This chapter contains sections titled: Origin vs. Descent Politics vs. History Interpretation Conclusion References.

In this article, I demonstrate that Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a unique form of hermeneutic critique. In particular, I contend that when reading Nietzsche’s perspectivism and will to power in light of each other, they provide us with the tools to overcome habits of interpretation through the concepts of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. I show this in three sections. In section one, I introduce Nietzsche’s perspectivism and situate it within his concept of the will to power. In doing so, (...) I demonstrate that interpretations exist amidst a complex field of agonistic, reciprocal relations in life’s constant production of meaning. In section two, I then analyze how certain interpretations sediment into habits, forming harmful blind spots in interpretive activity. Such habits, Nietzsche shows, when privileged as prima facie ‘True’ and left uncontested exclude different ways of interpreting and existing, stagnating the production of meaning and denying the agonistic conditions of life. In the final section, I argue that Nietzsche critiques such habits in the two directions of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. Through the backward approach of genealogy, Nietzsche problematizes the habit, excavates its lowly origin, and deconstructs its supposed universality. Through the forward approach of creative hermeneutics, he overcomes and reinterprets them out of their origins, experiments with difference and multiplicity, and engages in an ongoing critique to open up new perspectives. (shrink)

_Ressentiment_—the hateful desire for revenge—plays a pivotal role in Nietzsche’s _On the Genealogy of Morals_. _Ressentiment _explains the formation of bad conscience, guilt, asceticism, and, most importantly, it motivates the "slave revolt" that gives rise to Western morality’s values. _Ressentiment_, however, has not enjoyed a thorough treatment in the secondary literature. This book brings it sharply into focus and provides the first detailed examination of Nietzsche’s psychology of _ressentiment_. Unlike other books on the _Genealogy_, it uses _ressentiment_ as a (...) key to the _Genealogy_ and focuses on the intriguing relationship between _ressentiment_ and justice. It shows how _ressentiment_, despite its blindness to justice, gives rise to moral justice—the central target of Nietzsche’s critique. This critique notwithstanding, the _Genealogy_ shows Nietzsche’s enduring commitment to the virtue of _non-moral_ justice: a commitment that grounds his provocative view that moral justice spells the ‘end of justice’. The result provides a novel view of Nietzsche's moral psychology in the _Genealogy_, his critique of morality, and his views on justice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In “Il faut défendre la société”, Foucault attempted to historicize and criticize Nietzsche’s equating of the social with struggle. In order to do so, Foucault produced a descriptive discursive history of his genealogical project by deploying the method of the critical archaeology. Foucault realized thereinafter that his archaeological exposition of the genealogical discourse in fact laid bare a close historical and conceptual bond between genealogy and modern racial discourses. In the first lectures, Foucault, (...) unearthed the genealogical discourse hidden in the literature written by the nobility as they attempted to resist the centralisation of royal power. In the latter part of his lectures, he described a discursive interplay between genealogy-as-struggle and the biopolitical practices of the modern state. As such, he gave a tentatively description how the modern state inherited and extensively applied the notion of struggle in its biopolitical control on its populations. The immoral and historical consequences of this affinity, resulting in the biopolitics of genocide, warranted Foucault to distance himself from Nietzsche’s concept, which in effect resulted in rethinking the social within the framework of gouvernmentalité, in which struggle was a modality rather than the prime mover of society. (shrink)

In 1976, in “Society Must be Defended,” Foucault did more than offer an alternative genealogy of his own genealogical perspective to the one he is sometimes taken to have provided in “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” He also, by implication, located Nietzsche within that genealogy, one result of which is that he gave what amounts to a new perspective on how Nietzsche might be placed within the history of racisms.

Silence and madness can be likened to irritating cousins. Both introduce questionable or negative elements to the ideals of dialogue and rational communication. Silence can disturb and disrupt the rational pursuit of truth, while madness can noisily provoke a mockery of any meaningful or reciprocal exchange of ideas and thoughts. In the work and life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, silence and madness highlight more positive features.To study and articulate these features, this paper relies on the central themes of two prominent (...) thinkers, the archaeological and genealogical studies from the late Michel Foucault and the revived forces of phenomenology from American philosopher Alphonso Lingis, to present the case that Nietzsche embraced a late 19th century disorder called the fugue. This disorder, what Ian Hacking calls a transient mental illness, involves nomadic life. Nietzsche exemplified such a life. His writings and experiences comprise a mixture of travels, arts of the self, willful forgetfulness, and a philosophical play with madness. From conventional perspectives, this play is viewed as irrelevant or detrimental to Nietzsche's philosophical importance. From Nietzsche's own perspective, however, this play might be appreciated as a gift from the insights of madness and the enriching contacts with silence. (shrink)

The Rise of Politics and Morality in Nietzsche’s Genealogy examines Nietzsche’s account of the origin of political society and moral life in the Second Essay of his On the Genealogy of Morals. It argues this account is coherent and grounded in Nietzsche's understanding of nature and the will to power.

The first essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals seeks to uncover the roots of Judeo-Christian morality, and to expose it as born from a resentful and feeble peasant class intent on taking revenge upon their aristocratic oppressors. There is a broad consensus in the secondary literature that the ‘slave revolt’ which gives birth to this morality occurs in the 1st century AD, and is propogated by the inhabitants of Roman occupied Judea. Nietzsche himself strongly suggests such a (...) view. However, in a telling later passage from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that the hsitorical Zarathustra—a Bronze age iranian religious thinker—was the first to consider the opposite of Good vs. Evil; that “Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality” (EH, 'Destiny', §3). However, Nietzsche does not discuss Zarathustra or Zoroastrianism in his critique of moral values and their origin. This creates a prima facie tension. If at least part of what essentially characterises 'morality' preceded Judeo-Christianity, are moral values only contingently related to the feelings of ressentiment essential to Nietzsche’s story of the slave revolt? If the answer is 'yes', then the scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality may be somewhat limited. If the answer is 'no', then we require an answer as to why Nietzsche's genealogy—if it is an exercise in ascertaining the “real history of morality” (GM, Pref: §7)—does not extend further back in history. In this paper, I explore how the extent of Nietzsche's knowledge of Zoroastrianism informs his critique of slave morality in On the Genealogy of Morals. I argue that Nietzsche views the historical Zarathustra—like Socrates and Plato—as a forerunner of ‘morality’ in his creative conception of good and evil in metaphysical terms. From here, it is argued that the proposed tension can be dissolved by viewing Judeo-Christian morality merely as the latest and paradigmatic expression of slave morality. (shrink)

