Conceptual

genealogy for analytic philosophy

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

To appear in: J. Bell, A. Cutrofello, P.M. Livingston (editors), Beyond the Analytic-Continental
Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge Studies in Contemporary
Philosophy).


1. Introduction

The significance attributed to the history of philosophy for the systematic investigation of
philosophical issues divides the analytic and the continental philosophical traditions.
Typically, the continental philosopher sees the historical development of a given
philosophical issue or concept as a substantial and perhaps even indispensable element for
the analysis, whereas the analytic philosopher tends to treat issues and concepts as if they
were a-historical entities, thus not requiring such a historical contextualization to be
properly grasped.1

Influential continental authors such as Nietzsche and Foucault have placed historical
analysis at the epicenter of their respective philosophical methodologies, in particular with
the concepts of genealogy and archeology. More recently, analytic authors such as Ian
Hacking, Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, among others, have pursued similar lines of
investigation. For the most part, however, and despite some notable exceptions (such as
(Crane 2015)), analytic philosophers remain quite hostile to the idea that the systematic
analysis of a given concept or issue has something to benefit from becoming historically
informed.

In this paper, I discuss in detail a philosophical methodology that I call conceptual
genealogy. This methodology underpins much of my work in the history and philosophy of
logic to date (for example, my work on the concept of logical form), which however falls
squarely within the analytic tradition.2 I argue that analytic philosophy in general has

1 Habermas (2003) suggests that Continental philosophy, following G.W.F. Hegel, continually reflects upon,

and brings up into its manifest content, its own sociohistorical situation (7980). Thus, unlike analytic
philosophy, continental philosophy has never turned away from culture, tradition, literature, psychodynamics,
and political economy in the course of thinking about language and meaning. By contrast, analytic
philosophyespecially in the wake of the so-called linguistic turnhas tended to think about language in
abstraction from such matters. (Sachs 2011, 303) (I am quoting Sachs paraphrase instead of Habermas own
text because perhaps unsurprisingly the paraphrase is much clearer and to-the-point than the original.)
See also (Williamson 2014) for analytic philosophy as a somewhat anti-historical tradition.
2 References to my previous work will often be made to illustrate the points being made. This does not mean

that I am the only (analytic) philosopher resorting to the method of conceptual genealogy, but obviously I
know my own work better than the work of others.

1
much to gain from incorporating the historicist component of genealogical investigations.
Analytic philosophers too must take seriously the idea that philosophical concepts may be
historical products rather than a-temporal natural kinds or essences, and that they bring
along with them traces of their historical development as well as of broader cultural
contexts. Indeed, one of the key aspects of typical genealogical approaches (as is clear in
particular in Nietzsche) is an emphasis on the contingent nature of (philosophical) concepts
and phenomena as products of long and winding historical developments. Moreover,
conceptual genealogy produces narratives whose protagonists are concepts, issues,
arguments, not authors; it operates predominantly on philosophical texts, but textual
authorship is not the main focus. It focuses on how philosophical concepts are re-
interpreted and transformed through their historical developments, while maintaining
traces of their previous instantiations. Conceptual genealogy is thus a Longue Dure
approach to the history of philosophy.

Before we proceed, however, I must say something about the range and scope of the
considerations to follow. I focus almost exclusively on distinctively theoretical,
philosophical concepts, such as for example the concepts of logical form, truth, knowledge
etc. These concepts may be related to extra-theoretical concepts and phenomena in
interesting ways, but here the focus is on the historical development of such concepts as
registered in philosophical texts. Thus, projects of evolutionary genealogy, or state of nature
projects (i.e. quasi-mythological accounts of the original, pre-societal stages of human
existence, e.g. Rousseaus account of the origins of inequality), for example, do not count as
conceptual genealogy in the sense countenanced here.

Social and historical developments outside philosophy also fall outside the scope of the
present investigation (though the historian of philosophy does well to pay attention to the
material and social backgrounds for the emergence of philosophical theories and
concepts). 3 For example, Foucaults (1975, 1976) genealogical investigations of social
phenomena such as sexuality and punishment obviously included numerous elements
outside the limited scope of the philosophical corpus, and this is not the kind of
(sociological) genealogy we will focus on here (though some elements of Foucaults
framework will be in the background). In other words, the genealogical projects to be
discussed here pertain to the development of certain key concepts specifically within
philosophy, and predominantly as registered in philosophical texts. There is still the
question of how these philosophical concepts are related to non-philosophical concepts
(and the line between what counts as a philosophical vs. a non-philosophical concept is

3 More generally, the paper will only very selectively discuss the incredibly vast philosophical literature on

genealogy. In effect, a comprehensive overview of this literature would require a book-length treatment, and
so a number of pertinent works will have to be left out. In other words, this paper should not be seen as a
systematic discussion of the concept of genealogy as such, but rather perhaps as a methodological manifesto.

2
bound to be rather blurry and contentious) as well as to non-conceptual phenomena, i.e.
reality as such. But for now, it is sufficient to clarify that the scope of the present
investigation is somewhat narrower than some readers may expect, given the various other
genealogical projects they may be familiar with.

2. Analytic philosophy and the a-historical conception of philosophy

Williams (2002) and Craig (2007) draw a useful 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 described
as vindicatory. (I will have much more to say on this distinction later on; I will also discuss
a third category.)4 Nietzsches 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 (Srinivasan 2011).

But naturally, the pull of (Nietzschean) genealogy was not felt to the same extent elsewhere.
In effect, so-called analytic philosophers remained by and large resistant to genealogical
enterprises (both subversive and vindicatory), so much so that ones stance towards
genealogical projects can be seen as one of the main differences between so-called
continental and so-called analytic philosophers.5 What is more, some 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 (or even anti-historical) conception of philosophy,
whereas historical analysis remains of crucial importance for continental philosophers
(Mulligan et al. 2006).6

Naturally, these are general trends rather than absolute rules, and a number of analytic
philosophers have engaged in genealogical projects, or more generally ensured that their
philosophical analyses be historically informed.7 (I take genealogy to be one but not the

4 See also (Koopman 2013) for a similar tripartite taxonomy of genealogies.
5 See (Westphal 2010) and (Sachs 2011).
6 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 2002).
7 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. The same applies to those
influenced by him, e.g. Robert Brandom. But perhaps the analytic philosopher having engaged most
extensively with the history of philosophy for systematic analysis in recent years is Rorty, especially in his
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).

3
only way to engage in philosophically relevant historical analysis.) Hacking (for example in
(Hacking 1995), among many other works) is perhaps the most prominent example, along
with Craig (1990) and Williams (2002). (Importantly, Williams and Hacking are overtly
influenced by so-called continental authors such as Nietzsche and Foucault, respectively).
Still, mainstream analytic philosophers tend to believe that the (philosophical) history of a
given concept or belief is not likely to be relevant for 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.8 Here is an apt description of this phenomenon:9

Analytic philosophy has largely rejected historical modes of understanding. [] This
neglect, however, is not accidental: it is the result of the general repudiation of the
historical mode of understanding within analytic philosophy. In particular, analytic
philosophy seems to think of itself as taking place within a single timeless moment.
(Hylton 1990, viii)

A number of explanations may be given to account for (or even justify) the analytic
philosophers rejection of 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
establishing 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) (see section 4.3 for a discussion of the genetic
fallacy).

Moreover, a tacit (and sometimes explicit) commitment that seems to underpin much of
analytic philosophy is the idea that the concepts the philosopher 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).) Indeed, Frege,
Russell, and Moore (arguably, the founders of analytic philosophy as we know it) were all
conceptual realists, i.e. they took concepts to have human-independent reality.


8 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.
9 See also (Akehurst 2010, Introduction).

4
Now, if the concepts studied by philosophers correspond to (or are themselves) natural
kinds, or more generally have human-independent and a-temporal kind of existence, 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 gained from their mistakes (except perhaps for avoiding
making the same mistakes). Another way to make the same point is to say that what
philosophers do is to set out to discover pre-existing, possibly immutable, essences. 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
philosophically interesting) 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 a number of authors before me, such as Hylton (1990) and
Crane (2015)). 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. Notice also that these
considerations may apply more broadly to historical analysis as a whole, not only to the
specific kind of historical analysis that is a (conceptual) genealogy. 10

In the remainder of the paper I 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, traditional analytic
methods, but rather that it may be viewed as a valuable tool in the analytic philosophers
toolbox, to be combined with the traditional methods.

3. Conceptual genealogy

3.1 Nietzschean genealogy

The mundane, commonsensical sense of genealogy is typically related to the idea of
vindication, i.e. of validation of ones authority and standing through the narrative of ones
origins. This is particularly conspicuous in historical disputes for political power within

10 See also (Srinivasan draft) on reasons why even the staunch analytic philosopher should not dismiss the

genealogical perspective completely.

