This is philosophy bites with me, Nigel.
Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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Suppose you believe something.
Say that the rich should donate a portion of their wealth to the poor.
Now, you might believe this because you read it in a book or because your parents taught it to you, or you learnt it in church, or perhaps there's an evolutionary explanation for your belief.
Does it matter?
We asked Amir Srinivasan what the origins of our beliefs are.
Amir Srinivasan, welcome to philosophy bites.
Thank you.
We're going to focus on genealogy.
Could you just say what that is?
A genealogy is a story or an account of the genesis or origins of a thing or often a person.
So, as we normally use the term in everyday conversation, we mean by a genealogy, someone's family ancestry, your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, and so on.
But the term genealogy has a special philosophical meaning that was given to it by the 19th century german philosopher Nietzsche.
So in 1887, he wrote this very famous book called on the Genealogy of Morals, in which he gives a an account of the origins not of a particular person or a family, but instead of an entire system of belief, which he calls christian morality.
So it's a way of showing where something came from, basically.
But you can do different things with genealogy.
So, for example, you can use a genealogical story to try and vindicate or justify something.