There is a sense in which every philosopher both constructs and confronts the philosophical universe in which their work takes form and has its effect. Plato's thought unfolds within the gravitational pull of the Greek city-state, the wandering sophists, the agonistic relations between Athenian aristocrats, and the massive presence of Socrates. Deleuze, to take a contemporary example, creates his concepts and embarks on his lines of flight between thinkers such as Nietzsche and Spinoza, artists and writers including Bacon, Lawrence, and (...) Melville, and contemporary phenomena such as psychoanalysis and consumer capitalism. If we can speak of "Foucault's philosophy," it is in this sense of attempting to sketch out the philosophical universe in which Foucault's work and thought unfolds. What are the philosophical reference points that structure his thought? What are the questions and problems to which he tries to respond? How does he link up his thought with the actual concerns and struggles of both himself and others? The essays in this volume offer a series of answers to these questions, while this introduction attempts to give a preliminary overview of the terrain to be covered. (shrink)

Foucault's intellectual indebtedness to Nietzsche is apparent in his writing, yet the precise nature, extent, and nuances of that debt are seldom explored. Foucault himself seems sometimes to claim that his approach is essentially Nietzschean, and sometimes to insist that he amounts to a radical break with Nietzsche. This volume is the first of its kind, presenting the relationship between these two thinkers on elements of contemporary culture that they shared interests in, including the nature of life in (...) the modern world, philosophy as a way of life, and the ways in which we ought to read and write about other philosophers. The contributing authors are leading figures in Foucault and Nietzsche studies, and their contributions reflect the diversity of approaches possible in coming to terms with the Foucault-Nietzsche relationship. Specific points of comparison include Foucault and Nietzsche's differing understandings of the Death of God; art and aesthetics; power; writing and authorship; politics and society; the history of ideas; genealogy and archaeology; and the evolution of knowledge. (shrink)

Whether Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of morality is best understood as an internal or as an external critique remains a matter of controversy. On the internalist interpretation (Ridley, Owen, Merrick ), the genealogical enterprise takes as its starting point the perspective being criticized, gradually revealing it to be untenable ‘from within.’ On the externalist interpretation (Leiter, and arguably Geuss, Williams, and Janaway ), this constraint is lifted; the starting point of the critique need not be the perspective being criticized, but may (...) be that of someone who already suspects the latter to be untenable. According to a common objection to ‘external critique’ interpretations, the limited-scope objection, since an external critique to a value-system could only work on an audience whose members were predisposed to abandon that system of values, ‘external critique’ interpretations impose a severe limitation on the transformative potential of Nietzsche’s project. ‘Internal critique’ interpretations, by contrast, can seem hard to reconcile with the polemical character of On the Genealogy of Morality (which lends the book its subtitle, Eine Streitschrift) and with Nietzsche’s frequent remarks to the effect his works were addressing a particular, ‘higher,’ kind of individual. -/- The overarching goal in this paper is to call into question the usefulness of the ‘internal-external’ or ‘immanent-transcendent’ dichotomy for understanding Nietzsche’s genealogical critique. I argue that the apparent usefulness of the distinction between external and internal critiques when approaching Nietzsche’s works rests on the assumption that any critique of values must itself be grounded on values that function as evaluative-critical standards. If the assumption is right, then one of two things, either the values that are deployed as standards coincide with those that are the target of critique, in which case the critique is internal, or they are not (etc.). Thus the assumption is liable to render us forgetful of a third possibility, that of a critical strategy that does not work by deploying (internal or external) values as standards of critical assessment, but by revealing something about the nature of value, and more precisely about the origin of any individual’s commitments to their values. -/- On the view that I defend, one of the crucial steps of Nietzsche’s genealogical method is to bring his reader to realize that any individual’s commitment to their values is expressive of and rooted in their commitment to preserve their way of life. Realizing this does not require that the reader abandon their own values. But it does require that they acknowledge that were they committed to a relevantly different way of life, they would subscribe to different values. And this, in turn, suffices to bring about a transformation in their understanding of and relationship to those commitments through the further realization that it is ultimately always up to them to undertake the project of taking distance from and ‘re-evaluating’ those values. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Randall Havas articulates an approach to Nietzsche which demonstrates that the authentic individual need not stand apart from his or her culture in order to resist the demands of conformism. On Havas's reading, the task of the Nietzschean individual is instead to replace the illusion of culture - "herd morality" - with real community, and in this way to avoid nihilism. It is such community that Nietzsche aspires to establish with his readers - a claim that, (...) in the author's view, suggests that Nietzsche's conception of the nature of community and, hence, of individuality must be understood in terms of his theory of reading and interpretation. Nietzsche holds that the category of the individual is itself a historical construct. Havas's interpretation of this view dissolves the threat it appears to pose to individualism. By treating genealogical method as a response to this threat, he shows how Nietzsche's defense of individualism, his conception of history, and his commitment to truth reinforce one another. On this reading, Nietzsche's more properly ethical concerns lie at the heart of his understanding of the will to knowledge. Havas argues that, for Nietzsche, ostensibly epistemological questions can be assessed only in the light of an understanding of the interdependence between individual and community. (shrink)

