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Foucault Parrhesia SPEP 1 Moderate and Immoderate Candor: Foucault’s Parrhesia without Sophrosyne Abstract In this paper I consider Foucault’s discussion of Parrhesia, frank or candid speech—in his very last writings. I use many of his own examples, especially his brief discussion of Euripides’ Hyppolytus to show that a proper account of parrhesia needs to be connected with an account of the virtue of moderation, sophrosyne. Speaking frankly needs to be understood within the broader context of speaking appropriately and the virtues that guide that activity. By talking about courage but not moderation, opens himself up again to some common criticisms of his project. Foucault made Parrhesia—speaking fully, frankly, and candidly—a central theme of his very last works. It makes an appearance in his Collège de France lectures between 1981 and 19841, in The Use of Pleasure2, and in his 1984 Berkeley lectures “Discourse and Truth.”3 As Foucault turned his attention to the practices of subjectification, he became especially interested in the practices of speaking the truth about oneself. In his last works he subsumes sexual discourse under the general theme of speaking of oneself and turns to the Greeks and Romans to better understand what is at stake for the subject in such practices. For the Greeks and the Romans speaking the truth, whether about oneself or not, was closely tied to having a sound mind, inhabiting the virtue of sophrosyne, moderation.4 Yet when you think of Foucault’s writings, moderation does not jump to the fore; rather one tends to think of forms of resistance, disciplined bodies, self-governance, 1 The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982 (New York: Piacdor, 2001); Le gouvernement de soi et des autres (Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2008)—Paul Allen Miller discusses this lecture course at length in his “Truth Telling in Foucault’s ‘Le gouvernement de soi et des autres’ and Persius 1: The Subject, Rhetoric, and Power” (Parrhesia 1 (2006), 27–61); and Le courage de la vérité, which is discussed in detail in Edward McGushin’s Foucault’s Askesis: An Introduction to the Philosophical Life (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007). 2 The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume 2 (New York: Vintage, 1990). 3 Published as Fearless Speech (New York: Semiotext(e), 2001). 4 The classic work on this virtue is still Helen North’s Sophrosyne: Self-knowledge and Self-restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966). 2 and transgression. The Greek motto “know thyself” meant know the boundary between being human and being divine, know thy place, above all, do not transgress. Perhaps that is why Foucault claims that more important than knowing thyself is taking care of thyself, by which he means, engaging in libratory practices of self-creation. Here I will consider sophrosyne as a lacuna in Foucault’s presentation of parrhesia. It is necessary for a satisfactory account of candor, and its absence is telling as it points to three ways Foucault’s own views are limited. First, it shows the importance of considering a conception of the good life when discussing any Greek virtues—that is, Foucault’s presentation misses the necessary connections between care of the self and knowledge of the good. Second, it highlights the way feminist concerns are regularly missing from Foucault’s analyses. Finally, it helps limit the facile misreading of parrhesia as if it were the clichéd speaking truth to power for the sake of social justice, as if courage were the cardinal virtue connected to parrhesia. One might ask why Foucault’s lack of discussion of sophrosyne in conjunction with parrhesia is a failure on his part. He is providing a “history of the present”; he sees certain current issues as relevant for discussion, one being the relation between speaking boldly and self-discipline. To protest the absence of sophrosyne may simply be to complain that Foucault didn’t have a different philosophical agenda. But my point is that at an account of parrhesia is incomplete without an account of the relation between sophrosyne and truth telling. It is not that Foucault simply has a narrow intellectual focus; it’s that by narrowing the topic he has failed to present it in its proper light.5 5 He discusses sophrosyne in The Use of Pleasure, but it is overshadowed by his discussion of enkrateia, continence. Even though the section on sophrosyne in is titled “Freedom and Truth,” and parrhesia will be translated in Latin as libertas, his reflections on sophrosyne are never carried over to his discussion of 3 I will highlight the importance of discussing sophrosyne in the context of parrhesia by focusing on what Foucault says, and what he misses, about Euripides’ Hippolytus, but first a few things about parrhesia itself. Foucault obviously is not concerned about speaking the truth as such; nothing could be simpler. We speak the truth all the time in the most trivial of matters. Speaking