Abstract: The aetiologies of our beliefs, concepts, and values seem – in at least some cases – to come to bear on the reasons we have for endorsing them. Indeed, if it turns out I hold liberal values just because I was raised in a liberal household, then I seem to have reason to review them. Yet this may prompt a distinctive kind of philosophical unease. For whether I ought to endorse a belief, concept, or value is just a matter of its truth, aptness, and value respectively. If it turns out that I believe, conceptualise, and value simply because of contingent historical factors, then something, somewhere has gone awry.
Amia Srinivasan calls this unease genealogical anxiety. Yet some might find it quite strange. For in many normal cases, the fact that our beliefs, concepts, and values vary with the contingencies of history is an indication that they are appropriately sensitive to what the world is like. So, what exactly do some find anxiety-inducing? What are we supposed to be genealogically anxious about?
I shall argue that there are three candidates for what might prompt genealogical anxiety: cultural relativism, epistemological scepticism, and normative nihilism. I shall then argue that understanding genealogical anxiety as a worry about either cultural relativism or epistemological scepticism leads to debilitating problems. Understanding it as a worry about normative nihilism, however, raises a problem that strikes at the heart of a very general way of thinking about discursive normativity: the rule-following paradox. Genealogical anxiety thus warrants urgent philosophical attention.
Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar Convenors: Jack Wearing, Joseph Schear, Kate Kirkpatrick and Mark Wrathall.
