Vindicatory genealogy
6 writings
Une normativité sans histoire ? Foucault, Engel et la normativité de la vérité
Invited contribution to Dialogue : Revue canadienne de philosophie
By shielding the concept of truth from Foucauldian historicism, Pascal Engel ends up leaving the “virtues of truth” even more exposed to Foucault’s negative genealogy. This article proposes a more ambitious reading of the positive genealogy of these virtues, demonstrating that cultivating accuracy and sincerity as intrinsic values is a functional necessity rather than a historical accident. Vindicating these dispositions’ status as virtues provides a more robust defence against both Foucauldian cynicism and contemporary indifference to truth.
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Ethics Beyond the Limits: New Essays on Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Mind 132 (525): 234–243. 2023. doi:10.1093/mind/fzaa077
Reviews a collection of essays on Williams’s Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy and offers a substantive defense of Williams against Humean critiques, arguing that Williams does employ vindicatory genealogies for basic ethical concepts like obligation, but separates these from their distortion within the morality system. Synthesizes diverse interpretations of Williams’s relativism of distance and practical necessity, recasting them not as skepticism but as inquiries into authenticity and the irreducible first-person nature of deliberation. Frames the collection as evidence that Williams’s project was not merely destructive, but a liberating attempt to legitimize ethical thoughts that exist outside the rigid constraints of modern moral theory.
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How Genealogies Can Affect the Space of Reasons
Synthese 197 (5): 2005–2027. 2020. doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1777-9
Attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something are often said to commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices. But this invites a second objection, which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems.
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Nietzsche as a Critic of Genealogical Debunking: Making Room for Naturalism without Subversion
The Monist 102 (3): 277–297. 2019. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1093/monist/onz010
Argues that contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche’s genealogical method does not seek to subvert by revealing immanent and lowly naturalistic origins—quite the opposite: Nietzsche is a critic of genealogical debunking thus conceived, on the grounds that it threatens to make a universal acid of reflection in a world increasingly disenchanted by scientific advances. Instead, Nietzsche advocates an outlook which makes room for naturalistic understanding and redraws the contrast between vindicatory and subversive genealogies within the space of naturalistic origins.
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Nietzsches affirmative Genealogien
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 67 (3): 429–439. By invitation. 2019. doi:10.1515/dzph-2019-0034
Argues that alongside his well-known critical genealogies, Nietzsche also developed “affirmative genealogies” that are not historically situated. These genealogies investigate the “practical origins” of concepts like justice and truth, showing how they arise instrumentally from fundamental human needs. By presenting these concepts as naturalistically intelligible and practically indispensable, this approach offers an affirmative justification, which I connect to Nietzsche’s later idea of an “economic justification of morality.”
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Nietzsche’s Pragmatic Genealogy of Justice
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (4): 727–49. 2017. doi:10.1080/09608788.2016.1266462
Examines Nietzsche’s view that the ideal of justice is a contingent political development emerging only when parties of roughly equal power need a system of exchange and requital to avoid mutually assured destruction, meaning the applicability of norms of justice is originally tied to distributions of power. This perspective reframes justice as a human-made solution to the recurring problem of social order. Understanding these origins vindicates justice as an indispensable invention for social life.
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