This paper offers a rereading of Foucault's much-disputed mid-career historiographical shift to genealogy from his earlier archaeological analytic. Disputing the usual view that this shift involves an abandonment of an archaeological method that was then replaced by a genealogical method, I show that this shift is better conceived as a historiographical expansion. Foucault's work subsequent to this shift should be understood as invoking both genealogy and archaeology. The metaphor of expansion is helpful in clarifying (...) what was involved in Foucault's historiographical shift. I describe two expansions at the heart of Foucault's move. First, Foucault went from analyzing singular isolable domains of practice (such as knowledge) to analyzing the interactions between multiple domains of practice (such as power/knowledge). Second, Foucault went from an analytic which relied on a single temporal category of rupture to an analytic which invoked the relations amongst multiple temporalities, including continuity alongside discontinuity in his subsequent analyses. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's historical and philosophical investigations have gone through many phases: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical among them. What remains constant, however, is the question that motivates them: who are we? Todd May follows Foucault's itinerary from his early history of madness to his posthumously published College de France lectures and shows how the question of who we are shifts and changes but remains constantly at or just below the surface of his writings. By approaching (...) Foucault's work in this way, May is able to offer readers an engaging and illuminating way to understand Foucault. Each of Foucault's key works - "Madness and Civilization," "The Archaeology of Knowledge," "The Order of Things," "Discipline and Punish" and the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" - are examined in detail and situated in an historical context that makes effective use of comparisons with other thinkers such as Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Throughout this book May strikes a balance between sympathetic presentation and criticism of Foucault's ideas and in so doing exposes Foucault's contributions of lasting value. "The Philosophy of Foucault" is an accessible and stimulating introduction to one of the most popular and influential thinkers of recent years and will be welcomed by students studying Foucault as part of politics, sociology, history and philosophy courses. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's historical and philosophical investigations have gone through many phases: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical among them. What remains constant, however, is the question that motivates them: who are we? Todd May follows Foucault's itinerary from his early history of madness to his posthumously published College de France lectures and shows how the question of who we are shifts and changes but remains constantly at or just below the surface of his writings. By approaching (...) Foucault's work in this way, May is able to offer readers an engaging and illuminating way to understand Foucault. Each of Foucault's key works - "Madness and Civilization," "The Archaeology of Knowledge," "The Order of Things," "Discipline and Punish" and the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" - are examined in detail and situated in an historical context that makes effective use of comparisons with other thinkers such as Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Throughout this book May strikes a balance between sympathetic presentation and criticism of Foucault's ideas and in so doing exposes Foucault's contributions of lasting value. "The Philosophy of Foucault" is an accessible and stimulating introduction to one of the most popular and influential thinkers of recent years and will be welcomed by students studying Foucault as part of politics, sociology, history and philosophy courses. (shrink)

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre-moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of (...) a ‘conscience’, defining the enduring element as the practice of forming self-conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience. (shrink)

Underlying this article is the conviction that social scientists typically take on board a too restrictive concept of knowledge acquisition. The paper propounds a new concept of knowledge acquisition, one which is self-referential (i.e. which affects one's presuppositions) and which draws upon the unfamiliar to reveal and undercut the familiar. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is to show that this concept of knowledge acqui sition is already anticipated by Foucault, that it is a major concern (...) of his, and that it is a common thread throughout his work. Consequently, a new light can be thrown on both Foucault's archaeology and his genealogy: both are directed towards a self-referential form of knowledge, and as such the two periods are shown to have more in common than conventionally assumed. Second (and conversely), the aim of the paper is to elucidate this self-referential type of knowledge by showing how it is used by Foucault. Key Words: archaeology • Foucault • genealogy • history • methodology • Nietzsche • past • philosophy of social sciences • present • structuralism. (shrink)

A landmark work of western philosophy, "On the Genealogy of Morality" is a dazzling and brilliantly incisive attack on European "morality". Combining philosophical acuity with psychological insight in prose of remarkable rhetorical power, Nietzsche takes up the task of offering us reasons to engage in a re-evaluation of our values. In this book, David Owen offers a reflective and insightful analysis of Nietzsche's text. He provides an account of how Nietzsche comes to the project of the re-evaluation of (...) values; he shows how the development of Nietzsche's understanding of the requirements of this project lead him to acknowledge the need for the kind of investigation of "morality" that he terms "genealogy"; he elucidates the general structure and substantive arguments of Nietzsche's text, accounting for the rhetorical form of these arguments, and he debates the character of genealogy as a form of critical enquiry. Owen argues that there is a specific development of Nietzsche's work from his earlier "Daybreak" and that in "Genealogy of Morality", Nietzsche is developing a critique of modes of agency and that this constitutes the most fundamental aspect of his demand for a revaluation of values. The book is a distinctive and significant contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche's great text. (shrink)

Nietzsche's critique of Christianity is approached by asking how far it implicitly relies upon Christian concepts and resources in implementing its criticisms. The essay first looks in detail at the parable of the madman in Gay Science, focussing in particular on its double address to theists as well as atheists; I explore its implicit invocation of Macbeth, as well as its articulation of an implicit theology of Holy Saturday, which roots the thought of God's death in Christian conceptions of (...) the full implicationsof the Incarnation. The second half of the essay examines the Genealogy of Morality, itfocusses on Nietzsche's implicit admiration for the will to power implied in the slave revolt, his conception of himself as speaking against Christianity from a position prepared by it, and the ways in which his account of that revolt reiterates the structure of the Christian account of the Fall. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article: This essay begins by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the developmental strategy adopted in my Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morality” in relation to the contrasting approaches of Conway, Hatab, and Janaway in their studies of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. It then turns to take up a topic that, in the light of the readings of Conway, Hatab, Janaway, and myself, I now take to be (...) much more central than any of us has adequately acknowledged, namely, the relationship of GM to the Hellenistic conception of philosophy. I sketch this argument and explore its implications through Janaway’s and Hatab’s different (but not incompatible) reflections on perspectivism, before finally providing an illustration of how Nietzsche’s indebtedness to the themes of freedom and slavery in ancient philosophy illuminates our understanding of the slave revolt in morals, the psychology of the priest, and the interpretation of the sovereign individual. Given the complexity of the rhetorical and argumentative structure of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, any author presumptuousness enough to offer a study of this text needs to have a clear (and defensible) strategy for approaching it.1 Such strategies may be various, and in the cases under consideration, this is the case. Both Larry Hatab and Dan Conway offer textualist interpretations, with Hatab seeking to communicate the intensely radical character of GM by focusing strongly on the agonistic dimensions of its argument and rhetoric, while Conway reads GM as a Bildungsroman and so seeks to track and explicate Nietzsche’s efforts to guide his readers from innocence to experience. (Such readings need not be incompatible since it could be, for example, that it is through his efforts to construct an internal agon within the reader that Nietzsche seeks to overcome their innocence.) By contrast, both Chris Janaway and I offer more contextualist accounts. Janaway’s strategy is to take Nietzsche at his word and to offer a close reading of the argument of GM in relation to the two philosophical figures—Paul Rée and Arthur Schopenhauer—that Nietzsche identifies as his representative opponents. My own strategy is to adopt a developmental approach to considering GM, one that seeks to reconstruct the reasons—internal to his project of reevaluation—that lead Nietzsche to require a genealogical investigation of morality and to use this reconstruction as a way of orienting the analysis of this text. (And obviously there is some overlap here given Nietzsche’s varied relationships to Schopenhauer and Rée in the course of his philosophical development.) Although my own methodological commitments favor a contextualist approach, it is wise to avoid dogmatism on this issue—not least because one might reasonably note that Ridley’s Nietzsche’s Conscience, perhaps the most widely admired recent analysis of GM and one to which all of the authors considered here are indebted, is thoroughly textualist in its strategy of focusing on the central characters of GM.2 In what follows, I will briefly review my reasons for favoring a developmental form of contextualist account and what I take the strength and limitations of this approach (and of my performance of it) to be. I will then turn to consider what I now see as a central issue for understanding GM—namely, Nietzsche’s relationship to ancient philosophy—that has emerged in the light of further reflection on the arguments presented in these four works. I conclude by briefly reconsidering the nature of Nietzsche’s genealogical enterprise. (shrink)

