2 March 1983

Abstract

TO BEGIN TODAY I would like to mark some stages of the path […*]. The underlying theme I chose for this year’s lectures was this complex notion of parrēsia, which etymologically, or at any rate in its everyday use, seems to refer to two principles: on the one hand, the principle of everyone being free to speak and, on the other hand, the rather different principle of the frankness with which one says everything. All in all, would not parrēsia be the principle that anyone can say anything? In a sense, this is what the word suggests. Actually, you remember, we saw that things were a bit more complicated. In the first place, because parrēsia is not freedom of speech, the freedom to speak granted to anyone. In fact, parrēsia appears to be linked to an, if not exactly legislative organization, at least to an instituted, customary organization of the right to speak and of the privileges of the right to speak. Second, it appeared that parrēsia was not just the license to say anything but an obligation to tell the truth on the one hand, and an obligation accompanied by the danger that telling the truth involves on the other. For the analysis of these different dimensions of parrēsia I referred to two texts. [The first] was the play by Euripides, Ion, which I studied at greater length, and [the second] was the text in which Thucydides shows how Pericles employs his parrēsia towards the Athenian people in his intervention on war and peace with Sparta. Then, through these texts, it appeared, first, that parrēsia was linked to the working of democracy. You recall that Ion needed parrēsia for him to be able to return to Athens and establish the fundamental Athenian political right. On the other hand, Pericles employed his parrēsia —Thucydides emphasized this—within the general working rules of democracy. Parrēsia founds democracy and democracy is the site of parrēsia. First of all then, there is this circular bond of parrēsia/democracy, each belonging to the other.

Reminders about political parrēsia. ∽ Points in the evolution of political parrēsia. ∽The major questions of ancient philosophy. ∽Study of a text by Lucian. ∽Ontology of discourses of veridiction. ∽Socratic speech in the Apology. ∽The paradox of the political non-involvement of Socrates.