Genealogy, Evaluation, and Engineering (in: The Monist)

Analysis

In this paper, I respond to three critical notices of The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering, written by Cheryl Misak, Alexander Prescott-Couch, and Paul Roth, respectively. After contrasting genealogical conceptual reverse-engineering with conceptual reverse-engineering, I discuss pragmatic genealogy’s relation to history. I argue that it would be a mistake to understand pragmatic genealogy as a fiction (or a model, or an idealization) as opposed to a form of historical explanation. That would be to rely on precisely the stark dichotomy between idealization and history that I propose to call into question. Just as some historical explanations begin with a functional hypothesis arrived at through idealization as abstraction, some pragmatic genealogies embody an abstract form of historiography, stringing together, in a way that is loosely indexed to certain times and places, the most salient needs responsible for giving a concept the contours it now has. I then describe the naturalistic stance that I find expressed in the pragmatic genealogies I consider in the book before examining the evaluative standard at work in those genealogies, defusing the charge that they involve a commitment to a ‘stingy axiology’.

Modern Theology, 2023

The first part of this article offers some general remarks about genealogical approaches to history, focusing on historical narratives that stress the role played by theological considerations in the formation of aspects of secular modernity. A central question is whether such genealogies can serve to critique the present without drawing upon contestable moral or religious commitments. I suggest that genealogies fulfil this function when they identify inconsistencies in putatively neutral or secular stances by revealing how their coherence ultimately relies upon unacknowledged theological foundations.

Practices of Truth in Philosophy: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge), 2023

This chapter has two main, interconnected goals. On the one hand, I argue that, even though the major forms taken by genealogy throughout the history of philosophy seem to make it impervious to truth, there is an important sense in which genealogy, specifically as conceived of and practiced by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is a practice of truth. How to make sense of this claim? The first two sections address this question and show that the (Nietzschean and Foucauldian) genealogist aims to produce “new truths” that function as disruptive ethico-political forces destabilizing current modes of thinking and being, and creating the concrete possibility for the emergence of new possibilities for thought and action. The third and final section, on the other hand, builds on these insights to argue that Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric writings, too, can be construed as genealogical practices of truth.

This essay looks at different approaches to the “understanding of human activity and intercourse” (Oakeshott, 1967, p. 197) and claims that genealogy’s vital role is in its ability to free this practice from being “held captive” (Owen, 2002, p. 226) to one discourse, yet still allowing scientific discourse its (contingent) truth claims (Bevir, 2008, p. 269). In the first part of the essay I outline the problems of scientific discourse, by analysing Oakeshott’s concept of inquiry or debate. I expand on Oakeshotte’s concerns regarding the totality of the “voice of ‘science’” (Oakeshott, 1967, p. 197) within inquiry, by examining this claim through Foucault’s concept of subjugated and disciplined knowledges; namely their selection, normalization, hierarchicalization and centralization (Foucault, 2004, pp. 8, 180). With this lens, I expose the claims of power at work through methods such as inquiry, and offer Oakeshott’s alternative metaphor; a conversation, but highlight the problems this itself has in allowing for the voice of science. In the second part of the essay I make the claim that it is in the communication between these two philosophies of dialogue that a fully encompassing approach to understanding human activity can be found, and genealogy is the key to enabling this relationship. I look at the interplay between critical theory and genealogy as outlined by Owen, as reflective of inquiry and conversation. I argue that critical theory, in its emphasis on conclusions and “getting to the non-distorted view” (Owen, 2002, p. 227) is a method compatible with the idea of inquiry and its occupation with a scientific discourse. I then draw on ideas from Bevir to deposit genealogy as the “alternative” to critical theory, effectively positioning critical theory as the “regulative ideal” (Bevir, 1999, pp. 125-126). Finally, I show how a similar move can be made between inquiry and conversation; where the use of genealogy within conversation can be the field where inquiry is questioned. I therefore conclude that genealogy is a fundamental aspect in both conversation and inquiry. Its distinction from critical theory, and its relationship with truth as a regulative ideal show how genealogy is not just about understanding human activity from another perspective, but how that alternative perspective encourages idioms built upon scientific discourse, such as Student No: 640024179 DATE: 26.03.15 2 inquiry or critical theory, to be reconstructed and refined. In essence, genealogy dismantles voices which allude to truth through a scientific discourse, and by doing so, forces those voices to continuously react to the environments in which they interact and maintain effectiveness as the “best account of the world currently on offer”. Thus, by denying “utter certainties” (Bevir, 2008, p. 269), genealogy enables us to have approximations of truth from which the practice of understanding human activity is possible, yet still allows us discourse choice.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2024

