Nietzsche: Genealogy vs. History
In so far as history is understood as the impartial, dispassionate and objective study of the past, that is, history as an academic exercise, Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ (GM) is emphatically not an exercise in history, nor does Nietzsche intend it to be. I argue that this is for the following reasons:
1.) Nietzsche has consciously titled his work a ‘Genealogy’ of morality and not a ‘History’ of morality or a ‘On the Origins’ of morality and that this is significant.
2.) The genealogical pursuit is not an ultimate end in the work but rather is subordinate to a more profound end which is meta-historical and normative in nature: a revaluation of values.
3.) Nietzsche is at best ambivalent towards the status of ‘historical truth’ as an ultimate value and would rather argue that a commitment to truth for truth’s sake is a symptom of the very ascetic ideal he is railing against.
Introduction
In so far as history is understood as the impartial, dispassionate and objective study of the past, that is, history as an academic exercise, Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ (GM) is emphatically not an exercise in history, nor does Nietzsche intend it to be. I will be arguing this for the following reasons: 1) Nietzsche has consciously entitled his work a ‘Genealogy’ of morality and not a ‘History’ of morality or a ‘On the Origins’ of morality and that this is significant. 2) The genealogical pursuit is not an ultimate end in the work but rather is subordinate to a more profound end which is meta-historical and normative in nature: a revaluation of values. 3) Nietzsche is at best ambivalent towards the status of ‘historical truth’ as an ultimate value and would rather argue that a commitment to truth for truth’s sake is a symptom of the very ascetic ideal he is railing against.
Ultimately, I wish to argue that Nietzsche would take issue with the very term ‘exercise’ in history. History for Nietzsche is not a stale ‘exercise’, that is, a valueless and objective process of information acquisition; a catalogue of facts neutrally arranged into an impartial story culminating at the present to be carefully curated and then archived. Nietzsche is at pains to stress his departure from the historians of his age. We will always remain ‘unknown to ourselves’ if we seek to conduct history in this way (Nietzsche, 1996, p.2). Like bee’s ‘forever underway’ concerned with ‘bringing home something’, contemporary academic historians are hoarders of events, dates and isolated threads of cause and effect (ibid). However, what Nietzsche is interested in cannot be examined in this way. Nietzsche’s focus is on the barely conscious ideas, drives and sublimations behind ‘history’. It is, therefore, unclear what such a history, in the traditional academic sense, could look like. There is, and can be, no original source material tracking the origin of a sublimated desire such as ‘ressentiment’, therefore, Nietzsche’s historical project is inescapably reconstructive and speculative in nature. It is also, necessarily, deeply value-laden and dynamic as it is the stage for an assessment of contemporary drives, aversions and values. For these reasons, I believe there is something else altogether happening in GM and that, whatever else this turns out to be, it is decidedly not ‘history’ in any way in which modern historians would recognise it. I will be approaching this question in three sections. For the sake of brevity, I will be referring to essay I of GM. I will begin with a very brief description of Nietzsche’s account of the slave revolt in morality. In §1 I will be examining why the genealogy is not a history in any conventional sense. In §2 I will be asking why a genealogy is necessary at all for Nietzsche’s ends. Finally, in §3 I will be asking to what extent GM is necessarily wedded to any conception of history at all.
