Abstract

The article discusses the fundamental principles and methodological similarities of Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach with the genealogical critique of Friedrich Nietzsche. The antihistoricist views shared by both philosophers made Foucault address Nietzsche’s texts in pursuit of the methodological strategy that would add to his archeological method a lacking theory of causality. The principles of the genealogical approach are to be found in three works: “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, “The Order of Discourse”, and introductory notes to “Discipline and Punish”. In this article we discuss only two of them, since the primary object of our interest is the intellectual heredity of Nietzsche’s concept in Foucault’s philosophy. Although, it is often argued that Foucault’s understanding of history is radically relativistic, we believe that his project was misinterpreted in regard to what it means for the contemporary practices of history. Foucault considered himself a critical intellectual aiming at liberating his contemporaries of the restraints imposed on them by the existing discourses. His primary target was the modern truth production “industry” of the Western world. The genealogical method pointing to the multiple petty beginning of the things changed the perspective on what the historical identity is all about. In the contemporary situation of the post-colonial, post-Soviet Ukraine when it struggles for producing a proper image of itself and its history, Foucault’s genealogy might provide a suitable methodological solution for developing identity strategies. Foucault’s emphasis on the role of critical intellectuals has also to remind us about our own roles in the present situation when it seems that philosophy has nothing to say anymore.