Lectures on the Will to Know Also in this series: SOCIETY MUST BE DEFENDED (North America & Canada) ABNORMAL (North America & Canada) HERMENEUTICS OF THE SUBJECT (North America & Canada) PSYCHIATRIC POWER SECURITY, TERRITORY, POPULATION THE BIRTH OF BIOPOLITICS THE GOVERNMENT OF SELF AND OTHERS THE COURAGE OF TRUTH Forthcoming in this series: PENAL THEORIES AND INSTITUTIONS THE PUNITIVE SOCIETY ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE LIVING SUBJECTIVITY AND TRUTH M F ICHEL OUCAULT Lectures on the Will to Know LECTURES AT THE COLL È GE DE FRANCE 1970–1971 and Oedipal Knowledge Edited by Daniel Defert General Editors: Fran ç ois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson TRANSLATED BY GRAHAM BURCHELL This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London. (www.frenchbooknews.com) LECTURES ON THE WILL TO KNOW © É ditions du Seuil/Gallimard 2011, edition established under the direction of Fran ç ois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana, by Daniel Defert Translation © Graham Burchell, 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne C ONTENTS Foreword: Fran ç ois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana ix Translator’s Note xiv one 9 DECEMBER 1970 1 Shift of the theme of knowledge ( savoir) towards that of truth. Elision of the desire to know in the history of philosophy since Aristotle. Nietzsche restores that exteriority. (cid:2) Internal and external reading of Book A of the Metaphysics. The Aristotelian theory of knowledge excludes the transgressive knowledge of Greek tragedy, sophistic knowledge, and Platonic recollection. (cid:2) Aristotelian curiosity and will to power: two morphologies of knowledge. two 16 DECEMBER 1970 22 For an analysis of the de-implication of knowledge and truth. (cid:2) Obscure primacy of the truth in Aristotle in which desire, truth, and knowledge form a theoretical structure. Spinoza, Kant, and Nietzsche seek to disrupt this systematicity. (cid:2) Freeing oneself from the “old Chinaman” of K ö nigsberg, but killing Spinoza. (cid:2) Nietzsche gets rid of the affiliation of truth and knowledge. three 6 JANUARY 1971 31 The Sophists: their appearance and their exclusion. (cid:2) History of philosophy in its relations to the truth according to Aristotle. Philosophical discourse cannot have the same status as poetic discourse. (cid:2) The historical mode of existence of philosophy set for centuries by Aristotle. (cid:2) The existence of philosophy made possible vi contents by the exclusion of the Sophists. (cid:2) The Sophist as figure. Sophism as technique. (cid:2) Sophistics manipulates the materiality of words. (cid:2) The different roles of Plato and Aristotle in the exclusion of the Sophists. four 13 JANUARY 1971 55 The sophism and true discourse. (cid:2) How to do the history of apophantic discourse. (cid:2) Logical versus sophistical manipulation. (cid:2) Materiality of the statement, materiality of the proposition. Roussel, Brisset, Wolfson, today’s sophists. (cid:2) Plato excludes the figure of the Sophist, Aristotle excludes the technique of the sophism. (cid:2) The sophism and the relation of discourse to the speaking subject. five 27 JANUARY 1971 71 Discourses whose function in Greek society comes from being linked to the truth. Judicial discourses, poetic discourses. (cid:2) Examination of a late document, on the threshold of Hellenistic civilization. (cid:2) Comparison with the Iliad : a quasi-judicial Homeric dispute. A system of four confrontations. (cid:2) Sovereignty of the judge and wild sovereignty. (cid:2) A Homeric judgment, or the famous scene of “Achilles’ shield.” six 3 FEBRUARY 1971 83 Hesiod. (cid:2) Characterization of words of truth in Homer and judicial discourse. (cid:2) Greek ritual ordeal and Christian Inquisition. (cid:2) Pleasure and test of truth in masochism. (cid:2) Hesiod bard of krinein against the dikazein of judges-kings, eaters of gifts. (cid:2) Dikaion and dikē in Hesiod. (cid:2) Extension of krinein into the Greek juridical space and new type of assertion of the truth. (cid:2) Draco’s legislation and reparation. (cid:2) Dikaion and order of the world. seven 10 FEBRUARY 1971 101 Distribution of the word of truth according to dikazeina nd krinein . (cid:2) Appearance of a Hesiodic dikaion a s demand for a just order. (cid:2) Role of the neighbor in the game of justice and injustice. (cid:2) From ordeal truth to truth-knowledge ( savoir ). (cid:2) Contribution of Assyrian and Hittite forms of knowledge. Their transformation in Greece. Contents vii eight 17 FEBRUARY 1971 116 Hesiodic dikaion ( continuation). (cid:2) Tyranny and money: two borrowings from the East. (cid:2) The Greek transformation: displacement of the truth from ordeal to knowledge; movement of knowledge from the domain of power to that of justice. (cid:2) Recurrence of two oneiric figures: Saint Anthony and Faust. (cid:2) Agrarian crisis and political