Genealogy (philosophy)

Last updated

In philosophy, genealogy is a historical technique in which one questions the commonly understood emergence of various philosophical and social beliefs by attempting to account for the scope, breadth, or totality of discourse, thus extending the possibility of analysis. Moreover, a genealogy often attempts to look beyond the discourse in question toward the conditions of their possibility (particularly in Michel Foucault's genealogies). It has been developed as a continuation of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Genealogy is opposed to the Marxist use of ideology to explain the totality of historical discourse within the time period in question by focusing on a singular or dominant discourse (ideology).

Contents

For example, tracking the lineages of a concept such as 'globalization' can be called a 'genealogy' to the extent that the concept is located in its changing constitutive setting. [1] This entails not just documenting its changing meaning (etymology) but the social basis of its changing meaning.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche criticized "the genealogists" in On the Genealogy of Morals and proposed the use of a historic philosophy to critique modern morality by supposing that it developed into its current form through power relations. However, scholars note that he emphasizes that, rather than being purely necessary developments of power relations, these developments are to be exposed as at least partially contingent, the upshot being that the present conception of morality could always have been constituted otherwise. [2] Even though the philosophy of Nietzsche has been characterized as genealogy, he only uses the term in On the Genealogy of Morals. The later philosophy that has been influenced by Nietzsche, and which is commonly described as genealogy, shares several fundamental aspects of Nietzschean philosophical insight. Nietzschean historic philosophy has been described as "a consideration of oppositional tactics" that embraces, as opposed to forecloses, the conflict between philosophical and historical accounts. [3]

Foucault

In the late twentieth century, Michel Foucault expanded the concept of genealogy into a counter-history of the position of the subject which traces the development of people and societies through history. [4] His genealogy of the subject accounts "for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of objects, and so on, without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history." [5]

As Foucault discussed in his essay "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", Foucault's ideas of genealogy were greatly influenced by the work that Nietzsche had done on the development of morals through power. Foucault also describes genealogy as a particular investigation into those elements which "we tend to feel [are] without history". [6] This would include things such as sexuality, and other elements of everyday life. Genealogy is not the search for origins, and is not the construction of a linear development. Instead, it seeks to show the plural and sometimes contradictory past that reveals traces of the influence that power has had on truth.

As one of the important theories of Michel Foucault, genealogy deconstructs truth, arguing that truth is, more often than not, discovered by chance, backed up by the operation of Power/knowledge or the consideration of interest. Furthermore, all truths are questionable. Pointing out the unreliability of truth, which is often accused of "having a tendency of relativity and nihilism",[ citation needed ] the theory flatly refuses the uniformity and regularity of history, emphasizing the irregularity and inconstancy of truth and toppling the notion that history progresses in a linear order.

The practice of genealogy is also closely linked to what Foucault called the "archaeological method":

In short, it seems that from the empirical observability for us of an ensemble to its historical acceptability, to the very period of time in which it is actually observable, the analysis goes by way of the knowledge-power nexus, supporting it, recouping it at the point where it is accepted, moving toward what makes it acceptable, of course, not in general, but only where it is accepted. This is what can be characterized as recouping it in its positivity. Here, then, is a type of procedure, which, unconcerned with legitimizing and consequently excluding the fundamental point of view of the law, runs through the cycle of positivity by proceeding from the fact of acceptance to the system of acceptability analyzed through the knowledge-power interplay. Let us say that this is, approximately, the archaeological level [of analysis]. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

Egoism is a philosophy concerned with the role of the self, or ego, as the motivation and goal of one's own action. Different theories of egoism encompass a range of disparate ideas and can generally be categorized into descriptive or normative forms. That is, they may be interested in either describing that people do act in self-interest or prescribing that they should. Other definitions of egoism may instead emphasise action according to one's will rather than one's self-interest, and furthermore posit that this is a truer sense of egoism.

Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan Turgenev and more specifically by his character Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.

Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts like différance, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives", univocity of being, and epistemic certainty. Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. Many postmodernists appear to deny that an objective reality exists, and appear to deny that there are objective moral values.

Truth or verity is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discourse</span> Field of theory which examines elements of conversation

Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following pioneering work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our world experience. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics. In these expressions, ' denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michel Foucault</span> French philosopher (1926–1984)

Paul-Michel Foucault was a French historian of ideas and philosopher who also served as an author, literary critic, political activist, and teacher. Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships between power versus knowledge and liberty, and he analyzed how they are used as a form of social control through multiple institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels and sought to critique authority without limits on himself. His thought has influenced academics within a large number of contrasting areas of study, with this especially including those working in anthropology, communication studies, criminology, cultural studies, feminism, literary theory, psychology, and sociology. His efforts against homophobia and racial prejudice as well as against other ideological doctrines have also shaped research into critical theory and Marxism–Leninism alongside other topics.

