By Catarina Dutilh Novaes
As some readers may recall (see this blog post with a tentative abstract — almost 2 years ago!), I am working on a paper on the methodology of conceptual genealogy, which is the methodology that has thus far informed much of my work on the history and philosophy of logic. Since many people have expressed interest in this project, in the next couple of days I will post the sections of the paper that I've already written. Feedback is most welcome!
Today I post Part I, on the traditionally a-historical conception of philosophy of analytic philosophers. Tomorrow I will post Part II.1, on Nietzschean genealogy; on Thursday and Friday I will post Part II.2, on the historicity of philosophical concepts, in two installments.
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Wiliams (2002) and Craig (2007) fittingly draw a distinction between genealogies that seek to expose the reprehensible origins of something and thereby decrease its value, and genealogies that seek to glorify their objects by exposing their ‘noble’ origins. The former are described as ‘subversive’, ‘shameful’ or ‘debunking’, while the latter may be dubbed ‘vindicatory’. (I will have much more to say on this distinction later on.) Nietzsche’s famous genealogical analysis of morality is the archetypal subversive genealogy, and has given rise to a formidable tradition of deconstruction of concepts, values, views, beliefs etc. by the exposure of their pudenda origo, their shameful origins. As described by Srinivasan (2011, 1),
Nietzsche’s innovation prompted a huge cultural shift towards subversive genealogical thinking – what might be called the ‘Genealogical Turn’ – including Freudian analysis, 20th-century Marxism, Foucault’s historical epistemology, certain strands of postcolonial and feminist theory, and much of what goes by the label ‘postmodernism’. These ideological programmes operate by purporting to unmask the shameful origins – in violence, sexual repression, gender or racial hegemony and economic and social oppression – of our concepts, beliefs and political structures.
However, the pull of the Genealogical Turn was not felt to the same extent in different quarters. In effect, so-called analytic philosophers remained by and large resistant to genealogical enterprises, so much so that one’s stance towards genealogical projects can be seen as one of the main differences between so-called continental and so-called analytic philosophers.[1] What is more, many analytic philosophers seemed to take what they saw as the shortcomings of genealogical projects to be a sign that any kind of historical contextualization of concepts and beliefs in the context of philosophical analysis would be misguided. Thus, analytic philosophy embraced what could be described as a largely a-historical conception of philosophy, whereas historical analysis remains of crucial importance for continental philosophers.[2]
Naturally, these are general trends rather than absolute rules, and at least some analytic philosophers have engaged in genealogical projects, or more generally ensured that their philosophical analyses be historically informed.[3] (I take genealogy to be one but not the only way to engage in philosophically relevant historical analysis.) Hacking is perhaps the most prominent example, along with Craig (1990) and Williams (2002). (Williams and Hacking are overtly influenced by so-called continental authors such as Nietzsche and Foucault, respectively). Still, mainstream analytic philosophers tend to think that the (philosophical) history of a given concept or belief is not likely to be relevant to a philosophical understanding of the concept, or likely to improve our knowledge of the phenomena in reality that the concept in question is a concept of.[4]
A number of explanations may be given to account for (or even justify) the analytic philosopher’s opposition to historically informed philosophical analysis in general, and genealogical approaches more specifically. Firstly, the analytic philosopher may think that what is philosophically relevant is not the context of discovery of a concept or belief, but rather its potential justification (to resort to the old but still useful Popperian distinction). In this vein, the origins and historical development of a concept or belief are irrelevant for the establishment of its (presumably) objective and philosophically relevant properties: what is the extension of the concept? What is the truth-value of the belief? Is it justified? For instance: if the belief is true (and even better, also justified), then the fact of having shameful origins will not make any difference; conversely, if the belief is false, then having noble origins will not change its falsity (Srinivasan draft).
Moreover, a tacit (and sometimes explicit) commitment that seems to underpin much of analytic philosophy is the idea that the concepts it studies (or the corresponding non-conceptual phenomena in reality) are natural kinds, defined by immutable, a-temporal essences. (See e.g. (Kornblith 2011) for the claim that the concept of knowledge is a natural kind, and a critique of Kornblith by Kusch (2013).) If the concepts studied by philosophers correspond to (or are themselves) natural kinds, then the different ways in which philosophers conceived of them through time are irrelevant: what matters is to formulate them correctly, for example by formulating the right necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as X. Assuming that there are such conditions (objectively speaking), if philosophers of previous generations associated different conditions to X, then they were simply wrong, and there is not much of philosophical significance to be learned from their mistakes. Another way to put the general point is that, on this conception, what philosophers do is to set out to discover pre-existing, possibly immutable, essences, rather than to invent concepts of their own creation; now, if this is what they do indeed, then there is not much point in contextualizing historically the quest for a-historical essences.
My goal at this point is not to offer a definitive answer to the (largely sociological, but also philosophical) question of why analytic philosophers tend not to be big fans of genealogical projects in general. For now, it is sufficient to notice that this seems indeed to be the case (as also noted by Srinivasan (draft)). Moreover, the tentative explanations just offered also suggest a certain conception of philosophical concepts and of the nature of the philosophical enterprise – discovering truths, be they about concepts or about non-conceptual reality – that must be further discussed, and to some extent questioned, if genealogical projects are to be relevant at all for the investigation of systematic philosophical questions. (This will be done later on; see also (Srinivasan draft) on reasons why even the staunch analytic philosopher should not dismiss the genealogical perspective completely.) Notice also that these considerations in fact apply more broadly to historical analysis as a whole, not only to the specific kind of historical analysis that is a (conceptual) genealogy.
In the remainder of the paper I will defend the view that a suitable formulation of the idea of conceptual genealogy does represent a fruitful methodological approach also for the analytic philosopher. The idea is not that it should supplant other, more traditional analytic methods, but rather that it may be viewed as a valuable tool in the analytic philosopher’s toolbox, to be combined with the traditional analytic methods.
[1] See (Westphal 2010) and (Sachs 2011).
[2] Carnap seems to have been a key figure in the movement away from history within analytic philosophy (Sachs 2011). Indeed, his fallout with Heidegger has been described as one of the seminal events in the schism between analytic and continental philosophy (Friedman 2000).
[3] Sellars would be another example of an analytic philosopher who regularly engages with the history of philosophy in his analyses, to some extent from a ‘genealogical’ perspective.
[4] It is also interesting to notice that most of the genealogical projects in the analytic tradition tend to be of the vindicatory kind, whereas the continental projects tend to stick closely to the Nietzschean subversive spirit. The exception is again Hacking, who is in any case in a league of his own.
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