ABSTRACT
A paradigm of what genealogy opposes is the Augustinian view of history as recording a divinely scripted linear and teleological sequence of events. The core of the genealogical inversion of the accidental over the allegedly inevitable is that rather than providing discernment of unity, history only tracks complexity and disparity. Genealogy proceeds by tracing "the history of morals, ideals, and metaphysical concepts, the history of the concept of liberty or of the ascetic life". Genealogy analyzes the descent and emergence of morals, ideals, metaphysical concepts and all manner of institutions to show them to be the products of happen-chance meetings of blind forces and not discovered truths or preordained developments. Genealogy is opposed to history only as a quest for originative determinants. Genealogy even needs the historians' grand narratives because without them it would lack a counterpoint. Genealogy reconceives intellectual inquiry as a series of diverse practices governed by thoroughly historical standards.
