Genealogy (humanities)

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Genealogy (from ancient Greek γενεαλογία genealogía "genealogy, family tree"; going back to γενεά geneá "birth, descent, clan, family" and λόγος lógos "teaching") in the humanities describes an interdisciplinary historical method with the help of which the history of ideas generally perceived as self-evident philosophical and sociological facts of the modern age are examined as historically constructed. It is designed to question the breadth of ideology , especially with regard to the conditions that made the emergence of the ideologically motivated concepts discussed in the first place possible.

Disambiguation

The name is derived from the type of research, which is similar to that of those genealogists who meticulously trace their family history in archives, and was even used in the title by Friedrich Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morals in this sense. Michel Foucault continued the genealogy significantly .

The metaphor is inspired by the fact that both genealogy and genealogy in the new, Foucaultian sense, have as their subject that no origin can be identified, but an increasingly complex and branching system that ultimately leads to the dissolution of the ego. Instead of the search for truth, both are more concerned with tracing detours and wrong paths, processes and developments, parallel narratives and historiographies .

“Origin” can thus also be understood and described physically, with the past and its facts forming the body that is now dealt with by history, and conflicts. This apparent somatic unity also prepares the scene for the dissolution of the ego.

Genealogical enterprises before Nietzsche

In the first book of the state, Plato was probably the first to combine the justification of and criticism of institutions of a political nature with the question of historical development, where Plato is still starting from origins. In the discourse on the origin and basis of inequality among people , Rousseau makes similar philosophical considerations that ultimately lead him to a historically pursued critique of early modern social institutions. In doing so, he developed concepts around self and power that would later be formative for Nietzsche and then also for Foucault. Further to be mentioned, in order to endeavor to create a “genealogy of genalogy”, possibly marginally: Simmel's and Weber's cultural sociology , Scheler's and Plessner's philosophical anthropology , the “prehistory of subjectivity ” in Horkheimer's and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment , Benjamin's On the Critique of Violence , Hardt and Negri's Empire to Derrida's grammatology .

Genealogy at Nietzsche

In his Genealogy of Morals , Nietzsche analyzes the work of genealogists and proposes a historical philosophy as an object to criticize modern morality . In doing so, he assumes that it was first brought into its former form through power relations, and reveals its construction. For Nietzsche, understanding morality as having evolved historically also implies that it could just as well be constituted differently if power relations had been different and, conversely, calls into question their fundamental incontestability. Even though Nietzsche's philosophy is sometimes referred to as a unity as genealogy, Nietzsche himself uses this term exclusively in the genealogy of morals , here even prominently in the title. Still, it becomes clear that later genealogy, as an established philosophical category, does indeed share many of Nietzsche's insights. History of ideas, which is based on Nietzsche's work and works, was described as "a concern of oppositional tactics" that welcomes the conflict between philosophical and historical narratives instead of suppressing them.

Differentiation from the search for origin

In particular, Foucault later attaches importance to denying Nietzsche's genealogy the ascribed search for origin, although Nietzsche himself uses the term synonymously for origin, birth, origin in his genealogy of morality , without defining it more precisely. Genealogy is therefore not a search for origin even with Nietzsche. What separates here is that the search for an origin strives for a clearly delineated object that arises linearly, while the genealogy has the essence and historically conditioned variability of objects as its starting point. So a genealogy of morality remains in the case of coincidences and complex developments without confusing them with truth, the story of an error that is called truth.

Genealogy at Foucault

In the second half of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault expanded the method of genealogy into a counter-history of the position of the subject, which historically traces the development of societies. His genealogy of the subject represents “the constitution of knowledge, discourses, sets of objects, and so on, without having to make a reference to a subject that is either transcendental in relation to the field of events, or through its empty likeness the course of history draws. "

As Foucault discusses in his essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History , his ideas on genealogy were largely influenced by Nietzsche's work on the development of morality through power relations. Foucault describes genealogy as special in those elements of which "we usually feel [that they] are without history". In it he includes things like sexuality or punishment. Genealogy is therefore not the search for actual origins and also not the narration of linear developments, but the reconstruction of historical power relationships and areas of tension under which that which is commonly understood as "knowledge" or "truth" has grown in discourses, categories that then exercise and distribute power yourself.

One of the most important theses of Foucault is that with the help of genealogy “truth” can be deconstructed to the extent that it ceases to exist objectively. Instead, it is discovered by chance, recognized through the work of power / knowledge or in the sense of political interests. Therefore, for Foucault, all "truths" are to be questioned because they are unreliable. Although attributed with relativization and nihilism , Foucault rejects a historiography that is concerned with uniformity, linearity and regularity by emphasizing the irregularity and inconsistency of truth.

Foucault also describes genealogy as an "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]. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Heinz Geiß: Foucault - Nietzsche - Foucault. The elective affinity. Pfaffenweiler 1993, ISBN 3-89085-751-5 , p. 29.
  2. ^ Martin Saar: Genealogy as a criticism. History and theory of the subject according to Nietzsche and Foucault . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38191-6 , p. 297.
  3. ^ Paul di Georgio: Contingency and Necessity in the Genealogy of Morality. In: Telos. (162), 2013, pp. 97-111, doi: 10.3817 / 0313162097 .
  4. ^ John Ransom: Foucault's Discipline. Duke University Press, Durham 1997, ISBN 0-8223-1878-4 , p. 7.
  5. ^ Karl-Heinz Geiß: Foucault - Nietzsche - Foucault. The elective affinity. Pfaffenweiler 1993, ISBN 3-89085-751-5 , p. 27.
  6. ^ Michel Foucault: The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984. The New Press, New York 2003, ISBN 1-56584-801-2 , p. 306.
  7. ^ Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 1980, ISBN 0-8014-9204-1 , p. 139.
  8. ↑ Michel Foucault: What is Critique? In: The Politics of Truth. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext (e), Los Angeles 2007, ISBN 978-1-58435-039-2 , p. 61.