The Slave Revolt in Morality
In the first essay of GM, Nietzsche seeks to undermine our reverence for modern values by telling a story about their insidious beginnings and thus exposing them to the light. Before the advent of Judeo-Christian values, we are told, an earlier value system existed based upon the Greco-Roman, Homeric values of honor, courage, power and veneration of the body and embodied existence. These aristocratic noble values were asserted positively, that is, not in opposition to any other value system, but ‘spontaneously’ (Nietzsche, 2006, p. 25). If the noble values were internally judged as ‘good’, then ‘bad’ was anything in opposition to these values, namely weakness, sickness and ugliness. Alongside the knightly-aristocratic cast with their positivist modes of valuation sat the priestly cast who, being both powerless and resentful, began a subversion of the noble values. Their means of doing this lay with their power over the slave-cast, that is the weak and powerless. The priestly class are associated strongly with the Jews, who take revenge on the noble evaluative system by inverting it (ibid p.19). The slave revolt begins with ressentiment, the desired deed of actual revenge is denied of the priestly classes and thus their revenge takes a more ‘subterranean’ route (ibid, p.21). The priestly classes invert the noble values by persuading the slave classes that their suffering, weakness and low-born status is in fact ‘Godly’ and will be rewarded in a life to come, whereas the aristocratic nobles condemn themselves with their strength and power. The weak, the powerless and the miserable are now the good and those in opposition to these new valuations, the noble, the strong and the powerful, are the evil. This ‘sublime vindictiveness’ reaches its zenith with the ‘bait’ offered to their Roman masters; Jesus of Nazareth with the gospel of love as a magnificent vehicle of hate and revenge upon the noble values (ibid, p.20, p.31). The noble Greco-Roman values are then abandoned by the nobles who now adopt the valuation that it is evil to be powerful, strong and vengeful. Thus the ‘morality of the common man has won’ and Christian ‘slave-values’ of meekness, mediocrity, pity and asceticism preside (ibid, p.21).
§1 A ‘Genealogy’, not a ‘History’
Nietzsche was not a historian. His academic background was in Philology and, therefore, his expertise lay in the exegesis of source material rather than in the pursuit of it. From the perspective of academic historians, GM is therefore a potted-history; a poor attempt to spin an extremely tendentious and sparsely evidenced narrative of the emergence of our modern value systems. There is some attempt to tie the narrative to a recognised historical record, namely the conversion of the Greco-Roman world to a Judeo-Christian world view. However, it should be evident that history is not Nietzsche’s desired aim with the text. This is for one very important reason: In Nietzsche’s conception, history, as an objective, scientific pursuit is not only undesirable but unattainable. In the second essay of GM, he states ‘Only that which has no history is definable’ (Nietzsche, 2006, p.60). I believe our attention is being drawn here to an observation paradox as the fallacy at the heart of professional academic historiography. There is, and there can be, no objective history that is not necessarily infused with the historians contingent concerns, prejudices and values. Therefore, an attempt at a properly cited and referenced ‘history’ of moral values, supposing it were at all possible, Nietzsche would have seen as beneath him. The issue with such traditional histories is the attempt of the authorial subject to negate themselves and adopt a ‘view from nowhere’ and attempt a wholly objective examination of a phenomenon as a science a’ la Paul Rée’s ‘The Origin of Moral Sensations’ with its implicit nod to Darwinism. A genealogy, by contrast, is a value-laden, non-impartial exercise. It explicitly refers to a history that is prejudiced and idiosyncratic. Genealogies are traditionally supposed to infer value through ‘pedigree’ (as Geuss puts it) and are, therefore, prejudiced in the sense that they are not disinterested exercises in knowledge acquisition but instead selective as they vertically trace one or more ancestral routes at the expense of others (Geuss, 1994, p.274). That Nietzsche is using a genealogical method to undermine value rather than to infer it should not distract us from this. This very method, of selective non-impartiality, invokes the traditional historians’ criticism of Nietzsche, that there is too much of himself, his subjective concerns and interpretations, in the text. Christopher Janaway argues in ‘Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy’ that, for Nietzsche, the self-professed ‘impartial’, ‘valueless’ enterprise of historians such as Paul Rée fail because an examination of ones values can only succeed given that one is personally involved with them (Janaway, 2007, p.12). Janaway draws attention to Nietzsche’s assertion in the ‘Gay Science’ that ‘It makes the most telling difference whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his problems’ (Nietzsche, ‘The Gay Science’, in Janaway, 2007, p.31). Therefore, perhaps Nietzsche is right to not seek a value-vacuum from which to approach his genealogy.