It is well-known that the mature Foucault, while recognizing the influence of phenomenology on him during his youth, declared his anti-phenomenological position since his archeological breakthrough. This paper tries to argue and show that though phenomenology is an object of criticism of Foucault’s archaeology, it nonetheless plays a paradoxical and strategic role in the construction of the archaeological project. Though Foucault undertakes in The Birth of the Clinic a critical deconstruction of phenomenology as positivism, against the (...) open anti-positivist declaration of phenomenology itself, in the Archeology of Knowledge Foucault acknowledges that the opening of the space of archeology requires the practice of the “épochè of the épochè”, and in this sense archeology is a positivism too. That means also that archeology is possible only by the practice of the phenomenological operation of épochè in order to exit from phenomenology. This paradoxical and strategic usage of phenomenology in Foucault’s archeology is extended to his theory of discourse. For Foucault came to realize the limit of discursive practice: not only words signify but things signify too. If archeology wants to extend its domain of competence, it has to recur to description according to the way things show up themselves. This is nothing other than the basic methodological recommendation of phenomenology. Thus Foucault’s open declaration of his anti-phenomenological position is merely apparent, hiding his discrete paradoxical and strategic usage of the rich methodological resources of phenomenology. (shrink)

In his renowned courses at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1984, Michel Foucault devoted his lectures to meticulous readings and interpretations of the works of Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, among others. In this his aim was not, Edward F. McGushin contends, to develop a new knowledge of the history of philosophy; rather, it was to let himself be transformed by the very activity of thinking. Thus, this work shows us Foucault in the last phase (...) of his life in the act of becoming a philosopher. Here we see how his encounter with ancient philosophy allowed him to experience the practice of philosophy as, to paraphrase Nietzsche, a way of becoming who one is: the work of self-formation that the Greeks called _askésis_. Through a detailed study of Foucault's last courses, McGushin demonstrates that this new way of practicing philosophical _askésis_ evokes Foucault's ethical resistance to modern relations of power and knowledge. In order to understand Foucault's later project, then, it is necessary to see it within the context of his earlier work. If his earlier projects represented an attempt to bring to light the relations of power and knowledge that narrowed and limited freedom, then this last project represents his effort to take back that freedom by redefining it in terms of care of the self. Foucault always stressed that modern power functions by producing individual subjects. This book shows how his excavation of ancient philosophical practices gave him the tools to counter this function-with a practice of self-formation, an _askésis. _. (shrink)

The subject of this thesis is Friedrich Nietzsche’s methodology, the genealogical mode of inquiry, which came to fruition in On the Genealogy of Morals. The precise nature of the genealogy, as a mode of inquiry, is a site of contest amongst scholars, with the central debates pivoting around four questions which arise upon considering the methodology: what is the critical import of Nietzsche’s genealogical mode of inquiry? What form of critique does it take? To whom does Nietzsche address (...) his reflections? And what role, if any, does history play in Nietzsche’s genealogical narratives? Accordingly, this thesis seeks to offer and to defend answers to the central questions that are generated by the consideration of Nietzsche’s methodology. In order to get a foothold into these debates and to provide the boundary within which these disagreements occur the first chapter has as its object of inquiry an examination and evaluation of Nietzsche scholars’ responses to these issues. In chapter two I defend my interpretation against these rival views, and contend that the genealogy takes the form of an immanent critique, and that it is intended, at least, to reach all of Nietzsche’s contemporaries. The adage “genealogy is history correctly practiced” is treated in the remaining three chapters, in which I attempt to morph what appears to be at present an uninformative formulation into an informative one by arguing that for Nietzsche historiography is best seen as a form of artistry. And, this I submit, serves to shed light upon the genealogical mode of inquiry, and to shape the boundary by which the equation of genealogy as methodology with history becomes instructive. (shrink)

Aaron Ridley explores Nietzsche's mature ethical thought as expressed in his masterpiece On the Genealogy of Morals. Taking seriously the use that Nietzsche makes of human types, Ridley arranges his book thematically around the six characters who loom largest in that work—the slave, the priest, the philosopher, the artist, the scientist, and the noble. By elucidating what the Genealogy says about these figures, he achieves a persuasive new assessment of Nietzsche's ethics. Ridley's intellectually supple interpretation reveals (...) Nietzsche's ethical position to be deeper and more interesting than is often supposed: the relation, for instance, between Nietzsche's ideal of the noble and the ascetic or priestly conscience does not emerge as a stark opposition but as a rich interplay between the tensions inherent in each. Equally, he shows that certain under-appreciated confusions in Nietzsche's thought reveal much about the positive aspects of the philosopher's moral vision. The only book devoted entirely to the Genealogy, Nietzsche's Conscience offers a sympathetic but tough-minded critical reading of the philosopher's most important work. Delivered in clear and vigorous language and employing a broadly analytical approach, Ridley's commentary makes Nietzsche's reflections on morality more accessible than they have been hitherto. (shrink)

Beatrice Han argues that the theories of subjection (determinism: structure) and subjectivation (freedom: agency) are the “the blind spot of Foucault's work:” to the very end of his life, in being transcendental and historical theories, respectively, they were in irresolvable conflict. In part I, I have argued that Foucault encourages us to situate the theories of the subject in an un-thematized reach for a metaphysics of realism which, in effect, was to ground his uncertain complementary reach (...) for a naturalist conduct of research. In part II I also argue that it is this fundamental feature of Foucault's Foucault that drives his returns to Kant, the purpose of which is to resolve the conflicting theories of the subject, and thus to solve his Giddensian problem of structure and creativity. Locating the returns and their purpose in my context of Science for Humanism and the recovery of human agency, I ultimately argue that Foucault's two special returns to Kant in order to solve his structure/agency problem led to two unfortunate solutions. The resort to Baudelair's aesthetic subject is a failed solution in so far as it regresses to being a pre-noumenal conception of the subject. The subsequent mere reinstatement of Kant's subject as causally empowered, minus the noumenalism, is nothing more than a reclamation of Kant's conception. Only the reconstruction of Foucault's realism permits us to assert that he could have moved beyond the reclamation of human agency to its recovery. (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential, provocative, and challenging work of ethics. In this volume of newly commissioned essays, fourteen leading philosophers offer fresh insights into many of the work's central questions: How did our dominant values originate and what functions do they really serve? What future does the concept of 'evil' have - and can it be revalued? What sorts of virtues and ideals does Nietzsche advocate, and are they necessarily incompatible with aspirations to (...) democracy and a free society? What are the nature, role, and scope of genealogy in his critique of morality - and why doesn't his own evaluative standard receive a genealogical critique? Taken together, this superb collection illuminates what a post-Christian and indeed post-moral life might look like, and asks to what extent Nietzsche's Genealogy manages to move beyond morality. (shrink)

