"preceding generations" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it anytime you wish to refer to those who came before, such as grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. For example, "We owe a great debt to our preceding generations for paving the way to our present success."
Cohen may be regarded as a rather unusual case among the Jewish philosophers of his and the preceding generations because of the dual nature of his philosophical thought the general and the Jewish and the uneasy equilibrium between them.
Instead, it has taken a more humble approach of sprucing up the oeuvre of preceding generations.
In other words, it's unwise to assume that what worked for the preceding generations of academics will work now.
When creating a work of family history, the writer often takes on the emotions, trials and tribulations of preceding generations in order to express them better.
Perhaps this culture of full personal disclosure heralds a new and welcome openness to self-expression, a benign antidote to the buttoned-up repression of preceding generations.
Less conspicuously but more radically, Mr. Muti stripped off the verismo varnish applied by preceding generations, revealing an undreamed-of bel canto refinement.
American children may eat more and weigh more than the young in preceding generations, but most still dont get enough calcium, a nutrient vital for growth.
It represented a marked departure from the impersonal fiction of preceding generations and initiated a vogue for autobiographical revelations among Japanese writers.
From the "Communist Manifesto": The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
As both an individual playwright and a hub of theatrical activity, he has defined his time in the way Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon and Edward Albee defined the three preceding generations.