the truth freely when it might otherwise seem inappropriate is a different matter. Parrhesia is often translated as frankness; in some situations frankness is clearly dangerous, in some situations permission to speak frankly must be granted. Frank speech risks social discordance; it requires an understanding of the good such that one recognizes that social norms may need to be violated for the sake of speaking the truth. Parrhesia, then, falls under general guidelines of proper speech. In itself, speaking candidly is not a virtue; it is an activity that is appropriate for certain relationships and certain kinds of people at certain times.6 The great-souled man should speak freely as his judgment is always reliable; brothers should speak candidly with each other, as should friends with each other. Among Aristotle’s catalogue of virtues the closest virtue to candor is the virtue of friendliness. Foucault recognizes this in The Hermeneutics of the Subject, at least when discussing the Epicureans, but it is obvious when we consider the excess and deficiency of friendliness. According to Aristotle, the excess of friendliness is obsequiousness, excessive flattery, a refusal to criticize or say anything contrary to the person; the deficiency of friendship is quarrelsomeness, a constant state of argumentativeness towards all people. Aristotle’s virtue of friendship, Parrhesia. Given his interest in governmentality and disciplinary practices, practices of self-control should play a greater role than practices of continence. Sophrosyne is the main virtue of self-control. 6 I am indebted to J. J. Mulhern discussion in “Παρρηεσια in Aristotle” (in Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, edited by Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 313–340) 4 then, is defined around the idea of proper speech, and the mark of the mean is knowing when it is proper to contradict a friend; when for the sake of the good of the friend, one must speak bluntly to him or her. On the Greek connection between friendship, parrhesia, and sophrosyne, let’s consider two instructive quotations, one from Isocrates and one from Plato. Isocrates complains about the lack of good judgment in political speech and the tendency of the Athenians to fall for the athuroglottos—the incessant talkers. He says they “prefer as being better friends of the people those who are drunk to those who are sober.”7 The person who is supposed to speak truthfully, to exemplify parrhesia, in the Assembly, is a friend to Athens; yet the failure of this friendship and the failure to speak properly is analogous to drunkenness, which, with licentiousness, are the most common examples of lacking sophrosyne. Socrates in the Phaedrus speaks about the drawbacks of an older lover who has become a flatterer. Such a lover is an embarrassment with his “exaggerated praises,” but “when he is drunk” his statements are “intolerable in their wearisome and unrestrained frankness.”8 Plato is connecting the failure of proper friendship to disordered frankness brought about by immoderation.9 7 Quoted in Gary Allen Scott’s “Games of Truth: Foucault’s Analysis of the Transformation from Political to Ethical Parrhesia” (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34 [1996]), 109. For helpful discussions of the roles of political friendship in the polis, see chapter five, “The Polity of Friendship,” in Jill Frank’s A Democracy of Distinction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Danielle Allen’s 2001 dissertation, “Intricate Democracy: Hobbes, Ellison, and Aristotle on Distrust, Rhetoric, and Civic Friendship.” 8 Quoted in Scott’s “Games of Truth: Foucault’s Analysis of the Transformation from Political to Ethical Parrhesia”, 109. 9 In addition, Plato’s Charmides, a dialogue about the meaning of moderation, provides another example of the connection between sophrosyne and proper speech. As is typical, Socrates’ interlocutors fail to understand the nature of moderation; atypically both also fail to properly engage in Socratic dialogue. Critias, the future tyrant, only wants to argue and contradict Socrates—his quarrelsomeness interferes with his ability to hear Socrates’ suggestions and learn from them; Charmides, Critias’ future henchman, is a sycophant, always unreflectively siding with whoever seems to have the most power in the dialogue. Of course both are recognizable to Athenian audiences as people who lack moderation—tyranny is the 5 Consider two of Foucault’s own references. In Hermeneutics of the Subject Foucault discusses Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism (Peri parrhesias) and in Fearless Speech he mentions Plutarch’s essay “On How to Tell a Friend from a Flatterer.”10 For the Epicureans, friendship is the ideal for all relations and frank criticism, for Philodemus, is the “sine qua non of friendship.”11 Philodemus divides his advice about censuring students according to how obedient the students are as well as how sensitive they are to criticism.
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