Alexander Nehamas argues that, in GM, Nietzsche ‘give(s) up the view that causal description of objects and events in the world corresponds to their true nature’ (Nehamas, 2006, p.58). Nehamas argues that this amounts to the claim that ‘history is meaningless in itself’ (ibid, p.63). History, as it is ordinarily attempted by academic historians, is a conceptual folly. The gravest sin the historian commits is his attempted omission of his own value judgements. If this is the case, then what one is inevitably left with is a dry causal story of events devoid of their inner significance. Therefore, genealogy is ‘history correctly practiced’ (Nehamas, 1985, p.246). Genealogy, as opposed to history, is an attempt to decipher meaning back into history through interpretation. Necessarily, such an interpretation is, to an extent, subjective, but what elevates GM above mere history is that it is self-reflectively subjectivist. Morality is not a stagnant, dead concept to be dissected and examined, it is a living, breathing, evolving system of symbols and interpretations that is dynamically present within each of us. Therefore, a genealogy of morality is an interpretative exercise not merely in dead historical facts, but in ourselves. Consequently, historical ‘truth’, if there is room for such a conception in Nietzsche’s schema, is entirely subordinate to the interpretative and re-evaluative exercise that is supposed to be engendered in the reader. In this way we are to become less ‘unknown to ourselves’; what is proposed is a remedy for our attempts to busily collect objective historical ‘facts’ in the ‘beehives of knowledge’ which has only alienated us from a truly meaningful history of our values and ourselves (Nietzsche, 1996, p.3).
The second of Nietzsche’s ‘Untimely Meditations’, ‘On the Utility and Liability of History for Life’, establishes his distrust for history as a purported pursuit of disinterested truth. History, attempted as a purely causal mechanical science, is a danger because it forgets that the will to truth should only ever be put to use as a means to ‘stimulating (our) own activity’ (From Goethe letter to Schiller, referenced by Nietzsche, Second Untimely Meditation, in Nietzsche Reader, 2006, p.124). By this he means that knowledge, if it does not serve life, is impotent. We can, therefore, accept that Nietzsche is internally consistent in so far as, given his protestations, we would not expect an attempt at a neutral ‘history’ of moral values. What ‘traditional’ history there is contained in GM will not be an end pursued in-itself but a means to a greater end, the valorization of life and meaning. Janaway draws attention to a passage in ‘Ecce Homo’ where Nietzsche calls GM ‘preliminary’ to the revaluation of all values (Janaway, 2007, p.10). Janaway stresses that Nietzsche is keen in his Preface to GM to draw his audience’s attention to the conjectural and incomplete nature of the essays as hypothetical sketches undertaken ‘for the sake of an end to which it is one means amoung many’, namely a future project: a revaluation of all values (Nietzsche, 1996, p.7). Janaway concludes that this strongly suggests that GM is, to a significant degree, instrumental towards a greater, unfinished, non-historical project (ibid). This is decidedly not what ‘good academic history’ is about; Its self-professed goal being truth for its own sake. Nietzsche’s attempts to distance himself from academic history chimes nicely with his distrust of the veneration of ‘truth’ as an ultimate value in the third essay of GM. The pursuit of truth as a value in its own right, may appear to be a beneficent product of the enlightenment but, on closer examination, is a result of the Christian reverence for ultimate value that is held in esteem as the ascetic or life-denying ideal.
§2 Why give a genealogy and not just a critique?