5
traditional monarchic models: 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.11 The key idea is the idea of transmission of value: a person
with noble ancestry inherits this status from her ancestors through their common
bloodline.

But a genealogy may also have more neutral implications: perhaps a persons ancestors
are not particularly distinguished or noble, but she may still wish to know where she
comes from. In the limit case, a genealogy may also be of the shameful kind, e.g. if what
transpires from genealogical analysis is that a persons ancestors had dubious social
standing (e.g. convicted thieves). In theory, none of it should matter for a persons
individual worth, and yet in practice we tend to attach a great deal of importance to a
persons ancestry (e.g. the quasi-mythical status of the Mayflower pilgrims and their
descendants in the United States).

In this sense, a genealogy is a narrative with no gaps: a persons genealogy is a detailed
account of her ancestry, which specifies every relevant parent-offspring step in the chain.
(Naturally, it will have to stop at some point, usually at the person who is then viewed as
the founder of the dynasty in question even though this person obviously had parents as
well.) Typically, a genealogy may focus on the transmission of a familys surname through
generations, thus indicating continuity (of positive value in particular, e.g. nobility).12 At the
same time, a genealogy will always contain an element of change as well, if nothing else
because parents and offspring are by definition different individuals. In effect, the interplay
between continuity and change is one of the fundamental aspects of the concept of
genealogy for the present purposes.

But naturally, this is not a study of genealogies of people: instead, we are interested in
genealogies of (philosophical) concepts, and thus in their development through time. The
idea that thought itself is a historical beast rather than immutable and a-temporal can be
traced back (at least) to the German historicist tradition, which emerged in the 18th century
(Beiser 2011). Nietzsches genealogical approach falls squarely within this tradition, even if
his own interpretation of historicism in terms of genealogy is arguably quite unique to him.

11 In what follows, I mostly rely on Geuss reading of Nietzschean genealogy, as it contains all the elements

needed for the argumentation to be developed later on.

12 See (Geuss 1994, 275) for the five main characteristics of pedigree tracing.

6
For the present purposes, it will prove instructive to compare Nietzsches historicism to
that of Hegel,13 who famously said:

As far as the individual is concerned, each individual is in any case a child of his time,
thus, philosophy, too, is its own time comprehended in thoughts. (Hegel 1820/1991,
21)

It follows that different times/contexts will give rise to different instantiations of
philosophical concepts; thus, philosophical concepts themselves will change over time,
following more global changes. However, Hegels conception of history in general, and of
the history of concepts in particular, is teleological: things could not have taken a different
turn, as temporal developments follow an inevitable path. And so, from this perspective,
historical analysis tracing the different steps in the evolution of a concept and their mutual
relations a conceptual genealogy will not have the effect of decreasing the value of the
concept in question to us: when there are no other options, there is nothing to compare it
to.

Despite the already established dominant historicist background in 19th century Germany,
Nietzsche is usually seen as the inaugurator of a new approach, namely what can be
described as the subversive variant of historicist projects. In his On the Genealogy of Morality
(1887), he famously offers a genealogy of Christian morality that is meant to expose its
shameful origins. Rather than comprising eternal, immutable moral precepts, Christian
morality (and the human practices associated with it) is in fact the product of contingent
historical developments, more specifically a conjunction of a number of diverse lines of
events (Geuss 1994, 276) none of them particularly honorable. Specifically, Christian
morality arises from the resentment of slaves directed against their masters, having thus
distinctively malevolent origins (while currently presenting itself as pure and
magnanimous).

Besides the idea of a confluence of multiple lines of development, another crucial
characteristic of Nietzsches genealogy of Christianity for the present purposes is the idea of
a superimposition of layers through processes of re-interpretation of previously existing
practices, giving rise to new practices which nevertheless retain traces of their previous
instantiations. The first significant step in this succession of reinterpretations is the

13 Notice that Beiser (2011, 9) does not include Hegel among the historicists, chiefly because Hegels project

was to turn history into a kind of science, with necessary laws not different from the laws of the natural world
(hence his teleological conception of history). For this he (and Marx) was severely criticized by other 19th
century historicists.

7
influential conception of Christianity formulated by Saint Paul, which represents however a
drastic departure from the way of life exemplified by Jesus himself.14

Pauls interpretation represents so drastic and crude a misinterpretation of Jesus
way of life that even at a distance of 2000 years we can see that wherever the
Pauline reading gets the upper hand [] it transforms Christianity [] into what is
the exact reverse of anything Jesus himself would have practiced. (Geuss 1994, 280)

However, such processes of re-interpretation never manage to quash entirely traces of the
original practices:

Nietzsche thinks that such attempts to take over/reinterpret an existing set of
practices or way of life will not in general be so fully successful that nothing of the
original form of life remains, hence the continuing tension in post-Pauline
Christianity between forms of acting, feeling, judging which still somehow eventually
derive from aboriginal Christianity and Pauls theological dogmas. (Geuss 1994, 281)

Central to Nietzsches genealogy of Christianity is the idea of constant power struggles
between different wills, attempting to impose their own interpretations and meanings on
the practices in question. But even when a particular new meaning manages to impose
itself, the old meaning(s) will remain present, albeit in modified form, in the resulting
complex. Later on, we will see that this is very much what happens in the historical
development of philosophical concepts: they undergo modifications, but the superimposed
layers of meaning typically retain traces of their previous stages and instantiations even
when acquiring a new meaning.

And so, Nietzschean genealogy is characterized by the crucial interplay between continuity
and change; indeed, how can we say that a genealogy is a genealogy of X if there is nothing
permanent at all in the phenomenon in question through time? As Leiter puts it, how do we
fix the object? He says:

Genealogy, then, presupposes that its object has a stable or essential15 character its
Brauch that permits us to individuate it intelligibly over time. What the genealogist
denies is that this stable element is to be located in the objects purpose or value or

14 Geuss (1994) details subsequent transformative steps in the development of Christianity, but the Pauline

step is perhaps the most illustrative one.

15 It seems to me that the term essential is not the most appropriate to capture the stable component in a

genealogy, but the general point still stands.

8
 meaning (its Sinn); it is precisely that feature which is discontinuous from point of
origin to present-day embodiment.16 (Leiter 2002/2014, 136)

Thus, change and continuity are crucial in a genealogy. And so, the components of the
Nietzschean conception of genealogy that are particularly relevant for our present purposes
are: a particular historicist conception of concepts and values; the emphasis on the
contingency of the underlying historical developments (i.e. contingentist historicism,
different from Hegels teleological historicism), usually involving multiple lines of influence;
the superimposition of layers of meaning, resulting in both change (the new meaning) and
continuity (traces of the old meanings still present, and continuity in the phenomenon as
such).17 By contrast, Nietzsches focus on shameful genealogy is best kept apart for the
present purposes; it will be argued later on that conceptual genealogy of philosophical
concepts can be either vindicatory or subversive as well as largely neutral, i.e. expository.

3.2 Canguilhem and the historicity of scientific concepts

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-temporal essences or natural kinds. However, historicism can have
different meanings (Beiser 2011, Introduction), so I must spell out in more detail in what
sense I defend a historicist conception of philosophical concepts.

To this end, let us go back to the anti-historicism of analytic philosophy discussed in section
2. This largely a-historical conception of philosophy is at least partially related to the close
ties between philosophy and the (empirical and formal) sciences defended by key early
figures such as Russell and Carnap. Roughly speaking, just as scientists investigate
(presumably) immutable, non-historical physical phenomena such as relativity or cell
metabolism, so do philosophers investigate (allegedly) immutable concepts: truth,
causation, knowledge, logical validity etc.

However, the irony is that scientific concepts themselves have time and again been shown
to be everything but immutable and a-historical (even if the phenomena they describe
might be so, in some sense or another). There are vibrant, rich traditions within philosophy
of science that operate precisely by means of thorough historical analyses of the emergence
and transformation of scientific concepts and theories. For instance, the increasingly

16 Leiter provides the following passage by Nietzsche in support: We have to distinguish between two of its

aspects: one is its relative permanence, a traditional practice [Brauch], a fixed form of action, a drama, a
certain strict sequence of procedures, the other is its fluidity, its meaning [Sinn], purpose and expectation,
which is linked to the carrying out of such procedures. (GM II: 13).
17 This idea bears some resemblance to the famous thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad, typically but wrongly

attributed to Hegel, minus the teleological component.

