Heidegger, Foucault claims, was the ‘essential philosopher’ for his work. Reading Heidegger and Nietzsche together in the early 1950s provoked a ‘philosophical shock’ that determined Foucault’s ‘entire philosophical development’. Foucault’s previous refusal to associate his work with philosophy is not the only thing that makes these comments significant. What makes them significant is the fact that the interview in which they appeared was conducted to coincide with the publication of the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality, in the former of which Foucault, for the first time in his career, decisively articulates his work in terms of a philosophical exercise. Foucault claims that the objective of his research is ‘to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently’. ‘What is philosophy today’, Foucault asks rhetorically, ‘if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?’

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