Genealogin: kunskapen, moralen och subjektet : En undersökning av det genealogiska i Friedrich Nietzsches och Michel Foucaults arbeten

Sammanfattning: In the following essay I offer an analysis of the concept of genealogy in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. The genealogical is illuminated as a critical approach, a period and a method. Taking as a point of departure Foucault‘s description of genealogy as a historico-philosophical method, with which we can approach the question of how we constitute ourselves as human beings, by analyzing our ideas about knowledge, morals and the self as an acting subject, I go back to Nietzsche, from where Foucault derives his genealogical project. By analyzing how Nietzsche examines the three domains of genealogy, found in Foucault‘s description – knowledge, morals and the subject – I thereby present a way to read, understand and use the works of Nietzsche, a reading of Nietzsche which at the same time brings out some of the core topics, offering a more profound understanding of Foucault‘s genealogical project. My overall reading will show that one of the main aspects of what can be understood as the genealogical method is to locate concepts that constitute the way we think and act. In trying to determine the social and practical settings where these concepts take on form and content, the genealogy demystifies the located constituting concepts, offering new perspectives on how the present lives its past. This reading will show how the genealogy interweaves the philosophical and historical, at the same time exposing the problematic and varying practical and social settings that produce and uphold the inevitable link between the political and the human.