It seems we are to ponder whether more knowledge necessarily bends our choices toward the good. Yet, as I have often found, to possess many facts is not the same as possessing wisdom. For consider the man who meticulously counts the stones on the road; he knows the number, but does he know where the road leads, or whether it is the right path for him to tread?
My own inquiries have always led me to believe that true knowledge, the kind that guides action, is inextricably linked to understanding what is good and just. To know the good is to do the good. Thus, if "knowledge" merely refers to the accumulation of facts, then no, it does not guarantee better decisions. But if we speak of true, ethical knowledge, then the question becomes almost tautological.
The question of whether "greater knowledge" leads to "better decision-making" presupposes a stable, transhistorical subject and a transparent relationship between knowing and acting. This is precisely what historical analysis, particularly through the methods of archaeology and genealogy, calls into question. Knowledge, in the modern era, is not a neutral accumulation of facts. It is produced within specific discursive formations, within power-knowledge regimes that actively constitute what counts as true, what is deemed rational, and what types of decisions are even conceivable.
Socrates’ distinction between mere facts and ethical knowledge is pertinent, but I would reframe it. It is not simply a matter of possessing different *kinds* of knowledge. Rather, the very *dispositifs* that generate and disseminate knowledge simultaneously produce the subjects who make decisions and the frameworks within which those decisions are judged as "better" or "worse." The clinic, for instance, did not simply accumulate more medical knowledge; it forged a new way of seeing, of classifying, and of intervening in the body, thereby creating new objects of medical decision-making and new criteria for evaluating them. To speak of "better decisions" without interrogating the apparatus that defines and enforces that very notion is to remain within its terms, blind to the power dynamics that shape its production.
The notion that mere accumulation of facts, or "greater knowledge" as Socrates terms it, inevitably leads to "better decision-making" is a bourgeois illusion, obscuring the fundamental motor of history: class struggle. Decisions, far from being guided by pure reason or ethics, are forged in the crucible of material interests. The capitalist, armed with encyclopedic knowledge of markets and labor costs, does not employ it to foster universal well-being, but to maximize profit by extracting surplus value from the proletariat.
Foucault's observation that knowledge is produced within power-knowledge regimes is correct, but he fails to identify the *root* of that power. It is not an abstract discursive formation, but the material relations of production that shape these regimes. The "better decisions" of the bourgeoisie are those that perpetuate their dominance and the exploitation of labor, not those that serve humanity. The very categories of "rational" and "irrational" decision-making are dictated by the needs of capital, ensuring that choices reinforcing the existing class structure are valorized. True "better decision-making" for society as a whole can only emerge when the material conditions that necessitate and perpetuate class antagonism are abolished.
The pursuit of wisdom, it seems, is a journey fraught with peril, even when the path is illuminated by knowledge. My friend, Foucault, speaks of "discursive formations" and "power-knowledge regimes." But tell me, if a physician knows every disease of the body and all its remedies—a veritable storehouse of medical facts—and yet lacks the understanding of what constitutes a healthy, flourishing life for the patient, can his "knowledge" truly lead to a "better decision" when prescribing a treatment? Does not the very *purpose* of the decision, the intended good for the patient, hinge on a deeper understanding than mere factual recall?
My critique of the notion of "better decisions" is not merely about the *purpose* as Socrates suggests, but about the very constitution of that purpose. The physician's knowledge, whether factual or oriented towards a perceived "good," is itself a product of a medical apparatus—a *dispositif*. This apparatus, comprising institutions, practices, and even the language used to describe illness, shapes what can be known and what interventions are deemed appropriate. The “flourishing life” for the patient is not an independent, pre-existing ideal to which knowledge is applied, but rather a norm that the medical discourse, and its associated power, actively constructs and enforces. What counts as "healthy" is determined by the regime of knowledge itself.
The question of "better decisions" is utterly meaningless without specifying *for whom* and *under what mode of production*. The capitalist's "informed" decision to mechanize production, throwing thousands out of work, is undeniably "better" for his profit margins and the expansion of capital. But for the displaced worker, whose life is now rendered precarious and destitute, it is a catastrophic decision. This is not merely a matter of different ends, as Socrates implies; it is about the very forces that define and enforce those ends. Foucault correctly identifies the apparatus, but the ultimate engine of this apparatus is the antagonism between classes, the material necessity of the dominant class to reproduce its power through the exploitation of the subordinate.