9
influential &HPS (Integrated History and Philosophy of Science) movement defines itself in
the following way:

The founding insight of the modern discipline of HPS is that history and philosophy
have a special affinity and one can effectively advance both simultaneously. What
gives HPS its distinctive character is the conviction that the common goal of
understanding of science can be pursued by dual, interdependent means.18

Kuhn is of course one the founding fathers of the historically informed approach within
philosophy of science, but there are other strands contributing to these developments. In
particular, the French tradition of historical epistemology dating back to Bachelard and
Canguilhem, and including Foucault, has influenced the work of authors such as Hacking
and Kusch, among others. Now, if a strong case can be made for the need to adopt a
historically informed approach to analyze scientific concepts (and the main support for this
claim is the visible success of these programs), why should it be any different for
philosophical concepts?

To clarify further what a genealogy of concepts might look like in philosophical contexts, let
us take a brief look at the work of Canguilhem, who has made extensive use of this general
idea in his work on the history of medicine and biology for example, in La formation du
concept de rflexe and the classic The normal and the pathological (Canguilhem 1978). As is
well known, he was a major influence on Foucault, who credits him with promoting a
philosophy of the concept, as opposed to a philosophy of the subject (Mthot 2012,
114). 19 Canguilhem distinguishes concepts from theories, and describes concepts as
theoretically polyvalent (i.e. they can appear, often taking on different meanings, in
different theories).20 As described by Mthot (2012, 114):

[A]n historic-philosophical approach la Canguilhem consists primarily in tracking
scientific concepts over space and time, and across disciplinary boundaries, in order
to locate significant shifts regarding meaning, reference, and domains of application.

18 HPS manifesto, available at

http://www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr/Events/All/Conferences/others/other_conf_2007-
08/andHPS/andHPS_manifesto.htm
19 Canguilhem vehemently criticized what he described as the virus of the precursor (Gutting 1989, 39), that

is the preoccupation with establishing who said what first. What matters for the historian and philosopher of
science from Canguilhems perspective are not so much the actors, but the concepts produced and developed.
20 One rough way in which the distinction between concepts and theories can be cashed out is that concepts

describe or interpret phenomena, whereas theories attempt to explain them. See (Gutting 1989, pp. 32-55).
This kind of theoretical plasticity is also present in philosophical concepts, as we will see when discussing
specific examples.

10
For Canguilhem, a specific instantiation of a scientific concept at a given point in time is
closely linked to practices and available technologies;21 in turn, scientific concepts allow for
the formulation of new theories and hypotheses, which may provoke further changes in
practices and technologies, in a feedback loop. However, it would be a mistake to view
Canguilhem as a full-blooded social constructivist, even if he acknowledges the
contribution of social contexts and material conditions for the shaping of scientific
concepts. As he notes on the concept of normal within medicine and biology:

It is life itself and not medical judgment which makes the biological normal a concept
of value and not a concept of statistical reality. (Canguilhem 1978, 73).

The work of Canguilhem in history and philosophy of medicine and biology provides thus a
fruitful point of departure for the method of conceptual genealogy in the context of
philosophical analysis, especially given his focus on significant shifts regarding meaning,
reference, and domains of application. However, one obstacle for the project of
genealogical analysis of philosophical concepts is the (still) influential author-centered
conception of the history of philosophy. Scholarly work on the history of philosophy
typically focuses on authors, in particular the key figures of the philosophical canon: Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, Abelard, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, Hume,
Kant, Nietzsche etc.

Now, this is not the place for an extensive discussion of the shortcomings of the author-
centered approach to the history of philosophy. For the present purposes, it is sufficient to
note that an alternative, concept-centered approach is viable, and has in particular been
developed in detail by A. de Libera in his recent work (2007, 2008, 2014) presenting an
archeology of the subject. In an interview, he describes the enterprise in the following
terms:

The point for me was to construct a story whose protagonists would not be people, but
concepts, problems, rules and arguments.22

21 [T]he determination of the concept of normal, especially in physiology and clinical medicine, is linked to

specific laboratory equipments and sets of practices; in other words, that there is no absolute concept of the
normal state in medicine or physiology. (Mthot 2012, 119)
22 Il sagissait donc pour moi de construire une intrigue dont les protagonistes seraient non des personnes,

mais des concepts, des problmes, des rgles et des arguments. Interview for Actu Philosophia, available at
http://www.actu-philosophia.com/spip.php?article77. The starting point for this movement towards
anonymization is de Liberas own work on medieval logical texts, in particular the sophismata literature of
the end of the 12th century and the 13th century. As he describes it, 75% of the relevant texts have no clear
authorship, and so obviously an author-centered approach would have been eminently unsuitable for the
analysis of this material.
Notice also that De Libera focuses on the concept of archeology, not that of genealogy; we discuss this
distinction later on.

11

And so, there is prima facie no reason why the historian of philosophy or the philosopher
should necessarily focus on authors rather than on concepts or problems, much as the
historian of science inspired by Canguilhem and others chooses to do.

3.3 The historicity of philosophical concepts

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 Nietzsches conception of genealogy23 and Canguilhems concept-
centered historical approach.24 These are:

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

1. Historical change. This is probably the least controversial aspect of the historicist
conception of philosophical concepts that I wish to articulate here: few to none would deny
that, as a matter of fact, philosophical concepts do change over time. But the question then
becomes: how philosophically relevant is it (as opposed to merely historically relevant) to
track these changes over time? As described in section 2 above, one possible response (and
one that is often either explicitly given or presupposed) is that the temporal development of
a philosophical concept X is not relevant for the determination of the essence of X, i.e. the
necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as X. If past philosophers
differed from us in their conceptualization of X, then either they were wrong or we are
wrong (most likely they were wrong). Wed learn nothing of philosophical significance
about X by examining mistaken past conceptions of X. (Though some defend the relevance

23 It may be argued that the analogy does not hold water because Nietzschean genealogy is genealogy of

practices, of real forms of life, while the kind of conceptual genealogy I am proposing is not. However,
precisely because my notion of philosophical concepts is closely tied to practices and applications itself, the
gulf between the two enterprises will be much less large than it might seem at first.
24 What follows is a description of each of these aspects; I dont exactly offer arguments to support this account

of philosophical concepts (as opposed to a-historical, realist/essentialist conceptions). Indeed, what could
count as an argument here? I take it that the explanatory success of analyses based on this conception (i.e.
their ability to explain aspects and features of given philosophical concepts better than alternative
approaches) is the ultimate test, and so I do not expect an opponent of this approach to be thoroughly
convinced solely on the basis of this description; instead, she is invited to examine case studies and
applications of this methodology.

12
of such mistakes in the sense of telling us which mistakes not to repeat. See (Crane 2015)
for a critique of this argument.)

According to the present approach, however, most (if not all) philosophical concepts are by
and large theoretical constructs, even if they latch on in important ways to a concept-
independent reality (just as Canguilhems concept of the normal is closely related to the
biological phenomenon of life, even if it undergoes modifications through time qua
concept). Moreover, as they maintain traces of their previous instantiations throughout
their development over time (as will be argued shortly), in particular in the form of
presuppositions which then become uncritically accepted, to understand the current
instantiation of a particular concept it becomes crucial to examine how it was construed
over time. And thus, the historical development of philosophical concepts is not only a
factual observation; it is also a philosophically relevant aspect for the analysis.

2. Superimposition of layers of meaning. The relevance of the philosophical history of a
concept for the analysis of its current instantiations relies crucially on the idea of
superimposition of layers of meaning, which we encountered when discussing Nietzsches
conception of genealogy. An alternative conception would amount to, for example, viewing
the temporal changes of a concept as corresponding to radical revolutions, after which
nothing of their previous instantiations stays in place. If this were the case, then the
analysis of past instantiations of a philosophical concept with the goal of improving our
understanding of its current version(s) would be idle at best, but in fact also potentially
distracting and misleading.

That the superimposition of layers of meaning model offers a more accurate account of the
development of philosophical concepts than the alternative radical revolutions account is
perhaps best argued for by means of concrete examples. So let me offer a brief example to
illustrate the point: the philosophical concept of substance received a number of
formulations starting in ancient Greek philosophy, in particular Aristotles influential
conception. Through the centuries, it received a number of different instantiations, many of
which radically different from the Aristotelian conception (e.g. Descartes notion of
substance), while at the same time retaining some key Aristotelian components such as the
idea that there are basic ontological units which are the building blocks for all that exists in
reality (Robinson 2014).

