A question of two truths?

Abstract

"Although all instances of what the Greeks meant by parrhesia involved telling the truth, Foucault specifies, not all truthful speech can be called parrhesia in the Greek sense. At least two further conditions are required for parrhesia to be in play. First: Foucault emphasizes that parrhesia is true speech that involves the speaking subject, since it reflects their sincere convictions concerning the matter at hand, convictions which they are ready to ‘authenticate’ by their public actions.11 (So a paradigmatic modern case might be Luther’s famous ‘here I stand, I can do no other’ at Worms. We will return to this to close). Secondly, as with Luther’s ‘here I stand …’, the practice of the parrhesiast presupposes the entire political context of the speaker, a context in which their act of speaking the truth makes an intervention or difference. More specifically, parrhesia presupposes an asymmetry of political power, whereby the parrhesiast is subordinate to his addressee[s], and so always potentially runs a risk by expressing his true beliefs.12 Although one may profess one’s convictions sincerely before an assembled body, for example, the ‘threshold’ of parrhesia will be crossed at the point where these true beliefs concern, or aim to correct, the interests or perceived shortcomings of one’s addressee[s]. In a way that goes a long way to explaining Foucault’s contemporary reclaiming of Immanuel Kant’s work (Foucault’s response to Was ist Aufklärung? forms the exergue of the 1982- 83 lecture series13 Foucault asserts in these lectures the genealogical antecedence of parrhesia to the Kantian-modernist notion of the philosophical critique of the powers of reason: With the [Greeks’] question of knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we would call the ‘critical’ tradition of the West.14 Indeed—and here is my point—confronting Foucault’s late lectures on parrhesia, one could be tempted to form the opinion that what Foucault addresses in these lectures is an adequate description of Western philosophy per se, not just the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant."