ABSTRACT
A method of analysis of forms of ethical (Nietzsche) or epistemological (Foucault) discourse. Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), was the first to outline this approach, and Foucault’s work owes much to him. Nietzsche’s text argues that the basis of morality and the meaning of value-attributions such as ‘good’, ‘evil’ and ‘bad’ are not derived, as is often supposed to be the case, from either altruistic or utilitarian modes of valuing (nor, it might be added, from any divine sanction). Rather, ethical systems can be understood in terms of their ‘genealogy’, that is, as being produced by social and historical processes. Above all, morality for Nietzsche, represents not a disinterested conception of what constitutes the ‘good’, but is rather an expression of the interests of particular social groups. Thus, the notion of ‘good’ has, he argues, two modes of derivation which signify two very different social perspectives and hence systems of valuing. First, the ‘good’, in its original sense, expressed the viewpoint of the noble classes who inhabited the ancient world. ‘Good’, taken in this sense, meant ‘beloved of God’, and was the expression of the nobles’ affirmation of their own identity. ‘Bad’, in turn, expressed a secondary phenomenon, i.e. the nobles’ reaction to those who were their social inferiors (‘common’, ‘plebeian’, etc.). Noble (or master) morality was thus premised on an affirmation of the identity of the noble as a bestower of values. Second, ‘good’ in the second sense Nietzsche outlines was a secondary mode of valuing derived from the appellation ‘evil’ ascribed by slaves to describe their oppressors (the nobles). Slave morality, as Nietzsche terms it, therefore derived its notion of ‘good’ as a secondary consequence of the negative valuation ‘evil’. In this way, negation is the ‘creative deed’ of the slave. Slave morality, Nietzsche argues, is the morality of both the Hebraic tradition and of Christianity, and is a ‘resentiment’ morality, i.e. one whose genealogy is that of the slave’s resentment of the noble’s/master’s power over them. It is, in Gilles Deleuze’s phrase, a ‘reactive’ morality, rather than an active or affirmative one. Nietzsche’s genealogical method is in fact a variant on a project
outlined in one of his earlier works, Human, All-Too-Human (187880). In the opening sections of that work he argues for the construction of a ‘chemistry’ of the religious and moral sensations and values. In other words, Nietzsche takes the view that values (and, indeed, feelings/sensations) can be revealingly understood by producing a causal and historical account of them which seeks to unearth their origins. To this extent, the genealogical approach fits in with
much of Nietzsche’s philosophical thinking, which often expresses the view that what has hitherto been regarded as valuable (or even sacred) can be adequately accounted for within a materialist methodology of explanation. Foucault’s genealogical method of investigation, likewise, takes as its point of departure the historical conditions which constitute discourses of knowledge. His analysis of, for example, the clinical definitions and treatments of madness since the seventeenth century emphasises the importance of social relations (above all, relations of power) in the construction of knowledge, and seeks to reveal through painstaking historical analysis the influences and interests which underlie and are concealed by discourses which claim to articulate objective knowledge. A key problem, at least with Foucault’s application of the genealogical method, is that in applying it to forms of knowledge he opens himself to the criticism that his own discourse is itself a production of historical factors and an expression of interests (see Peter Dews’s criticisms listed in the readings below, which provides a Nietzschean criticism of Foucault’s methodology).