_On the Genealogy of Morality_ is a history of ethics, a text about interpreting that history, and a primer on interpretation in general. It also has elements of archaeology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and etymology. Nietzsche’s history-based approach to the development of morality, as well as his keen understanding of how power relations—especially the role played in this process by social, class, and racial divisions—continue to shape our ethical norms and standards of behavior. His reading of history and the human (...) capacity for rationalization anticipated, influenced, and underpinned the interpretative techniques and strategies that emerged as dominant in the humanities and social sciences over the past several decades. In this age of “alternative truths,” Nietzsche’s insight into the nature of interpretation is more valuable than ever before. (shrink)

In his later lectures, published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault surveys different modalities of obtaining ‘truth’ about one's self and the world: from Socrates to the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and early church writers. Genealogically tracing this opposition between knowing self and world, he occasionally invites phenomenological enquiry into how this epistemic couplet bears on education. Drawing on three vignettes familiar to educators, my investigation explores modes of discovering self and world through counselling, distributed governance in the (...) classroom and the arts of writing. In each case we confront a paradox of freedom, in that agency is needed, already, to liberate the self from the world. An exegetical task is to show how Foucault worked through this philosophical problem, of relevance to many situations in education, by re-reading Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger. (shrink)

This book explores Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism in its historical context, showing that his position is best understood against the background of encounters between neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the nineteenth century. Analyzing most of Nietzsche's writings from the late 1860s onwards, Christian J. Emden reconstructs Nietzsche's naturalism and argues for a new understanding of his account of nature and normativity. Emden proposes historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt the position he did; his genealogy of (...) values and his account of a will to power are as much influenced by Kantian thought as they are by nineteenth-century debates on teleology, biological functions, and theories of evolution. This rich and wide-ranging study will be of interest to scholars and students of Nietzsche, the history of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and history of science. (shrink)

The blind spot of philosophy: to live a life Age-old philosophical texts, from Plato to Montaigne or from Lao-tse to Rousseau, are still being read by many. What makes these texts so attractive and ‘contemporary’ today, other than scientific texts from long ago? Most of the time these texts do not address empirical or conceptual questions, but address the problem to understand ourselves as creatures that try to live a life. Academic philosophy has left this question more and (...) more aside, in an ongoing process of ‘scientification’, and concentrated more on conceptual and epistemological questions or on the reconstruction of the philosophical tradition. Yet, in the margins of academic philosophy, in neighboring fields of research and in the public sphere, we can discern examples of a philosophical practice that rephrases the classical philosophical question in a new manner. In this essay an attempt is made to draw the contours of this new practice of philosophy and the writings it produces. Starting with (among others) Nietzsche and Benjamin, and inspired by recent lectures by Norman Lear, a portrait is created of an author who operates somewhere on the borders between science and literature, as a placeholder – or more precise: as an ethnographer who, more than the average scholar, is closely involved with the object of his research, and who, more than the average novelist, addresses ‘the weird problem of having a life’ in a direct way, starting with the problematic and problematizing experiences of others. This philosophical attitude comes close to what Michel Foucault called ‘an ontology of the present’ that writes about the question of who or what we are here and now from a ironical involvement with everyday problematizations of our cultural, political or personal identity. The essay ends with some concrete examples of this philosophical practice and with some suggestions for a philosophical institute in which such a practice could be a central concern. (shrink)

Nietzsche's readers are often tempted to look for his critique of morality in On the Genealogy of Morality. However, I will argue that the Genealogy does not contain Nietzsche's critique of morality, nor was it intended by Nietzsche to contain his critique. Rather, the Genealogy is Nietzsche's attempt to develop crucial parts of what he calls a natural history or typology of morals, which he considers to be a descriptive project meant to serve as (...) preparation for a critique of values. More precisely, the Genealogy serves as preparation for a critique of moral values in three ways: it (1) traces the historical development of Judeo-Christian moral values in a way that (2) enables diagnosis of their psychological effects on various types of people, and of the physiological traits and states of which those values are symptoms. In turn, this vital factual information is needed by Nietzsche so that he can (3) compare Judeo-Christian values to other values. 1–3 are purely descriptive, and they make possible a further, evaluative project Nietzsche does not undertake in the Genealogy itself, namely, his critique of those values by determining their place in a new rank ordering of values (i.e., Umwertung or revaluation of values). (shrink)

In this essay, I start from Foucault's last text, his "Life: Experience and Science." Speaking of Canguilhem, Foucault makes a distinction between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living). I then examine this difference between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living); that is, I examine the different logics, we might say, of immanence that each concept implies. To do this, I reconstruct the "critique" that Foucault presents of the concept of vécu in the ninth (...) chapter of The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses): "Man and His Doubles." I try to show how this critique applies to the early Merleau-Ponty, the Merleau-Ponty of the Phenomenology of Perception. Then, I construct the positive logic of Foucault's relation of immanence by means of another text, which is contemporaneous with Les Mots et les choses: This is not a Pipe. The critique of the concept of vécu is based on the fact that the relationship in vécu is a mixture (un mélange) that closes "un écart infime." Conversely, Foucault's conception of the relationship in "le vivant" is one that dissociates and keeps "l'écart infime" open. At the end, I suggest, through three "landmarks," how Foucault's critique might be applied to the later Merleau-Ponty. This essay is Part I of a trilogy on Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. Part II concerns Merleau-Ponty's "mixturism," while Part III concerns "the blind spot" in Foucault. These three texts complete the work necessary to open the problem of memory and life. (shrink)

This article will address sexuality as a medium of empire, approaching this question through the absence of empire in Foucault’s history of sexuality. This absence of empire is all the more enigmatic given that it coincides with the omnipresence of race. To that extent, I argue for an “alteration of absence” in the reading of Foucault. Acknowledging the paradoxical presence of race--perhaps even its centrality--in Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and liberalism is a necessary step to reveal the (...) depth of another absence, that of empire and coloniality. The article discusses this blind spot in Foucault’s work, arguing that a form of racial distinction operates through sexuality.It attempts to assess how influential this “imperial absence” is to the genealogy of sexuality and race. Lastly, it also sketches some possible reconfigurations of Foucault’s theses when read in colonial or postcolonial contexts. (shrink)

Counselor educators can utilize the ideas of philosopher Michel Foucault in preparing preservice school counselors for their work with K?12 students in public schools. The Foucaultian ideas of governmentality, technologies of domination, received truths, power/knowledge, discontinuity, and archaeology can contribute to students' understanding of the hidden power relations in the assumptions and techniques of counseling. Because most students enter counseling programs without a background in Foucault, it falls to counselor educators to incorporate his ideas into the curriculum. This (...) article describes areas in which Foucaultian ideas can be introduced into the counseling curriculum, in particular, in the practicum courses. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in (...) the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson has modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe has incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche in the twelve years since this edition first appeared. In this new guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level. (shrink)

On 20 May 1961 Foucault defended his two doctoral theses; on 2 December 1970 he gave his inaugural lecture at the College de France. Between these dates, he published four books, travelled widely, and wrote extensively on literature, the visual arts, linguistics, and philosophy. He taught both psychology and philosophy, beginning his explorations of the question of sexuality. Weaving together analyses of published and unpublished material, this is a comprehensive study of this crucial period. As well as Foucault's (...) major texts, it discusses his travels to Brazil, Japan, and the USA, his time in Tunisia, and his editorial work for Critique and the complete works of Nietzsche and Bataille. It was in this period that Foucault developed the historical-philosophical approach he called 'archaeology' - the elaboration of the archive - which he understood as the rules that make possible specific claims. In its detailed study of Foucault's archive the book is itself an archaeology of Foucault in another sense, both excavation and reconstruction. This book completes a four-volume series of major intellectual histories of Foucault. Foucault's Last Decade was published by Polity in 2016; Foucault: The Birth of Power followed in 2017; and The Early Foucault in 2021. (shrink)

Nietzsche, Genealogy, In the preface of On the Genealogy of Morality (GM), Nietzsche tells us the third treatise of his book is an “interpretation” of the aphorism placed at the beginning of that treatise. Much work – primarily by John Wilcox, Maudemarie Clark, and Christopher Janaway – has gone into proving that the aphorism is not the quotation from Zarathustra placed at the beginning of the treatise, but that it is Section 1 (perhaps minus the last few lines) (...) of the third treatise. I am in agreement on this point. But it seems the limited work that has been done on explaining in what sense the third treatise is an interpretation of the first aphorism is fundamentally misguided. In particular, we do not have a grasp of what Nietzsche means by ‘interpretation’. This ought to strike us as a significant hole in the literature, for it leaves misunderstood the longest of the three treatises that comprise what is widely regarded as Nietzsche’s most important and extended analysis of morality. -/- The goal of this paper is to fill that lacuna by illustrating 1) the inadequacies of a theory of what Nietzsche means to be doing in the third treatise, 2) what the right – that is, Nietzsche’s – understanding of ‘interpretation’ is, 3) how we ought to approach the third treatise, and 4) the particular impacts this approach has on our reading of the third treatise. In the course of proving these theses other influential readings of Nietzsche are challenged, in particular those concerning Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power and his perspectivism. (shrink)

In Nietzsche's Psychology of Ressentiment, Guy Elgat develops an interpretation of some of the central themes of Nietzsche's GM, which is one of his most systematic works and a pivotal part of his critique of the modern moral outlook that grew out of Christianity. Elgat's original approach is framed by two fundamental ideas: first, Nietzsche takes the concept of "moral justice" to be central to the morality he sets out to criticize; second, Nietzsche's suspicion toward moral justice (...) is rooted in its association with the affect of ressentiment. Thus, Elgat notes that ressentiment is frequently supposed either to express a sense of justice, or to... (shrink)

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett proposes a deflationary treatment of sensory qualia. He seeks to establish a continuity among both the neural and the conscious phenomena connected with the blind spot and with the perception of repetitive patterns on the one hand and the neutral and conscious phenomena connected with blindsight on the other. He aims to analyze the conscious phenomena associated with each in terms of what the brain ignores. Dennett offers a thought experiment about a blindsight (...) patient who has the sensory information that normals do, but who seems not to have their sensory qualia.What is it that normals know that this blindsight patient does not? Dennett′s answer is "nothing." Dennett′s denial of "filling-in" accounts of repetitive patterns and the blind spot constitute a Rylean intuition pump for this thought experiment. Research by Ramachandran raises important problems for Dennett′s account. Moreover, Dennett′s attempt to discount the significance of "artificial scotomas" inadvertently employs a principle that undermines his case for establishing the continuity between the phenomena in question. (shrink)

In this article, I make an attempt to elucidate the problem of violence in Foucault’s genealogy that, following Nietzsche’s genealogy, seems to be based on the concept of a conflict of forces. Thus, the war of forces that constitutes history is the first dimension in which the presence of violence can be described in Foucauldian philosophy. The second dimension refers to violence taken as the effect of an interplay between forces. Both aspects allow us to think on (...) violence, not in terms of natural objects, but in terms of relations and simultaneously to challenge the established concept of violence as something necessarily related to brute force or aggression. (shrink)

On a postcard to Franz Overbeck from January 4, 1888, Nietzsche makes some illuminating remarks with respect to the three treatises in his book On the Genealogy of Morality.2 Nietzsche says that, ‘for the sake of clarity, it was necessary artificially to isolate the different roots of that complex structure that is called morality. Each of these three treatises expresses a single primum mobile; a fourth and fifth are missing, as is even the most essential (‘the herd instinct’) – (...) for the time being, the latter had to be ignored, as too comprehensive, and the same holds for the ultimate summation of all those different elements and thus a final account of morality.’ Nietzsche also points out that each treatise makes a contribution to the genesis of Christianity and rejects an explanation of Christianity in terms of only one psychological category. The topics of the treatises are ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (first treatise), the ‘bad conscience’ (second), and the ‘ascetic ideal’ (third). The postcard suggests that Nietzsche discusses these topics separately because a joint treatment is too complicated, but that in reality, these ideas are inextricably intertwined, both with each other and with others that Nietzsche omits. Therefore, the three treatises should be regarded as parts of a unified theory and critique of morality. Nietzsche’s remarks on that postcard are important because in the Genealogy itself, he makes little effort to show the unity among the treatises. We shall return to this postcard repeatedly.3 The first treatise has attracted most scholarly attention, but much less work has been done on the second treatise, ‘ “Debts”, “Bad Conscience”, and Related Matters’. This is unfortunate, since it seems that, in Nietzsche’s own view, the central notion of the second treatise, namely, the bad conscience as a feeling of guilt, is a key element of Christian morality. Therefore, understanding Nietzsche’s treatment of this notion is essential to understanding his views on Christianity and the impact of the Christian heritage on non-religious moral philosophy.. (shrink)

