Criticism and Captivity: On Genealogy

and Critical Theory

David Owen

The aim of this essay1 is to elucidate the logical structure of genealogy as a prac-
tice of critical reflection and, in doing so, to illustrate, dispel and account for the
confusion concerning this practice which has characterised its reception, perhaps
especially among philosophers working within the tradition of the Frankfurt
School. The essay advances five claims which can be stated in summary as
follows:

1. Setting aside the cases of contingent error and of ignorance, we can note that
there are (at least) two logically distinct forms of self-imposed, non-physical
constraint on our capacity for self-government: being held captive by an ideol-
ogy (i.e., false consciousness) and being held captive by a picture or perspec-
tive (i.e., what one might call ‘restricted consciousness’).
2. Critical Theory as ideologiekritik2 is directed to freeing us from captivity to an
ideology; genealogy is directed to freeing us from captivity to a picture or
perspective.3
3. Philosophers working within the tradition of Critical Theory have typically
misinterpreting genealogy as a (empirically insightful but normatively
confused) form of ideologiekritik.
4. This category mistake is the product of an illicit generalisation of ideological
captivity as the only form of self-imposed, non-physical constraint on our
capacity for self-government.
5. Once this ‘craving for generality’ is dispelled, we are able to grasp both geneal-
ogy and Critical Theory as addressing distinct aspects of enlightenment and
involving distinct kinds of dialogue.4

The argument of this essay is presented in five parts, each corresponding to one
of the theses summarised above.

Let us consider the class of types of self-imposed, non-physical constraint on our

capacity for self-government. The argument advanced here is that we can distin-
guish at least two members of this class, namely, being held captive by an ideol-
ogy and being held captive by a picture or perspective, which I’ll refer to as

European Journal of Philosophy 10:2 ISSN 0966–8373 pp. 216–230 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford
OX4 1JF, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 217

‘ideological captivity’ and ‘aspectival captivity’ respectively. Let us take each in

turn.
The primary feature of ideological captivity can be elucidated by reference to
the concept of ‘false consciousness’. This concept refers to the condition of hold-
ing beliefs that are both false and compose a world-picture (where ‘picture’ refers
here to a more or less coherent collection of beliefs) which legitimatizes certain
oppressive social institutions, where this condition is a non-contingent product of
inhabiting a society characterised by these social institutions (Geuss 1981: 59–60).5
As Raymond Geuss has pointed out in his classic study of Critical Theory, it is not
difficult ‘to see in what sense the ‘unfree existence’ from which the agents [char-
acterised by false consciousness] suffer is a form of self-imposed coercion’:

Social institutions are not natural phenomena; they don’t just exist of and
by themselves. The agents in a society impose coercive institutions on
themselves by participating in them, accepting them without protest, etc.
Simply by acting in an apparently ‘free’ way according to the dictates of
their world-picture, the agents reproduce relations of coercion. (Geuss
1981: 60)

Hence, ideological captivity is characterised by self-imposed coercion because the

agents concerned are subject to ‘a kind of self-delusion’, where the power of this
coercion ‘derives only from the fact that that the agents do not realize that it is self-
imposed’ (Geuss 1981: 58).
The main, contrasting, feature of aspectival captivity is that, whereas in the
case of ideological captivity, the condition of captivity is necessarily tied to the
falsity of the beliefs held by the agent, in the case of aspectival captivity, the
condition of captivity is independent of the truth or falsity of the beliefs held by
the agent. This can be drawn out by reference to the concept of being held captive
by a picture (Wittgenstein) or a perspective (Nietzsche/Foucault). We can eluci-
date the sense of this concept in four stages.
First, the concept of a picture and the concept of a perspective (in the technical
senses with which I am concerned) are co-extensive in that the former refers in a
passive mode to what the latter refers in active mode. A picture refers to a system
of judgments in terms of which our being-in-the-world – or some feature of it –
takes on its intelligible character; a perspective refers to a system of judgments as
a system of judging in terms of which we make sense of ourselves (or some
features of ourselves) as beings in the world. Thus, a picture or perspective refers,
in Foucault’s terms, to a way of conceptualizing the real. Expressed through and
embodied in practices, ‘they open up a field of experience in which subject and
object alike are constituted’ (‘Florence’ 1994: 318).
Second, there are two necessary features of such systems of judgment/judg-
ing. On the one hand, such systems govern what is intelligibly up for grabs as
true-or-false. They do not determine what is true or false, but rather what state-
ments or beliefs can count as true-or-false. This is why Foucault characterizes such
systems as ‘games of truth (jeux de verité)’: ‘the games of truth and error through