The main reason why it is of the utmost importance for the philosopher to be aware of the
stratified nature of philosophical concepts is the fact that neglecting this dimension leads to
the uncritical assimilation of presuppositions and substantive theoretical choices made
along the way in the shaping of a concept, which then come to be viewed as truisms. These
are often described as ones absolute intuitions about concept X, when in fact they are the

13
products of theoretical choices made (by others) along the way. It is by exposing and
investigating these different layers of meaning that the philosopher is able to isolate the
theoretical choices that led to the particular shaping of a given philosophical concept
overtime.

Notice also that the superimposition of layers model coupled with the idea of some sort of
stable core which fixes the object of the genealogy sits well with Canguilhems idea of the
polyvalence and plasticity of a (fruitful) philosophical concept, amenable to receiving a
number of theoretical interpretations. Arguably, each of these interpretations will impose a
new meaning on the concept in question, but traces of previous interpretations will remain.

3. Contingency. The process of superimposition of layers of meaning may be understood in
at least two radically different ways: either in teleological or in contingent terms. On the
teleological conception, each new instantiation of a concept is necessitated by its past
instantiations: there is one unique path for the temporal development of a concept
(roughly, in the spirit of Hegelian teleology).

X

On the contingentist conception, in contrast, each new meaning is one of the many new
layers that a given concept is capable of acquiring at any given time, and a result of
contingent events pertaining to the struggle among the different contenders (to resort
again to Nietzschean ideas). In other words, the historical development of a concept
branches to the future:


X

And thus, there will most likely be possible theoretical paths that do not become actualized
or instantiated for a given concept.25 Which path does become instantiated (at the expense
of other possibilities) is typically a matter of substantive theoretical choices (and possibly
of contingent extra-philosophical factors). However, once the choice is made, its substantive
content often becomes viewed as a constitutive component of the concept as such, as if it
had been there all along, and necessarily so. (In other words, something like a teleological
conception is often tacitly endorsed.) But of course, on the contingentist conception, this is

25 In fact, different philosophical traditions may emerge precisely if two or more groups take different paths

with respect to core philosophical concepts. So at a given point in time, it may well happen that more than one
path is instantiated, but by different groups/traditions. This can be observed for example in the different
interpretations given to some core Aristotelian concepts in the Latin and Arabic medieval traditions,
respectively.

14
a mistake: the historical development of concept X could have taken a rather different turn
at some point or another. If this had been the case, then its current instantiations might
have become something quite different.26

One of the claims associated with (but not necessitated by)27 the contingencist conception
is thus that philosophical concepts are by and large theoretical constructs: they do not track
necessary essences that exist in reality (though they do latch on to phenomena in reality in
somewhat complicated ways), but rather unfold through time by means of the process of
superimpositions of layers of meaning described above.

4. Multiple lines of influence. The contingency aspect just discussed ensures that the
developmental path of a concept branches to the future. But what about the past? Well, as
mentioned when discussing Nietzsches conception of genealogy, the instantiation of a
concept or practice at a given point in time is typically the result of a confluence of multiple
lines of events and ideas, each having influenced the current status quo in different ways.
And thus, the historical development of a concept branches to the past as well, not only to
the future:


X


Both Leiter and Geuss note that, in this respect, Nietzschean genealogy differs from
genealogy as pedigree, in that the latter features only one, non-branching line of ancestry
leading to a given person: each person has one unique father. However, this is the case only
if the sole lineage that matters in a genealogy is the male lineage. If the female lineages are
included, then a persons genealogical tree is composed of multiple lines of influence,
namely the multiple branches and lineages that come together in one and the same person.
Viewed from the perspective of multiple lines of influence, the genealogy of a person is not
that different from the genealogy of a concept or practice, as described by Nietzsche.

More concretely, this means that a philosophical concept will often be shaped by a number
of lines of influence. One example, to be discussed in more detail below, is the concept of
logical form; it emerged from the confluence of Aristotelian metaphysical hylomorphism
with developments in logic, in particular syllogistic (Dutilh Novaes 2012a). As noted by
MacFarlane (2000), Aristotle is both the father of hylomorphism and the father of logic, but

26 This is a Wittgensteinian idea: One of my most important methods is to imagine a historical development of

our ideas different from what has actually occurred. If we do that the problem shows us a quite new side.
(Wittgenstein 1998, p. 45)
27 I owe this caveat to Jacob Archambault.

15
he is not the father of logical hylomorphism: he himself never brought the two concepts
together. This happened only later, in the tradition of the ancient commentators. (See
section 4.2 for further details.)

5. Connected to (extra- or intra-philosophical) practices and goals.

The final component of the specific historicist conception of philosophical concepts
presented here is a commitment to a view of such concepts not as disembodied
constructions, floating above and beyond all human reality and practices. Instead,
philosophical concepts are typically embedded in (philosophical as well as non-
philosophical) practices and goals, and are formulated as responses to specific theoretical
(and possibly practical) needs and circumstances of a given intellectual community.

The claim is not that philosophical concepts emerge only in response to material conditions
and material needs, as the crude Marxist might claim (though these factors too are more
significant than most philosophers tend to recognize). Rather, the idea is that philosophical
concepts, theories and techniques typically emerge or receive new interpretations in
response to theoretical or even practical needs, or against the background of pre-existing
practices. For example, Aristotelian logic is best understood against the background of the
practices of ancient dialectic (Kapp 1975; Castelnerac & Marion 2009), which we presume
were pervasive in the early Academy (judging from e.g. Platos dialogues). Ignoring the
dialectical background gives rise to much confusion concerning otherwise puzzling aspects
of Aristotles syllogistic such as irreflexivity (Duncombe 2014).

Another example might be medieval logical theories. When they began to be investigated
more systematically in the mid-20th century, scholars tended to look at these theories only
from the point of view of modern logic and modern concerns. Thus, Geach (1962) went on
to claim that theories of supposition (a very important group of semantic theories in Latin
medieval logic) were theories of reference and what is more: they were very deficient
theories of reference without raising the question of whether theories of supposition
might be theories of something else altogether. In my own work on theories of supposition,
by contrast, the starting point was the question: why did the medieval authors themselves
need something like a theory of supposition? What did they need these theories for? My
answer to this question is that a semantic theory providing the tools for textual
interpretation was much needed in a tradition where textual commentary and
interpretation played such a crucial role. And so, I claimed that medieval theories of
supposition are best understood as theories of sentential meaning rather than as theories of
reference (Dutilh Novaes 2008).

16
An example closer to home is the emergence of modern symbolic logic in the late 19th
century. It is absolutely imperative to keep in mind the broader context for these
developments, namely the projects of axiomatization of portions of mathematics:
axiomatizing mathematics was the primary goal and function of the logical systems
designed by Frege, Russell, Hilbert etc. Understanding this background clarifies a number of
still pervasive features in the practices of logicians, such as the prominent role of
completeness proofs (Awodey & Reck 2002).

Thus the theoretical function(s) of a concept, broadly speaking, is typically an important
element in how a philosophical concept is shaped and interpreted at a given time. But this
of course poses a serious problem for the historian/interpreter, who must resist the
temptation to project her own ideas regarding the function(s) of a given concept which
presumably will reflect her own Zeitgeist into past instantiations of the concept (as Geach
seems to have done for supposition/reference). This is a point that Nietzsche was acutely
aware of in his genealogical project, and he criticized his predecessors for failing to take it
into account: one must avoid projecting current uses and meanings into the past.

On this point, Nietzsche follows Darwin, who cautioned against the mistake of
inferring current function or meaning from ancestral function or meaning. (Leiter
2002/2014, 135)

In fact, mis-projection of meaning and function can take place in both directions: it is a
mistake to infer past function or meaning from current ones, but it is also a mistake to infer
current meaning and function from past ones. (Notice that this is a potential pitfall for
state-of-nature genealogical projects such as Craigs (1990, 2007).) This is so because
purpose and function are precisely elements of change and discontinuity in the historical
development of a concept given that theoretical needs, circumstances, and available
techniques themselves change overtime.28 And thus, the fact that a given concept has had a
certain meaning in the past does not mean that the same meaning is the one that we,
current philosophers, should attribute to it (see discussion of the genetic fallacy below).

However, the point is that traces of these previous meanings (related to past purposes and
functions) may still be present in the current embodiment(s) of a concept, which may in fact
not necessarily sit well with the current functions and purposes of a concept and yet are
uncritically accepted by current practitioners. Exposing such tensions is indeed one of the
goals of conceptual genealogy, just as it is a goal for Nietzschean genealogy.

28 A
similar point holds of Canguilhems conception of the genealogy of concepts, which (on Mthots
interpretation at least) is very much attuned to practical aspects such as the development of material
techniques. According to Mthot, Canguilhems is an embodied-embedded conception of concepts, contrary
to what some critics have said.