The blossoming literature on genealogy in recent years has come as somewhat of a pleasant surprise to the historically inclined among us. It has not, however, come without its difficulties. As I see it, the literature on genealogy is guilty of two conflations, what I call the “debunking/problematizing conflation” and the “problematizing/rationalizing conflation.” Both are the result of the inadequate typological maps currently used to organize the literature. As a result, what makes many genealogies philosophically interesting often remains obscure. In response, I propose a new two-dimensional typology that avoids these conflations and outfits us with a richer conceptual vocabulary with which to understand and organize the genealogies which populate the literature. By identifying a second dimension of analysis which has thus far gone untheorized, my typology enables us to elucidate the various normative objectives and objects of investigation structuring a literature which is more diverse than previously acknowledged. We can thus get a clearer understanding of the problems those genealogies face, of their critical potential, and of their implications for our conception of critique.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2021

In this article I want to reconstruct some threads of the recent discussions on pragmatism and genealogy. As a starting point for this discussion, I will discuss Koopman’s proposal of a division of labor between genealogy and pragmatism. While preserving his emphasis on the centrality of problematization in genealogical inquiry, I will try to challenge his ideas about the incompatibility between genealogies that problematize, and genealogies that vindicate. In the subsequent parts of the paper, I aim at developing the hypothesis about the compatibility between problematization and vindication by discussing two different pragmatist approaches to genealogy: Hans Joas’s genealogy of human rights, and Mathieu Queloz’s pragmatic genealogy. In the final part of the article, I will sketch a possible contribution to the understanding of the normative status of genealogies, by focusing on Dewey’s concept of evaluation. More specifically, I hope to show that evaluative genealogy inquiries can preserve their sui generis normative force, without being reduced to a tool for defending and backing ready-made moral and political positions.

Lineage theory, and more generally the intellectual fascination with descent as a deeply significant, ostensibly universal organizing principle of human societies, has been immensely generative within anthropology, and has undergirded to some degree nearly all familiar structuralist and structural-functionalist models and modes of inquiry. This prolific generativity, however, has been continually belied by equally productive criticism of its descriptive and explanatory adequacy in grasping the actual playout of human social life, whether recounted historically, experienced in vivo by actual humans, or interpreted and evaluated in vitro by scholars of culture. Much of the theory that helped to construct over the years (strongly-/weakly-/quasi-) determinant models of (aspects of) typically small-scale, pre-capitalist societies, which could stand up to increasing empirical and ethnographic diversity being discovered all over the globe, has to say the least outlived much of its usefulness. The critiques of the limits of lineage theories deeply undercut British social anthropology in the mid-to-late 20 th century, and, like Newton's 3 rd law might predict, also fueled innovative new projects and paradigms elsewhere in the world, particularly structuralist varieties in France and cultural/interpretive ones in America (and both in Africa!). But several developed aspects of this theory, when properly re-contextualized, can still be useful to understanding how, why, and to what extent individuals and collectivities imbue meaning into and 'practice' concepts like kinship, affinity, consanguinity and the like. And from the perspective of theory-making itself, focusing more on the "very movement of their accomplishment" (Bourdieu 1977, 3) and fetishizing far less the objective, if elegant, structures (statuses/titles, roles, rights, etc.) and their interrelationships could serve to