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

218 David Owen

which being is historically constituted as experience; that is, as something that

can and must be thought’ (Foucault 1986: 6–7). Or, as Wittgenstein puts it while
making essentially the same point, a picture ‘is the inherited background
against which I distinguish between true and false’ (Wittgenstein 1969: §94). On
the other hand, such systems are ‘partial’ in the sense that they involve pre-
judgments (i.e., judgments which act as principles of judgment), which are
themselves not grounded in more basic judgments but, rather, in (nothing more
or less than) our ways of acting in the world. This is why Foucault takes pains
to focus his accounts on ‘the problematizations through which being offers itself
to be, necessarily, thought – and the practices on the basis of which these prob-
lematizations are formed’ (Foucault 1986: 11), where ‘problematizations’ refer
to the specific ways in which a topic is constituted as an issue for reflection and
action within particular systems of judgment.
Third, the value of a picture or perspective is dependent on its capacity to
guide our reflection such that we can make sense of ourselves in the ways that
matter to us. In Foucault’s terms, this is the question of the extent to which the
self-problematising of subjects (that is the actual practices of self-understanding
in which a form of subjectivity is grounded) exposes or occludes the forms of
power to which they are subject. The crucial point to note here is that a picture
or perspective formed under, and in response to, one set of conditions of
worldly activity may cease to be a good way of orienting our thinking under
different conditions of worldly activity. Ways of problematizing ourselves as
agents which were appropriate, for example, to enlightening us to the operation
of certain forms of power may come to occlude the exercise of other forms of
power. Hence the importance of being able (a) to free oneself from captivity to
the picture or perspective in question by seeing it as one picture or perspective
among many possible pictures or perspectives and (b) to assess the value of this
picture or perspective in relation to, and through a process of comparison with,
other pictures or perspectives.6 Such an assessment will include, but not be
reducible to, reflection on the truth value of the ‘principles of judgment’ char-
acteristic of the picture in question.
Fourth, to be held captive by a picture or perspective is to be captivated such
that one cannot re-orient one’s reflection and, hence, one ‘thinks that one is trac-
ing the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely trac-
ing round the frame through which we look at it’(Wittgenstein 1953: §114). This
is a state of unfreedom. The exercise of our capacity for self-government qua
agency is blocked by our captivity to a picture or perspective because the exer-
cise of our capacity for self-government qua judging is obstructed by our capti-
vation by this picture or perspective: we are enslaved because we are entranced.
In such cases, we are subject to the picture or perspective as a limit in either of
two senses:

A ‘limit’ can mean either the characteristic forms of thought and action
which are taken for granted and not questioned or contested by partic-
ipants in a practice of subjectivity, thereby functioning as the implicit

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 219

background or horizon of their questions and contests, or it can mean

that a form of subjectivity (its forms of reason, norms of conduct and so
forth) is explicitly claimed to be a limit that cannot be otherwise because
it is universal, necesseary or obligatory (the standard form of legitima-
tion since the Enlightenment). (Tully 1999: 93)

Thus, to repeat, what matters in this context is (a) our capacity to free ourselves
from our captivation to the ways of thinking in question – to recognize and
loosen the grip that the picture or perspective expressed by these ways of
thinking has on us – in order (b) to evaluate the value of this picture or
perspective relative to other possible pictures or perspectives. Hence, as
Foucault remarks, the point of his philosophical work consists in ‘the endeav-
our to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently’
(Foucault 1986: 7).
At this stage, it should not be difficult to see that the ‘unfree existence’ to
which those held captive by a picture or perspective are subject is a form of self-
imposed constraint on their capacity for self-government. It is a constraint on
their capacity for self-government because it prevents those subject to it from
exercising their powers of judgment concerning the value of such and such a
picture or perspective by presenting this picture or perspective as the only way
of reflecting of the topic in question. This constraint is self-imposed because it
is held in place by our practices – and, more generally, the relations of power
and domination that govern our ways of reflecting and acting in the world.7 To
adapt Geuss’ remark concerning false consciousness, we might say that simply
by acting in an apparently ‘free’ way according to the dictates of their world-
picture (where ‘picture’ refers here to a system of judgments), the agents repro-
duce their condition of subjection and that the power of the subjection to which
agents are subject derives solely from the fact that they do not realize that it is
self-imposed. Now we might be tempted to say that in a certain respect this
kind of self-imposed captivity does, like ideological captivity, involve a false
belief but that it does not involve a false first order belief, rather it involves a
false second order belief (i.e., a false belief about one’s beliefs). This way of
reflecting on aspectival captivity would lead us the following claim: aspectival
captivity involves the agents holding the false belief that the range of possible
beliefs (whether true or false) open to them are the only possible range of beliefs
open to them. But to accept this conceptualization of aspectival captivity would
be misleading and mistaken for the following reason: an agent held captive by
a picture cannot have such a second order belief about the range of first order
beliefs available to him or her; there is, as it were, no logical space for such a
belief to arise for the agent. The point can be put this way: it is a necessary
condition of the agent having such a false second order belief that the agent
recognizes the possibility of such a second order belief being true-or-false but to
be held captive by a picture or perspective is just to fail to recognise this possi-
bility as a possibility.8 This is why it is appropriate to refer to this condition as
one of ‘restricted consciousness’.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