For historians of psychology, Hugo Münsterberg is best remembered as William James’ successor as director of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory and a pioneer of applied psychology. By contrast, for film and media studies scholars, Münsterberg is recognized less for his contributions to experimental psychology than for those to film theory, a field in which his penultimate book, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916), is frequently claimed as an inaugural text. However, lost in the blind spots of both disciplinary perspectives (...) has been a thorough examination of Münsterberg's collaboration with Paramount Pictures, translating psychological tests into experimental short films. Despite reaching millions of moviegoers in 1916, Münsterberg’s ‘Testing the Mind’ series has received little attention from historians of science and early cinema alike. One reason for this neglect is that, to date, not a single extant copy of a ‘Testing the Mind’ release has been located. This article is about the author's efforts, in collaboration with students, to reanimate these lost psychological tests for the screen through meticulous historical reconstruction based on the original scripts, journalistic accounts, and correspondence between Münsterberg and Paramount. This reconstructive process, I show, yields new insights into the relationship between psychology and early cinema and an opportunity for reflection on this promising new space for research at the intersection of media archaeology, the history of psychology, and experimental history of science. Film URL: https://archive.org/details/munsterberg_paramount.pictographs. (shrink)

This paper aims to increase our understanding of the genealogical method by taking a developmental approach to Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology and reconstructing an early instance of it: Nietzsche’s genealogy of truthfulness in On Truth and Lie. Placing this essay against complementary remarks from his notebooks, I show that Nietzsche’s early use of the genealogical method concerns imagined situations before documented history, aims to reveal practical necessity before contingency, and focuses on vindication before it turns to subversion or problematization. I (...) argue that we understand Nietzsche’s later critique of truthfulness better if we place it against the background of his earlier vindicatory insight into the practical necessity of cultivating truthfulness in some form; and I suggest that Nietzsche’s own mature genealogical method has roots in its supposed contrary, the method of the “English” genealogists. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is continuity in Foucault?s thought, as opposed to the common division of his work into three phases, each marking a distinct field of research - discourse, power, subject. The idea is that there are no radical turns in his work that justify this division; rather, there is a shift of focus: all crucial concepts are present in all periods of his thought and in all of his undoubtedly differently-toned and oriented works. This is shown (...) through examining the characteristics of archaeology and genealogy, their relation, as well as the relation of discursive practices and strategies of power to knowledge. The retrospective and interpretation intend to shed light on the constant interplay between concepts that demonstrate continuity in Foucault?s thought. The viewpoint, based in the integrity of Foucault?s work, offers a better starting point for understanding certain aspects of his theories. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals is how it is written. Nietzsche employs a literary style that provokes his readers' emotions. In Beyond Selflessness, Christopher Janaway argues that such a literary approach is integral to Nietzsche's philosophical goals. Feeling the emotions Nietzsche's style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. I argue that Janaway's position is mistaken. The evidence at our disposal fails to establish that emotion is ever necessary for cognition. (...) However, I maintain that we do have good evidence for a slightly weaker claim. The emotionally sensitive person is epistemically better off than the cold and dispassionate person. There are some truths he or she will be more likely to believe and will have better reasons for believing. I conclude that Janaway is right to defend the philosophical importance of Nietzsche's literary writing style. His error is simply that he overstates the case. (shrink)

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche’s early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche’s writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert, and accounts for Nietzsche’s lack of historical references. On (...) the other hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism’s conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche’s failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Blind Spots and Avenues for Transformation within the Utopian Canon: Toward A Terrestrial EcotopianismHeather Alberro (bio)Limitations and Exclusions of the (Western) Utopian CanonUtopianism in all of its manifestations often powerfully (re)surfaces during times of significant socio-ecological upheaval as a response to oppressive and exploitative realities. As such it is a fervent refusal against a given status quo and its purported inevitability. Utopianism and hope are rendered possible by, (...) and draw their transformative potential from, the boundless terrain of potentiality surrounding any given reality.1 Indeed, without such conditions of radical uncertainty, hope and utopianism would not be possible. Often and understandably, the seminal works of Plato, Thomas More, William Morris, H. G. Wells and others come to mind when we think of utopian studies. Hence Kumar’s parochial observation that there is no discernible utopian tradition beyond the West because other cultures lack the foundational myth of the Golden Age—that is, the Garden of Eden, Atlantis, and Arcadia—that has been so formative to the development of utopia in the West.2 These traditional or “transcendental” utopian modalities often feature a dichotomous opposition to their present reality, depicting time and historical movement [End Page 528] as linear successions of stages proceeding from an archaic past and toward a future wherein the utopian ideal is seen as occupying a “fixed space outside time and history.”3 Such temporally “transcendent” utopias marked the dawn of the modern phase of utopian thought, originating in the seventeenth century alongside new theories of social evolution that coalesced into modern Enlightenment notions of linear historical progress.4Prioritizing Pluralism: Critical Heterotopias of the “Here and Now”What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the “concrete alternative.” The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society: they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial and error, as the new society develops.5Tom Moylan’s notion of “critical utopianism,” which emerged during the “historic block” of political opposition of the 1960s and 1970s, marks one important step within the utopian canon toward praxis and the essential “Nowness” of critique and imaginative projection.6 This “critical” strand of utopianism is fueled by a fervent opposition to the exploitation and domination of people and the natural world that is increasingly characteristic of Western-capitalist societies.7 This opposition is coupled with a utopian desire for mutual aid, ecological resilience, liberation, and peaceful living—in effect, a longing for community.8 The “critical” in Moylan’s formulation has a bivalency: first, in the sense of critique through the debunking and deconstruction of the utopian genre itself, which was “colonized” by capitalism toward the 1970s and infused with technocratic dreams of material abundance through boundless economic expansion; and second, in the sense of the critical mass required to effect fundamental societal transformations.9 If the better is the enemy of the good, then perfection serves as “a stick with which to beat the possible.”10 Utopias do not offer rigid blueprints of a fixed or perfect ideal world but rather head toward “the ideal” by offering “a rich blending of creative fantasy, critical thinking, and oppositional activism” predicated on a demand for radically new relations between social and natural systems.11 Ever critically self-reflective, critical utopias continually remind us of the limitations of the utopian impulse, particularly the dangers of pursuing rigid and transcendental visions of “the better.” Nevertheless, these are desperate times that demand some orientation toward a better; utopianism’s [End Page 529] denunciative function is not enough. Thus, in his impassioned recent work Becoming Utopian, Moylan denotes the need for an intersectional, democratically unified leadership structure that can help sustain a political movement for counteracting the “global/neoliberal superpower order while reaching for a utopian horizon.”12 With a focus more on process than a fixed ideal, the critical utopia explores and articulates vibrant post-capitalist futures that are simultaneously open-ended, and far more socio-ecologically resilient than the “now” of late capitalism.Akin in function and style to critical utopias are the grounded and transgressive... (shrink)

