Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1970-1971, & Oedipal Knowledge

Cours au Collège de France/Lectures at the Collège de France #1

by Michel Foucault, Graham Burchell (Translator), A. Davidson (Editor)

Lectures on the Will to Know reminds us that Michel Foucault's work only ever had one object: truth. Here, he builds on his earlier work, Discipline and Punish, to explore the relationship between tragedy, conflict, and truth-telling. He also explores the different forms of truth-telling, and their relation to power and the law. The publication of Lectures on the Will to Know marks a milestone in Foucault's reception, and it will no longer be possible to read him in the same way as before.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, France, 20th Century, Sociology

293 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 2014

About the author

Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.

Reviews

[Muhammed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foucault söyleme maddi bir varlık olarak bakarken hakikati ve bilgiyi de aynı havuza koyuyor ve bu kavramların gerçekliğini sorguya çekiyor. Kitap kabaca iki kısımdan oluşuyor gibiydi. Birinci bölüm söylem, bilgi, hakikat eleştirisini içerirken ikinci bölüm iktidar konusuna ayrılmış gibiydi. Çevirisine, baskısına diğer her şeyine de ayrıca bayıldım.

[chea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This inaugural lecture course at the Collège de France is situated between Foucault's expansion of the focus of his work from archaeological investigations into a variety of 'positivities' (epistemes) that he developed in Madness and Civilisation, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things. His 'Archaeology of Knowledge' was published in 1969 and serves as a methodological 'guide' to the archaeological method. This course, then, taken up directly after this period is, is Foucault's 'shift' to the genealogical method, with Nietzsche pervading the analysis conducted. This, also, is one of Foucault's rare excursions into philosophical confrontation, with Aristotle the focus of investigation in early weeks, as well as Nietzsche, Kant and Spinoza.

The course, however, is primarily one about philosophy as such, and its historical conditions of emergence in Greece. Foucault's analysis is largely pre-Aristotelian, and indeed, pre-philosophical - the unifying feature of his analyses are perhaps the investigation of different 'regimes' and 'procedures' of truth that emerged in pre-Aristotelian Greece: legal procedures, oaths, the establishment of abstract currency-as-measure, and so on. All of this then, with a view to shedding light on the historical 'founding exclusions' of philosophy (what types of procedures of truth had to be excluded in order for philosophy to develop as it did, in the Aristotelian vein?). One example of such an exclusion is the figure of the Sophist, who is the topic of one of the early lectures here. This connection immediately connects Foucault's analysis to Deleuze's 'Reverse Platonism', where Plato's likewise exclusion of the Sophist is the subject of Deleuze's critique. Further and finally, this book also contains an extensive lecture Foucault gave on Oedipal knowledge - a confrontation with Freud, then - and a rich, rewarding and brilliant re-reading of Oedipus the King that is all the more illuminating once the entirety of the lecture course has been read.

[Wind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Öncelikle belirtmeliyim ki bu kitap bir ileri okuma kitabı. Yani belli bir felsefe konusunda ilerlemek üzere okunması gereken ve ön koşul olarak belli bilgilere sahip olunması gereken bir kitap. Antik yunan felsefesi, mitleri, destanları başta olmak üzere derslerde bir çok unsurdan örnekler veriliyor. Nietzsche, Derrida gibi filozofların görüşlerine atıf yapılıyor. Onun için bu ön şartlara sahip olmayanların okumasını tavsiye etmiyorum.

Foucault'nun görüşlerini, anlatımını çok beğeniyorum. Son derece açıklayıcı ve öğretici. İlgilisi için önemli bir kaynak.

Dediğim gibi bir ileri okuma eseri ve herkese hitap etmiyor.

[Sajid · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is the objective of someone who navigates the very ground of knowledge to question knowledge itself?
What is the objective of someone who quests for a truth while questioning the very notion truth?
Isn’t it a job of solving a paradoxe? Or is it merely a job create paradox?
For thought's sake. For the sake of thinking.
The very job a philosopher or a thinker is to create milieu rather a system. But without system, is there a milieu?
Here,(as elsewhere,don't we know that Foucault confronts the very archaeology of Systems with his own method of Archaeology)Foucault essentially looked upon Aristotle and Nietzsche. He looked upon to know the very “Will to know”. Is it possible? What is it in the first place?(Lol. I am not a fool) In Aristotelian sense knowing for the sake of pleasure and pleasure for the sake of truth and truth for the sake of knowing etc.. This never ending circle. Aristotle--that moral. And In Nietzsche we get to know that knowledge isn’t a pure concrete faculty of human mind. Neither is it a believable sets of rules upon which we can base our truths. Huh? Lol. Nietzsche refuted the very system of truth or truth discourse. For him knowledge is a dirty play of so many instincts. Knowledge itself came out as a result of Will to power. Then came truth? Lol. It is a dirty joke we played on us. Truth is based on knowledge, we say. But knowledge is a foul-play. So is truth. But why is there a marriage of knowledge and truth in the first place? The answer: Will to power..

