Friday, August 15, 2014

Experiment, Oligarchy, Democracy

One blind-spot in Nietzsche's exhortation to Experimentalism, e. g. in Beyond Good and Evil, is the possibility of Dr. Mengele.  Now, whether or not that possibility is inherent in the concept of Experiment, in Nietzsche's case, it is independently rooted in his Oligarchical interpretation of the Will to Power as a principle of Overpowering.  In contrast, in Experimentation determined by the Will to Power qua principle of Empowerment, maximum strengthening of the Species is the aim, in the context of which no human is as disposable as any of Mengele's guinea pigs.  So, similarly rooted is another blind spot--his lack of recognition, implicit in the futural direction of that exhortation, of the innovations in Modern Political Philosophy, culminating in the experiment in Democracy of the American Founding Fathers, a century prior to Beyond Good and Evil.

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