Williams’s Pragmatic Genealogy and Self-Effacing Functionality

In Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams sought to defend the value of truth by giving a vindicatory genealogy revealing its instrumental value. But what separates Williams’s instrumental vindication from the indirect utilitarianism of which he was a critic? And how can genealogy vindicate anything, let alone something which, as Williams says of the concept of truth, does not have a history? In this paper, I propose to resolve these puzzles by reading Williams as a type of pragmatist and his genealogy as a pragmatic genealogy. On this basis, I show just in what sense Williams’s genealogy can by itself yield reasons to cultivate a sense of the value of truth. Using various criticisms of Williams’s genealogical method as a foil, I then develop an understanding of pragmatic genealogy which reveals it to be uniquely suited to dealing with practices exhibiting what I call self-effacing functionality—practices that are functional only insofar as and because we do not engage in them for their functionality. I conclude with an assessment of the wider significance of Williams’s genealogy for his own oeuvre and for further genealogical inquiry

A Genealogy of Emancipatory Values

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening

Nietzschean Genealogy and Hegelian History in the Genealogy of Morals

I would like to offer an interpretation of the Genealogy of Morals, of the relationship of master morality to slave morality, and of Nietzsche\u27s philosophy of history that is different from the interpretation that is normally offered by Nietzsche scholars. Contrary to Nehamas, Deleuze, Danto, and many others, I wish to argue that Nietzsche does not simply embrace master morality and spurn slave morality.1 I also wish to reject the view, considered simply obvious by most scholars, that the iibermensch develops out of, or on the model of, the master, not the slave.2 And to make the case for all of this, I want to explore the relationship between Hegel\u27s master-slave dialectic and the conflict Nietzsche sees between master morality and slave morality. That Nietzsche does not intend us to recall the famous master-slave dialectic of Hegel\u27s Phenomenology as we read the Genealogy of Morals, I find difficult to believe. Yet very few commentators ever notice, let alone explore, this connection. Those who do, like Deleuze, Greene, and Houlgate, think that Nietzsche, in direct opposition to Hegel, simply sides with the master, not the slave, and that Nietzschean genealogy renounces all Hegelian dialectic - or any sort of Hegelian developmental view ofhistory.3 I do not think any of these views are correct. I wish to argue that Nietzsche is very much influenced by Hegel and that Nietzschean genealogy and Hegelian history are intimately linked in the Genealogy of Morals. Thus I think that there is a limit that must be put to the recent tendency, otherwise most insightful and illuminating, to see Nietzsche as radically postmodem, as totally breaking with the nineteenth century, and, certainly, as having little to do with Hegel

In pursuit of the subject of happiness : a genealogy : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand /

This study is a Foucauldian genealogy of the truth and knowledge produced by the Science of Happiness, which is part of the Positive Psychology movement; this is a an historical analytic of the scientific truths and knowledges of the present. Psychological well-being, or happiness, has become a legitimate, and burgeoning, object of scientific inquiry since the formation of the Positive Psychology movement in 2000. The first section reviews the literature for findings from the new Science of Psychology and also reviews the literature on the use of the methodology of genealogy as a research practice. The second section contains the genealogy which, following Foucault's advice, starts with Descartes and the ruptures of the Enlightenment, following the transition of happiness from a matter of luck or chance or the gift of the gods, to a matter that man has control over and the Science of Psychology has an interest in. This section takes fragments of text from Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke, Blackstone, Jefferson, Bentham, Mill, Carlyle, Dickens, and Skinner to build the genealogy and to show the contingencies of the past that brought us to the scientific 'truths' of the present. The final section briefly reviews the genealogy and explores the trajectories for future work on the subjectivity produced by the scientific subject of happiness

Diffusion or War? Foucault as a Reader of Tarde

The objective of this chapter is to clarify the social theory underlying in Foucault’s genealogy of power/knowledge thanks to a comparison with Tarde’s microsociology. Nietzsche is often identified as the direct (and unique) predecessor of this genealogy, and the habitual criticisms are worried about the intricate relations between Foucault and Marx. These perspectives omit to point to another – and more direct – antecedent of Foucault`s microphysics: the microsociology of Gabriel Tarde. Bio-power technologies must be read as Tardian inventions that, by propagation, have reconfigured pre-existing social spaces, building modern societies. We will see how the Tardean source in Foucault’s genealogy sheds new clarity about the micro-socio-logic involved in it, enabling us to identify some of its aporiae and to imagine some solutions in this respect as well

Genealogical Reference Material Collection - Accession 1386

The Genealogical Reference Material Collection consists of genealogical publications collected by the Louise Pettus Archives and Special Collections and often includes serials with which that the Ida Jane Dacus Library at Winthrop University maintained a subscription. The collection is continually added to. This collection is a valuable source for any persons researching family genealogy.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/2222/thumbnail.jp

A giant graviton genealogy

In this article we extend the construction of giant gravitons from holomorphic surfaces [arXiv:hep-th/0010206] to the ABJM correspondence. We construct a new class of 1/6-BPS M5-branes wrapping 5-manifolds in S^7/Z_k and supported by a large angular momentum in the orbifold space. These orbifold giant gravitons undergo a supersymmetry enhancement to 1/3-BPS and 1/2-BPS configurations in special cases. The compactification of M-theory on AdS_4 x S^7/Z_k to type IIA superstring theory on AdS_4 x CP^3 then gives rise to another new class of 1/6-BPS D4 and NS5-branes wrapping 4 and 5-manifolds in CP^3. The D4-branes carry a combination of D0-brane charge and angular momentum in the complex projective space, while the NS5-branes are supported only by D0-brane charge. Finally, we present a detailed analysis of a one-parameter family of 1/2-BPS M5-brane orbifold giant gravitons, and their D4 and NS5-brane CP^3 descendants.Comment: 34 pages; 1 figure; minor revisions; references adde

Simple permutations with order 4n+24n + 2. Part I

The problem of genealogy of permutations has been solved partially by Stefan (odd order) and Acosta-Hum\'anez & Bernhardt (power of two). It is well known that Sharkovskii's theorem shows the relationship between the cardinal of the set of periodic points of a continuous map, but simple permutations will show the behavior of those periodic points. This paper studies the structure of permutations of mixed order $4n+2$, its properties and a way to describe its genealogy by using Pasting and Reversing.Comment: 17 page