If GM, as an exercise in academic ‘history’, is impossible, then why does Nietzsche not simply give us a critique of moral values as they currently are? Why invoke a genealogy to begin with? The answer to this, I believe, is that Nietzsche wishes to set his reader free of the necessitarian conviction that morality as it stands today is morality as it eternally must be. He wishes to invoke in his reader a sense in which he can free himself from historical contingencies. For such an exercise to work, history must be drawn upon and Nietzsche does indeed do this. There is clear reference to Homeric, Early Christian and Jewish history. However, I believe Nietzsche does not wish to lose sight of his real target by becoming bogged-down in historical detail. His real target is the psychological condition within ‘modern’ man, and, therefore, to besiege the text with historical sources, citations and references would be to become distracted from his project. Not only this, but it would appear impossible to even attempt to make reference to original source material anyway. What positivist evidence could there for a sublimated desire such as ressentiment? Even if there were first or second hand accounts, the early Christians of the slave revolt would presumably, owing to their sublimated nature, not be aware of them and even imagining they were, would have no incentive to leave a historical record of their true motive.
When it comes to cold, historical ‘facts’ such as wars or successions, history may be able to shed light, but when it comes to what Nietzsche is really interested in, it is hard to see how there can be any falsifying evidence either way. How does one document drives, desires and wills? Raymond Geuss draws our attention to the parallels between Nietzsche’s project and the Christian project itself in his article ‘Nietzsche and Genealogy’. A profundity of the sort proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth is such that there really can be no history of it separated from interpretation. For Nietzsche, according to Geuss, the very history of Christianity is, therefore, a history of interpretation; the history of Christianity has evolved through interpretative attempts at making sense of this very same history. There is, therefore, an exegetical echo chamber at work: the attempts to make interpretative sense of Christian history inform and shape its very history. Consequently, for Nietzsche, the distinction between the interpretation of history and the history of interpretation is not at all a clear one. Geuss states ‘the history of Christianity, then, is a history of successive attempts…to take control...and reinterpret’ (Geuss, 1994, p.281). For Nietzsche, the driving force behind both the interpretation and history of Christianity is Paul. Consequently, there can be no disinterested non-subjectivist ‘view from nowhere’ from which to construct a history of Christianity, or of anything else for that matter. All history involves individual wills making value judgements. Academic historians may be despairing in the face of such a claim and may either 1) refuse to concede that Nietzsche’s contentions on the subjectivist nature of historical enquiry are true or 2) despair altogether. Alternatively post-modernists may wish to view Nietzsche’s contentions as an invitation for the radical destabilizing of all histories. I, however, think there is something altogether more interesting happening in GM, something that treads a careful path between the traditional historian and the post-modernist. Because objective history is impossible, the most objective one can be is in embracing the fact that all history is interpretation. If one does this, then one is able, as Nietzsche does, to see that the tools needed to interpret the phenomenon under examination, that is ‘systems of value’, are already extent within oneself. Because the ability to assign and systematize values exists within oneself, we have privileged access to the manner in which values are formulated, acquired and asserted. The history of valuation is, therefore, a history of our own internal psychological landscape. Therefore, by embracing the subjectivist and exegetical nature of an interpretative genealogy, Nietzsche’s reader is encouraged to realise three things: 1) that no valuing can exist without a contingent value-er, and that this is true of history as well as of morals. 2) That, in so far as we are all participants in our shared inherited moral universe, a genealogy of morals is, to an extent, a genealogy of our own collective psyche’ and 3) following from 1) and 2), moral values are entirely contingent both upon history and upon our own valuation. Therefore, a genealogy is a critique and a critique necessitates a genealogy.
§3 Would GM survive the charge that it is in no way historical?
Critics of GM may still wish to argue that there is simply no history happening in the text. An interesting question is: how wedded to a verifiable historical narrative is GM and could it survive as a prelude to a revaluation of values if its account of history turned out to be totally erroneous? Recent research conducted on the importance of history as a unifying thread in Nietzsche’s philosophy shines a light on this. Christoph Schuringa argues in his doctoral thesis, ‘Nietzsche’s Historical Philosophy’, that Nietzsche relies on history not merely as an aid to philosophy but that its reliance is the result of his deepest Heraclitean convictions (Schuringa, 2012, p.9). Given that all the world is flux and, consequently, there are no ultimate values, the contingent role of history in the formation of ideas is of central importance. While I agree with Schuringa, I still do not believe it is to ‘history’ as a contingent set of facts that Nietzsche would have us turn. History, in Nietzsche’s hands, must be understood in a very different way. History must include myth, fiction, fable, parable et cetera as an arsenal of rhetorical devices for aiding us in our return to ourselves.
