Week+1

Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search of origins.
 * __Foucault: Nietzsche, Genealogy, History__**

Why does Nietzsche challenge the pursuit of the origin (Ursprung), at least on those occasions when he is truly a genealogist? First, because it is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities, and their carefully protected identities; because this search assumes the existence of immobile forms that recede the external world of accident and succession.

What is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity.

The origin makes possible a field of knowledge whose function is to recover it, but always in a false recognition due to the excesses of its own speech.

Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things.

Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species and does not map the destiny of a people. On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations – or conversely, the complete reversals – the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us.

Descent attaches itself to the body.

The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings and errors.

Its (genealogy’s) task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history’s destruction of the body.

In placing present needs at the origin, the metaphysician would convince us of an obscure purpose that seeks its realization at the moment it arises. Genealogy, however, seeks to reestablish the various systems of subjection: not the anticipatory power of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations.

Emergence is always produced through a particular stage of forces.

In a sense, only a single drama is ever staged in this “non-place,” the endlessly repeated play of domination.

Humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination.

Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.

As the demagogue is obliged to invoke truth, laws of essences, and eternal necessity, the historian must invoke objectivity, the accuracy of facts, and the permanence of the past.

The historical sense gives rise to three uses that oppose and correspond to the three Platonic modalities of history. The first is parodic, directed against reality, and opposes the theme of history as reminiscence or recognition; the second is dissociative, directed against identify and opposes history given as continuity or representative of a tradition; the third is sacrificial, directed against truth, and opposes history as knowledge. They imply a use of history that severs its connection to memory, its metaphysical and anthropological model, and constructs a countermemory – a transformation of history into a totally different form of time.

Genealogy is history in the form of a concerted carnival.

If genealogy in its own right gives rise to questions concerning our native land, native language, or the laws that govern us, its intention is to reveal the heterogeneous system which, masked by the self, inhibit the formation of any form of identity.

The historical analysis of this rancorous will to knowledge reveals that all knowledge rests upon injustice (that there is no right, not even in the act of knowing, to truth or a foundation for truth) and that the instinct for knowledge is malicious (sometimes murderous, opposed to the happiness of mankind).

4. Dialogue A. Was I ill? Have I recovered? Has my doctor been discovered? How have I forgotten all? B. Now I know you have recovered: Healthy is who can’t recall.
 * __Nietzsche: The Gay Science__**

10. The Scornful One Much do I let fall and spill, thus I’m scornful, you malign. One who drinks from cups too full will often let much fall and spill - , yet never think to blame the wine.

16. Upward ‘How do I best get to the top of this hill?’ ‘Climb it, don’t think it, and maybe you will.’

23. Interpretation If I read me, then I read into me: I can’t construe myself objectively. But he who climbs consuming his own might bears me with him unto the brighter light.

38. The Pious One Speaks God loves us //because// he created us! ‘Man created God!’ – responded the jaded. And yet should not love what he created? Should even deny it //because// he made it? Such cloven logic is limping and baited.

54. To My Reader Strong teeth and good digestion too – This I wish thee! And once my book’s agreed with you, then surely you’ll agree with me!

Book 1: 7 So far, all that has given colour to existence still lacks a history. If all these jobs were done, the most delicate question of all would emerge in the foreground: whether science is able to //furnish// goals of action after having proved that it can take such goals away and annihilate them; and then an experimenting would be in order, in which every king of heroism could find satisfaction – an experimenting that might last for centuries and eclipse all the great projects and sacrifices of history to date. So far, science has not yet built its cyclops-building; but the time for that will come too.

Book 2: 107 We have to discover the //hero// no less the //fool// in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be pleased about our folly in order to be able to stay pleased about our wisdom

Book 3: 204 //Beggars and Courtesy.// – ‘One isn’t being impolite if one uses a stone to knock on a door which lacks a doorbell’: that is how beggars think, and everyone who is suffering some kind of distress, but no one thinks they are right.

Book 3: 138 //Christ’s Error.// – The founder of Christianity thought that there was nothing from which man suffered more than their sins. That was his error – the error of one who felt himself free from sin and who lacked experience of it! Thus his soul filled itself with that wonderful fantastic compassion for a torment that was rarely a very great torment even among his people, who invented sin! But the Christians have found a way of retroactively vindicating their master and of sanctifying his error into ‘truth’.

Book 3: 170 //With the crowd.// – So far he is still running with the crowd singing its praises, but one day he will become its opponent! For he is following it thinking that this will give his laziness full play, and he has not yet discovered tha the crowd is not lazy enough for him! That it always pushes ahead! That it allows no one to stand still! – And he so much likes to stand still! - I think this may describe me!

Book 3: 225 //The natural.// – ‘Evil has always had great effects in its favour! And nature is evil! Let us therefore be natural!’ that is the secret reasoning of the great effect-artists of humanity, who have all too often been considered great human beings.

Book 3: 173 //Being deep and seemingly deep.// – Those who know they are deep strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem deep to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd takes everything whose ground it cannot see to be deep: it is so timid and so reluctant to go into the water. - So is this deep? And am I deep for asking?

Book 3: 246 //Mathematics//. – Let us introduce the subtlety and rigour of mathematics into all sciences to the extent to which that is at all possible; not in the belief that we will come to know things this way, but in order to ascertain our human relation to things. Mathematics is only the means to general and final knowledge of humanity.