genealogy Article The Passive Body and States of Nature: An Examination of the Methodological Role State of Nature Theory Plays in Williams and Nietzsche Brian Lightbody Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University, Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada; [email protected] Abstract: In his work Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams offers a very different interpretation of philosophical genealogy than that expounded in the secondary literature. The “Received View” of genealogy holds that it is “documentary grey”: it attempts to provide historically well-supported, coherent, but defeasible explanations for the actual transformation of practices, values, and emo- tions in history. However, paradoxically, the standard interpretation also holds another principle. Genealogies are nevertheless polemical because they admit that any evidence that would serve to justify a genealogical account is indexical to a perspective. In short, genealogies are not true per se. This view of genealogy leaves it vulnerable to three criticisms. I call these three: (1) the reflexive, (2) the substantive, and (3) the semantic. In contrast, Williams argues that all genealogies provide a functional account for the manifestation of something and further, that a State of Nature story subtends these accounts. The upshot of Williams’ approach is that it makes for strange philosophical bedfellows. For example, Nietzsche’s account for the rise of Christian morality shares methodological features with Hobbes’ functional explanation for the emergence of civilization and yet Nietzsche seems to take issue with genealogists who are hypothesis mongers gazing haphazardly into the blue. In the following article, I flesh out, more fully, how to make sense of Williams’ novel reclassification Citation: Lightbody, Brian. 2021. The of genealogy. I show that Nietzsche’s genealogies are State of Nature stories and, just like Hobbes’ Passive Body and States of Nature: An State of Nature story in chapter thirteen of Leviathan, are subtended by our collective corporeality. Examination of the Methodological I then demonstrate how Nietzsche’s three stories in the Genealogy, when brought together, serve Role State of Nature Theory Plays in to undermine what Williams refers to as “ ... a new system (of reasons)—which very powerfully Williams and Nietzsche. Genealogy 5: resists being understood in such terms ... ” Finally, I explain how my reconstruction of Williams’ 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/ interpretation of the genealogy immunizes it against the three criticisms noted above. genealogy5020038 Keywords: Williams; Nietzsche; genealogy; State of Nature; functional; Hobbes Received: 10 March 2021 Accepted: 7 April 2021 Published: 13 April 2021 1. Introduction Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in The ruptures in that history (of science), as identified by Bachelard and Kuhn, moments published maps and institutional affil- in which a transition is made from one standardized understanding of what is to be rational iations. to some other, sometimes incommensurable standardized understanding of rationality, are also secondary phenomena. For they, like the standardized orders which they divide and join, are the outcome of assemblages and confluences in the making of which distributions of power have been at work, in such a way that what appear at the surface level as forms of rationality both are, and result from, the implementation of a variety of aggressive Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. and defensive strategies, albeit strategies without subjects. Truth and power are thus This article is an open access article inseparable—what appear as projects aimed at the possession of truth are always willful in distributed under the terms and their exercise of power (MacIntyre 1994, p. 301). conditions of the Creative Commons The above rendering of genealogy by Alastair MacIntyre is as profound as it is provoca- Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// tive. It exemplifies and greatly clarifies the standard interpretation of genealogy in the creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ secondary literature. Yet, for all its perspicacity, MacIntyre’s reading leaves genealogy 4.0/). open, perhaps intentionally, to three different criticisms. I call the first methodological (or Genealogy 2021, 5, 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5020038 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy Genealogy 2021, 5, 38 2 of 15 reflexive), the second the substantive, and the third the semantic. While it is possible to address each complaint, the purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a very different view of genealogy. It is a reconstruction that purports to avoid these kinds of critiques altogether. This new interpretation of genealogy is one hinted at by the late English moral philosopher Bernard Williams. In his work Truth and Truthfulness, Williams presents a more capacious understanding of genealogy than that offered by MacIntyre’s “Received View” by suggesting that Niet- zsche’s and Foucault’s respective genealogical projects can be brought into the orbit of modern and contemporary political state theorists. Putting the point more sharply, political philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, and Nozick have more in common with Nietzsche and Foucault than one might initially think, for all the thinkers mentioned above may be classified as genealogists. The grouping of these thinkers under the um- brella term “genealogy” does appear strange, but the advantages of Williams’ position are manifold. One which stands out, in particular, is something I already alluded to: Williams’ reconstruction of genealogy, if sound, immunizes it from the substantive, methodological, and semantic kinds of criticisms that populate the current secondary literature. The issue, then, is whether this radical reclassification of genealogy is justified. If Williams’ understanding of genealogy reconstrues the standard view, as I hold, then what is its defining feature? The answer: genealogies, in all forms, are State of Nature stories. State of Nature stories provide an imaginary (or at best quasi-fictional) functional account for a phenomenon’s emergence. If I am right, then such an interpretation of genealogy stands in stark contrast to the traditional reading noted above by MacIntyre and others. Genealogy, according to the traditional view neither hypothesizes about the origin of some event or thing nor utilizes a thought experiment à la Rawls’ Original Position to justify some new arrangement of the political order. Genealogy instead provides a historical account of how some existing thing (e.g., a practice, institution, even a feeling) was transformed. Historically, real causal forces produced the transformation. The problem, then, is this: either Bernard Williams (arguably the most significant English moral philosopher in the last 30 years) makes an elementary mistake, as indeed some imply, or he has a very different understanding of what a state of nature is. Those who argue for the former, like C.G. Prado in his review of Truth and truthfulness, suggests that Williams commits a rudimentary error. He writes, “Two problems with Williams’ genealogical story, are, first, that despite the prominence he gives to state-of-nature account, it does remarkably little work. But second and considerably more serious, is that William’s genealogical story is not Nietzschean because intended to establish an originative claim and Nietzschean genealogy-perhaps best exemplified in Darwin’s work- is a technique for understanding how something evolved as it did not how something arose.” (Prado 2004, p. 523). In contrast, I argue that Prado’s reading is uncharitable. To resolve this impasse, we need to answer the real question: What underpins these State of Nature imaginary hypotheses? The answer, or so I will demonstrate, is the body’s malleability. In the following essay, I examine how Nietzsche’s presentation of the body—as an unstructured and, therefore, passive terminal for disciplinary strategies—compels readers to condemn, as Williams puts it, “ ... a new kind of collective reason, the shared consciousness of morality.” (Williams 2002, p. 37). Williams provides a novel way of thinking about Nietzschean and Foucauldian genealogy by furnishing a different category to rethink the so-called histories of Christian morality and the carceral regime, respectively. However, Williams’ retelling of genealogy’s nature and purpose requires a fair bit of reconstruction on my end. It is a formidable challenge to present Williams’ innovative model of genealogical investigation lucidly and systematically. With that said, I begin, in Section2, by articulating the three criticisms mentioned above. In the next part, I provide a general overview of what genealogies attempt to do before explaining what Williams believes they are not. In Section4, I delve into the specific positive attributes of genealogy qua genealogy. There are two substantive and Genealogy 2021, 5, 38 3 of 15 controversial claims Williams makes about genealogy. First, genealogies are functional accounts of historical phenomena, and second that an imaginary State of Nature subtends these accounts. To augment my thesis, I examine Chapter 13 of Hobbes’ Leviathan in Section5. I use this chapter as a model to concretize how genealogies are imaginary hypotheses that provide a functional account for the emergence of a thing. In Section6,I apply Hobbes’ model to the three essays of On the Genealogy of Morals. I demonstrate that