WILLIAMS AND NIETZSCHE

ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY FOR MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Alexander Prescott-Couch

It is a truism that our current common sense morality is the product of a complicated

historical development. Whether and in what way classic questions of moral philosophy – e.g. those

concerning the content, justification, and motivational efficacy of moral norms – need to be

informed by an understanding of this history is, however, a matter of controversy.

Some recent work in meta-ethics has taken an understanding of the broad contours of

morality’s history as important for questions about the existence of moral facts and the justifications

of our beliefs about such facts. For instance, moral diversity and the history of moral disagreement

have been cited as reasons to believe there are no objective moral facts; for the absence of moral

facts is – according to such arguments – the best explanation of the intractability of such

disagreement.1 Appeals to morality’s history have also been made in disputes about moral

epistemology. Witness the lively discussion regarding whether an evolutionary story of how we came

to possess our moral sentiments gives us reason to doubt that our moral beliefs are justified.2

Historical facts are crucial in both of these cases, but neither case provides us reason to think

that philosophers themselves should engage in detailed historical study. Careful empirical inquiry

may be required to vindicate the premises of these arguments, but establishing the historical facts is

                                                                                                               1 For example, see Brian Leiter, "Moral skepticism and moral disagreement in Nietzsche," in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 9, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford University Press, 2014). There are other arguments from disagreement whose conclusions are epistemic or semantic rather than metaphysical. For discussion, see D. Loeb, "Moral realism and the argument from disagreement," Philosophical Studies 90, no. 3 (1998). 2 Particularly, see Sharon Street, "A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value," Philosophical Studies 127, no. 1 (2006). See also Peter Singer, "Ethics and intuitions," Journal of Ethics 9, no. 3-4 (2005). J. D. Green, "The secret joke of Kant's soul," in Moral Psychology, Vol 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

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best left to those with the appropriate empirical training. For the purpose of these arguments, there

is a sensible division of labor between the historian and the philosopher: the historian establishes the

historical facts, and the philosopher considers what philosophical conclusions follow from them.

However, for certain philosophical projects, the study of history has been taken to have a

sort of bearing that requires philosophers themselves to engage more deeply with the historical

record. Understanding these projects requires understanding the role of history in the particular

philosophical argument and the role of philosophical reflection in structuring the relevant historical

investigation. In this paper, I’ll consider one such project – “genealogy” – by considering the work

of two of its most prominent practitioners, Bernard Williams and Friedrich Nietzsche. Many works

describe themselves as genealogies, but it is far from clear that this term picks out some particular

type of historical-philosophical project. It is therefore instructive to carefully examine the nature and

function of historical investigation in two central cases. Specifically, I’ll examine the role historical

investigation plays in Bernard Williams’ Truth and Truthfulness and contrast it with the role (or at least

one key role) for history in Nietzsche’s work, particularly Zur Genealogie der Moral.

Williams himself saw the philosophical approach in Truth and Truthfulness as an appropriation

of Nietzsche’s historical method.3 However, I’ll argue that the role of historical investigation in their

respective works is in fact interestingly different. Moreover, a key function for history in

Nietzschean genealogy is to question certain assumptions that are required for history to play the

role it does in Williams’ approach. Considering these differences will not only aid us in

understanding Williams’ and Nietzsche’s respective projects. It also illustrates some important

                                                                                                               3 “Nor is it a book about Nietzsche, but it uses a method for which I have borrowed a name from him, genealogy, and I intend the association to be taken seriously” (TT 13). Similarly, Williams writes, “In this book… I use a method which I call ‘genealogy.’ It is a descendant of one of Nietzsche’s methods, but only one descendant among others” (TT 18)

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possibilities regarding the ways that historical investigation can be integrated into philosophical

reflection.

In Truth and Truthfulness, Williams argues that historical reflection is required to understand

how individuals can “make sense” of certain values they take to be non-instrumentally important.

Somewhat confusingly, the sort of historical reflection that Williams has in mind is not information

about the history of the values in question but rather more detailed information about the agent’s

context and psychology, information that qualifies as “historical” when the agents in question lived

in the past. Williams’ basic idea is that while abstract (non-historical) philosophical theorizing is

useful for picking out certain values and exhibiting the role they serve in social life, a more fine-

grained understanding of the agent’s psychology and historical context is required to explain how

individuals can be motivated to adopt those values.

For example, consider what Williams calls the value of “Sincerity,” the value of avowing

what one believes to be true (when appropriate). Without any historical reflection, one might note

that such a value serves an essential social function in that it enables individuals in a given society to

rely on the testimony of others. However, according to Williams, considerations of this social

function are not the sort that could motivate individuals to see telling the truth as important for its

own sake. To uncover what could motivate agents to take these values seriously, one needs to look

at the way that norms of truth-telling are integrated into more historically local moral concepts like

honor, equal respect, and authenticity. Historical investigation reveals different historically-specific

ways in which it can “make sense” for individuals to take some value seriously.

However, the use of history in Nietzsche’s Genealogie and other texts is quite different. As I

will argue, one of Nietzsche’s concerns in the Genealogie is to provide a revisionary account of what

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morality is, an account in which morality is a temporally-extended historical entity. One should think

of Nietzsche’s genealogy as a “constitutive narrative” along the lines of a historical story that

recounts the development of a temporally extended historical practice like a holiday tradition. The

history of a holiday tradition might reveal that it has changed considerably over time – the activities

that made it up and the social function it served might have evolved as it adapted to new historical

contexts. If a tradition’s history is like this, then it is likely that the elements of the tradition will not

neatly fit together such as to jointly realize a single social function. Rather, it is likely that the

tradition has no one particular function since the elements hang together as parts of a single practice

merely due to their historical association with one another. I will argue that a key role for history in

Nietzsche’s work is to show that “morality” is a historical entity analogous to such a tradition. This

is a quite radical idea. For it means that what holds together the various components of our moral

psychology and practice is not that they operate together to realize an important goal or ideal; it is

rather that they are grouped together in virtue of being related by the appropriate sort of ancestor-

dependent nexus.

That is, while Williams and Nietzsche both describe their practice as “genealogy,” the

philosophical questions for which their historical investigations are relevant are quite different. In

Truth and Truthfulness, history is relevant for understanding what kinds of considerations can motivate

agents when they manifest what he calls the “virtues of truth,” i.e. dispositions that lead one to

acquire and espouse true beliefs. Historical information is essential for understanding the way those

agents make sense of these virtues and for considering what reason those agents have to manifest

them. By contrast, Zur Genealogie der Moral uses history to answer the classic question of what

something is. Historical investigation should replace the search for a “definition” of morality. This

replacement has implications for what sort of coherence we should expect to discover in our moral

practices and how we should go about searching for such coherence.