220 David Owen

II

This section will establish the claim that just as ideologiekritik is directed to freeing
us from ideological captivity or false consciousness, so genealogy is directed to
freeing us from aspectival captivity or restricted consciousness. As in the preced-
ing section, I will briefly summarise the relevant points concerning ideologiekritik
in order to focus primarily on the more interesting – since more controversial –
case of genealogy.
In so far as ideological captivity is characterised by agents both holding false
beliefs which legitimize oppressive social institutions and being blocked in some
way from recognizing the falsity of the beliefs that they hold, the aim of the prac-
tice of ideologiekritik – as its very name proclaims – is to enable them to recognize
this fact. As Wittgenstein put it:

One must start out with error and convert it into truth. That is, one must
reveal the source of error, otherwise hearing the truth won’t do any good.
The truth cannot force its way in when something else is occupying its
place.
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather
one must find the path from error to truth. (Wittgenstein 1993: 119)

Hence, the key feature of ideologiekritik is to produce a form of self-reflection

within the agents subject to ideological captivity which facilitates recognition of
the falsity of the beliefs that they hold. The nature of the self-reflection involved
in this process – and hence the form of the critical theory – will hang on the
account of the mechanism through which they are currently blocked from achiev-
ing such recognition; what is certainly the case is that this process of self-reflec-
tion will involve not only liberation from the false beliefs in question but also, and
immanent to this process, a recognition of how they came to be held captive by
these false beliefs. Hence, as Geuss puts it, ‘a critical theory has its inherent aim
to be the self-consciousness of a successful process of enlightenment and emanci-
pation’ (1981: 58). The form of this process of self-reflection within the tradition
of the Frankfurt School has been specified by Geuss as follows:

a critical theory criticizes a set of beliefs or world-picture as ideological

by showing:
(a) that the agents in the society have a set of epistemic principles which
contain a provision to the effect that beliefs which are to be sources of
legitimation in the society are acceptable only if they could have been
acquired by the agents under free and uncoerced discussion;
(b) that the only reason the agents accept a particular repressive social
institution is that they think that this institution is legitimized by a set
of beliefs embedded in their world-picture;
(c) that those beliefs could have been acquired by these agents only under
conditions of coercion.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 221

From this it follows immediately that the beliefs in question are reflec-
tively unacceptable to the agents and that the repressive social institution
these beliefs legitimize is not legitimate. (Geuss 1981: 68)

In other words, through a process of self-reflection, agents come to recognise the

falsity of their false beliefs and an integral part of this process is that these agents
are brought to see that their failure to recognize this fact prior to this process of
self-reflection as part and parcel of the oppression to which they were subject and
to which, at the level of social institutions, they are still subject. Hence, ideolo-
giekritik is successful if and only if the agents subject to ideological captivity are
enabled to free themselves from this captivity and, through this process of
enlightenment, become motivated to engage in a process of emancipation, i.e., to
fight against the oppressive social institution in question.
The state of unfreedom described by the concept of aspectival captivity is, as
we have seen, logically distinct from that described by the notion of ideological
captivity, most notably in that aspectival captivity is independent of the truth-or-
falsity of the beliefs held by the agent. Hence, too, the kind of practice of criticism
required to address this condition of unfreedom, namely genealogy, is also logi-
cally distinct in kind from ideologiekritik. Genealogy, as will become clear, also has
as ‘its inherent aim to be the self-consciousness of a successful process of enlight-
enment and emancipation’, albeit one of a somewhat different kind.9
In so far as aspectival captivity is characterised by agents reflecting and acting
on themselves as subjects in terms of a given picture or perspective as the only
possible picture or perspective open to them, the initial aim of genealogy is to
enable them to free themselves from aspectival captivity by exhibiting the possi-
bility of other pictures or perspectives. As Gordon Baker puts it, commenting on
Wittgenstein’s discussion of aspectival captivity:

The cure is to encourage surrender of the dogmatic claims ‘Things

must/cannot be thus and so’ by exhibiting other intelligible ways of seeing
things (other possibilities), that is, by showing that we can take off the pair
of spectacles through which we now see whatever we look at. . . . To the
extent that philosophical problems take the form of the conflict between
‘But this isn’t how it is!’ and ‘Yet this is how it must be!’ . . ., they will
obviously be dissolved away once the inclination to say ‘must’ has been
neutralised by seeing another possibility. (Baker 1991: 48–9)

