Critical History and Genealogy

Schuringa, Christoph (2020) Critical History and Genealogy. In: Nietzsche on Memory and History. De Gruyter, pp. 17-36.

Abstract

A number of commentators have supposed that what Nietzsche understands by ‘critical history’ and what he understands by ‘genealogy’ are significantly analogous. I question the supposed analogy. Critical history involves condemning the past, and sometimes supplanting the actual past with an invented fictive alternative; genealogy draws on the past for insight into the knotted history of the present. Instead I draw attention to a continuity that underlies the transition from the earlier project in which critical history is embedded to the later project in which genealogy figures. This is a concern on Nietzsche’s part, all too often given insufficient attention by commentators, with what ‘serves life’. Examining precisely what Nietzsche means by this in each case (the earlier and the later) shows up a different discontinuity. Each of the two projects is dependent on a particular conception of life. Each project is problematic: the earlier project because of its aspiration to have ‘life’, conceived as a ‘dark’ ineffable force, sit in judgement of the past; the later project because it both hinges on a detailed articulation of what life is, and fails to supply such an articulation.

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