Revolution 13/13 | On Critical Genealogy with Bernard E. Harcourt

In this final session of Revolution 13/13, Professor Bernard E. Harcourt addresses the question “What Good Is Genealogy for Praxis?” More information can be found on the Revolution 13/13 website here: blogs.law.colu...
A more polished and updated draft of Bernard E. Harcourt's presentation is available in open access at SSRN here: ssrn.com/abstr...
This lecture was presented as a keynote address at the Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference 2021/2022, “Continental Philosophy and Global Challenges,” organized by the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy, at the University of Warwick on June 11, 2022.
In the lecture, Bernard Harcourt explores the utility of genealogical critique for praxis. The lecture serves as a conclusion to this year's 13/13 seminar that interrogated the relationship between critical theory and revolutionary practice by examining the work of worldly revolutionary philosophers. It focuses precisely on the place where critique can nourish worldly activity, and vice versa. It explores the most worldly, activist writings of Nietzsche and Foucault (their genealogical work) in relation to praxis. It locates when and where critical philosophy and worldly activism can work together.
The following is a précis of the keynote address:
“In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” It is with those words of Goethe that Nietzsche opened his untimely meditations on the value of history. Today, history has been eclipsed by the genealogical method, within critical circles. Foucault’s genealogical approach now dominates historically inflected critique.
But not all genealogical work today encourages praxis or directly invigorates our activity. In part because of its proliferation and now ubiquity, the genealogical method has essentially become what history was in the nineteenth century. It is crucial now that we assess the value of genealogical critique. The proper metric against which to evaluate genealogical writings is whether they contribute to transforming ourselves, others, and society.
In this lecture, Professor Bernard E. Harcourt proposes that we use the term “critical genealogy” to identify those genealogical practices that nourish our activity and thereby advance the ambition of critical philosophy, namely to change the world. It is time, once again, Harcourt argues, that we test whether our historical critiques are productive or demobilizing. It is imperative that we knock on them to determine which are hollow and which are robust-which discourage and which nourish action. It is time, once again, that we do philosophy with a hammer.