This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre-moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the (...) enduring element as the practice of forming self-conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience. (shrink)

Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in turn can ground practical reasons to preserve or further a conceptual practice. (...) In this paper, I argue that none of this is true, and that only a turn to the actual recent history of such practices can reveal those sorts of practical reasons. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

So-called 'realists' have argued that political philosophers should engage with real politics, but that mainstream 'non-realist' political philosophers fail to do so. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the discussions between realists and their critics have not drawn much on debates in metaethics. In this paper, I argue that this is an oversight. There are important connections between the realism/non-realism debate and certain controversies in metaethics. Both realism and non-realism come with metaethical baggage. By considering several arguments that could be made for (...) and against both positions, each of which rests on contested views about the metaphysics and epistemology of value, I outline exactly which metaethical claims realists and nonrealists must defend in order to make their position tenable. (shrink)

Nietzsche's readers are often tempted to look for his critique of morality in On the Genealogy of Morality. However, I will argue that the Genealogy does not contain Nietzsche's critique of morality, nor was it intended by Nietzsche to contain his critique. Rather, the Genealogy is Nietzsche's attempt to develop crucial parts of what he calls a natural history or typology of morals, which he considers to be a descriptive project meant to serve as preparation for a critique of values. (...) More precisely, the Genealogy serves as preparation for a critique of moral values in three ways: it (1) traces the historical development of Judeo-Christian moral values in a way that (2) enables diagnosis of their psychological effects on various types of people, and of the physiological traits and states of which those values are symptoms. In turn, this vital factual information is needed by Nietzsche so that he can (3) compare Judeo-Christian values to other values. 1–3 are purely descriptive, and they make possible a further, evaluative project Nietzsche does not undertake in the Genealogy itself, namely, his critique of those values by determining their place in a new rank ordering of values (i.e., Umwertung or revaluation of values). (shrink)

This essay explores whether, and how, genealogy might remain critical within anti-foundationalist philosophical contexts. While adherents of genealogy often presume that genealogy simply is inherently critical in any context, adherents of historicized forms of anti-foundationalist philosophy might rightly wonder whether genealogy can continue to serve any critical purpose whatsoever. Is genealogy a form of historical inquiry that can be done away with once a shift has been made towards historicized forms of anti-foundationalist philosophy? Why continue to do genealogies once certain (...) generalizeable insights have been learned from genealogy? This essay argues that there remains a critical role for genealogy, understood as a particular form of historical inquiry, within anti-foundationalist modes of reasoning. By exploring this critical role for genealogy, our understanding of anti-foundationalist modes of reasoning is enriched, and some clarity is gained into the philosophical foundations of genealogical critique. (shrink)