Hence, as Jim Tully notes, Foucault’s genealogical exercises consist ‘of historical
studies undertaken to bring to light the two kinds of limit: to show that what is
taken for granted in the form of the subject in question has a history and has been
otherwise; and to show ‘in what has been given to us as universal, necessary and
obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent and the
product of arbitrary constraints’. These studies enable us ‘to free ourselves from
ourselves’, from this form of subjectivity, by coming to see that ‘that-which-is has
not always been’, that it could be otherwise, by showing how in Western cultures

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

222 David Owen

people have recognised themselves differently, and so to “alter one’s way of look-
ing at things” ’ (Tully 1999: 94).
However, what motivates genealogy is not simply the condition of being held
captive by a picture or perspective but that this captivity prevents us from
making sense of ourselves as subjects or agents in the ways that matter to us. In
other words, whereas ideologiekritk seeks to disclose a contradiction between our
beliefs and our epistemic principles, genealogy aims to elucidate a disjuncture
between the ways in which we are intelligible to ourselves with respect to some
dimension of our subjectivity or agency, on the one hand, and our cares and
commitments, on the other.10 This disjuncture is not a matter concerning our
beliefs but of the relationship between a picture or perspective and our capacity
to experience ourselves as subjects or agents in the ways that matter to us. Two
examples may clarify this point.
Nietzsche’s concern is this: we are held captive by a picture of morality – which
he refers to as the ascetic ideal – that renders us increasingly unable us to make
sense of ourselves as moral agents. This concern has two dimensions. The first,
given dramatic expression in section 125 of The Gay Science, is that we fail to
recognise that, following the death of God, the conditions of intelligibility of
many of our moral concepts no longer apply and, hence, continue to use our
moral words as if they expressed the concepts which, prior to the death of God,
they expressed.11 The second is that as we come to acknowledge the meaning of
the death of God, i.e., that our moral words no longer express these moral
concepts, we will recoil into a condition of nihilism – God is dead and hence
everything is permitted. This latter point becomes clear if we take, as Nietzsche
does, Kant’s moral theory as an expression of this picture and recall Kant’s
famous argument in the ‘Critique of Teleological Judgement’ that morality
requires certain matters of faith and that without the res fidei there is only
nihilism, where nihilism can be glossed as the condition of being unable to make
sense of ourselves as moral agents. Nietzsche agrees that this picture of morality
does generate the requirement for such matters of faith – but the point of his
efforts to enable us to free ourselves from this picture of morality is to free us
from the entailment of Kant’s view that, once we acknowledge the death of God,
nihilism is all that remains. Hence, Nietzsche’s task is to free us from captivity to
this picture; a task that he takes up by providing a genealogical account of how
we have become subject to it.
There are three stages in this genealogical process of self-reflection. First, by
providing an account in which two types of morality stand in relation to one
another, Nietzsche unsettles the view that what he refers to as ‘slave morality’ is
the only type of morality. Second, by giving an account of the emergence and
development of the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche shows us both how our moral
concepts are interwoven with a particular form of life and how we have become
captivated by this picture of morality as well as how this captivation leaves us
open to the threat of nihilism. Third, in devaluing this picture of morality by
showing that it entails our becoming obscure to ourselves qua moral agency,
Nietzsche’s account motivates us in terms of our own commitment to making

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 223

sense of ourselves as moral agents to engage in the practical task of revaluing our
moral values.12 In other words, Nietzsche’s genealogical account attempts to
articulate a way in which we can make sense of ourselves – and, in particular,
make sense of our current failure to make sense of ourselves – as moral agents
which guides us to engage in the revaluation of our moral values.
The second example is provided by Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish
and The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1. Here, Foucault’s concern is based on the
thought that we are held captive by a picture of politics fundamentally shaped by
discourses and practices of sovereignty – and which leads us to assume that
sovereignty is the pre-eminent locus of political reflection. As he puts it:

At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the represen-

tation of power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political
thought and analysis we still have not cut off the head of the king. Hence the
importance that the theory of power gives to the problem of right and
violence, law and illegality, freedom and will, and especially the state
and sovereignty . . . To conceive of power on the basis of these problems
is to conceive it in terms of a historical form that is characteristic of our
societies: the juridical monarchy. (Foucault 1978: 88–9)