However, the worry remains: Does GM lose its evaluative edge if it is not closely wedded at all to any ‘real’ historical evidence? One emergent worry is submitted by Peter Kail in his article ‘Genealogy and the Genealogy’. Kail does not agree with Nehamas, that is that Nietzsche has provided ‘history correctly practiced’. This is because so much of GM is focused on the situation of psychological rather than historical contingencies. However, neither does Kail follow the post-modern ‘truth-skeptic’ model, namely that Nietzsche held that there is no such thing as empirical ‘truth’. Rather Kail believes that the GM is invoking an inference to the best explanation. In the absence of more qualifying evidence on the history of values, Nietzsche’s account, he (Nietzsche) would have us believe, provides the greatest explanatory power (Kail, 2011, p.231). Therefore, as already mentioned, perhaps because there can be very little empirical evidence of a history of barely conscious drives, Nietzsche is in the game of attempting to provide us with a likely story that does its best at ticking as many boxes as possible. I believe that this would provide an attractive solution to the historian’s critique, this is because Nietzsche is not ignoring the evidence, there just is very little of it.
Keil goes on to explain how Bernard Williams believes GM may be presenting a fictional account of the history of values with the purpose of destabilizing the rational and emotive grounds upon which we value a system of morality (ibid, p.232). This, however, is not convincing for Keil, largely because, unlike for instance Hobbes’ quasi-fictional account of the emergence of the state (where it is good that individuals have sacrificed their autonomy to the sovereign), there is no independently good reason to pay attention to Nietzsche’s assertions if his story is a fiction (ibid). I would have to agree with this argument; A ‘Just-So’ story of the emergence of the state from a Hobbesian state of nature can withstand the charge of being falsified by the historical evidence. This is because, the imaginary account, just like any good fictional cautionary tale should, compels us by showing us what could be the case if our values were not adhered to (war of all against all). However, if there is no truth whatsoever to the Nietzschean account and it is nothing more than a ‘Just-So’ story, then there is no compelling reason at all for us to take seriously Nietzsche’s assertions that our values require a revaluation. This is because the Nietzschean account is radical in nature in its call to de-stabalize and re-valuate and therefore risk losing what we have whereas the Hobbesian account is conservative in nature and compels us to not change the current state, to stabilize, through fear of what we might lose. I, therefore, agree with Kail; Nietzsche’s account must be historical to the extent that it must give us compelling reason to believe that our system of values is both contingent and non-necessary.
Conclusion
In this essay I have tried to argue that GM both is and is not an exercise in history. To the extent that history has been understood as the academic history of impersonal facts, GM is not history. This is for a variety of reasons, including 1) the genealogical pursuit is not an ultimate end in the work but rather is subordinate to a more profound end which is meta-historical and normative in nature: a revaluation of values. 2) Nietzsche is at best ambivalent towards the status of ‘historical truth’ as an ultimate value. 3) There could be no positivist, verifiable history of sublimated values as these are barely conscious to those in whom they prevail, let alone privy to documentation. However, GM is also not devoid of history altogether. As argued by Keil, this would leave the text entirely without its compelling, imploring element: we would have no good reason to re-valuate our values if Nietzsche simply provided us with a fiction. There is, therefore, a fine line being traversed, between these two polar opposites. While I do not agree with Schuringa that a historical concern sits on par with a psychological concern in Nietzsche’s agenda, there is nonetheless a real concern with history at work in GM, this is, however, not a history as we would ordinarily understand it but something else altogether entirely: a partially historical, partially imaginative, psychological reconstruction of an inversion of values which is not pursued as an end in itself but as a means to set us moderns free and become better known to ourselves.
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