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These differences in philosophical question correspond to differences in the type of

historical investigation demanded. “Making sense” of agents in a particular context (in the way

relevant for Williams) does not require understanding past contexts; it does not require history per se.

It merely demands acquaintance with local concepts and conditions. By contrast, for Nietzsche, the

story of how morality’s content and function evolved in earlier contexts illuminates its content and

function in later contexts. Like a narrative of an individual life, the Genealogie depicts how morality

evolved in response to changes in context, highlighting events that are particularly important for

shaping it into its current form. Nietzschean genealogy is, as it were, history as biography.

Williams and the Use of History for Making Sense of Others

In Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams seeks to defend the value of truth from so-called

“deniers,” those who deny that truth plays an important role in our lives (TT 5). For Williams,

defending the value of truth involves defending what he calls the “virtues of truth,” i.e. dispositions

that lead one to acquire and espouse true beliefs. In Williams’ account, these dispositions are two:

Sincerity and Accuracy.4 The former is the disposition to express what one believes when

appropriate, while the latter is directed towards acquiring reliable information through carefully

weighing evidence and avoiding self-deception and wishful thinking. Williams is concerned to define

and defend these dispositions as well as show how agents can be motivated to manifest them.

To these ends, Williams draws on two different types of historical stories: a “State of

Nature” story and “real history.” While the focus of our attention will be to the role and importance

of real history, we can better understand this role by first considering his State of Nature story and

its role in his argument. The State of Nature story is a philosophical heuristic useful for considering

                                                                                                               4 I’m following Williams’ convention in capitalizing Accuracy and Sincerity to indicate that they possess a quasi-technical meaning.

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what function the virtues of truth can serve in social life.5 Although it takes the form of a historical

story, it is not meant to be literally true. In employing such a fictional story to reveal the function of

a particular attitude or practice in social life, Williams is appropriating the traditional use of such

stories by figures such as Locke and Hume. In Williams’ story, we are to imagine a group of people

with a common language who need to pool information in order to navigate their environment. For

such a society, it would be desirable if individuals cultivated the virtues of Sincerity and Accuracy

because these would enable a smooth epistemic division of labor. We could not rely on others’

testimony if we were not confident that others were disposed to form accurate beliefs and reveal

those beliefs to us when asked. Supporting the epistemic division of labor is the function of

Sincerity and Accuracy.

Considering the function of these virtues is useful for three purposes. First, the State of

Nature story explains why these virtues are found in every human community. If an epistemic

division of labor is required for rudimentary social organization, and these virtues are required for

the epistemic division of labor, then one would expect to find such virtues in any society. Second,

this explanation can be used to defend these virtues against certain skeptical challenges. Why–the

deniers ask6 -- should we be so concerned with truth and honestly? The answer is that such virtues

are needed for the epistemic division of labor, and the epistemic division of labor is crucial for a

society of even minimal complexity. Third, the considerations that vindicate these virtues can be

used to specify and resolve certain disagreements about their content. For example, would a

disposition to make true but highly misleading statements count as Sincerity? Williams believes that

                                                                                                               5 Williams writes that “Imaginary genealogies typically suggest that a phenomenon can usefully be treated as functional which is not obviously so. Moreover, they resemble a larger class of explanations (including those given by natural selection theory) in explaining the functional in terms of the non-functional, or perhaps in terms of the more primitively functional. The power of imaginary genealogy lies in introducing the idea of function where you would not necessarily expect it, and explaining in more primitive terms what that function is” (TT 32). 6 E.g. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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it would not,7 since such a disposition would not support the sort of trust needed for efficient

epistemic division of labor. (Of course, there will be many aspects of the content that cannot be

settled by the State of Nature story. 8)

Importantly, Williams believes that even if the effects of Sincerity and Accuracy on the

epistemic division of labor might explain the importance of these virtues on the social level, such

considerations do not and could not motivate agents to practice them. For, he claims, part of what it

is to possess the virtues of Sincerity and Accuracy is to value telling the truth and being intellectually

conscientious non-instrumentally. This claim about the content of Accuracy and Sincerity is

supported by his State of Nature story: agents in the State of Nature could only effectively pool

information if they were disposed to take truth-telling and intellectual consciousness to be important

for non-instrumental reasons.

There are some subtleties here that Williams does not discuss but that will help clarify his

view.9 Particularly, note that even were a practice to only deliver benefits if participants see non-

instrumental reasons for adhering to its rules, it does not follow that participants cannot take the

ultimate justification of the practice to be instrumental. For example, consider the virtue of

punctuality. A society whose members take punctuality seriously will derive substantial benefit from

increased efficiency in coordination. Moreover, perhaps such efficiency gains can only be achieved if

agents see some non-instrumental reason for being punctual and, thus, refrain from weighing the

costs and benefits of tardiness on a case-by-case basis. Still, the agents may take seriously non-

instrumental reasons for punctuality while believing that the ultimate justification for punctuality is

instrumental. For instance, perhaps agents believe that conditional on there existing a social practice of

                                                                                                               7 See Chapter 5, especially pg. 100-10. 8 As Williams himself says: “What does Sincerity need to be? And what structures of other virtues and values will surround it, in such a way that the reflective agent can make sense of it as an intrinsic value? We saw also that the two questions are related: the surrounding of other values itself affects what Sincerity needs to be” (TT 95). 9 Thanks to Johann Frick for discussion of these points.

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punctuality, it would be unfair of them to be tardy. Tardiness is understood as a form of free riding.

In this case, while agents are motivated by (non-instrumental) fairness considerations, these

considerations only have force against a background understanding of the instrumental benefits of

the practice of punctuality.10

I take it that Williams believes that the virtues of truth are importantly different than e.g. the

virtues of punctuality. One could capture this difference by amending Williams’ proposal to the

effect that the benefits of Accuracy and Sincerity are dependent not only on agents seeing non-

instrumental reasons for exercising these virtues but on seeing these reasons not being conditional

on the instrumental benefits the virtues bring. This, I believe, is the most charitable way to

understand what Williams means when he says that for the virtues of truth to deliver epistemic

benefits, agents must “come to think that trustworthy behavior [i.e. behavior manifesting the virtues

of truth]… has an intrinsic value, that it is a good thing…to act as a trustworthy person acts, just

because that is the kind of action it is” (TT 90). For while one might want an argument that

Accuracy and Sincerity would be unstable were agents to believe their ultimate justification were

instrumental, it is quite plausible that agents do not – as a matter of fact – believe that benefits from

the epistemic division of labor provides the ultimate grounds for caring about these virtues.