Foucault’s concern is that our captivation by this sovereignty-based picture of

politics means that we fail to make sense of our political agency. The substance of
this concern is, thus, that in being so captivated we are blind to the operation of
forms of domination articulated through relations of power that are not disclosed
by this picture. His task is, thus, to enable us to free ourselves from this picture
such that we may begin to make sense of ourselves as political agents in ways that
support, rather than undermine, our capacity for self-government.
Again, there are three stages to the process of genealogical self-reflection. First,
Foucault provides an account of two types of political relations, those organized
around sovereignty and those organized around bio-power, and their relation to
each other in order to unsettle the grip of the sovereignty-picture on our political
imaginations. Second, by giving an account of the emergence and development
of bio-power, Foucault shows us how we have remained captivated by the sover-
eignty picture and how this captivation leads us to fail to make sense of ourselves
as political agents in so far as we fail to make sense of our own unfreedom as
political agents. Third, by enabling us to make sense of ourselves as ‘unfree’ polit-
ical agents and, in particular, our current failure to make sense of our own polit-
ical unfreedom, Foucault’s account motivates us in terms of our own
commitment to self-government to engage in the practical task of overcoming this
condition of unfreedom through a re-orientation of our political subjectivity
expressed in experiments with altering our games of government to minimize the
degree of domination within them (Foucault 1997: 298).
In the cases of both Nietzsche and Foucault, then, starting from an incohate
sense that some feature of our subjectivity, of our ways of problematising our
experience, is a problem of the type described by the conflict between ‘But this

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

224 David Owen

isn’t how it is!’ and ‘Yet this is how it must be!’, the kind of self-reflection that
genealogy aims to produce has the following form:

(a) it identifies a picture which holds us captive, whereby this captivity obstructs
our capacity to make sense of ourselves as agents in ways that matter to us,
(b) this account involves a redescription of this picture which contrasts it with
another way of seeing the issue in order to free us from captivity to this
picture,
(c) it provides an account of how we have become held captive by this picture
which enables us to make sense of ourselves as agents and, more particularly,
to make sense of how we have failed to make sense of ourselves as agents in
ways that matter to us,
(d) and in so far as this account engages with our cares and commitments, it
motivates us to engage in the practical working out of this re-orientation of
ourselves as agents.

It is in this way that genealogy performs its inherent aim to be the self-conscious-
ness of a process of enlightenment and emancipation. As Foucault puts it, geneal-
ogy ‘will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the
possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think . . .
seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work
of freedom’ (1997: 315–6).

III

It is hard to overlook the contrast between the account of genealogy provided in the
preceding section and the readings of genealogy which have been characteristic of
writers working within the traditions of the Frankfurt School. For such authors,
genealogy is predominantly seen as failed or botched form of critique. This is a
picture of genealogy presently most famously, and most bluntly, by Jurgen
Habermas (1987) and endorsed in its central claims by numerous others, even
where, as with Nancy Fraser (1989), they write with more sympathy and subtlety.
What is most noteable about these criticisms of genealogy, however, is that they
share a common assumption concerning the demands of critique or responsible
criticism. There are two ways of elucidating this unquestioned presumption. The
first way is to frame genealogy in terms of critique. It goes like this:

Genealogy is an attempt at critique. Critique involves adequately satisfy-

ing certain specific demands, not the least of which is the articulation of
normative criteria concerning the justification of moral norms and/or the
legitimacy of social institutions and practices. Genealogy, it is argued,
lacks the resources to satisfy this immanent demand of critique for
normative criteria – and, thus, fails to achieve its ambition of being an
adequate form of critique.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 225

The second way is to frame genealogy in terms of responsible criticism. It can be

put like this:

Genealogy is an attempt at moral or ethical or political criticism. Such

criticism, if it is not be irrational, nihilistic, relativist, etc. (insert whatever
‘boo’-word comes to mind) must involve the articulation of normative
criteria concerning the justification of moral norms and/or the legitimacy
of social institutions and practices. Genealogy cannot do this and so must
be seen as irrational and/or nihilistic and/or relativist, etc.

Thus we can see that the unquestioned presumption is that genealogy needs to
articulate normative criteria and can’t do so. Consequently, there are two ways of
responding to this line of argument. The first is to argue that genealogy can
generate normative criteria in the appropriate way. This seems unpromising and
I won’t pursue it here. The second kind of response is to say that responsible crit-
icism does not require the articulation of any such normative criteria. This is the
more radical response and it strikes me as the right one. Let me explain why.
The first point to note is that to say that genealogy does not provide normative
criteria is not to say that it isn’t motivated by specific normative interests.
Foucault is explicit about genealogy being motivated by an interest in freedom or,
more accurately, self-government which is one reason why he makes the follow-
ing remark:

a system of constraint becomes truly intolerable when the individuals

who are affected by it don’t have the means of modifying it. This can
happen when such a system becomes intangible as a result of its being
considered a moral or religious imperative, or a necessary consequence
of medical science. (Foucault 1988: 294)

