Victor Braga Weber (UCL) - 2019-20 Students
victor.weber.17@ucl.ac.uk

Genealogy and Philosophy

In what way might our past effect our current philosophical outlooks? More particularly, is there any philosophical value in investigating the contexts from which our philosophical outlooks originate? In an earlier generation, analytic philosophy responded antagonistically to the suggestion that looking to our past for answers is valuable, fearing—amongst other things—that such enterprises were likely to commit the genetic fallacy. Nowadays, such antagonism is waning. Many philosophers argue that the search for the origins of our philosophical outlook can be a source of great (meta-)philosophical insight. One such strand are the so-called genealogists. I am interested in understanding what the promise of philosophical genealogy is, and whether it can be fulfilled.