Table Of ContentLectures 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
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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
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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.