17

3.4 Archeology and genealogy Foucault

I hope to have argued more or less convincingly by now that, given the specific historicist
conception of philosophical concepts Ive just sketched, genealogy is a particularly suitable
method for historically informed philosophical analysis. However, and as mentioned above,
I take genealogy to be one among other such historical methods, so there are options. Why
is genealogy a better option than the alternatives? In order to address this question, in this
section I pitch genealogy against one of its main competitors as a method for historical
analysis: its close cousin archeology. Naturally, this confrontation leads me directly to
Foucault.

As is well known, early in his career Foucault developed and applied the archeological
method in a number of works, which then received a more explicit methodological
reflection in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969).

An archaeology of knowledge is an investigation that examines artifacts unearthed
in an excavation, but the kind of artifact is not bone, pottery, or metalwork, it is what
people said and wrote in the past: their statements (in French, nonc: what has
been enunciated or expressed). (Packer 2010, 345)

The real archeologist digs out material traces of past practices and forms of life, which are
then laid out for synchronic analysis (though of course layers of sediments typically convey
information about sequences of events). The conceptual archeologist does something
similar with documented discourse, digging deeper towards levels of unconsciousness.29

The premise of the archaeological method is that systems of thought and knowledge
(epistemes or discursive formations, in Foucault's terminology) are governed by
rules, beyond those of grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of
individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines
the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period. So, for example, History of
Madness should, Foucault maintained, be read as an intellectual excavation of the
radically different discursive formations that governed talk and thought about
madness from the 17th through the 19th centuries. (Gutting 2013, section 4.3)

29 See (Kusch 1991, Part I, chap. 2) for further comparison between what a real archeologist does and the

Foucaultian archeologist, as well as for the influence of psychoanalytic concepts. Kusch also documents the
pervasiveness of the concept of archeology among Foucaults teachers and intellectual predecessors in other
words, the idea of archeology for conceptual analysis is not a Foucaultian novelty.

18
The key word here is excavation: Foucault took (conceptual) archeology to allow for the
unearthing of what is hidden and unconscious. It allowed the historian of thought to
operate at an unconscious level that displaced the primacy of the subject found in both
phenomenology and in traditional historiography. (Gutting 2013, section 4.3) (Recall
Foucaults endorsement of Canguilhems rejection of a philosophy of the subject in favor of
a philosophy of the concept.)

Now, just as the real archeologist does not necessarily seek to establish historical and
causal connections between different segments of time, the Foucaultian conceptual
archeologist is not interested in establishing how one way of thinking transitions into
another: she mostly looks at different temporal points in isolation. She is of course able to
notice differences and similarities between different times and ways of thinking; but not
much will be said about how such changes come about, and how specific modifications to
one mode of thinking resulted in a new mode of thinking. Indeed, Foucaultian archeology is
predominantly interested in rupture and discontinuity (Packer 2010, chap. 14; Koopman
2008).

In his later work, however, Foucault came to see the essentially synchronic nature of
archeology as a limiting feature of the method, in particular when it came to stressing the
contingency of modes of thinking (Gutting 2013, section 4.3; Koopman 2008). This is when
he turned to Nietzschean genealogy (Foucault 1971) in order to fill this lacuna in the
archeological method.30

The shift from archeology to genealogy (which should however be viewed as an addition
rather than as a replacement; archeology remains in the theorists toolbox) is a much-
debated topic among scholars, and so any brief treatment of it is bound to be superficial.
But this seems like an apt description:

The much-debated question of why Foucault shifted from archaeology to genealogy
can be answered in this way: whereas archaeology offers a static analysis of
practices synchronically pulled from the past, genealogy offers a dynamic analysis
whereby these practices can be viewed diachronically as historical processes
themselves. Genealogy enabled Foucault to explain historical change and continuity.
In this way, genealogy was an expansion of archaeology rather than a refutation of
itof course genealogy refutes a few assumptions made by archaeology, but on the

30 Koopman (2013) emphasizes Foucaults indebtedness to Kant, interpreting his genealogical method as first

and foremost a critical project, concerned with the limits and conditions of possibility for our human ways of
being (Koopman 2013, 17). (More on this point below.)

19
 whole it refutes these assumptions by reinterpreting the key elements of the earlier
approach. (Koopman 2007; emphasis added)31

I submit that the very reasons that led Foucault to supplement (and to some extent revise)
his archeological method with genealogical elements (as suggested in this passage) are also
compelling reasons to prefer the genealogical approach over the archeological one for the
kind of historically informed analysis of philosophical concepts that I propose.32 What is
needed is a diachronic framework offering the resources to explain not only each particular
stage in the history of a philosophical concept, but also the transitions between stages.
Nietzschean genealogy, as also developed by Foucault, offers precisely this insofar as it
brings to the fore the interplay between continuity and change by means of the key notion
of superimposition of layers of meaning. In a slogan: genealogy is about emergence, whereas
archeology is about existence (Koopman 2013, 40; Foucault 1971).

Another valuable component of Foucaultian genealogy for the present enterprise (which it
shares with Foucaultian archeology) is its focus on discourse. Recall that the main object of
analysis for the theorist engaged in the kind of conceptual genealogy that I propose here are
philosophical texts.33 I take it to be of paramount importance that the analysis be firmly
grounded in existing documentation in this case, primarily but not exclusively
philosophical texts34 rather than being merely speculative. (I worry about the risk of
producing philosophical just-so stories35 Nietzsche himself already stressed that genealogy
is about that which can be documented, which can actually be confirmed, and has actually
existed (GM Preface, 7).)36

The focus on texts and documentation naturally still leaves margin for the emergence of
selection biases: which texts the theorist will include in her analyses will significantly

31 See (Koopman 2008) and (Koopman 2013, Chap. 1) for more detailed elaboration of these ideas.
32 A small autobiographical note: I also started thinking of this approach in terms of archeology, but gradually

came to realize that what is really required is the genealogical perspective.

33 Crane (2015) also emphasizes the importance of focusing on a tradition of philosophical texts, but
introduces the idea of how these texts are read as equally tradition-defining.
34 I do make a plea for taking into account the larger historical and cultural contexts for the production of

philosophical texts, in particular in connection with the embedding of the philosophical theories into broader
institutional and social practices. In this sense, documentation going beyond purely philosophical texts is also
relevant for the analysis.
35 This concern is what makes me less enthusiastic about state-of-nature genealogical projects, such as those

described in (Craig 2007).

36 Leiter (2015, 134) reads this passage as suggesting that the Nietzschean genealogist is interested in

essences, real things. I abstain from getting involved in a debate with Leiters essentialist reading of Nietzsche,
but in any case I very much share Nietzsches concern for proper documentation and a rejection of English
hypothesis-mongering. I take it that Foucaults focus on discourse is also in the spirit of concern for proper
grounding and documentation. Indeed, as suggested by Koopman (2013, 61), despite his criticism of
hypothesis-mongering, Nietzsche himself indulges in a fair amount of speculation when engaged in genealogy,
while Foucault displays a much greater degree of archival breadth and attention for documentation.

20
influence the results, hence the need to be inclusive and to consider a large number of
sources (which will of course still typically be a selection). Indeed, a judicious choice of the
textual material to work with is one of the main methodological challenges for a conceptual
genealogy of philosophical concepts; in particular, it is important to resist the temptation to
focus exclusively on a few canonical texts by canonical authors. (In this sense, my proposal
differs somewhat from Foucaults archeology, which tends to focus on pronouncements
made by figures of authority in positions of power (Packer 2010, 345).)

Finally, another commitment that Foucault and Nietzsche seem to share, namely a focus on
practices and forms of life (to use a Wittgensteinian terminology), represents a useful
reminder for the (analytic) philosopher. Analytic philosophers tend to view philosophical
theories as disembodied and dis-embedded, as if the broader material, social, and cultural
contexts in which they emerge were unimportant (Akehurst 2010). Now, while conceptual
genealogy is not the same thing as history of ideas, it does recommend that elements
outside the purely textual sources be taken into account including (but not restricted to)
facts about circulation and dissemination of texts such as availability of translations,
number of extant copies (in the case of manuscripts) etc. Moreover, the dynamics of how a
particular instantiation of a concept becomes influential at the expense of others will often
be related to, among other factors, institutional facts pertaining to curriculum and structure
of education.37 Such elements (which both the Nietzschean and the Foucaultian would
probably be happy to describe as power relationships) should also be taken into account.

