Genealogy (philosophy) - Wikipedia

2024.02.07 21:05


Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Languages Language links are at the top of the page. Search Create account Log in Personal tools Create account Log in Pages for logged out editors learn more Contributions Talk

Contents

move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Nietzsche 2 Foucault 3 See also 4 References Toggle the table of contents

Genealogy (philosophy)

8 languages Español فارسی Bahasa Indonesia Nederlands Norsk bokmål Русский Suomi Türkçe Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Download QR code Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Historical technique in philosophy See also: Genealogy

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 the ideology to explain the totality of historical discourse within the time period in question by focusing on a singular or dominant discourse (ideology).

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 [ edit ]

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 . But 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 [ edit ]

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 as "having 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 "archeological 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 [ edit ]

History of ideas The Archaeology of Knowledge Geistesgeschichte Hermeneutics diachrony

References [ edit ]

^ 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 . ^ di Georgio, Paul (2013). "Contingency and Necessity in the Genealogy of Morality" . Telos . 2013 (162): 97–111. doi : 10.3817/0313162097 . S2CID 219190726 . ^ Ransom, John (1997). Foucault's Discipline . Durham: Duke University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-8223-1878-1 . ^ Michel Foucault Lectures At The College de France Society Must Be Defended 1975 ^ 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 . ^ Foucault, Michel (1980). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-8014-9204-4 . ^ Foucault, Michel. "What is Critique?" in The Politics of Truth , Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e), 2007, pg. 61. v t e Michel Foucault Books Mental Illness and Psychology (1954) Madness and Civilization (1961) The Birth of the Clinic (1963) Death and the Labyrinth (1963) The Order of Things (1966) This Is Not a Pipe (1968) The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) Discipline and Punish (1975) The History of Sexuality (1976–2018) Essays, lectures,
dialogues and
anthologies Introduction to Kant's Anthropology (1964) " What Is an Author? " (1969) Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother (1973) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (1977) Herculine Barbin (1978) Power/Knowledge (1980) Remarks on Marx (1980) Le Désordre des familles (1982) What Is Enlightenment? (Foucault) (1983) The Foucault Reader (1984) Politics, Philosophy, Culture (1988) Foucault Live (1996) The Politics of Truth (1997) Society Must Be Defended (1997) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Essential Works Volume 1) (1997) Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology (Essential Works Volume 2) (1998) Abnormal (1999) Power (Essential Works Volume 3) (2000) Fearless Speech (2001) The Hermeneutics of the Subject (2001) The Essential Foucault (2003) Psychiatric Power (2003) Security, Territory, Population (2004) The Birth of Biopolitics (2004) The Government of Self and Others (2008) The Courage of Truth (2009) Lectures on the Will to Know (2011) On the Government of the Living (2012) Subjectivity and Truth (2012) Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling (2013) On the Punitive Society (2015) Concepts Anti-psychiatry Author function Biopolitics Biopower Carceral archipelago Cultural imperialism Disciplinary institution Discontinuity Discourse analysis Dispositif Ecogovernmentality Episteme Genealogy Governmentality Heterotopia Interdiscourse Limit-experience Parrhesia Power (social and political) Postsexualism Sapere aude Influence " Cogito and the History of Madness " (Derrida) Foucauldian discourse analysis Foucault (Deleuze) The Passion of Michel Foucault (Miller) Giorgio Agamben Gary Gutting Thomas Lemke James Miller Paul Rabinow Claude Raffestin Nikolas Rose Foucault in Iran Related articles Bibliography Foucault–Habermas debate Chomsky–Foucault debate Daniel Defert François Ewald Alan Sheridan Authority control databases : National France BnF data Israel United States Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genealogy_(philosophy)&oldid=1184544987 " Categories : Michel Foucault Concepts in the philosophy of history Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from September 2008 Articles with BNF identifiers Articles with BNFdata identifiers Articles with J9U identifiers Articles with LCCN identifiers This page was last edited on 11 November 2023, at 02:06 (UTC) . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0 ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. , a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Code of Conduct Developers Statistics Cookie statement Mobile view Toggle limited content width

Menu

Last Photo