Considerations of the epistemic division of labor seem to lack importance in comparison to other

consequences of truth telling and may even border on being the wrong kind of reason for honesty.

Say your significant other is lying on the floor sobbing after you confessed a series of infidelities.

Bleary-eyed, she looks up and asks why you felt you had to tell her. Are you really going to say that

you felt the need to do your part for the efficient coordination of information in society?

                                                                                                               10 Punctuality is, of course, just one example of a common phenomenon: norms the general conformity to which brings social benefits but from which agents often have incentive to deviate.

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The crucial point is that the State of Nature story does not itself provide an account of the

reasons that do and can motivate agents to practice the virtues. Moreover, it is not a peculiarity of

Williams’ specific State of Nature story that it must be supplemented with an account of agents’

motivations. For any State of Nature story that purports to reveal the socially useful functions of a

disposition to take an activity to be non-instrumentally valuable cannot fully explain the motivational

basis for that disposition. 11 The State of Nature story highlights important consequences of the

activity, but those consequences cannot be the agent’s motivations since they only follow if the

agent is not motivated by consequences.

So we need an account of what considerations could motivate agents to practice these

virtues, and this account cannot be instrumental. It is at exactly this point in the argument that

Williams believes that actual historical investigation is required. It is therefore worth considering in

slightly more detail what sort of account we want of an agent’s motivations and some examples of

how history figures in such an account. We’ll then be able to reflect more broadly about the role of

history in Williams’ project and (more broadly still) on the sorts of philosophical questions for which

history is relevant on Williams’ approach.

The virtues of Sincerity and Accuracy that play a role in Williams’ State of Nature story have

been picked out in a way that has abstracted from certain features of their realization. Particularly,

the characterization of these virtues has abstracted from the way in which agents “make inner sense”

of these virtues.12 Williams is frustratingly vague regarding how to understand this notion, but the

intuitive idea is that for an agent to “make inner sense” of these virtues is for her to find support for

                                                                                                               11 Even if the considerations motivating participants in a practice are conditional on instrumental benefits provided by the practice, the State of Nature story does not provide a full account of participants’ motivations. For one still needs an account of the (conditional) non-instrumental motivating reason (e.g. fairness), and this is not provided by the State of Nature story. 12 For example, Williams writes that the State of Nature story shows “that something has to support the disposition of Sincerity, and that an agent should be able to make inner sense of the structure in which Sincerity is embedded” (TT 93).

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them in a framework of values that she endorses.13 I take it that Williams’ background thought is

that the desires, values, commitments, and other features of the agent’s psychology that play a role in

motivating the agent – what in other work he calls the agent’s “motivational set”14 – is not a mere

conjunction of discreet and disparate primitive motives. Rather, the agent’s motives stand in

complex relations of mutual support and combine to form a (more or less) cohesive outlook on how

to live. To “make sense” of a value is to locate it within such a network of support and exhibit how

it coheres with the agent’s other values.

Making more precise the relevant notions of “support” and “cohesion” is difficult, and the

exact details will not matter for our purposes. The crucial point is that Williams believes there are

multiple such motivational frameworks capable of supporting the virtues of truth. Consequently,

“making sense” of Accuracy and Sincerity in a particular case requires attentiveness to the

historically specific circumstances, conceptual framework, and psychology of the agent. He puts the

point this way:

Living in an ethical system demands a certain psychology. But, importantly, it does not follow that all ethical systems demand the same psychology – moral psychology may be opportunistic (an example would be the supposed difference between guilt and shame societies). Nor need it be the case that one and the same ethical system demand exactly the same psychology (TT 24)

That is, certain aspects of our motivational architecture with respect to Accuracy and Sincerity are

matters of local empirical fact and cannot be discovered through simple reflection.

It may not seem surprising that Williams believes actual empirical investigation is required to

understand what can motivate agents given that motivational sets can differ. However, in this

                                                                                                               13 Williams writes, “We have to see what those other values may be that surround trustworthiness, values that provide the structure in terms of which it can be reflectively understood” (TT 92). 14 See “Internal and External Reasons” in Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981). A motivational set contains the agent’s desires as well as “dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects, as they may be abstractly called, embodying commitments of the agent” (IER 104).

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context, Williams is not merely noting that the possibility of variation requires empirically verifying

one’s armchair hypotheses about motivation. He is rather (best interpreted as) making specific

empirical claims about these motivational sets on the basis of which he believes sustained historical

reflection will be philosophically illuminating. Particularly, Williams believes that (i) for almost any

motivational set15, there will be some aspects of that set in virtue of which the agent will be disposed

to take Accuracy and Sincerity to be non-instrumentally valuable and (ii) the aspects of agents’

motivational sets that realize these dispositions will be importantly distinct in different societies and

periods. The first claim is supported by the State of Nature story. The second is borne out by

Williams’ own engagement with history.

We can illustrate the sense in which the realizers of the virtues of Accuracy and Sincerity are

importantly distinct in different periods by considering some of the examples that Williams

provides. Consider how agents “make inner sense” of Sincerity in societies with a strong ethic of

nobility. In such societies, Williams claims, the virtue of Sincerity is typically motivated by a sense of

honor and the desire to avoid shame. Deceit is despised because it indicates that one is concerned

with “the accommodations that deceit can secure” (TT 116) and betrays a lack of self-sufficiency. In

these cases, the value of honor enables agents to understand the importance of Sincerity as a

constitutive component of being a particular type of character that these agents are committed to

wanting to be. By contrast, when a strong ethic of equality and autonomy reigns, agents may be

motivated to be Sincere because they understand deceit as a form of manipulation, a wrong in which

they are making others the products of their will (TT 118). Moreover, in lying an agent may consider

herself to be insulting other persons by betraying their trust (TT 118). In both of these cases,

                                                                                                               15 There may be some individuals who do not take seriously Accuracy and Sincerity to be non-instrumentally valuable. For example, moral nihilists may believe they have no reason to be sincere. Such individuals, however, could not constitute a substantial part of society.

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violations of Sincerity are understood as wrong for non-instrumental reasons. However, the nature

of these reasons varies depending on the historical period.

With these examples in mind, note that it is a bit misleading for Williams to claim that

“history” is relevant for moral psychology. He rather thinks that empirical investigation is necessary

to answer questions about motivation and that – as a matter of empirical fact – there will be

significant variation amongst individuals, particularly individuals in different social environments.

One might better characterize Williams view by saying that he believes that answering particular

questions in moral psychology requires local investigation. This local investigation will qualify as

“historical” when the location in question is the past.

The idea that an important kind understanding of ourselves is local is a recurring theme in

Williams’ work.16 However, there is a puzzle regarding why information about other historical periods

should be relevant to our own self-understanding if the way we “make sense of ourselves” is local.

For, ex hypothesi, the values that support our activities are not going to be ones that we share with

individuals from other periods. So how should investigating their values help us make sense of

ourselves?17

                                                                                                               16 In “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,” Williams writes, “…in seeking to understand ourselves… we need concepts and explanations that are rooted in our more local practices, our culture, and our history, and these cannot be replaced by concepts which we might share with very different investigators of the world” (PHD 186) We need to make sense of ourselves using such local concepts in order to answer basic questions about how to live. See Bernard Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

Similarly, he writes in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, “The truth is that the basic question is how to live and what to do; ethical considerations are relevant to this; and the amount of time and human energy to be spent in reflecting on these considerations must itself depend on what, from the perspective of the ethical life we actually have, we count as a life worth living, and what is likely to produce people who find life worth living” (ELP 171, italics mine). See Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1985).

17 It is important not to confuse this question with the question of whether looking at our ancestors’ ethical frameworks may help us causally explain elements our current motivational apparatus. Say we inherited some ethical idea from previous generations. If so, then we might be said to “understand” our current ethical idea by knowing its lineage. However, it is crucial that causal understanding is not the sort of self-understanding that Williams has in mind when he speaks of us “making sense” of ourselves. This is not to say that knowledge of the causes of elements of our motivational apparatus is irrelevant to our project of making sense of ourselves. For causal

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I believe there are two responses to this puzzle. First, historical investigation may aid our

self-understanding (despite not directly providing us with information about how to make sense of a

value in our local context) simply by impressing upon us that there is historical variation. Knowledge

of the fact of variation may help us make sense of ourselves by discouraging us from adopting an

inappropriate constraint in our theorizing about ourselves: that the account we provide must be one

that could apply to anyone in any period. Such a constraint will encourage us to look for more

universal stories that avoid using thick ethical concepts specific to a period; and such stories will, on

Williams view, lack a certain richness that is given by values that are only taken seriously in particular

concrete historical situations.

Yet, while Williams is surely concerned to encourage us to look locally in making sense of

ourselves, this cannot be the only reason that examining other periods is important for him. For if

he simply wanted to reinforce a healthy pluralism regarding the ethical frameworks that can support

Accuracy and Sincerity, there would be no need to examine the details of how this support operates

in different social and psychological contexts. We should therefore consider whether there is

another answer to the puzzle, one that explains the role detailed historical knowledge can play in

philosophical reflection.

A second answer – and one that explains the need for detailed understanding of other

periods – is that there is a broader sense of “understanding ourselves” in which part of

understanding ourselves involves understanding our relations to others. Consider the following

passage in “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline”:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     knowledge may give us reasons to think that there are certain limits to self-understanding in the relevant sense. For instance, Williams writes, “In fact, we are very unlikely to be able to make complete sense of our outlook. It will be in various ways incoherent. The history may help us to understand why this should be so: for instance, the difficulties that liberalism has at the present time with ideas of autonomy can be traced in part to Enlightenment conceptions of the individual which do not fully make sense to us now” (PHD 194). Here, causal knowledge gives us evidence that there is an aspect of our motivational set that cannot be integrated with the other parts of that set. This is a theme that will be more fully explored when we consider the role for history in Nietzsche’s genealogy. This role for history, while potentially important in some of Williams’ other works, is not the role that we are considering here.

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…a philosopher may say: the contingent history has no effect in the space of reasons (to use a fashionable phrase), so why bother about it?... . Again, what we think about these things affects our view of people who have different outlooks in the present, outlooks that present themselves as rivals to ours. To say simply that these people are wrong in our terms is to revert to the thin tune that we have already heard in the case of disapproval over the centuries. It matters why these people believe what they do; for instance, whether we can reasonably regard their outlook as simply archaic, an expression of an order which happens to have survived into an international environment in which it cannot last, socially or intellectually. This matters both for the persuasion of uncommitted parties, as I have already said, but also for making sense of the others in relation to ourselves—and hence of ourselves in relation to them. Even with regard to those elements of our outlook for which there are no further justifications, there can still be explanations which help to locate them in relation to their rivals (PHD 195, italics mine)

When Williams writes that we understand ourselves by understanding our relations to others, I

believe there are two distinct ideas at play.

One idea is that there is a sort of self-understanding involved in coming to have the

appropriate attitudes towards others. The reason taking the appropriate attitudes towards others

brings self-understanding is that taking these attitudes requires correctly cognizing one’s place in

relation to them. As Williams writes in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, “We must also see that our

reactions and relations to other groups are themselves part of our ethical life, and we should

understand these reactions more realistically in terms of the practice and sentiments that help to

shape our life” (ELP 160). Moreover, an understanding of our relations to those with different

motivational apparatuses is particularly important, Williams believes, in our current historical

situation. For Williams thinks that contemporary societies are “marked by a particular level of

reflectiveness” (ELP 163). That is, they think of their social order as one amongst various

possibilities rather than one that is religiously or metaphysically necessary (ELP 163). To “make

sense” of this feature of contemporary society (reflectiveness) involves thinking clearly about what

attitudes are appropriate given the concrete differences between ourselves and those in other

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epochs.18 We understand ourselves by reflecting on our attitudes towards those at a certain historical

and psychological remove from us.

A distinct idea that I also take to be expressed in the above passage is that one understands

oneself by understanding the diversity of human experience and one’s place within it. R.G.

Collingwood, who Williams remarks is one of the most underrated philosophers19, described well the

way historical investigation can aid self-understanding in this fashion:20

Lastly, what is history for? […] My answer is that history is 'for' human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a man; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of man you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the man you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.” (Idea of History Introduction 2.d)

The point seems to be a familiar one that travel, especially time travel, expands the mind in a certain

crucial respect. Such travel expands our understanding of human possibility and where we are

situated within a space of such possibilities.