Written at the height of the philosopher's intellectual powers, Friedrich Nietzsche's _On the Genealogy of Morals_ has become one of the key texts of recent Western philosophy. Its essayistic style affords a unique opportunity to observe many of Nietzsche's persisting concerns coming together in an illuminating constellation. A profound influence on psychoanalysis, antihistoricism, and poststructuralism and an abiding challenge to ethical theory, Nietzsche's book addresses many of the major philosophical problems and possibilities of modernity. In this (...) unique collection focusing on the _Genealogy_, twenty-five notable philosophers offer diverse discussions of the book's central themes and concepts. They explore such notions as _ressentiment_, asceticism, "slave" and "master" moralities, and what Nietzsche calls "genealogy" and its relation to other forms of inquiry in his work. The book presents a cross section of contemporary Nietzsche scholarship and philosophical investigation that is certain to interest philosophers, intellectual and cultural historians, and anyone concerned with one of the master thinkers of the modern age. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nietzsche's investigation into the origins of morality bears some striking similarities to contemporary investigations into human evolution. Here I investigate these similarities, using a comparison between Nietzsche's GM and Gould and Lewontin's influential “Spandrels” essay as a departure point. I argue that Nietzsche defends a proto-evolutionary psychology about morality, where the inheritance of enduring biological drives conflicts with our culturally evolved moral system. While Nietzsche's claims about the evolution of morality fit well within a Darwinian framework (...) of natural selection, his claims about our underlying biology do not. Those claims cohere better with the non-Darwinian views found in nineteenth-century German biology and embryology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Case: Philosophy as/and LiteratureJeff MitchellNietzsche’s Case: Philosophy as/and Literature, by Bernd Magnus, Jean-Pierre Mileur and Stanley Stewart; 284 pp. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1993, $16.95.In their “Pre(post)faces,” which open and conclude Nietzsche’s Case, the authors explain that the essay was primarily motivated by a problem they perceived in English-speaking Nietzsche criticism. Critical discussion of Nietzsche has suffered, they argue, from institutionalized “mutual shunning” which creates (...) a neat divide between literary and philosophical discourses. From within the safety of their professional keep, philosophers have generally adjudged literary treatments of Nietzsche’s writings negatively, assigning them a place on a scale ranging from “inaccurate” to “inept.” Viewed from the walls surrounding the literary stronghold, philosophical analyzes of Nietzsche have appeared naive and/or uninteresting. The authors assert that especially in the case of Nietzsche this turf mentality in the humanities has impoverished our cultural imagination, since he presents us with a sort of writing which defies mutually exclusive pigeon-holing as either philosophical or literary.Philosophy, the authors maintain, arises “out of the possibilities of idealization” (p. 138). Literary criticism, on the other hand, is “based on the possibilities of textualization” (p. 138). Philosophers studying Nietzsche tend to look for coherent meaning and, even more importantly, for logical rigor, whereas literary critics generally read “for novel new ideas, new insights, for fractures, fissures, and ambiguities in Nietzsche’s texts, for opportunities or connections missed” (p. 4). Nietzsche’s Case is an experiment in genre-mixing, [End Page 164] incorporating as it does all of these concerns into its critical perspective. The authors argue that Nietzsche’s work demands such criticism since his texts are informed by a conceptual rigor whose logic involves exploitation of the literary and rhetorical possibilities of the written word.The book’s project—undertaken, appropriately enough, by a philosopher (Magnus) and two literary theorists (Mileur and Stewart)—sets out to establish a new mode of criticism by carefully tracing the ways in which Nietzsche’s texts exceed traditional boundaries. The book’s extended argument aims at showing that Nietzsche’s transgression of hoary epistemic borders was directly motivated by his own genealogy of Western knowledge. “I, Plato, am the truth”—Nietzsche’s quip from the Twilight of the Idols ironically exposes the philosophical will to truth, and it is this claim to be primarily concerned with truth that the authors say can be seen “with only slight exaggeration,” as “the founding gesture of philosophy as it has been delivered over to us” (p. 4). They helpfully recall that part of Nietzsche’s genealogy which traces the origins of philosophy to religion and the priestly caste. Claims to the possession of knowledge were tied very early on to priestly strategies of asceticism and social domination, which cleverly highlighted the salvational nature of “true” knowledge as well as the discipline and self-renunciation required to attain it. On Nietzsche’s analysis, the dedication of philosophers to truth for truth’s sake and the supposedly disinterested character of their ideas and observations are the descendants of priestly asceticism.Magnus, Mileur and Stewart suggest that the philosophers’ assumption of a wholly objective and definitive access to truth was a pipedream, and that it helped seduce philosophers into a blindness vis-à-vis the interested and personal nature of their own theories, the textuality of their interpretations of world and humankind. If one grants this thesis, then the self-evident contemporary division between philosophy and literary criticism becomes, effectively, much less self-evident.The book’s originality and strength comes out best in the detailed analyses to which the authors’ new critical mode gives rise. In addition to displaying an impressive command of the enormous secondary literature on Nietzsche, the research team draws a series of novel and interesting comparisons between Nietzsche’s texts and texts from the English Renaissance and Romantic periods. Their emphasis on understanding the rhetorical aspects of Nietzsche’s writing—such as his continual use of hyperbole—should prove to be a genuine resource in interpreting his writings in the future. By pointing out and investigating the various rhetorical devices Nietzsche employs, they... (shrink)