Matthieu Queloz

“The method I propose to explore in this book is designed to help us look at ideas from a practical point of view—to look at what ideas do rather than at whether the judgements they figure in are true—in order to see how exactly our ideas are bound up with our needs and concerns. This method, which I propose to call pragmatic genealogy, consists in telling partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these ideas do for us. What point do they serve? What is the salient useful difference these ideas make to the lives of those who live by them? Much as an archaeologist who digs up a mysterious relic will try to reverse-engineer its point by imaginatively reconstructing the life of those who used it and hypothesizing what useful difference it might have made to that life, we can take an abstract idea whose point eludes us, such as truth, knowledge, or justice, and try to explain why we came to think in these terms by reconstructing the practical problems that these ideas offer practical solutions to. A pragmatic genealogy answers the question of why we came to think as we do by reverse-engineering the points of ideas, tracing them to their practical origins, and revealing what they do for us when they function well.”
― Matthieu Queloz