                                                                                                               18 One might wonder why historical distance is particularly important. For we could imagine societies that differ with respect to motivational apparatus and yet are contemporaneous. Williams admits this possibility but thinks it is not something we can take seriously in our contemporary situation. He writes, “Relativism over merely spatial distance is of no interest or application in the modern world. Today all confrontations between cultures must be real confrontations, and the existence of exotic traditional societies presents quite different, and difficult, issues of whether the rest of the world can or should use power to preserve them, like endangered species; anthropological and other field workers find themselves in the role of game wardens” (ELP 163). 19 “This form of historical (and, more generally, social) understanding has been properly emphasized by many writers, notably, in English by the most unjustly neglected of twentieth century philosophers, R.G. Collingwood” (TT 237). 20 The idea that self-understanding comes through an understanding of others is common in parts of the German tradition. For instance, compare to Dilthey: “Moreover, any inner experiencing, through which I become aware of my own disposition, can never itself bring me to a consciousness of my own individuality. I experience the latter only through a comparison of myself with other people; at that point alone I become aware of what distinguishes me from others, and Goethe was only too right when he said that this most crucial of all experiences is also one of the most difficult, and that our insight into the extent, nature, and limits of our powers remain at best incomplete” (“The Rise of Hermeneutics” 231). See Wilhelm Dilthey and Frederic Jameson, "The Rise of Hermeneutics," New Literary History 3, no. 2 (1972).

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Nietzsche and the Use of History For Elucidating What Something Is

Williams understands his historical approach as a development of Nietzsche’s practice of

“genealogy.” However, as I’ll argue here, the role of history in their respective projects is actually

quite different. This difference is not simply the obvious one that Nietzsche appeals to genealogy in

the service of critiquing morality while Williams employs history to vindicate the virtues of truth. It

is rather that the philosophical questions whose answers depend on historical investigation are

different in the two cases, and one key object of Nietzschean genealogy is to undermine certain

assumptions that play an important role in Williams’ approach to the use of history.

Particularly, Nietzsche takes genealogy to discredit the idea that the practice whose history is

being investigated plays a common functional role across a variety of historical contexts, an idea that

is essential for Williams vindicatory project. Nietzsche needs to discredit this assumption in order

for history to play two roles in his broader project: providing an account of what morality is and

structuring our search for symbolic and functional unity within a heterogeneous moral practice.

Before turning to Nietzsche’s texts, it will be helpful to put my account of the role of history

in Nietzsche’s project on the table.21 The basic idea is that historical information about morality

reveals that morality is a particular type of practice, a type that I will call a “historical individual.” A

historical individual is a temporally extended entity whose parts are related in the appropriate sort of

ancestor-dependent nexus. Practices that are historical individuals need not have “definitions” in

that there may be no cluster of act-types or functional properties that the practice possesses at

                                                                                                               21 There are numerous suggestions regarding why the Nietzsche’s argument takes a historical form. For example, the genealogy has been interpreted as debunking morality’s claims to a pedigree, providing evidence that modern morality undermines flourishing, and showing that morality breaks the connection between perceptions of increased power and actual increases in power (see Geuss 1994, Leiter 2002, and Katsafanas 2011 respectively). Unfortunately, space does not permit me to discuss these and other views. However, note that many of these suggestions are not mutually exclusive. There is therefore little pressure to argue against them. See Raymond Geuss, "Nietzsche and Genealogy," European Journal of Philosophy 2, no. 3 (1994). Brian Leiter, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge, 2002). Paul Katsafanas, "The Relevance of History for Moral Philosophy: A Study of Nietzsche's Genealogy," in Nietzsche's 'On the Genealogy of Morality': A Critical Guide, ed. Simon May (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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different times. Not every practice with a history is a historical individual, and it is the job of

historical information in the Genealogie (and other texts) to show that a particular practice –

“morality” – is a practice of this sort.

To understand what it is for a practice to be a historical individual and why it matters, it will

be helpful to briefly compare two practices: monetary exchange and Christmas. While practices of

monetary exchange may differ in a number of ways, there is a function that all such practices have in

common: the facilitation of trade amongst members of a community. Moreover, this function is not

merely incidental to the practice. Rather, monetary exchange is a practice that is for the facilitation of

trade. 22 A practice that has a function of this sort is not a historical individual in my sense.

Notice that having a function that is of central importance for social life has consequences

for the role that a practice’s history can play in explaining aspects of the practice. Given that any

society with more than the most rudimentary division of labor will need some medium of exchange

to facilitate trade, it is no coincidence that it has developed in different societies that have no causal

connection to one another. That we currently use money is not some historical contingency.

Moreover, how monetary exchange functions in any given society can be understood largely in

ignorance of the historical details of the development of that system of exchange.

Let’s now consider Christmas. In contrast to the practice of monetary exchange, there is no

single functional role or set of act types that is common to Christmas in each historical period it has

been practiced.23 Christmas has its origins in a pagan festival for marking the winter solstice, which

turned into a Christian community festival, which turned in to a drunken debaucherous celebration,

which turned into a family-friendly holiday focused on doing good for one’s neighbor, which turned

                                                                                                               22 I am leaving open exactly how to understand these functional claims. Differences in this respect will not matter for the contrast I am drawing. 23 For a cursory overview, see Elon Gilad, "The real story of Christmas: From sun-worship to Sinterklaas," Haaretz 2013. http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.565113

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into our current practice of bonanzic shopping. What these different historical periods of the

practice have in common is not a shared set of act types or functional role but rather some

continuity with respect to the concrete acts that make up the practice, the way actors conceive of

those acts, and the functional roles they serve. This continuity may take the form of a “family

resemblance” among elements of the practice at contiguous time points; however, parts of a

historical individual at a historical remove from one another may not be similar at all. Our current

holiday practice may bear no resemblance, not even a family resemblance, to early Christian festivals,

even though both count as parts of the Christmas tradition. This is a manifestation of the fact that

Christmas, unlike money, is a historical individual.

The fact that Christmas is a historical individual has a number of implications for the role its

history can play in our search for unity within the practice. Given its history, it is no coincidence that

our current practice of Christmas is such a hodgepodge. Moreover, it is a hodgepodge in two

different senses. It is a functional hodgepodge, in that there is not a single function that the elements

jointly contribute to realizing. But it is also a symbolic hodgepodge in that there is not a single

overarching ideal that the elements combine to manifest.24 Despite being a hodgepodge in both of

these senses, the different elements of our current practice of Christmas – going shopping,

ornamenting evergreens, reading stories about the baby Jesus, singing holiday music in the cold, etc.

