10/09/2004 06:09:00 AM

Coming off of this post...

Speaking truth to power is an unsettling thing. The ancient cynics were masters of it. The classical Greek word for this is parrhesia--free, open, risk-taking speech. The parrhesiastes, truth speaker, is the one who uses parrhesia. Party politics and those who stump for one camp or another can never be about parrhesia because there is no freedom or risk involved in their speech; they are about rhetorical coercion. Institutions and their apologists sterilize truth because of the relationship between the the speaker and what is said; because they speak from a corrosive position of power.

Foucault, during his 1983 Berkeley lectures ("Discourse and Truth"), said:

"The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse.... the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks.

...parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism... and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy."