“We Remain of Necessity Stranger to Ourselves”: The Key Message of Nietzsche’s Geneology (original) (raw)

Strangers to Ourselves: Self-Knowledge in Nietzsche's Genealogy

Nietzsche famously claims that “we knowers … remain of necessity strangers to ourselves” in the Genealogy’s preface (GM P, 1). But the meaning of Nietzsche’s claim isn’t entirely clear; and it bears no obvious connection to the Genealogy’s historical or evaluative projects. The aim of this paper is to clarify Nietzsche’s claim and to connect it with the rest of Nietzsche’s projects in the Genealogy. With this goal in mind, I canvass three interpretations of Nietzsche’s claim: (1) the naturalistic interpretation; (2) the transcendental interpretation; and (3) the normative interpretation. Ultimately, I argue, the naturalistic and transcendental interpretations are unsatisfactory; it’s the normative interpretation that comes closest to capturing the meaning of Nietzsche’s claim. According to this interpretation, Nietzsche’s claim that we’re necessarily “strangers to ourselves” shouldn’t be understood descriptively, but rather normatively, i.e., as suggesting that lacking a certain kind of self-knowledge is good for “we knowers.”

Knowing Ourselves: Nietzsche, the Practice of Genealogy, and the Overcoming of Self-Estrangement

2021

By centering Nietzsche’s philosophical methods, notably the practice of genealogy, this article addresses how our moral values developed, and how, while they once worked to address certain needs, these values now may perpetuate our self-misunderstandings. In conversation first with Nehamas and Geuss, and then with Reginster, I reconstruct the two dominant conceptions of the practice of genealogy in Nietzsche Studies. I argue that when history is plainly in view, authors have a tendency to remove necessity and psychology from the picture; when necessity and psychology are sharply in focus, commentators are likely to lose sight of history. In keeping all dimensions in the picture, I argue that we obtain a richer and more textured account of the genealogical mode of inquiry. Moreover, I demonstrate that as a psycho-historical mode of inquiry, the normative force of genealogy is immanent to the system of evaluation that is under consideration, which gives Nietzsche’s version of the phil...

Nietzsche's Genealogical Histories and His Project of Revaluation

History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2014

The introduction of an approach called “genealogy” is widely seen as one of Nietzsche’s chief contributions to philosophy. However, the status and aims of his genealogies remain the subject of controversy. They are read as variously (a) true histories, or alternatively (b) fictional accounts, that somehow provide a critique of morality. Both readings encounter difficulties: (a) implicates Nietzsche in the genetic fallacy, whereas (b) fails to account for the level of historical detail in Nietzsche’s genealogies. I demonstrate that Nietzsche intended his genealogies as true histories, in part by documenting his reliance on historical sources. I argue, further, that if we interpret Nietzsche’s project of critique correctly, the genetic fallacy charge falls away. Rather than doing the work of directly debunking values, genealogies ask (i) whether these values have contributed to human flourishing and (ii) what authority they possess. With this reading in place, we can now additionally make sense of the role Nietzsche’s genealogies play in his overarching project of a “revaluation of all values.” Presenting a given set of agents with a true historical account of the emergence of their values enables those agents to see how a set of values has been invented by human beings in the past. This demonstrates to these agents that such an act of value invention is, in principle, possible once again—and this is precisely what the revaluation demands.

"Nietzsche's Critique of the Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals"

The Enlightenment is exemplified in the thought of one of its most important representatives, namely Immanuel Kant. Nietzsche defined his theoretical position in relation to Kant's critical philosophy. However, Nietzsche's philosophy marked a break with the philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment in general and Kant's project in particular. For Nietzsche, the irony of Kant's critical philosophy lies in the fact that 'critique' took the form of 'legislation' (viz. 'categorical imperative'). Kant's critique confined itself to delimiting the laws governing knowledge and the claims to morality, but, in so doing, failed to challenge the value of knowledge and moral ideals per se. It is Nietzsche's view that Kant's thought is an instance of the Enlightenment appearance/reality and subject/object distinctions (HAH 16), which are challenged by means of a genealogical enquiry in the first and second essays of "On the Genealogy of Morality" respectively. These distinctions are facilitated by the 'mythology' which is concealed in language and grammar. In particular, the modern belief in the separation of 'subject' (or 'transcendental ego') from 'being' is made possible by the distinction between 'doer' and 'deed' that the structure of language imposes on us in the form of the subject-predicate dimension. As, with the passage of time, human beings forgot that it was they who had created liguistic symbols, they came to regard concepts as if they were 'eternal facts' (HAH 11). As a result, "the most diverse philosophers unfailingly fill out again and again a certain basic scheme of possible philosophies" (BGE 20). According to Nietzsche, Kant's critical philosophy turned out to be uncritical, because he took "grammatical functions" for granted. In directing his genealogy against the Enlightenment (and thereby Modernity), it can be argued that Nietzsche was the first post-modern thinker. Therein lies the radicalism of his genealogical project. This paper examines Nietzschean genealogy. For Nietzsche, genealogy is a re-valuative enterprise, its task being to recount the process through which we have become 'moderns' so as to provide us with a context of 'meaning' within which we can recognize and critically reflect on our 'modern condition'. Therefore, the starting-point of genealogy is the 'present', an age when religion has lost its influence on the conscience of human beings* and when moral values themselves are subject to stringent criticisms. Implicit in genealogy is a drive to overcome the present stage of 'nihilism' through understanding it, namely, through philosophy. In other words, a "transvaluation of values" (the Nietzschean term for critique) which will lead to a future age is inherent in the diagnosis of modernity. The paper explores how this diagnosis is accomplished. It also looks at the issue of perspectivism. In addition, it discusses the nature and value of Nietzschean genealogy as critique, and suggests that genealogy is a "performative critique", in so far as it aims to inspire the individual with the possibility of the Übermensch. ABBREVIATIONS HAH Human, Allt Too Human BGE Beyond Good and Evil GS Gay Science Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra * Nietzsche's famous 'death of God' phrase. Vide the scene of the 'madman' at GS 125; cf. Z prologue.

Nietzsche's Genealogy revisited

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 MoralityMorals. 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 have 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.

Theater of the Absurd: Nietzsche's Genealogy as Cultural Critique

The paper seeks to demystify Nietzsche's concept of genealogy. Genealogy tells the story of historical origins in the form of a myth that is betrayed from within, while readers have naively assumed it tells a story that Nietzsche endorses-whether of history or naturalized origins. Looked at more closely, genealogy, I claim, tells the story of human consciousness and its extraordinary fallibility. It relates the conditions and limits of consciousness and how these are actively avoided and forgotten, for the most part in vain. The lessons are these: there is no human time before consciousness; no unconscious activity that is uncontaminated by consciousness or culture; no period of prehistory that isn't already historical or historicized, hence subject to dehistoricization (for prehistory, Urzeit, always comes after history, in the form of a myth); no primordial "innocence of becoming," let alone any future condition free of these same constraints. Genealogy is the critique of the myth of knowing critique.

(More) Notes on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

Contained here are a collection of teaching notes meant to guide a multi-day discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche's _On the Genealogy of Morality_. The goal is to provide a careful framework around which a more free-flowing discussion can revolve.