Lecture on Nietzsche, April 1971

We first generated a list of discussion questions:

•  p. 217 - Foucault wants to use Nietzsche to think a history of truth without relying on truth.  What are the distinctions between "truth," and "truth without truth"?
• p. 209 - Is a Nietzschean/Foucaultian genealogy of knowledge reliant on a rump materialism/biologism?
• What are the various senses of knowledge that Foucault discusses in this chapter?
• What is Foucault attacking here, via Nietzsche?  Particularly, what swatch of political philosophy is Foucault critical of (doesn't seem like just Aristotle)?
• p. 216 - What is the relationship that Foucault posits between violence and knowledge, and violence and error?
• p. 214 - What does it mean that knowledge-connaissance freed from the subject-object relation is knowledge-savoir?  

Subject Headings of Nietzsche Lecture

• I. Invention of Knowledge (202-208)
• II. What is Knowledge Before Truth? (208-214)
• III. The Event of Truth (214-219)
• 1. Will to Truth
• 2. Paradoxes of Will to Truth

We then discussed:

• Nietzsche's claim that knowledge is an invention, that knowledge does not precede itself, this seems to be a direct contradiction of an entire philosophical tradition, from Aristotle to Descartes to Locke.
• Although does Nietzsche contradict himself here when he traces knowledge to biological instincts and need?
• Perhaps Nietzsche's use of need here is an instrumental tool of critique.  And "need" is not just about preservation, but also about "flourishing," "becoming."
• What is knowledge prior to truth?  The need to unveil, to transgress something.  Also the need to preserve and grow.  Only after the invention of these knowledges is ascetic knowledge invented - truth - which suppresses the point of view of the body and erases partialities and limits.
• F says that Nietzsche wanted to put difference between the categories of subject and object, but this seems like a bad metaphor.  The point is that subject and object are the products of knowledge.
• How is Foucault using the term violence here?  In a metaphysical sense?  Physical sense?  Not just physical violence - fisticuffs, etc. - but also psychical violence.
• For N, the will to know is not an expression of knowledge or truth, but - simply - an expression of a will. 
• So F's critique is of any mode of disinterested knowledge.  Nietzsche is a key figure for breaking away from this mode of knowledge.
• Why does Foucault never go "meta"?  Following Nietzsche, likely never saw a particular problem in value claims - unavoidable.