the 'master race'.

Democracy and Family Values

The phrase 'Family Values' these days typically refers to a Moral arrangement constituted by a strong father, a compliant wife, and obedient children.  While a staple of Conservative rhetoric, a Liberal variation of it has been urged by Lakoff, which he classifies as encoding 'maternal' values, consisting in a 'nurturing' relation between Government and Citizenry.  However, that alternative is as inappropriate to a Democracy as is what it opposes--they each connote a Parent-Child representation of what is presumably a system of self-rule.  Furthermore, since, as Hegel, via Kant, argues, Political and Moral relations are autonomously constructed, they are falsified by the representation of their terms as 'brothers' and/or 'sisters', each of which is a connection that is involuntarily given.  So, the concept of Family Values, in any of its permutations, is antithetical to that of Democracy.

Power, Parent, Child

Indirectly implied in the concept of Genealogy is a hierarchical relation that is more concretely fundamental than that of Master-Slave--Parent-Child, which plainly contrasts strength and weakness, independence and dependence.  Indications of the pervasive cultural influence of this relation include phrases such as 'God the father' and 'Mother Earth', as well as concepts such as Patriarchy and Matriarchy.  Now, by not recognizing this most basic of natural power relations, Nietzsche fails to decisively distinguish the hierarchies that he does endorse from those of the philosophies of the past.  More specifically crucial, that inattention undercuts his image of the "child", from the 'Of the Three Metamorphoses', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a metaphor that sentimentally abstracts 'innocent creativity' from the actuality of powerless dependence.