Becoming ‘intangible’ here refers just to the condition of aspectival captivity

sketched in the opening section of this paper. The second point to which we need
to draw attention is that Foucault takes it that the audience which he is address-
ing is committed to the value of self-government; as he puts it: ‘we can see that
throughout the entire history of Western societies, the acquisition of capabilities
and the stuggle for freedom have been permanent elements’ (Foucault 1997: 317).
This is one reason why he remarks that in ‘cases of domination, be they economic,
social, instutitional, or sexual, the problem is knowing where resistance will
develop’ (1997: 292) rather than whether or not it will develop. The final point to
note is that, given the first two points, all that Foucault needs to do in order to
provide responsible criticism is to enable us to free ourselves from our condition
of aspectival captivity so that we are able to see the forms of power, government
and domination to which we are subject as forms of power, government and
domination which we can and will seek to challenge, modify or minimize in
accordance with our own commitment to self-government. This is why he refers
to genealogy as seeking to give new impetus to the undefined work of freedom.13

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

226 David Owen

Consequently, it is clear that on the first framing of the issue, Foucault can and
should simply deny that genealogy is a form of critique and on the second fram-
ing he can and should deny that responsible criticism requires the articulation of
normative criteria. Both of these equivalent responses provide a cogent riposte to
his Frankfurt School critics by undermining the unquestioned presumption
which frames their critical attacks.

IV

If the argument thus far is cogent, we confront a puzzle: why has the reception of
Foucault’s practice of genealogy within the tradition of Critical Theory taken the
form that it has? One could with reasonable plausibility suggest that Foucault
was not always very clear about what he was doing himself, but this is does not
seem adequate as an explanation of the phenomenon which we are concerned. A
more plausible explanation, I’d suggest, is that precisely insofar as these writers
are working from within the tradition of Critical Theory, their focus generates a
blindspot concerning the issue of aspectival captivity which genealogy addresses.
Or, to put it another way, they are held captive by a picture.
We can approach this suggestion by reference to the following question: what
are the conditions which would legitimate the claim that responsible moral or
political criticism must articulate normative criteria for the justification of moral
norms and/or the legitimation of political institutions and practices? Whence this
despotic demand (to borrow Wittgenstein’s phrase)? It would seem that a neces-
sary condition for the legitimacy of this claim is that the only threat to the exercise
of our capacity for self-government which requires critical reflection (as opposed
to action) is the existence of false beliefs concerning the justifiability of our moral
norms or the legitimacy of our political institutions and practices, where such
false beliefs are the products either of ignorance and mistakes or of ideological
captivity. If this is so, a condition of the legitimacy of this ‘must’ is that ideologi-
cal captivity is the only form of non-physical, self-imposed condition which is a
threat to the exercise of our capacity for self-government. Hence, in so far as the
tradition of Critical Theory is committed to this claim concerning responsible crit-
icism or critique – and this is, I think, the case – so it is also committed to the latter
claim concerning ideological captivity. Consequently, it should not surprise us
that adherents to this tradition have systematically misunderstood the philo-
sophical character of genealogy because, precisely in so far as they are committed
to a central tenet of this tradition, they will also be blind to the kind of non-phys-
ical, self-imposed captivity which genealogy is designed to address.

The aim of this paper has been to elucidate the philosophical structure of geneal-
ogy and in so doing to illustrate and dispel the systematic confusion surrounding

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 227

the reception of Foucault’s practice of genealogy among philosophers working

within the traditions of the Frankfurt School. Having given this my best shot, it is
useful to reflect on the upshot of this argument for thinking about enlightenment
and the ethics of dialogue.
The first, and most obvious, point to make is that on the argument offered here,
critical theory and genealogy are both practices directed to enlightenment and
emancipation – but they are directed to distinct aspects of enlightenment and
emancipation in that they involve distinct forms of self-reflection designed to
address different threats to the exercise (and development) of our capacity for
self-government. The second, and more interesting, point is that these practices
call forth different kinds of ethical dialogue. Let me try to elucidate this.14
If you think of yourself as correcting an ideological mistake, then you see your-
self as presenting something like an undistorted view, that is, something like the
truth of the matter. If this is correct, then one’s attitude to the dialogue that
follows from presenting this undistorted view is to defend it against the objec-
tions that are raised to it by one’s interlocutors. And this is the correct attitude to
take to this type of case, dialogue is a ‘means’ to an end: namely, to getting to the
non-distorted view, and so can be seen as the exchange of yes/no speech acts. But
if you think of yourself as freeing a person from the limitations of a picture and
of presenting another one (also limited), which does the freeing by juxtaposition,
then one’s attitude to the dialogue that follows is completely different. One actu-
ally needs others to present rival pictures in order to see the limitations of one’s
own picture and the ways in which it inhibits self-government. We are dependent
on the dialogue for enlightenment just because pictures are partial but we are
never completely self-aware of their partiality (or they wouldn’t be pictures). So,
on this view, we have to take a Nietzschean stance to dialogue: namely that the
exchange of pictures or perspecives (often masquerading as comprehensive
accounts) is the condition of our getting clear about the partialities of our picture
and the pictures of others. This is why we value dialogue as ‘reciprocal elucida-
tion’. In such a dialogue of reciprocal elucidation, the question is not ‘Who is
Right?’ or ‘Who has the truth?’ Rather, the question is: ‘What difference does it
make to look at the problem this way rather than that? What difference does it
make to approach the problem under this picture rather than that?’ And the
answer will be that different pictures bring to light different aspects of, or ways
of, self-government and its constraints, possibilities, purposes, goods, etc. If we
are to engage in the ongoing quest for enlightenment and emancipation, we will
need to participate in both of these kinds of dialogue.