<i>The History of Sexuality</i> Four-volume book by Michel Foucault

The History of Sexuality is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and separate sphere of life and argues that the notion that every individual has a sexuality is a relatively recent development in Western societies. The first volume, The Will to Knowledge, was first published in 1976; an English translation appeared in 1978. The Use of Pleasure, and The Care of the Self, were published in 1984. The fourth volume, Confessions of the Flesh, was published posthumously in 2018.

In philosophy, episteme is knowledge or understanding. The term epistemology is derived from episteme.

Perspectivism is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism does not regard all perspectives and interpretations as being of equal truth or value, it holds that no one has access to an absolute view of the world cut off from perspective. Instead, all such viewing occurs from some point of view which in turn affects how things are perceived. Rather than attempt to determine truth by correspondence to things outside any perspective, perspectivism thus generally seeks to determine truth by comparing and evaluating perspectives among themselves. Perspectivism may be regarded as an early form of epistemological pluralism, though in some accounts includes treatment of value theory, moral psychology, and realist metaphysics.

Hans D. Sluga is a German philosopher who spent most of his career as professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Sluga teaches and writes on topics in the history of analytic philosophy, the history of continental philosophy, as well as on political theory, and ancient philosophy in Greece and China. He has been particularly influenced by the thought of Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault.

Discontinuity and continuity according to Michel Foucault reflect the flow of history and the fact that some "things are no longer perceived, described, expressed, characterised, classified, and known in the same way" from one era to the next. (1994).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antihumanism</span> Philosophical and social theory, critical of traditional humanism

In social theory and philosophy, antihumanism or anti-humanism is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism, traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition. Central to antihumanism is the view that philosophical anthropology and its concepts of "human nature", "man" or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative, ideological or metaphysical.

<i>The Order of Things</i> 1966 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences is a book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumptions, ways of thinking, which determine what is truth and what is acceptable discourse about a subject, by delineating the origins of biology, economics, and linguistics. The introduction to the origins of the human sciences begins with detailed, forensic analyses and discussion of the complex networks of sightlines, hidden-ness, and representation that exist in the group painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. Foucault's application of the analyses shows the structural parallels in the similar developments in perception that occurred in researchers' ways of seeing the subject in the human sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apollonian and Dionysian</span> Terms representing a dialectic between rationality and emotion

The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, though the terms had already been in use prior to this, such as in the writings of poet Friedrich Hölderlin, historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and others. The word Dionysian occurs as early as 1608 in Edward Topsell's zoological treatise The History of Serpents. The concept has since been widely invoked and discussed within Western philosophy and literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche</span>

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) developed his philosophy during the late 19th century. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and said that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers that he respected, dedicating to him his essay Schopenhauer als Erzieher, published in 1874 as one of his Untimely Meditations.

<i>The Birth of the Clinic</i> 1963 book by Michel Foucault

The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, by Michel Foucault, presents the development of la clinique, the teaching hospital, as a medical institution, identifies and describes the concept of Le regard médical, and the epistemic re-organisation of the research structures of medicine in the production of medical knowledge, at the end of the eighteenth century. Although originally limited to the academic discourses of post-modernism and post-structuralism, the medical gaze term is used in graduate medicine and social work.

<i>The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity</i> 1985 book by Jürgen Habermas

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures is a 1985 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author reconstructs and deals in depth with a number of philosophical approaches to the critique of modern reason and the Enlightenment "project" since Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche, including the work of 20th century philosophers Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Cornelius Castoriadis and Niklas Luhmann. The work is regarded as an important contribution to Frankfurt School critical theory. It has been characterized as a critical evaluation of the concept of world disclosure in modern philosophy.

This is a list of articles in continental philosophy.

<i>On the Genealogy of Morality</i> 1887 book by Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated treatises that expand and follow through on concepts Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three treatises trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to confronting "moral prejudices", specifically those of Christianity and Judaism.

References

  1. ↑ James, Paul; Steger, Manfred B. (2014). "A Genealogy of Globalization: The Career of a Concept". Globalizations. 11 (4): 424. doi:10.1080/14747731.2014.951186. S2CID   18739651.
  2. ↑ di Georgio, Paul (2013). "Contingency and Necessity in the Genealogy of Morality". Telos. 2013 (162): 97–111. doi:10.3817/0313162097. S2CID   219190726.
  3. ↑ Ransom, John (1997). Foucault's Discipline. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 7. ISBN   978-0-8223-1878-1.
  4. ↑ Michel Foucault Lectures At The College de France Society Must Be Defended 1975
  5. ↑ Foucault, Michel (2003). The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984. New York, NY: The New Press. p. 306. ISBN   978-1-56584-801-6.
  6. ↑ Foucault, Michel (1980). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. p. 139. ISBN   978-0-8014-9204-4.
  7. ↑ Foucault, Michel. "What is Critique?" in The Politics of Truth, Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e), 2007, pg. 61.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.