Will to know: ethics of truth in Foucault's first course at the Collège de France (1970-1971)

• Grant number: 17/21625-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Monica Loyola Stival
• Grantee: Rafael Gironi Dias
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

When Foucault puts the problem of will and radically takes a Nietzschean attitude of interpretation, incorporating and reworking his concepts, he admits that the will that binds to a particular knowledge manifests itself always as power. With this, Foucault operates a shift from his archaeological approach to genealogy. This project aims to study carefully the classes of the course on the will to know, taught at the Collège de France between 1970-1971, as this course develops this genealogical approach and deals with discourses which must, by their function, be linked to truth in Greek society. Such discourses range from poetics to legal discourse, from an "ordeal truth" to a "truth-knowledge", from the institution of the Greek currency to the constitution of the city-state. Along the way is the discussion about the relationship of knowledge with the truth, through the will. Thus, the problem of the discourse in the indication of an ethics of truth, which will gain various ramifications throughout Foucault's later work, seems to involve a conception of truth that, from the Greeks, pervades all philosophy, or even the whole foundation of the theory of knowledge, besides indicating a change of research procedure. Understanding how this ethics of discourse and its relationship with the will for truth develops is the central objective of the project proposed here. (AU)