Conclusion

This essay has defended the claim that genealogy is best understood as a practice
of critical reflection directed to enabling us to free ourselves from a condition of
aspectival captivity. Understood as such, it is a form of self-reflection directed to
enlightenment and emancipation. Although I have not explored it here,15 it

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

228 David Owen

should be noted that this defence helps to account for Foucault’s late concern with
enlightenment and practices of criticism. However, be that as it may, if the argu-
ment presented in this essay is cogent, it follows that the confused and critical
reception of Foucault’s genealogical work by philosophers working within the
traditions of Critical Theory may be accounted for in terms of their own captivity
to a picture of criticism which cannot acknowledge the point of genealogy. I hope
that this essay has gone some way to dispelling this confusion.16

David Owen
Department of Politics/Centre for Post-Analytic Philosophy
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
UK
dowen@soton.ac.uk

NOTES
1 The issues raised in this essay have been discussed over several years with Aaron

Ridley and Jim Tully who also gave me detailed comments on an earlier draft and I am
most grateful to them. I am also grateful to Jane Bennett, Chris Brown, Tom Dumm, Rainer
Forst, Jocelyn Maclure, Gregor McLennan, Denis McManus, Tom Osborne, Peter Niesen,
Paul Patton and Jon Simons for their helpful remarks. This paper was first presented at a
conference on Foucault at the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in September
2001 and I am grateful to my co-panellists Raymond Geuss and Martin Saar for their
comments on my argument and to the other participants, notably Axel Honneth, and
Judith Butler, for their remarks. On a later occasion, it was also given to the Postgraduate
Political Theory Group at Balliol College, Oxford and I owe thanks to Monica Mookerjhee,
Michael Frieden and the postgraduate students present for pressing me on some of my
formulations. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee for the journal who pushed me
to clarify some important features of my argument.
2 In specifying Critical Theory as ideologiekritik I do not mean to suggest that critical

theorists limit themselves to this kind of criticism; on the contrary, as Peter Niesen and
Rainer Forst have both pointed out to me (forcefully and rightly), theorists such as
Habermas and Honneth also engage in Gesellschaftskritik (roughly, social criticism). I
restrict my attention to ideologiekritik in this essay simply to present as clearly as possible
the contrast between this form of criticism and genealogy. For consideration of the debate
between Foucault and Habermas across a wider terrain of issues, see Ashenden & Owen
(1999) and Kelly (1994).
3 I made this case elsewhere in respect of a focus on Wittgenstein in two related essays

(Owen 2001 and 2002). The first of these was presented to the Philosophy Society at the
University of Aarhus and I am grateful to them for helping me to clarify my views, partic-
ular thanks are due to Morten Raffnoe-Moeller for his comments. The second was occa-
sioned by an invitation from Cressida Hayes to contribute to a collection on Wittgenstein
and political philosophy and I am also grateful for her comments.
4 I have addressed the contrasting form of enlightenment and dialogue at stake in the

contrast between Habermas’ universal pragmatics and Foucault’s historical pragmatics

more fully in an earlier essay (Owen 1999).

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

 On Genealogy and Critical Theory 229

5 A referee for this essay has suggested that it is not a condition of an ideological belief

being ideological that it is false. This may well be the case but within the tradition with
which I am concerned here, falsity has been taken as a central feature of ideological beliefs
and so I will abide by these terms for the purposes of this essay.
6 Such an assessment will include, but not be reducible to, reflection on the truth value

of ‘principles of judgment’ that compose the picture in question.

