Philosophical Genealogy Volume I: An Epistemological Reconstruction of Nietzsche and Foucault’s Genealogical Method is a rigorous examination of the philosophical investigatory practice known as «genealogy». This critique of the philosophical tradition leads to the creation of new values. Both Nietzsche and Foucault extolled these critical and emancipatory virtues of genealogy.
Volume I examines the principal ontological and epistemological problems with Nietzsche and Foucault’s respective uses of the genealogical method. It elucidates the differences between genealogy and other forms of historical inquiry before turning to explicate, in great detail, the three axes of genealogical inquiry: the power axis, the truth axis and the ethical axis. Volume I explains the very important role the body plays in a genealogical investigation before examining several of the problems with the doctrine of perspectivism – a central component to a genealogical inquiry.
Philosophical Genealogy Volume I provides a thorough and incisive analysis of essay two of On the Genealogy of Morals, as well as the «the means of correct training» section in Discipline and Punish, while reaffirming the problems that have been examined in previous chapters and pointing toward a solution that will be further explicated in Philosophical Genealogy Volume II.