Genealogical thought SIGNED

Project "Genealogical thought" data sheet

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 Project objective

Since a few decades, “genealogy” has become a philosophical keyword: self-proclaimed genealogies of X or Y are offered every day (where X can be democracy, modernity, spiritualism, Europe, and so on). Admittedly, the word “genealogy” doesn’t mean much more than “genesis” in most of these contexts. But even this loose understanding of the term seems to echo a philosophical tradition which grew out of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and of some influential readings of it: especially those of Deleuze and Foucault . The present research proposal aims at interrogating this tradition. To circumscribe a real tradition and not a mere intellectual fashion, the genealogical corpus must be defined as a history of explicit receptions of Nietzsche. Thus, Foucault, Judith Butler and Bernard Williams are three major genealogists in the strong sense: they have all engaged in a creative dialogue with the Genealogy of Morals, around the idea of “problematizing” our present norms and values through history . In doing so, however, they have also reinterpreted what Nietzsche initially meant by a “genealogy of morals”. Hence, it seems both needful and worthwhile to write a history of genealogical thinking in Nietzsche’s wake. This history could also help clarify what philosophical genealogy can achieve today in the fields of social and political philosophy, ethics, epistemology and gender studies.

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