So we learn that: truth is violence done to things. It is a product or an effect of knowledge. It is not is norm, or condition,or foundation, or justification.
Bedsides,the political discourse, the juridical discourse, the social System, the notion of Justice... And in the end the play of power within the class struggle. Long to know,long grasp. Read it. Laugh then.

[Pablo Reyes]

Este trabajo fue mi principal fuente de investigación para realizar mi TFG en Filosofía. Para mi gusto en Foucault siempre son mucho más enriquecedoras las consecuencias de su lectura que la lectura misma. Como dice en este libro ``hay que ser sumiso en el uso privado de la razón y militante en su uso público´´(o agresivo, cita de memoria). Hay que saber doblarse ante las dificultades que presta el entendimiento del análisis Foucaultiano pero luego las piezas encajan, como si de un rompecabezas se tratara, a la hora de traer las conclusiones del estudio al presente.

La historia es un producto que puede ser pensado y repensado de infinitos modos, sólo que el uso que hemos usado generalmente de Historia es ya una historia de las esencias que se basa en lo monolítico. La historia como ficción estratégica que funciona en pro de los requisitos de los que ella misma se ha servido en su demoledor avance debe encontrar hoy su balance con la sociedad que avanza muchísimo más rápido que su historia.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who is looking to get a good idea of Foucault's project, especially in relation to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Deleuze should give this book a read. The title makes it obvious enough that Foucault is working in the realm of Nietzschean historical analysis. This text though gives great insight into how Foucault's other works are in conversation with a theory of knowledge in which F is the first whom separates the will to know from the will to power (savior), while the will to truth is subordinated the will to power (conasiance). I wonder if the other people reviewing this text don't realize how crucial of a role this text place in showing the continuity in Foucault's thought throughout his writings, and focus of his project; truth and knowing.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

These lectures are notable for their examination of the relationship between justice and truth. But, they are also interesting for their examination of the relationship between money and exchange.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sempre arriba un moment en els cursos o els llibres de Foucault que una, saturada, voldria suplicar-li que parés, que fes una llarga digressió banal, que donés un respir. Aquest llibre és interessantíssim per a reconstruir la concepció que tenim de la primera filosofia, la socràtica i platònica, i la seva relació amb la Veritat: què es considera i des de quan com a veritat, a què s’ajusta aquesta veritat, quin és el seu criteri i la seva meta. A la fi, Foucault fa un intens estudi des del punt de vista legal, religiós, històric i polític en què se’ns permet percebre que la construcció de la veritat, com la del savi en oposició al poble, té un parentesc gran i subreptici amb l’ordre de la pólis, amb el nómos, i tal ordre és, alhora, l’expressió formal d’una certa concepció sobre què és la justícia.

[sadeleuze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notable lectures on the relationship between justice and truth, but also money and exchange.

Foucault decided to show, through a commentary on the great texts of ancient Greece (Hesiod, Aristotle, Homer, Sophocles, the Sophists), enlightened by Kant, Spinoza, Nietzsche, how each era produces discourses that aim at separating the true from the false, the just from the unjust, the pure from the impure...

This text gives great insight into how Foucault's other works are also in conversation with a theory of knowledge and as this is a transcript of the courses, the oral style appears as a good introduction to the rest of his work.

[Travis Culley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lectures themselves are elaborations developed from a larger theme: Upon what basis does a person develop the idea that learning something might indeed improve their lives?

2 stars

The essays, on Neitzsche and On Oedipus, are where the third and fourth star come from.

"Knowledge is not of the order of the good."

[Isaac Price-Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d give this 4 and a half stars, but oh well. The ideas and analysis expressed in this series of lectures are excellent, and have provided a lot of material for me to consider in future. The only downside is that parts of the text haven’t survived, so there are a few bits missing. They’re quite small, however, and the editors usually make up for it in one way or another.

[Casey Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The structure of this publication was a bit messy as the publisher had to rely, for the most part, on written manuscripts rather than audio recordings (which will be the source of the remaining books).

Incredible analysis of the development of knowledge and "truth" with an historical focus on Ancient Greece.