Truth, Asceticism, and Becoming: Foucault with and against Nietzsche

ABSTRACT: In light of the recent publication of an important volume collecting previously unpublished lectures and manuscripts by Michel Foucault on Friedrich Nietzsche, this paper discusses the (largely implicit) presence of Nietzsche in Foucault's later lectures and writings. In particular, I address Foucault's references to the notions of Wahrsagen and Wahrsager in connection with his own project to write a genealogy of truth-telling, as well as his problematization of Nietzsche's reading of asceticism with the aim of shedding light on what I call an "asceticism of becoming," as opposed to the "asceticism of being" that Nietzsche examines and criticizes. I conclude by emphasizing several elements of continuity between Foucault's writings on Nietzsche in the 1950s and his own analyses of parrhesia , critique, and the role of the will in the final years of his life.