– are elements of a single practice. But what unites these elements is not their joint contribution to

realizing some function or their combined manifestation of a single ideal but the fact that they bear a

particular historical relation to one another. While knowledge of the history of Christmas has not

                                                                                                               24 Andrew Huddleston makes a convincing case that Nietzsche often criticizes practices on the basis of the ideals they enshrine rather than simply on the basis of their consequences. To see the difference between these two sorts of objections, consider that one might object to pornography on the basis of that it enshrines an objectionable conception of women – e.g. a conception of them as mere sexual objects – over and above objecting to its deleterious consequences. See Andrew Huddleston, "What Is Enshrined in Morality? Understanding the Grounds for Nietzsche's Critique," unpublished manuscript (2014).

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stopped everyone from looking for a spirit of Christmas,25 it gives us good reason to believe there is

a not a single function or ideal that the various elements of the practice serve.

Moreover, insofar as we are tempted to look for more local functional or symbolic unity

within the practice, attention to the concrete details of the history is instructive. First, we may be

able to disentangle a relatively small number of distinct influences (e.g. paganism, Christianity,

consumerism) on the practices and use these influences as a guide in looking for elements of the

current practice that can be seen as combining to serve a single function. For example, one might

wonder what unifies Santa Clause, evergreens, the Macy’s store window, charity drives, and midnight

mass. Attention to the history of Christmas might indicate that there may be some ideological

connection between charity drives and midnight mass, it is unlikely that there is any deeper unity

amongst all the elements of the set. Second, if the historical influences are sufficiently numerous and

diverse, one might conclude that there is little sense in trying to find unity in parts of the practice at

all. In such a case, we might conclude that there is no deeper purpose that participation in the

practice qua practice serves.

On my view, one key role of historical information in the Genealogie is to show that contra the

assumption that our moral practices should be understood like monetary exchange, morality is

actually more like Christmas. That is, morality (on Nietzsche’s view) cannot be defined by some set

of features, e.g. by some distinct content, form, or functional role possessed by moral norms.

Rather, morality is a temporally extended practice whose elements are unified only by their sharing a

place in an ancestor-dependent nexus.

There are good reasons to believe Nietzsche thought historical information could be used to

answer the question of what morality is. A common theme in Nietzsche’s writing is that

                                                                                                               25 For a recent attempt, see Sarah Palin, Good Tiding and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas (Broadside Books, 2013). Thanks to Ned Hall for drawing my attention to this important work.

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philosophers have been too quick to consider how to evaluate morality and thereby neglected to

carefully consider what it is. For example, he writes in Jenseits von Gut und Böse that

every philosopher so far has thought that he has provided a ground for morality. Morality itself, however, was thought to be “given.” What a distance between this sort of crass pride and that supposedly modest descriptive project, left in rot and ruin, even though the subtlest hands and senses could hardly be subtle enough for it (BGE 186)26

In complaining that philosophers take morality as “given,” I think Nietzsche is making three claims.

First, he is claiming that philosophers have treated morality as immutable and not susceptible to

criticism. They have been engaging in apologetics rather than critique. Second, philosophers have

treated morality as some kind of coherent, unitary phenomenon that can be motivated or justified as

a whole (when this in fact is not true). Third, and partially a consequence of the second point,

philosophers who do not understand the diversity and history of morality do not even know what

they are trying to justify. Not enough attention is given to what morality is.

Of course, it does not follow from the complaint that insufficient attention has been given

to what morality is that the remedy is to appeal to morality’s history. It could be that moral practice

can be characterized by some distinct content or formal feature of moral norms or by a particular

functional role these norms serve, but philosophers have yet to hit on the right characterization.

However, philosophers have incessantly searched for such definitions, so it would be odd for

Nietzsche to complain that they have neglected this question. Moreover, it is also extremely unlikely

that Nietzsche believes that morality can be defined by codes of a certain kind or by some set of

functional properties. For he is constantly at pains to emphasize the degree to which the morality in

different periods is characterized by codes with distinct content and formal features. For instance, he

remarks in the Vorrede of the Genealogie that in investigating the origin and value of the distinction

                                                                                                               26 For translations, I have used the Cambridge Editions. See Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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between good and evil, “I found and ventured all kinds of answers... I distinguished between

epochs, peoples, grades of ranks between individuals. I focused my inquiry, and out of the answers

there developed new questions, investigations, conjectures, probabilities…” (GM V.3). These

distinctions between epochs, peoples, and grades of rank are presumably distinctions between the

codes of conduct that individuals in such categories thought appropriate. Similarly, Nietzsche is at

pains to emphasize that codes of conduct do not have a single functional role; rather, their functions

are highly context-specific. For instance, ascetic ideals, while poisonous in many circumstances, are

prerequisites for art and higher life.27 Christian morality, while a travesty for the masters, was useful

to the slaves since it provided an interpretation that gave their lives meaning.

So if Nietzsche seeks to answer the question of what morality is, this answer cannot appeal

to some cluster of codes of conduct or a set of functional roles. What other means does he have for

answering this question? Precisely this: he can appeal to history as a corrective to (what are by his

lights) misguided attempts to provide such definitions.

Consider a famous passage in which Nietzsche discusses punishment in the genealogy.

Nietzsche writes,

With regard to the other element in punishment, the fluid one, its ‘meaning,’ the concept ‘punishment’ presents, at a very late stage of culture (for example, in Europe today), not just one meaning but a whole synthesis of ‘meanings’ [Sinnen]: the history of punishment up to now in general, the history of its use for a variety of purposes, finally crystallizes in a kind of unity which is difficult to dissolve back into its elements, difficult to analyse and, this has to be stressed, is absolutely undefinable. (Today, it is impossible to say precisely why people are actually punished: all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated defy definition; only something which has no history can be defined) (GM II.13)

                                                                                                               27 “We know what the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal are—poverty, humility, chastity: let us now look at the life of all great, productive, inventive spirits close up, for once—all three will be found in them, to a certain degree every time. Of course, if goes without saying that they will definitely not be ‘virtues’—this type of person cannot be bothered with virtues!—but as the most proper and natural prerequisites for their best existence and finest productivity” (GM III.8).

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I take it that Nietzsche’s point here is something like the following. One might think that defining

punishment is quite easy – for instance, something along the lines of “a penalty inflicted for an

offense or fault.”28 However, such a definition is at best uninformative, since we already need to

understand how “penalty” or “fault” are understood in the practice. Moreover, such a definition will

not capture the connection between the various sorts of acts that are grouped together under the

concept because there is no one such connection to capture.

