ABSTRACT
According to a commonplace in the critical discussion of Michel Foucault’s later work, he is supposed to have decided to take up Friedrich Nietzsche’s interpretation of power as Wille zur Macht, ‘will to power.’ For instance, J. Habermas believes he has criticized Foucault when he says, ‘Nietzsche’s authority, from which this utterly unsociological concept of power is borrowed, is not enough to justify its systematic usage.’ Foucault contends that since medieval times, Western political thought has represented ‘political’ power on a juridical model: such power limits freedom by imposing a will, issuing a command, laying down the law and exacting obedience with threats. Habermas accuses Foucault of an ‘uncircumspect levelling of culture and politics to immediate substrates of the application of violence.’ But there is nothing of the kind. Power can be violent, of course. Foucault is not a Pragmatist, any more than Nietzsche was.
