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    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Part II.3: The historicity of philosophical concepts

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      This is the fourth and for now final installment of my series of posts on conceptual genealogy. Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; Part II.2 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. 

      I now discuss the five main features of the historicist conception of philosophical concepts that motivates and justifies the method of conceptual genealogy for philosophical concepts. In a sense, this is the backbone of the  paper and of the whole project, so I'm particularly interested in feedback from readers now.

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      We are now in a better position to describe in more detail what I take to be the five main characteristics of the historicist conception of philosophical concepts that I defend here, borrowing elements from Nietzsche’s conception of genealogy and Canguilhem’s concept-centered historical approach. In short, these are (they will each be discussed in turn subsequently):

      1. Historical change
      2. Superimposition of layers of meaning
      3. Contingency
      4. Multiple lines of influence
      5. Connected to (extra- or intra-philosophical) practices and goals

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    • Directory of Philosophers from Underrepresented Groups in Philosophy

      …is online! It merges the different lists hitherto available with specific underrepresented groups within philosophy and for different areas into a single directory. From the description:

      The UPDirectory publicizes information about philosophers who are members of traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy. The purpose of the directory is to provide an easy-to-use resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the work of philosophers who belong to underrepresented groups within the discipline. […]

      For the purposes of the UPDirectory, traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy include women philosophers, black philosophers, Asian philosophers, Latina/o and Hispanic Philosophers, Indigenous/Native philosophers, LGBTQ philosophers, and philosophers with a disability, among others. […] Inclusion in the directory is primarily a matter of self-entry.

      So, philosophers belonging to one or more of these underrepresented groups: go add yourselves! And everybody else: go check it out! Make sure you use this amazing resource next time you plan a conference, an edited volume etc.

    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Part II.2: Canguilhem on genealogy of scientific concepts

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      This is the third installment of my series of posts with different sections of the paper on conceptual genealogy that I am working on. Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. 

      I now turn to Canguilhem as an author exemplifying the kind of approach I have in mind when I speak of 'conceptual genealogy'. The main difference is that Canguilhem focused on scientific concepts (especially from biology and medicine), whereas I am articulating a methodology for the investigation of philosophical concepts (though of course, often the line between the two groups will be rather blurry). The same caveat of the previous installment on Nietzsche applies: this is a very brief and inevitably superficial discussion of Canguilhem's ideas, on which there is obviously much more to say.

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      The thesis of the relevance of historical analysis for philosophical theorizing rests crucially on a historicist conception of philosophical concepts, namely that they are not (or do not correspond to) a-historical essences or natural kinds. However, ‘historicism’ can have different meanings (Beiser 2011, Introduction), so let me now spell out in more detail in what sense I defend a historicist conception of philosophical concepts.

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    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Part II.1: Nietzschean Genealogy

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      This is the second installment of my series of posts with different sections of the paper on conceptual genealogy that I am working on. Part I is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. 

      I now present some of the basics of Nietzschean genealogy which will then be central for my general project. The goal here is thus not to offer a thorough account of Nietzsche's thought on the matter, obviously (a lifelong project!), but it should still be an accurate presentation of some aspects of it. If that is not the case, please do let me know! (I rely mostly on Geuss' and Leiter's interpretations.) Feedback in general is more than welcome.

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      The mundane, commonsensical sense of genealogy is typically related to the idea of vindication, i.e. of validation of one’s authority through the narrative of one’s origins. This is particularly conspicuous in historical disputes for political power within the traditional monarchic model: a contestant has a claim to the throne if she can prove to be a descendent of the right people, namely previous monarchical power-holders. In such cases, a genealogy is what Geuss (1994, 274) describes as ‘tracing a pedigree’, a practice as old as (Western?) civilization itself. The key idea is the idea of transmission of value: a person with noble ancestry inherits this status from her ancestors.