At risk of being overly schematic, one can think about Nietzsche’s understanding of the

historical development in the following way: Historically, there were some particular activities, e.g.

physically assaulting other individuals or excluding them from social life. These activities could be

given a variety of “senses” in that the same sort of activity might be understood as having a number

of rationales. For instance, a physical assault might be understood as retribution or as amusement.

These distinct senses provide a reason for grouping together what might have looked like distinct

kinds of activities. Under the rubric of retribution for example, one might group together physical

assault and withholding of goods. But once particular activities are grouped together, their meaning

can itself be reinterpreted, and this reinterpretation could then make new groupings possible. For

example, once we have grouped together physical assault and the withholding of goods, one might

reinterpret the purpose of a practice with these elements as rehabilitation rather than retribution.

Under this new interpretation, new sorts of activities can then become part of the practice and

activities that were once central may be removed. 29

                                                                                                               28 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/punishment 29 Earlier in this section, Nietzsche speaks as if there is in fact something that is held constant in the history of punishment: the “custom, the act, the ‘drama’, a certain strict sequence of procedures” [“den Brauch, den Akt, das “Drama”, eine gewisse strenge Abfolge von Prozenduren”] (GM II.13). One might naturally think that this passage conflicts with the interpretation I’m offering. However, I believe this passage is less worrying for my account than it may appear. For even if there are certain types of acts that are common to the practice of punishment in different periods, there still being significant addition and subtraction with respect to the kind of acts that make up the practice. Moreover, note that even when a practice is a historical individual, there may be – as a matter of contingent fact – elements that are common to the practice in all periods of its existence. So my interpretation of Nietzsche’s account of punishment is compatible with certain features of the practice persisting through all periods of its existence as long as such persistence is a contingent mater.

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Importantly, on Nietzsche’s view, these new interpretations are often the result of some

actor or social group “hijacking” the practice for their own ends. For instance, in a society in which

work is believed to be good for the soul, factory owners might urge that the rationale for

punishment is rehabilitation.30 This interpretation might become generally adopted not because it is

inherently the most plausible rationale for the practice but because it has been pushed by influential

actors (for self-interested reasons, e.g. enabling the exploitation of prison labor). As this process of

reinterpretation repeats itself many times, the practice at a later date might look substantially

different from the same practice at an earlier one. For instance, the official exercise of harsh physical

violence no longer plays a central role in punishment in America and Western Europe, and

punishment there can now take the form of reading popular social science.31

The key point is that for a social practice with this sort of history, persistence consists in a

process of continual regrouping of activities and exogenous reinterpretation of their purpose, a

process that exhibits no “deeper” logic of development. A token activity belongs to a practice type

in virtue of occupying a place in this process.

The practice of punishment is only one example of a phenomenon of normative interest that

exhibits a history of this form. For another example, consider Nietzsche’s genealogy of our

conscience, our feelings of guilt. Nietzsche’s story runs approximately as follows: a primitive

association between pain and having debts32 is transformed into an expectation that we will suffer

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     What is crucial for my purposes is that there are no parts of the practice whose persistence is essential for the practice to be what it is. Importantly, the beginning of GM II.13 does not claim that the aspects of punishment that are relevantly permanent are also essential to the practice. This absence is no coincidence, since a claim that the permanent aspects are essential would appear to run counter to Nietzsche’s insistence that punishment is not definable. For if such permanent elements were essential, why not use them to define the practice? In any case, it would be a mistake to put much weight on Nietzsche’s claim that there is an element of the practice that persists. Nietzsche’s main point in this passage is that many distinct and conflicting meanings can be imposed on the same concrete act, not that punishment should be understood as a particular kind of act. 30 In this paragraph, I have not tried to stick to Nietzsche’s account of punishment. I have freely embellished in order to more clearly illustrate the general form of the history that Nietzsche thinks characterizes punishment’s development. 31 Carolyn Kellogg, "Unusual punishment: Woman sentenced to read Malcolm Gladwell," Los Angeles Times January 28 2014. 32 GM II 4-6.

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for violating custom33 due to the introduction of the belief that we owe ancestors a debt of

obedience. This expectation of suffering for violating custom is transformed in a pre-moral bad

conscience when our aggressive tendencies begin to be directed away from others and towards

ourselves as population density increases.34 This pre-moral bad conscious is in turn transformed into

the moral conscience and feeling of guilt with the introduction of the concept of sin.35

Moreover, the ideals, values, and codes of conduct to which this psychology is responsive

have a history of a similar structure. Our current “ascetic” morality is, in Nietzsche’s view, similarly

the product of a complex series of changes. There is a primitive conception of justice as the

restoration of equality,36 which – through a series of complex developments37 –eventually becomes a

traditional ethic of nobility. This so-called “master morality” is then famously re-interpreted by the

priestly caste, and this re-interpretation is taken up by slaves and eventually the nobility. The

resultant morality itself undergoes change as science comes to play a larger role in culture.

What these historical narratives illustrate is that morality is a historical individual. Consider

our moral conscience. The story is one in which there is similarity between our psychology at

contiguous time points but deep difference between our primitive conscience and our current moral

conscience. If one asks, “what is conscience?” the answer – in Nietzsche’s view – does not take the

form of a definition but rather that of a complex historical narrative.

This role that history plays in showing that morality a historical individual is, I believe,

essential to understanding the importance of history in Nietzsche’s ultimate project of assessing the

                                                                                                               33 GM II 19. 34 GM II 16. 35 GM III. 16, 20. 36 GM II. 4.7. 37 Admittedly, the relationship between the events depicted in the first and second essays of the Genealogie is not completely clear. As is unavoidable in interpreting Nietzsche, I am taking some license to reconstruct his view.

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value of morality.38 For if a practice is a historical individual, then its history is particularly important

for guiding the search for pockets of unity amongst particular parts of the contemporary practice.

For instance, the history might give us evidence that our current moral outlook is less coherent than

we would otherwise expect, and it might guide us in looking for the location and nature of internal

conflicts.39 Of course, a shared history may not be the only source of unity in our current practices.

However, it is a crucial and telling guide.

