FS : Now there's this whole story, first, last year, of "the new philosophy", which you initially committed to, but from which you withdrew.
MF : No, no, no, I didn't retract my statement because I was never committed to it; I simply said, by the way…
FS : But you said somewhere that you were taken on more than you wanted.
FS : Either in Le Nouvel Obs , or in L'Arc …
MF : Ah, listen, I don't think so.
FS : You didn't want to get involved…
MF : I may have said I didn't want to get involved. I did a piece: an article about Glucksmann's book, which I believe is an important book. And especially his two books—
1. well, * The Cook and the Man-Eater * seemed to me, at the time, a very important book, and one that didn't receive the attention it deserved, it seems to me. When the second book came out, I thought: well, this time I mustn't miss the opportunity. It turned out to be a huge success, and I didn't need to...
2. but Glucksmann's book had posed some problems for me. That's all. Glucksmann was considered a "new philosopher," a label he rejected.
3. Personally, I don't really care. Glucksmann's book interests me, but the other books by the so-called "new philosophers" don't. So little, in fact, that after skimming a few, I stopped reading them. I don't care, it's completely irrelevant to me, I feel it's not my thing, and that's that. So I can't have gotten involved.
4. But it's true that because I said Glucksmann's book was interesting for certain problems... well...
5. Oh, but all this is very unhealthy. Again,
either we police people who write nonsense, in which case we'd spend all day on it,
or we let it go, with the resulting burden that people feel free to say absolutely anything
—and that's one of the political and moral problems I haven't been able to solve.
– Michel Foucault, Interview with Farès Sassine, 1979