Summing up: in the context of the methodological proposal being articulated here, a
genealogical approach is to be preferred over its close cousin archeology for a number of
reasons, but most importantly because genealogy is largely diachronic while archeology is
largely synchronic. Foucault correctly identified this limitation in his earlier archeological
method, and his turn towards Nietzschean genealogy provided the required remedy.

4. Applications of genealogy

In the spirit of the functionalist, goal-oriented approach adopted here, a pressing question
now becomes: whats the point of a genealogy? What kind of results do we obtain from
performing a genealogical analysis of philosophical concepts? Ive already mentioned
vindication and subversion/debunking en passant along the way, but now it is time to
discuss applications of genealogy in a more systematic way.38


37 The importance of these factors is also pointed out by authors such as Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and

Ian Hacking, among others.

38 Koopman (2013, Chap. 2) offers an in-depth examination of this question, and so will serve as the main

source for the present discussion along with Craig (2007).

21
4.1 Genealogy as vindicatory or as subversive

By now, it should be clear that genealogy is a rather plastic concept, which can be (and has
been) instantiated in a number of different ways. Craig offers a helpful description of the
range of options:

[Genealogies] can be subversive, or vindicatory, of the doctrines or practices whose
origins (factual, imaginary, and conjectural) they claim to describe. They may at the
same time be explanatory, accounting for the existence of whatever it is that they
vindicate or subvert. In theory, at least, they may be merely explanatory, evaluatively
neutral (although as I shall shortly argue it is no accident that convincing examples
are hard to find). They can remind us of the contingency of our institutions and
standards, communicating a sense of how easily they might have been different, and
of how different they might have been. Or they can have the opposite tendency,
implying a kind of necessity: given a few basic facts about human nature and our
conditions of life, this was the only way things could have turned out. (Craig 2007,
182)

In this section, we are primarily interested in the goals associated with genealogies, in
particular the distinction between vindicating and subversive genealogies (the third option
raised by Craig, neutral genealogies, will be the focus of the next section). However, before
discussing these goals more specifically, let us pause for a minute on the kinds of origins
that may become the object of genealogical analysis, according to Craig: factual, imaginary,
and conjectural. We can accordingly distinguish three kinds of genealogical projects.
Factual genealogies focus on developments actually having taken place in time and space, as
documented in extant sources such as texts, but also other kinds of material evidence.
Imaginary genealogies are like foundational myths, which may not be believed to the letter
by practitioners (not even as possibilities), but which help them explain and make sense of
current practices and beliefs. Conjectural genealogies are different from purely imaginary
ones in that things could at least in theory have unfolded as described conjecturally, but
these descriptions do not require the kind of evidential documentation involved in factual
genealogies.

Imaginary genealogies are arguably not particularly prominent within philosophy, but
there are a few interesting examples such as Aristophanes myth of the origin of love as
described in Platos Symposium. Conjectural genealogies, in turn, have enjoyed and continue
to enjoy quite some popularity among philosophers. For example, recent uses of
evolutionary arguments in ethics in their majority of the debunking, subversive kind
(Kahane 2011) are typically of the conjectural kind, not necessarily grounded in material
documentation or empirical evidence (though there seem to be some exceptions). State-of-

22
nature genealogical enterprises such as the ones by Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and more
recently by Craig (1990, 2007) and Williams (2002), are overtly conjectural (Williams in
fact describes his genealogy as fictional and imaginary, but it seems to me to come closer
to being a conjectural genealogy).

As such, conjectural genealogies do not seem to offer a fruitful vantage point for the kind of
conceptual genealogy of philosophical concepts articulated in this paper; indeed, histories
of philosophical concepts based on speculation and conjecture are not going to be very
illuminating. In this sense, the philosopher engaged in this enterprise must be more like a
proper historian, dealing extensively with documented sources.39 And so, the relevant kind
of genealogy for our purposes is what can be described as factual genealogy (as already
suggested elsewhere in this paper). The model here would be that of the French school of
historical epistemology as represented by Canguilhem and Foucault, as well as more recent
work in the HPS tradition, with emphasis on grounding the analyses on sources and
documentation.

And now let us turn specifically to the purposes of engaging in a genealogy. As suggested in
the passage by Craig above, on the received view genealogy involves the idea of passing a
judgment of value on a given practice, doctrine or idea by means of a genealogical analysis:
genealogies are often used to show that something is good, or else that something is bad.
Koopman (2013, 62) describes these projects as normatively ambitious (and goes on to
contrast them with the normatively modest genealogical method of Foucault, which he
embraces). Craig seems to think that this value component is inherent to any genealogical
project, and thus that evaluatively neutral genealogies are in a sense conceptually unviable
(or else hopelessly uninteresting see below).

As noted above, vindicatory genealogies are closer in spirit to the commonsensical notion of
genealogy, whereby tracing a persons pedigree serves to legitimate and/or increase her
social and political standing. Subversive genealogies, in contrast, turn the commonsensical
notion of genealogy upside down; they seek to decrease or question the legitimacy of a
given practice or concept by exposing its shameful origins. As examples of vindicatory
genealogies, Koopman (2013, 59) cites the new British genealogists Williams, Craig, and
Skinner, possibly inspired by the old British genealogist Hobbes. Nietzsche is of course the
quintessential example of a subversive genealogist, but Koopman also mentions a few
precursors such as Darwin40 and Hume. More recently, evolutionary debunking arguments

39 To be honest, I am suspicious of conjectural genealogies in general, which seem to me to be detrimental to

progress in a number of different disciplines by producing just-so stories. But this is not the place for an
extensive discussion of my reservations.
40 The connections between Nietzsche and Darwin have received much attention from scholars, a recent

example being (Johnson 2013).

23
(in ethics (Street 2006; Kahane 2011) as well as elsewhere) can also be viewed as examples
of subversive genealogies. (Koopman (2013) focuses specifically on Williams and Nietzsche
as representatives of vindicatory and subversive genealogies, respectively.)

To further discuss these two kinds of genealogy in general terms, we can continue to follow
Craig (2007). He distinguishes between genealogies that are intrinsically vindicatory/
subversive from genealogies that are merely accidentally so, and then goes on to describe
the four categories. He starts with intrinsically subversive genealogies:

In the intrinsic type we have an account of the history of certain attitudes, beliefs or
practices that their proponent cannot accept without damage to his esteem for, and
certitude in, the attitudes, beliefs or practices themselves. For one thing, it may in
some cases actually be a part of the belief-system that the belief-system itself had a
quite different kind of origin most religions are like this, perhaps all. (Craig 2007,
182)

He then goes on to describe how Humes account of the origins of monotheistic belief as
related to processes that have no apparent connection to truth (some of which are based on
motivations that are positively disreputable) will surely affect negatively the faith of the
believer who takes Humes story onboard. Similarly for Nietzsches account of Christian
morality as a self-deceptive expression of hatred, resentment, and bewilderment. (His
example of an accidental subversive genealogy is Darwinism.)

Vindicatory genealogies as described in the following terms:

Some genealogies, by contrast, are vindicatory: the story they tell is in one way or
another a recommendation of whatever it is they tell us the story of. [] The
genealogies by which I mean the causal stories of many of our beliefs are
intrinsically justificatory in a very strong sense: they give an essential place to the
very facts believed in, so if that is how they came about they must be true. Or a
genealogy may vindicate a practice, exhibiting it as arising out of the need to find a
solution to a problem; and we may then regard it as intrinsically vindicatory if the
problem is one that any human society [] will want to solve. [] A genealogy is
accidentally vindicatory, on the other hand, when the increased prestige it confers
on its object is due to features that are relatively local, or of limited timespan. (Craig
2007, 183)

Unlike subversive genealogies, vindicatory genealogies show us that we have good reasons
to hold the beliefs and practices that we hold: either because the belief-forming process was
reliable and truth-conducive, or else because the beliefs and practices present themselves

24
as solutions to inherently important problems. Though this need not always be the case,
vindicatory genealogies will typically confer a certain necessity and inevitability to their
objects (they must be true). By contrast, subversive genealogies will typically highlight the
contingency of the beliefs and practices in question.41 (Recall Craigs quote at the beginning
of this section, distinguishing genealogies emphasizing contingency from genealogies
emphasizing necessity.)

How does the distinction between these two kinds of genealogy fare when applied to the
conceptual genealogies of philosophical concepts that are the object of the present analysis?
Here too, it seems that this is a useful distinction. A conceptual genealogy of this kind may
be vindicatory if it shows that a given philosophical concept or doctrine has a venerable
pedigree, for example that it was developed and/or maintained by some of the great
figures of our philosophical canon. One example that springs to mind is the enthusiasm with
which proponents of the Language of Thought hypothesis (e.g. Fodor) received historical
analysis showing that this general idea had antecedents in Latin medieval philosophy,
Ockham in particular (Panaccio 2004). In contrast, a conceptual genealogy may be
subversive if it shows that the historical (and conceptual) grounds for a given notion or
doctrine are either confused, shaky philosophical ideas, or else philosophical theses and
doctrines to which we no longer want to commit. One example of the latter would be
feminist critiques of logic such as (Plumwood 1993), among others.

We have seen that, while he considers the possibility of a third, evaluatively neutral kind of
genealogy, Craig then goes on to dismiss it (I will discuss his reasons for doing so shortly). If
he is right, then any genealogy has an intrinsic evaluative component, and thus the
vindicatory vs. subversive distinction will be exhaustive. However, in the next section I
argue that this third category is not only viable; it is also quite promising, in particular from
the point of view of the method of conceptual genealogy that I am sketching here. I will use
the term explanatory for my own characterization of evaluatively neutral genealogies of
this kind. (Koopman (2013) also defends a third option, which he describes as
problematization, and attributes it to Foucault.)

4.2 Genealogy as explanatory

Craig does consider the possibility of evaluatively neutral genealogies, which he describes
in the following (rather dismissive) terms:

41 However, I do not want to maintain that contingency is inherent to subversive genealogies, while necessity

is inherent to vindicatory genealogies. It seems to me that subversive genealogies emphasizing necessity as

well as vindicatory genealogies emphasizing contingency are both at least conceptual possibilities.

25
 There may also be neutral genealogies, which give us a history of X without either
impugning or enhancing the standing of X. I doubt whether there can be such a thing
as an intrinsically neutral genealogy []. But I also doubt whether this is a very
interesting class for philosophy, and dont propose to spend time or energy on it.
(Craig 2007, 184)

In other words: even if there can be such a thing as a neutral genealogy, it will not
constitute an interesting enterprise, in any case not for the philosopher. Craigs argument in
support of this claim is based on functionalist considerations:

[V]ery many genealogies work by ascribing functions to their objects, telling us what
they are for. If the function is of some importance to us and the object performs it
well, we have to that degree a recommendation, if we find the function in some way
disreputable, then a critique. If the function really is one to which we are indifferent
it becomes unclear what the genealogist can be aiming for [].(Craig 2007, 184)

The underlying assumption seems to be that what determines the value of a genealogy is
the importance we attach to the function(s) attributed to the object by means of the
genealogical analysis. It seems thus that the value of the function as such is not put under
scrutiny; weve already assumed it is valuable, or we are only interested in it because it is
valuable for us.

In response to Craig, firstly we may point out that a genealogy may lead precisely to a
critical evaluation of the very function(s) we attribute to its object: from valuable to
invaluable, from neutral to valuable, from invaluable to neutral etc. A genealogy of
monotheist religion along Humean lines may uncover that the traditional, presumed
function of religion, that of revealing truths about God, is not well-served by these practices,
but it may nonetheless unearth other desirable functions performed by religious practices,
such as social cohesion. So even the theorist who does not value the goal of obtaining divine
truths may still view a genealogy of religion as a worthwhile enterprise if it reveals other
(desirable) consequences and functions of religious practices. (Of course, the
Nietzschean/Marxist genealogist will by contrast emphasize the undesirable consequences
of religious practices.) Moreover, in the spirit of the broadly Nietzschean conception of
genealogy adopted here, changes of functions and meanings through time are precisely one
of the things that a genealogy aims at capturing.

Secondly, and more importantly, Craig seems not to appreciate sufficiently the purely
epistemic dimension of a genealogy, which emerges independently of whatever evaluative
judgment one may wish to pass. As well put by Allen (2013) in her review of (Koopman
2013),

26

[T]he point of genealogy is not only to demonstrate that our practices or concepts or
norms or forms of life are contingent and therefore could be otherwise; genealogy
also aims to show how those practices, concepts, norms, and forms of life have been
composed through complex practices.

Indeed, it is at least conceivable that one and the same genealogical narrative may be
subversive for some and at the same time vindicatory for others, while both agree on the
details of the narrative. (A genealogy of religion showing that it does not perform the
function of revealing divine truths successfully, while also revealing other desirable social
functions of religious practices, may be subversive for the revelation-seeker and yet
vindicatory for the social theorist.) What this suggests is that the epistemic, explanatory
component is not intrinsically tied to the evaluative component, and thus that a genealogy
can also fulfill a purely explanatory function.

Koopman (2013) defends what he describes as a normatively modest conception of
genealogy (as opposed to the normatively ambitious conception of Nietzsche and
Williams), which he refers to as problematization, following Foucault. He emphasizes the
Kantian, critical nature of Foucaults project:

Foucault's transformative appropriation of Kant's critical project is best understood
as deploying critical inquiry for the purposes of the problematization of our
historical present. Kant's and Foucault's projects are both properly critical in that
they are inquiries into the conditions of the possibility forming the limits of our
human ways of being. (Koopman 2013, 17)

The key Kantian terms here are conditions of possibility and limits. Foucaults main
transformation consists in historicizing the Kantian critical project; a problematizing
genealogy consists in a history of the present, in a narrative of the historical conditions of
possibility for things to be as they are in the present how they came about. The challenge
for Koopman is to equate the kind of transcendental necessity involved in the Kantian idea
of conditions of possibility with the emphasis on contingency that the historicist approach
brings in. At any rate, it seems to me that the crux of Koopmans claim to being normatively
modest in his conception of genealogy42 is the emphasis on the explanatory nature of
genealogy thus understood. It seeks to make the present comprehensible, intelligible to

42 Notice though that he does not claim to be normatively neutral, as a genealogy as problematization carries

the potential for intervention: "if genealogy helps us to see how our present was made, it also thereby equips
us with some of the tools we would need for beginning the labor of remaking our future differently."
(Koopman 2013, 130)

27
explain how the present came about which subsequently may or may not lead to efforts of
revision and transformation.

My conception of genealogy of philosophical concepts as essentially explanatory (thus also
intended to be normatively modest, if not outright normatively neutral) is related to the
Foucault/Koopman approach in a number of ways, in particular given the common
emphasis on the epistemic dimension of elucidating how things came about as preceding
evaluative judgment. However, while Koopman emphasizes conditions of possibility, I
emphasize underlying assumptions, in the sense of the idea of superimposition of layers of
meaning detailed in section 3.3 above. The thought is that the history of a philosophical
concept is marked by a number of branching moments in which theoretical choices are
(tacitly or explicitly) made, and these choices constitute underlying assumptions which we
do well to isolate (but not necessarily reject). By isolating them, we may conclude that these
are assumptions we should continue to endorse, but with the benefit of having exposed
them and made them explicit thanks to the genealogical process. (To be sure, there may
well be non-genealogical ways to uncover assumptions as well.) Or we may conclude that
these assumptions, which presumably seemed reasonable to philosophers at one point in
time, are no longer plausible to us; in this case, the genealogy may lead to a subversive
critique of the concept in question.

Perhaps an example may be required to illustrate the point, so here follows a condensed
version of the genealogy of the concept of logical form that I developed in a number of
articles (Dutilh Novaes 2011, 2012a, 2012b). The concept originates in Aristotles
metaphysical (not logical) hylomorphism, which encompasses three tenets: uniqueness of
form (each substance has only one substantive form, which is the principle of unity that
keeps its parts together);43 a non-mereological understanding of the form-matter composite
(form is not a part of the whole; rather, it is the principle of unity that keeps the parts
together); a sharp, principled distinction between what is form and what is matter (though
they are intrinsically intertwined in substances). Aristotle, however, does not apply the
form-matter distinction to logical objects such as arguments in any systematic way.

The next step in the development of the concept of logical form occurs with the ancient
commentators (2nd to 6th century AD), who went on to apply the form-matter distinction
systematically to logical objects, in particular syllogistic arguments. They maintained the
tenets mentioned above (uniqueness, non-mereologicality, principled distinction) by
identifying the figure of a syllogism as its form. Early medieval authors then went on to
identify two senses of form with respect to syllogistic arguments, namely figure and mood,
thus modifying the uniqueness condition. In later authors however, such as the 14th century

43 Medieval theories of the form-matter compound will later make room for a plurality of substantive forms,

thus parting ways with Aristotles own version of hylomorphism.

28
author John Buridan, the form of a syllogism is understood exclusively as its mood, and we
thus arrive at a mereological understanding of logical form according to which the form of
an argument its logical, syncategorematic terms is a proper part of the argument as a
whole. But then we also return to the idea of uniqueness of form: each argument has exactly
one, unique logical form.

