Nietzsche, Genealogy, History

Abstract

1 . Genealogy i s gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary . It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on d ocuments that have been scratched over and recopied many times . O n this basis, it i s obvious that Paul Reel was wrong to follow the English tendency in describing the history of morality in terms of a linear development-in reducing its entire history and genesis to an exclusive concern for utility . He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ig­ nored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable re­ straint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history-in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recur­ rence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in dif­ ferent roles . Finally, genealogy must define even those in­ stances when they are absent, the moment when they remained unrealized (Plato, at Syracuse, did not become Mohammed) . Genealogy, consequently, requires patience and a knowl­ edge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source