transformations in the seventh and sixth centuries. (cid:2) Hoplites and peasants. Craft industry. (cid:2) Homeric truth-challenge and Eastern knowledge-power transformed into truth-knowledge . nine 24 FEBRUARY 1971 133 The institution of money. Money or different kinds of money? (cid:2) The three functions of Greek currency: metathesis of power, simulacrum, social regulation. (cid:2) Money as establishment of diakaion kai alē thē s. ten 3 MARCH 1971 149 Nomos . Institution contemporary with the written law and money ( nomos and nomisma ). (cid:2) Written law and enunciative ritual ( nomos and thesmos ). (cid:2) The four supports of nomos . Corinthian money and Athenian nomos . Hesiodic eunomia a nd Solonic eunomia. (cid:2) Economics and politics. The City-State: an absolutely new notion. Caesura between economics and politics. (cid:2) Return to the simulacrum, money, law. What is a nomos p ronounced by no one? eleven 10 MARCH 1971 167 The pure and the impure: Homeric ablution as rite of passage. (cid:2) Reversal of the status of defilement in the seventh and sixth centuries. (cid:2) Nomos, money, and new religious practices. (cid:2) Prohibition as democratic substitute for expensive sacrifice. (cid:2) Democratization and immortality. (cid:2) Criminality and will to know. twelve 17 MARCH 1971 183 Crime, purity, truth: a new problematic. (cid:2) The tragedy of Oedipus. Emergence of visual testimony. (cid:2) Nomos a nd purity. Purity, knowledge, power. (cid:2) Sophocles’ Oedipus versus Freud’s Oedipus. (cid:2) What hides the place of the sage. (cid:2) What is a discursive event? (cid:2) Usefulness of Nietzsche. viii contents thirteen LECTURE ON NIETZSCHE 202 Knowledge ( connaissance ) does not have an origin, but a history. Truth too has been invented, but later. (cid:2) Nietzsche’s insouciance in breaking up the implication of knowledge ( savoir ) and truth. (cid:2) Subject-object, products and not foundation of knowledge. (cid:2) Mark, sign, word, logic: instruments and not events of knowledge. (cid:2) A knowledge deployed in the space of transgres- sion. Interplay of mark, word, and will. Knowledge as lie. (cid:2) Truth as morality. Is it freedom or violence that connects will and truth? (cid:2) The paradoxes of the will to truth. Illusion, error, lie as categories of distribution of the untrue truth. (cid:2) Aristotle and Nietzsche: two paradigms of the will to know . Course summary 224 OEDIPAL KNOWLEDGE 229 In Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus the King, five types of knowledge confront each other and fit together. The mechanism of the sumbolon , or law of halves, governs the confrontation. (cid:2) The judicial procedure of inquiry, installed in the sixth and fifth centuries, facing traditional divinatory procedure. (cid:2) Ignorant Oedipus is the bearer of the tyrant’s knowledge ( savoir ); Oedipus, blazon of the unconscious or old oriental figure of the expert king ( roi savant )? (cid:2) Oedipus the King , or transgres- sive power-knowledge Course context 262 Index of notions 287 Index of names 292 F OREWORD MICHEL FOUCAULT TAUGHT AT the Coll è ge de France from January 1971 until his death in June 1984 (with the exception of 1977 when he took a sabbatical year). The title of his chair was “The History of Systems of Thought.” On the proposal of Jules Vuillemin, the chair was created on 30 November 1969 by the general assembly of the professors of the Coll è ge de France and replaced that of “The History of Philosophical Thought” held by Jean Hyppolite until his death. The same assembly elected Michel Foucault to the new chair on 12 April 1970.1 He was 43 years old. Michel Foucault’s inaugural lecture was delivered on 2 December 1970. 2 Teaching at the Coll è ge de France is governed by particular rules. Professors must provide 26 hours of teaching a year (with the possibil- ity of a maximum of half this total being given in the form of seminars3 ). Each year they must present their original research and this obliges them to change the content of their teaching for each course. Courses and semi- nars are completely open; no enrolment or qualification is required and the professors do not award any qualifications. 4 In the terminology of the Coll è ge de France, the professors do not have students but only auditors. Michel Foucault’s courses were held every Wednesday from January to March. The huge audience made up of students, teachers, researchers and the curious, including many who came from outside France, required two amphitheatres of the Coll è ge de France. Foucault often complained about the distance between himself and his “public” and of how few exchanges the course made possible. 5 He would have liked a seminar in which real collective work could take place and made a number of attempts to bring this about. In the final years he devoted a long period to answering his auditors’ questions at the end of each course.