Genealogy, 2017

A genealogy is a narrative that tries to explain a cultural phenomenon by describing a way in which it came about, or could have come about, or might be imagined to have come about. (-Bernard Williams ([1], p. 20).) Genealogy is an open-access, quarterly journal that publishes original research and theory online immediately after it has completed the review process. The journal will serve as a venue for cutting edge contributions to the field of genealogy studies; making this scholarly work available to the broadest possible reading audience in a timely manner. But what exactly is genealogy studies? The journal invites a multiplicity of answers to this question, seeking to foster a dialogue about the relevance of genealogical perspectives for an interdisciplinary array of theories and research questions. The journal's inaugural issue initiates this discussion by inviting essays that explore the question "What is Genealogy?" The journal also invites proposals for guest-edited special issues which can include (but are not limited to) family lineage and family studies more broadly defined, migration studies, histories of law and state policy, medical and health studies, literary studies and philology, the narration of all types of social identities (including but not limited to racial-ethnic, gendered, religious and political identities), and the implications that recent developments in genetic/genographic research and services hold for the narration of these identities. The introductory quote by Bernard Williams encompasses all of these directions. His definition of genealogy is both succinct and suitably vague; suggesting an analytic tendency that characterizes all genealogies, while allowing for a diversity of research interests and disciplinary perspectives which are amply illustrated by the scholarship of the journal's editorial board. But perhaps the most compelling feature of Williams' definition is the implication that genealogical narratives must be understood as methods of explanation and not simply aggregations of historical data. Put another way, the thing that is most genealogical about a genealogy is the method by which its contents have been strung together. Following Williams, if all genealogies are explanations, then they can also be understood as expressions of a philosophy of knowledge; whether these are essentialist epistemologies that have informed popular ideas about blood lineage or Nietzschean genealogical distinctions that are used to decenter universalist truth claims. Although these examples describe very different perspectives on genealogy, they both shed light on the uneasy tension between genealogical narratives and the dominant epistemologies of modernity. In the former case, genealogy recalls a premodern knowledge-neofeudal lineage trees that are at odds with the egalitarian subjectivities of the modern, liberal-democratic state. While in the latter case, genealogy gravitates toward the postmodern-taking the form of an explicit assault on modernist categories of thought. In both cases, genealogy lies on the margins of the modern. It embeds things in history, mapping irreducible singularities; generating a kind of knowledge radically counterpoised to the modernist paradigm described by Anthony Giddens [2], which dis-embeds things from localized contexts and reinserts them within generalizable categories that are articulated across progressively wider tracts of time and space. When viewed in this light, the journal's scope broadens considerably. Genealogy is also a venue for rethinking the contours of modern science. This aim is not well described by the idea of critique,

Genealogy, 2023

What is philosophical genealogy? What is its purpose? How does genealogy achieve this purpose? These are the three essential questions to ask when thinking about philosophical genealogy. Although there has been an upswell of articles in the secondary literature exploring these questions in the last decade or two, the answers provided are unsatisfactory. Why do replies to these questions leave scholars wanting? Why is the question, "What is philosophical genealogy?" still being asked? There are two broad reasons, I think. First, on the substantive side, the problem is that genealogical models will get certain features of the method right but ignore others. The models proffered to answer the first question are too restrictive. The second reason is that the three essential questions to ask regarding the nature of genealogy are run together when they should be treated separately. In the following paper, I address these problems by attempting to reconstruct genealogy from the ground up. I provide what I hope is an ecumenical position on genealogy that will accommodate a wide variety of genealogical thinkers, from Hobbes to Nietzsche, rather than a select few. Therefore, I examine two of the three questions above: What is philosophical genealogy and its purpose? I argue there are seven main features of genealogy and that these features may be used as a yardstick to compare how one genealogist stacks up to another along the seven aspects I outline in the paper.

TROPOS Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica, 2022

This paper studies five approaches on the future of alterity that awaits ideas and doctrines. According to these predictions, embedded in texts by Weber, Meinecke, Butterfield, Merleau-Ponty and Koselleck, the coming forms of thinking shall endure the same destiny affecting the ideas of the past because they will evolve without relying on historical sameness. The future of Western thought, in short, is bound to an unpredictable "destiny of otherness". These claims, taken together, outline a redirection of the genealogical untangling to the future. While they persist on linking present phenomena to realities deemed historically "other", they also foresee that this fate of alterity will prevail in future times, an enlargement of scope that results in a symmetrically expanded genealogy. This universalized "discourse of historical otherness" makes evident that genealogy, in addition to its involvement with past vicissitudes of ideas and beliefs, is also bound to explore their future emmeshing with alterity. Its "forward-looking inflection" will proscribe historiographic prolepsis, contending that the destiny of otherness awaiting ideas and doctrines excludes any surmise about the meaning they will be given in the future.