7 It may seem slightly strange to characterise both ideological captivity and aspectival

captivity as ‘self-imposed’ in that both conditions are tied to the prevalence of asymmetri-
cal relations of power; but in respect of our collective social condition of being subject to
either of these forms of captivity, they are held in place by our ways of reflecting and
acting, and in this respect are ‘self-imposed’.
8 I am grateful to Denis McManus for discussion and clarification of this point.
9 For further reflection on critical theory and genealogy in relation to enlightenment,

see Owen (1999). It should be noted that in advancing this argument concerning geneal-
ogy, I am not only rejecting the view of genealogy as ideologiekritik but also the view
advanced by Raymond Geuss in relation to Nietzsche that, for example, his genealogy of
morality is simply an attempt to be better history than that which the (Christian) moralists
can provide, where the fact that his genealogy provides a better history indicates the supe-
riority of his perspective. This view is mistaken on two counts in my view. First, it misses
the sense in which genealogy attempts to accomplish a re-orientation of our thinking.
Second, it makes the claim of genealogy hang on its truth or, more broadly, its satisfaction
of the norms of historical inquiry; but while the historical truth of Nietzsche genealogy
may contribute to its perspicuity, it does not in any way follow that its perspicuity is
dependent on its historical truth. For Geuss’s position, see his essay ‘Nietzsche and
Genealogy’ (Geuss 1999: 1–28).
10 A theme which has also been significantly discussed by Stanley Cavell (1990) in his

remarks on Nora in Ibsen’s play A Doll House; remarks whose drift supports the basic
claim of this essay.
11 On this point, see Conant (1995).
12 An important element of this devaluation is given in Nietzsche’s attempt to

persuade us that the idea of a view from nowhere is an error, not because it is false but
because it is incoherent – and as a consequence of its incoherence gives rise to false beliefs.
13 It is, of course, the case that Foucault does not seek to provide a justification for why

we should be committed to self-government but, given that we are, there is no compelling

reason why he should be required do so.
14 For the comments that follow I am much indebted to Jim Tully.
15 I have said more on this topic in an ealier essay (Owen 1999) and it has also been

addressed in am important essay by Jim Tully (Tully 1999).

16 In the panel discussion of this essay, my co-panellists Raymond Geuss and Martin

Saar both suggested that this account of genealogy failed to acknowledge the centrality of
power to Foucault’s genealogy and the sense in which a genealogy provides a historical
ontology of ourselves. This suggestion is based on a confusion for which I am no doubt
responsible. It should be clear, first, that to be subject to captivity by a picture is to exhibit
a particular form of subjectivity, a mode of being in the world, and, second, that the picture
is held in place by our practical ways of going on in the world, where these are signifi-
cantly shaped by power relationships. I did not emphasise these features here because my
concern was with genealogy as a practice of critical reflection; but it is of course the case that
part of giving such a genealogical account is tracing the ways in which our captivity – our
being what we are – is held in place and this involves, obviously enough, attending to

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

230 David Owen

power relations. Nothing I say in this essay is in tension with these points and I have
explored this issue at length elsewhere (Owen 1994 and 1996).

REFERENCES

Ashenden, S. and Owen, D. (eds.) (1999), Foucault contra Habermas, London: Sage.
Baker, G. (1991), ‘Philosophical Investigations Section 122: Neglected Aspects’ in R.
Arrington and H-J. Glock (eds.) Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’, London:
Routledge.
Cavell, S. (1990), Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Conant, J. (1995), ‘Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Anscombe on Moral Unintelligibility’ in T.
Tessim and M. von der Ruhr (eds.) Morality and Religion, New York: St. Martins Press.
‘Florence, M.’ (Foucault, M.) (1994) ‘Foucault, Michel, 1926–’ in G. Gutting (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M. (1978), Discipline and Punish, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1986), The Use of Pleasure, New York: Random House.
Foucault, M. (1988), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–84 (ed.
L.D. Kritzman) London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1997), Ethics: The Essential Works: Vol.1 (ed. P. Rabinow), Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Fraser, N. (1989), Unruly Practices, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Geuss, R. (1981), The Idea of Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Geuss, R. (1999), Morality, Culture and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, J. (1987), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press.
Kelly, M. (ed.) Critique and Power, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Owen, D. (1994), Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the Ambivalence of
Reason, London: Routledge.
Owen, D. (1996), ‘Foucault, Habermas and the Claims of Reason’, History of the Human
Sciences 9 (2): 119–38.
Owen, D. (1999), ‘Orientation and Enlightenment’ in S. Ashenden and D. Owen (eds.)
Foucault contra Habermas, London: Sage, pp. 21–44.
Owen, D. (2000), ‘Wittgenstein and Genealogy’, Sats (Nordic Journal of Philosophy) 2 (2):
5–29.
Owen, D. (2002), ‘Genealogy as Perspicuous Representation’ in C. Heyes (ed.) Wittgenstein
and Political Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming.
Tully, J. (1999) ‘To Think and Act Differently’ in S. Ashenden and D. Owen (eds.) Foucault
contra Habermas, London: Sage, pp. 90–142.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Invesitigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittenstein, L. (1969), On Certainty, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002