According to common usage, myth is defined in terms of its untruth and unreality. The task of a genealogy of myth is to reconstruct the presuppositions of such a view. Following Nietzsche's definition of the genealogical method (Nietzsche 1994), a genealogy must address the question of “what is x?” by simultaneously asking “why do we conceive of it in this way?”. As Nietzsche pointed out, a genealogy faces the problem of meaning by looking at the circumstances in which it was created and thus at the values that were at stake in its creation (Nietzsche 1994: 5).

In this sense, genealogy is a form of critique (Nietzsche 1994: 8). In contrast to the typically modern type of philosophical critique, it does not, however, aim at providing a transcendental fundament. The latter, according to Nietzsche, can easily turn into the opposite of the critique, that is, into the hypostatisation of a particular view and of the values that it presupposes (Nietzsche 2002: 75–92). In contrast, as Nietzsche puts it in his letter to Overbeck on 4 January 1888, the genealogical method aims to set up a critique of a given formation through the “artificial isolation” of some of its different hotbeds (verschiedenen Entstehungsheerde) (Nietzsche 1984: 224, trans. mine).

Consequently, a genealogy of myth must not be understood as either a history of myth or as a simple reconstruction of its origins.