Nietzsche seems to believe the historical narrative he provides can be used as just such a

guide. For, he claims,

At an earlier stage… the synthesis of ‘meanings’ appeared much easier to undo and shift; we can still make out how, in every single case, the elements of the synthesis change valence and alter the order in which they occur so that now this, then that element stands out and dominates, to the detriment of the others, indeed, in some circumstances one element… seems to overcome all the rest. (GM II.13)

Facts about the development of morality can enables us to more clearly see functional or symbolic

conflict within the current practice. Nietzsche remarks on one example of such conflict – revealed

by the history– in Jenseits von Gut und Böse when he writes that “in all the higher and more mixed

cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities [the master and slave

moralities], and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at

times they occur directly alongside each other – even in the same human being, within a single soul”

(BGE 260). History reveals such disunity, which might be otherwise be obscured.

Note Nietzsche’s story reveals not only disunity but discord in our current morality.

Diversity in function or ideal is not per se problematic, since a practice might realize a number of

                                                                                                               38 “Under what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and evil? And what value do they themselves have?” (GM Vorrede III) 39 For example, our contemporary practice of incarceration might be seen as the product of a rickety compromise amongst often competing desires for retribution, public safety, rehabilitation, and providing “closure” for victims, not to mention more unsavory desire like to project state authority, promote social solidarity, discipline deviants, disenfranchise minorities, form a docile work force, etc. Knowledge of the history of this practice might guide us in assessing which of its elements are sensitive to which desires.

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distinct but non-conflicting values. The concern raised by morality’s history is that the relevant

disunity coincides with deeper conflict at the level of justification.

Conclusion

We can now step back and consider more clearly the relationship between Nietzsche and

Williams’ conceptions of the role that history can play in moral philosophy. On Williams’ account,

non-historical philosophical reflection (in this case, a State of Nature story) can help us (i) explain

the content of the virtues of truth by appealing to their function, and (ii) evaluate the importance of

those virtues on the basis of that function.

Like Williams, Nietzsche is interested in explaining the content of particular values by

considering the functions they serve. However, in Nietzschean genealogy, these functions will be

highly variable in different historical contexts. Moreover, Nietzsche supposes – plausibly – that as

the historical context and thereby functional role of a value changes, the value’s content does not

neatly adapt to the new environment. Rather, some features of the value that are explained by that

value’s role in a previous environment persist under change, even if those features no longer

contribute to the function of the value in the new context. Instead of fitting new environments like a

glove, values need to be shoe-horned into fulfilling their new functional roles. As this process of

value change under alteration in environment repeats over time, the content of a value comes not to

reflect suitability for any particular historical context but ends up a kind of amalgam. In the process

of trying to repeatedly shoehorn a foot into a series of different boots, one ends up with a pretty

deformed foot, which – importantly – is not suitable to any one particular boot. That is basically

where we are now with respect to morality.

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These two different roles for history reflect quite different ways in which history can be said

to provide understanding. There is one sort of historical understanding that involves taking some

phenomenon and putting it in local historical context, i.e. exhibiting the phenomenon is thematically

and functionally connected to the institutions, norms, or trends characteristic of a period. This

notion of historical understanding need not involve knowledge of facts about historical periods

temporally prior to that of the phenomenon in question. To claim that historical understanding in

this sense can inform classic philosophical questions is to claim that sustained reflection on more

localized contexts is philosophically illuminating.

By contrast, there is another notion of historical understanding that involves knowledge of

how an important practice or institution has changed over time. Historical understanding of this sort

is like knowing the biography of an individual life. In certain biographies, the subject maintains

essentially the same character despite new experiences and alterations in circumstance. In others, the

subject is more mutable, adapting in response to shifting conditions and continually remolded by

outside influences. In some cases such change seems like development, but in others it simply looks

like the subject lacks a defined character, like the subject is less of a self. At the extreme, if the

subject were continually transformed in new environments, displaying virtually no integrity over

time, one might feel that there is hardly a subject at all, no real agent behind the deed, or, rather,

nothing to agent beyond his or her history. In such cases, one might say that what is depicted in the

biography just is the agent. While the subject of Nietzsche’s genealogy is a social practice not a

human individual, the understanding of the subject provided by its history is of a similar sort. It is an

understanding of the subject’s essence as discerned in the right sort of biography.

It is worth considering the ways in which these two uses of history can be combined. It is

clear one and the same thing cannot be the subject of both Williams-style contextualization and

Nietzschean genealogy. For a successful Nietzschean genealogy shows that the subject’s function

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changes – often quite radically – over time, but the way Williams uses history requires functional

stability. This is not to deny, however, that certain complex projects may employ elements of both.

Note that while Nietzsche’s Genealogie concerns morality as a whole, Williams’ Truth and Truthfulness

concerns only a part of our moral practice, the virtues of truth. Consequently, the assumption that

Nietzschean genealogy seeks to undermine – that morality serves a single functional role– is not itself

presupposed in Williams’ project in Truth and Truthfulness. Morality as a whole may be a historical

individual even while certain of its parts serve the same social function in different contexts. It

should not be surprising that practices that are not themselves historical individuals can be parts of

practices that are. Monetary exchange may have a common functional role across societies, but it

might also be bound up as a part in a variety of complex practices that themselves cannot be

understood in terms of common function.

The difference I have been drawing attention to is therefore not a disagreement between

Williams and Nietzsche regarding some substantive truth, but rather a difference in the role history

plays in their respective projects. Such a difference leaves open whether such projects can be

fruitfully combined. And in fact, there is good reason to think that Williams would welcome some

sort of combination. For instance, he writes in “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline” that “we are

very unlikely to be able to make complete sense of our outlook. It will be in various ways incoherent.

The history may help us to understand why this should be so” (PHD 194). However, one should not

confuse this role for history – to elucidate our moral practice by explaining its incoherence – with the

way history can inform our self-understanding by illustrating the variety of ways our practices can be

and have been made coherent.

That is, the purpose of drawing attention to these differences between Nietzsche and

Williams has not been to expose a substantive dispute but rather to illustrate differences in how

historical knowledge can be put in philosophy, differences not often recognized even by those

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deeply concerned with this question. Of course, such differences between Williams and Nietzsche

may seem small when compared to the differences between them and the many philosophers who

do not believe that classic questions of moral philosophy need be informed by deep historical

understanding of either sort. Whether these latter philosophers are correct in neglecting historical

inquiry depends on whether and how historical investigation can provide material for philosophical

inquiry and structure philosophical reflection. A more sustained consideration of the relation

between philosophy and history can help clarify the fundamental assumptions behind what

sometimes appear to be brute differences of philosophical temperament.

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