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.