Democracy, Political Structure, Political Genesis

Churchill's statement, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others", implicitly accepts the commonly held concept of Democracy as a structure of a Polity.  It thereby overlooks a different evaluation of Democracy--as a mode of political transition. Its main rivals in that regard are violence and inheritance.  Now, there appears to have never been a substantive debate over the comparative merits of those three. But, before it is taken for granted that voting would be the unanimous choice among intelligent people, at least some Conservatives seem to prefer dynastic rule, and Nietzsche and Marx are among those who are not unequivocally opposed to violent accession to power.  Such uncertainties indicate that the debate over Political Structure should not be abstracted from that over Political Genesis, two categories which Democracy, perhaps uniquely, spans.

Democracy and Hereditary Monarchy

The novelty of the American experiment, at least relative to its recent European antedecedents, is usually conceived to consist in the juxtaposition of its Democracy to their Monarchies. However, that concept does not adequately distinguish the inception of a regime from its structure.  For example, a polity in which a plebiscite chooses a ruler-for-life can be classified as both a Democracy and a Monarchy, and some executive powers of a President are unconditional, while those of a Constitutional Monarch might not be.  Instead, the novelty of the American experiment is with respect to the hereditary dimension of those polities, i. e. with respect to the inception of a regime.  In other words, a Hereditary Democracy is a contradictory notion, an antithesis that demonstrates that Democracy is primarily a mode of Political transition, rather than a Political structure.

Democracy and Experiment

The first experiment in human history, perhaps that of seeing what would happen if the fruit from a certain tree were ingested, entails two experiments--one, the specific content of the experiment, the other, the experiment qua experiment, i. e. seeing what would happen if something unprecedented were attempted, perhaps disobeying a deity.  The distinction might explain why America has been called an 'experiment'.  For, though the generally accepted reason for the latter is its Democracy, America is hardly the first Democracy in a well-documented, even in 1776, History.  Instead, what perhaps distinguishes it from its Athenian predecessor is precisely that it is an experiment, a distinction that becomes clearer as its pioneering Democracy diverges over the next few centuries from its pioneering Experimentalism, e. g. the Soviet Union, has been characterized as a 'Socialist experiment', not a Democratic one.  An aversion to experimentation per se that is deeply ingrained in American History would explain why that tradition has been much less celebrated than the other.

Experiment and Political Philosophy

The four main Modern Political Philosophies are usually considered to be the works of Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and Rousseau.  They share a general deductive structure, beginning with some principle taken to be self-evidently true, such as the Freedom of the Individual.  Thus, the American Declaration of Independence follows in this Deductive tradition.  But, if so, then America qua "experiment" is not in that tradition.  Instead, its antecedent, as Jefferson notes, is the originator of Modern Experimentalism, whose Political ideas can be found in the constitutions of several colonies, as well as in a speculative called New Atlantis, which pre-dates the recognized works of the era by at least several decades--Francis Bacon.  Like his pioneering formulation of Experimentalism, that project is completely ignored in contemporary academia, leaving Bacon best known as either a namesake of a painter, or a secret Shakespeare.  Perhaps, Experimentalism is as threatening to a status quo as is Revolution.

Genetic Engineering, Theology, Nature

There is nothing in the concept of Evolution that precludes the possibility of a divine creator of Nature.  What the concept is antithetical to are the specific Theological theses that all Nature is coeval, and that there is nothing new under the sign.  Otherwise, human experimentation is no more 'unnatural' than the unprecedented emergence of opposable thumbs.  Similarly, the modification of human genes, even if in vain or harmful, is not, as some opponents present it, inherently evil, an evaluation that expresses only a specific Theological prejudice.

Genetic Engineering, Experimentalism, Morality

According to a widely accepted narrative, the father of Modern Philosophy is Descartes, by virtue of his refusal to accept the existence of God as the foundational premise of his system, replacing it with I Think, thereby establishing both Certainty and Subjectivism as the cardinal principles of the era, with Rationalism and Empiricism as competing means to those ends.  But, according to one counter-narrative, the more radical break with the preceding Theocratism is formulated by Bacon, an Experimentalism that evokes the pre-Fall curiosity of Adam and Eve, and implicitly embraces Uncertainty. On that basis, the subsequent Empiricist tradition initiated by Locke is reactionary, as is the Rationalist one, at least until Kant, somewhat belatedly, acknowledges Bacon as an influence.  But, it is not until Nietzsche and Dewey begin to codify Experimentalism that Bacon's primogeniture begins to become overt.  In Dewey's case, that codification is formulated as a Logic, while for Nietzsche, Self-Overcoming, and, hence, Will to Power, are fundamentaly Experimentalist, as is the Morality that corresponds to them.  It is that Morality that challenges the blanket repudiation of genetic engineering as 'Ethically questionable'.

Genetic Engineering and Ethics

Nietzsche could not have anticipated the technological advances that have facilitated the possibility of genetic engineering as a means to the creation of superior humans.  However, he does anticipate one of the controversies surrounding it.  While one objection to what is now best known as a "GMO"--genetically modified organism--is that its potential harms remain inadequately diagnosed, another is more generally glossed as "Ethical questions".  But, the latter is precisely addressed by his 'Revaluation of All Values'.  For, those "questions" express a Theological orientation, often presented as absolute, according to which human Techne is conceived as a corruption of 'natural', aka created by a deity, processes.  At minimum, he refutes the Absolutism implicit in the phrase 'Ethical questions', and arguably exposes the unhealthful consequences of adherence to practices typically advocated by it.