ABSTRACT
In order to make sense of Michael Peters’ approach to educational research, a brief critique of what “genealogy” is and why it is often considered a “new” method to philosophy is a useful starting point. The reason for this critique is due in part to the method itself, but more to understand how Peters employs a form of genealogy and scientific method in the service of educational research. Although scientific and genealogical method are not the same, there are some similarities in the principles that underpin them both, particularly in relation to the provisional nature of knowledge, truth, language, history, value, and so on. The fame of “genealogy” or the “genealogical method” would appear to rest with Nietzsche’s (1887/1998) usage in his book entitled On the Genealogy of Morality. That said, Foucault (1971) popularised the idea that “genealogy” represents a new historical and philosophical method in his essay entitled “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”. Foucault (1971, pp. 77–80) argues that the genealogist “refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics” and so “opposes itself to the search for ‘origins’” in the search for “immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession”. Here, we have an example of Foucault’s claim that the genealogical object has no “origin” or “essence of things”. In one sense, this forms the basis of his scepticism about “fact” and “objectivity”, but more importantly it reveals the crucial role of interpretation. In another sense, this is not what Nietzsche (1887/1998, preface, §7) means by genealogy as he is only interested in what has “really existed, really been lived”, and discovering this with a “completely new set of questions” and “new eyes”. This is why Nietzsche’s genealogical method is different because it is concerned with breaking the chain of value transference by showing that the value or meaning is discontinuous over time. Of course, the object of Nietzsche’s genealogical critique is morality; however, this could easily be replaced with other values or meanings in the illustration of no 115unitary value or meaning being transferred over time. Likewise, values and meanings arise from multiple points of origin and hence why to Nietzsche it is nonsensical to speak of moral absolutes because we are bound to mistakenly attribute prior histories of morality with its present value, meaning, purpose, and so on. The fact that there is no unitary and/or single point of origin about morality renders morality unstable. As such, it is the connection morality has with present value, meaning, purpose, and so on that Nietzsche (1887/1998) desires to sever because we are not entitled to infer about its origin (see for example, first treatise, §1–3).
