A recurring theme of Foucault’s lectures on ‘The Government of Self and Others’ over the two years before his death in 1984 was their reappraisal of the philosophi-cal tradition—indeed of the Socratic opening of that tradition, no less. Rather than reproduce the Nietzschean condemnation of Platonism that, for example in the work of Foucault’s contemporary, Deleuze, had become a staple of the French thought of his generation (“the task of modern philosophy has been defined: to overturn Platonism”1), Foucault seemed more interested in a line of Socratic phi-losophy, a line exemplified in Ancient Cynicism, that he clearly saw as irreducible to Platonism and which he also sought to place Plato in. That Plato was not a Platonist was already a commonplace of Heidegger’s.2 Even Deleuze demurred that “with Plato the issue is still in doubt: mediation has not yet found its ready-made movement.”3 Foucault, however, developed this point in new ways. One of these—the subject of the discussion that follows—involved resuming his long-standing feud with Derrida.