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    EXC1

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    EXC1

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    EXC1

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    of 1

    Page 371

    Why did Nietzsche challenge the pursuit of the origin [Ursprung], at


    least on those occasions when he is truly a genealogist? First, because
    it is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest
    possibilities, and their carefully protected identities; because this
    search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and
    succession. This search is directed to
    "that which was already there," the "very same" of an image of a
    primordial truth fully adequate to its nature, and it necessitates the
    removal of every mask to ultimately disclose an original identity.
    However, if the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics,
    if he listens to history, he finds that there is "something altogether
    different" behind things: not a timeless and essential secret but the
    secret that they have no essence, or that their essence was fabricated
    in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms. Examining the history of
    reason, he learns that it was born in an altogether "reasonable"
    fashion-from chance;10 devotion to truth and the precision of scientific methods arose from the
    passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their
    spirit of
    competition-the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of
    reason. 11 Further, genealogical analysis shows that the concept of liberty is an "invention of the
    ruling classes,,12 and not fundamental to
    man's nature or at the root of his attachment to being and truth. What
    is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the
    dissension of other things. It is disparity.

    Page 373
    The genealogist needs history to dispel
    the chimeras of the origin, somewhat in the manner of the pious philosopher who needs a
    doctor to exorcise the shadow of his soul. He
    must be able to recognize the events of history, its jolts, its surprises,
    its unsteady victories and unpalatable defeats-the basis of all beginnings, atavisms, and
    heredities. Similarly, he must be able to diagnose
    the illnesses of the body, its conditions of weakness and strength, its
    breakdowns and resistances, to be in a position to judge philosophical
    discourse. History is the concrete body of becoming; with its moments
    of intensity, its lapses, its extended periods of feverish agitation, its
    fainting spells; and only a metaphysician would seek its soul in the
    distant ideality of the origin.

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