Thus, a genealogy of the concept of logical form unveils the deeply metaphysical
presuppositions still underlying what I described as logical hylomorphism as we know it;
these are presuppositions tied to a particular metaphysical theory of the nature of
substances (Aristotles hylomorphism). At the same time, we observe that one of the
components of the original matrix, the non-mereological understanding of the hylomorphic
compound, is now lost. Having exposed these presuppositions, the theorist is now in a
better position to evaluate them critically, but not necessarily to supplant or revise them.

True enough, this kind of genealogy is not entirely neutral insofar as it shows that certain
components of the concept of logical form, which might be viewed as necessary,
constitutive features of the concept, are in fact somewhat contingent. For example, one may
wonder what a non-mereological logical hylomorphism might look like, and whether it
might be more compelling than its mereological counterpart, which we now by and large
accept uncritically. But at this point, the analysis is largely evaluatively neutral in that it
does now adjudicate between the different options. Similarly, the presupposition of
uniqueness of form, which makes perfect sense within Aristotles framework and is
essentially maintained in modern logical hylomorphism, could in theory be questioned:
why cant an argument have a plurality of logical forms? The space of theoretical
possibilities is thus enlarged once assumptions are isolated and it becomes clear that
different positions with respect to each of them are viable.44 In a similar vein, a number of
intuitions pertaining to this concept can be explained as products of contingent, historical
processes of superimposed layers of meaning, and can thus be put under critical scrutiny
rather than taken as unquestionable hard data for philosophical analysis.

In sum, the kind of conceptual genealogy of philosophical concepts that I defend is, as such,
neither subversive nor vindicatory, though it can be used for both ends. In first instance,

44 Crane (2015) makes a similar point with respect to the philosophical questions we take to be central: The

second moral is that an awareness of the history of the question one is pursuing can make one sensitive to the
contingency of the question, in the sense of the contingency of the philosophical concerns that give rise to it.
For example, the formulation of the doctrine of materialism/physicalism in analytic philosophy took a very
specific form in the twentieth century in terms of all truths being expressed in physical language
because of very specific ideas deriving from logical positivism about what philosophy can and cannot do.
Reflection on these ideas and their effects can help us see that they are detachable from the core of doctrines
like materialism; and dispensing with these assumptions can help us to see the questions in a new light. In some
cases, it may help us move away from the questions altogether, and to pose new questions which make more
sense to us today. (Emphasis added)

29
however, it seeks to produce a narrative that is above all explanatory by describing the
theoretical turning points in the historical shaping of a philosophical concept through time
(in the spirit of Canguilhems shifts of meaning). In doing so, it reveals assumptions
underlying the concept in question that are often tacitly and uncritically accepted, thereby
widening the space of theoretical possibilities.45

4.3 The genetic fallacy

What remains to be discussed now is the most prominent objection put forward against
genealogical explanations, namely the charge that they commit the so-called genetic
fallacy. The term itself is credited to Cohen and Nagel in their 1934 textbook Logic and
Scientific Method (Honderich 2005). Generally speaking, it consists in the fallacy of
confusing the causal origins of a belief with its justification: any attempt to support or to
discredit a belief, statement, position or argument based upon its causal or historical
genesis, or more broadly, the way in which it was formed (Klement 2002, quoted in
Koopman 2013, 62). In other words, the genetic fallacy would amount to a conflation of the
descriptive level of how something came about with the normative level of its justification
(again, the good old Popperian distinction between context of discovery and context of
justification). One reason to think that such explanations are indeed fallacious is the
observation that past instantiations of a given phenomenon may be so fundamentally
different from its current instantiations that reference to the former can in no way serve as
justification for the latter.

However, it has been argued that genetic reasoning is not always fallacious (Klement 2002).
Koopman (2013) takes his response to the genetic fallacy to be precisely what distinguishes
his Foucaultian conception of genealogy from vindicatory or subversive genealogies.
Indeed, if a genealogy does not have the normative goal of justifying, supporting, or
discrediting a belief or practice, it cannot be said to be confusing the normative level of
justification with the descriptive level of origins. A genealogical analysis that takes itself to
be essentially descriptive and explanatory makes no strong normative claims to start with.
At the same time, if the layers of meaning conception of philosophical concepts is correct,
then retracing the historical development of a concept will tell us something important

45 As for Craigs charge that an evaluatively neutral genealogy will not be philosophically interesting, I refer

the reader to my defense of descriptive metaphilosophy (a term introduced by Rescher, in opposition to

prescriptive metaphilosophy) as philosophy: Inspired by Nietzsche and Foucault, I call the enterprise of
tracing the history of a given philosophical concept conceptual genealogy. It now seems to me that what Ive
been arguing for all along, in Reschers terms, is for the importance of descriptive metaphilosophy for the
enterprise of prescriptive metaphilosophy, and thus for the claim that historically-informed descriptive
metaphilosophy is indeed part of philosophy tout court, just as prescriptive metaphilosophy. More to the
point, Ive been claiming that prescriptive metaphilosophy desperately needs descriptive metaphilosophy. A
plea for descriptive metaphilosophy as philosophy, http://www.newappsblog.com/2014/03/a-plea-for-
descriptive-metaphilosophy-as-philosophy.html

30
about its current instantiations as well.

The same holds for the notion of conceptual genealogy of philosophical concepts presented
here. Going back to the example of the genealogy of the concept of logical form, by retracing
the Aristotelian, metaphysical origins of some of the components of current versions of
logical hylomorphism, one neither justifies nor debunks these underlying assumptions. The
fact that the form-matter distinction has venerable metaphysical origins does not mean that
its application to logical entities is automatically justified; nor does it mean that it is
unjustified, given that conceptual distinctions can be fruitfully transferred from one realm
of investigation to another. But once these components have been isolated, the general
normative question becomes: can these metaphysical principles, which seem at least prima
facie plausible in metaphysical contexts, be transposed (mutatis mutandis) to the realm of
logic? Are logical entities such as arguments the kinds of things to which we can attribute
form and matter? On which version of the form-matter distinction? But it is precisely
thanks to the genealogical analysis that these normative, systematic questions can be asked.

There is another sense in which the broadly Nietzschean conception of genealogy endorsed
here does not fall prey to the genetic fallacy: in the sense that the synchronic analysis of
superimposition of layers of meaning outlines precisely the changes in function and
meaning in the practices and concepts being analyzed. Hence, from the start we have the
recognition that past instantiations of the phenomenon in question may be fundamentally
different from its current instantiations, so much so that reference to past instantiations
may do no justificatory work. In other words, even if something started out as good (or
bad), this does not mean that its current instantiations will necessarily also be good (or
bad), as goodness (or badness) are not necessarily preserved and transmitted through
shifts of meaning. (See section 3.3 for Nietzsches critique of the practice of projecting
current meanings to past instantiations, and vice-versa.)

And yet, examining these shifts of meaning, and identifying traces of previous instantiations
as well as the theoretical choices that led to the changes, greatly contributes to our
understanding of the current instantiations of some of our beloved philosophical concepts.
And thus, I conclude that the methodology of conceptual genealogy as formulated here does
not fall prey to the genetic fallacy.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, Ive drawn inspiration from a number of authors to formulate the
methodology of conceptual genealogy, which I claim is relevant for any kind of
philosophical analysis (even those that view themselves as purely systematic and
normative). The main inspiration comes from Nietzsche, but Foucault and Canguilhem have
also contributed important ingredients. These are so-called continental authors, and yet I

31
claim that historically informed analysis is just as important for analytic philosophers. The
goal of this paper was to provide a more explicit articulation of the method, in its ins and
outs, and perhaps convince others of its viability, fruitfulness and relevance.

But ultimately, the proof is in the pudding, i.e. the fruitfulness and relevance of the
conceptual genealogy approach can only be established by means of successful
applications of the method: philosophical analyses that succeed in illuminating aspects of
philosophically important concepts which remain otherwise difficult to account for. Some of
my previous work on the history and philosophy of logic may serve as illustration for the
method in action, but I take it that others have been relying on something similar to this
approach in their own work. And of course, I hope yet others will feel inclined to adopt
some of these ideas in their own work, such that discussions within analytic philosophy
may become more thoroughly informed by the history of philosophy.

---------------------------------

Acknowledgments: this paper is the living proof of the power of the Internet to foster
collaborative work. Most of it was published in installments in the form of blog posts at
NewAPPS, and Ive greatly benefited from feedback from readers there. The whole project
has also benefited from extensive discussions on Facebook with fellow philosophers. And
thus, many people have contributed to the project in important ways, but I would like to
thank in particular Leon Geerdink, Matthew Duncombe, Peter Tarras, and Colin Koopman.

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