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    • Schmitt not so Decisionist

      Nothing new to say about Schmitt here, but I think there is something to be said for clarifying in what ways Schmitt is not ‘Schmittian’ in some senses that influence some people. This issue came up in a teaching context recently and I think refers to a widespread tendency, which I believe can be tackled without hopefully falling into assault and battery on a straw man in order to clarify what is distinctive about Schmitt’s contribution.

      The issue is of defining Carl Schmitt as a ‘decisionist’ who regards the question of who exercises sovereignty as arbitrary, as a question which begins and ends with the question who has the force to exercise sovereignty, with no regard for the legitimation of that sovereignty. This is severely one- sided, but does have some basis in some things Schmitt said, particularly in Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, and Crisis in Parliamentary Democracy. The opening of Political Theology and a slightly later in the text quotation from Kierkegaard, with related discussion, is where decisionistic Schmitt seems most apparent. 

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    • Moral Order and Immanent Justice

      by Eric Schwitzgebel

      Let’s say the world is morally ordered if good things come to those who act morally well and bad things come to those who act morally badly.


      Moral order admits of degrees. We might say that the world is perfectly morally ordered if everyone gets exactly what they morally deserve, perfectly immorally ordered if everyone gets the opposite of what they morally deserve, and has no moral order if there’s no relationship between what one deserves and what one gets.

      Moral order might vary by subgroup of individuals considered. Perhaps the world is better morally ordered in 21st century Sweden than it was in 1930s Russia. Perhaps the world is better morally ordered among some ethnicities or social classes than among others. Class differences highlight the different ways in which moral order can fail: Moral order can fail among the privileged if they do not suffer for acting badly, can fail among the disadvantaged if they do not benefit from acting well.

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    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Part I: Analytic philosophy and the a-historical conception of philosophy

      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.

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    • Theranos and the Biopolitics of Blood-Testing

      By Gordon Hull

      The current New Yorker includes a profile of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that is developing new techniques of blood-testing, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes.  In the old way, you’d go to the doctor, who’d order some tests.  You’d then get a blood draw of a couple of vials of blood, and they’d get shipped off to LabCorps or Quest.  A few days later, you’d find out your lipid or other levels.  Theranos claims to have developed the technology to get much, much more information out of a couple of drops of blood – at a fraction of the cost.  Needless to say, such an innovation would be a game changer.  There is serious money at stake: Quest and LabCorps apparently generate $75 billion a year in revenue. Medically, it’s not just that routine lipid screenings would be easier; it’s that as researchers discover blood markers for more and more diseases, routine blood testing could enable early detection of some that are currently very difficult to treat.  For example, recent research suggests such biomarkers might enable early detection of the most common form of lung cancer (this follows the discovery of another lung cancer biomarker a year ago); such early detection is critical for treatment, and its absence is part of why lung cancer has such a high mortality rate.  The automatic testing for cancer biomarkers could simply be folded into the lab result.  Holmes puts it this way:

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    • Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

      By: Samir Chopra 

      In 'Five Parables' (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes,

      I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last meeting, some students gathered around and began with the conventional, 'Gee, what a great course.' The subsequent remarks were more instructive: 'But you could not help it…what with all those great books, I mean like Descartes…' They loved Descartes and his Meditations.

      I happen to give terrible lectures on Descartes, for I mumble along saying that I do not understand him much. It does not matter. Descartes speaks directly to these young people, who know as little about Descartes and his times as I know about the green family and its time. But just as the green family showed itself to me, so Descartes shows himself to them….The value of Descartes to these students is completely anachronistic, out of time. Half will have begun with the idea that Descartes and Sartre were contemporaries, both being French. Descartes, even more than Sartre, can speak directly to them….I do find it very hard to make sense of Descartes, even after reading commentaries, predecessors, and more arcane texts of the same period. The more I make consistent sense of him, the more he seems to me to inhabit an alien universe.

      A few brief responses:

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    • The Dickhead Theory Of Academic Philosophy, Revisited

      By: Samir Chopra

      A little while ago, I posited something I jocularly termed The Dickhead Theory as a possible explanation for the lack of women in academic philosophy (“there are too many dickheads in philosophy”). In response, one male reader commented:

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