For those who think the term genealogy still only in pedigrees:
Foucault: Nietzsche, genealogy, history:
"The genealogy can not therefore fail to be content: it has make the uniqueness of the events in lieu of a monotonous finality identified, they must then lie in wait for the events where they are least expected and where they seem to have no history - in the feelings of love, conscience, instincts, they must their return record, not to trace the slow curve of development, but to rediscover the different scenes, have played different roles on which the events; [...] The genealogy thus requires the meticulousness of knowledge, a large number of accumulated materials, patience . [...] It is therefore a consequence of bitter-powered learning. The genealogy is to the history not as the high (and low) point of view of the philosopher to the mole view of the scholar, but rather it is in contrast to metahistorical development of ideal meanings and unlimited teleologies. It stands in contrast to the search for the 'origin'. "
" If the genealogist to the story wants to listen, rather than the metaphysics of believing what he learned then? That behind all things 'something else' is: not their essential and timeless mystery, but the secret that they are without substance or that its nature piece by piece from figures that were alien to him have been built, "
. The analysis of the origin leads to the dissolution of the ego can and at such places and places his empty synthesis swarm thousand lost events. The analysis of the origin takes us back also to the myriad events through which (thanks to which and against) have formed a concept or a character. The genealogy does not go into the past back to build a large continuity beyond the distraction of the forgotten. It will not show that the past is still there, that they still live in the present and they secretly revived after it has every time one runs pressed from the beginning fixed form. Nothing here resembles the development of a species or the fate of a people. The complex thread of origin to pursue is rather hold on to what has happened in their dispersion: the incidents, the tiny deviations, or the total reversals, the errors, the estimation error, the false statements that gave rise to what exists for us value. To be discovered, that at the root of what we know and what we are, not the truth and being available, but the externality of the contingent. Therefore, everyone deserves origin of morality, if he is not worthy of respect - and the home it is never - criticism "
" The genealogical conceived History does not want to find the roots of our identity, but would they scatter to the winds;. They will not identify the domestic hearth, from which we come, that first country, which we will return to the promises of the metaphysician, according to, but would like to make any visible discontinuities that cross us "
[Michel Foucault. Nietzsche, the genealogy, history, Dits et Ecrits II]
The genealogy and the search for the origin
