Michel Foucault - The Government of Self and Others; January 12, 1983: First hour lyrics

Lectures at the College De France 12 January 1983 First Hour Last week I briefly reminded you of the general project which is to true to an*lyze what may be called the focal points or matrices of experience like madness, criminality, and s**uality, and to an*lyze them according to the correlation of the three axes which constitute these experiences: the formation of forms of knowledge(savoirs), the normatively of behavior, and the constitution of the subject's mode of being. I also tried to indicate the theoretical shifts involved in this kind of an*lysis when one is studying the formation of the forms of knowledge, the normatively of behavior, and the subject's modes of being their correlation. it seems to me in fact when one tries to delineate the formation of forms of knowledge in this perspective, the an*lysis should be conducted not so much as the history of bodies of knowledge, but on the basis of and from the point of view of the an*lysis of discursive practices and forms of verification. The first theoretical displacement to be made was this transition, this shift from the development of bodies of knowledge to the an*lysis of forms of verification. The second theoretical displacement to be carried out consists in freeing oneself from any would-be general Theory of Power (with all the capital letters) from explanations in term of Domination in general, when an*lyzing the normatively of behavior, and in trying instead to bring out the history and an*lysis of procedures and technologies of governmentally. Finally, the third displacement consists, I think, in pa**ing from a theory of the subject, on the basis of which one would try to bring out the different modes of being of subjectivity in their historicity, to the an*lysis of the modalities and techniques of the relation to self, or forms, some examples of which I tried to give you last year. So: an*lysis of forms of verification; an*lysis of procedures of governmentally; and an*lysis of the pragmatics of the subject and techniques of the self. These, then, are the three displacements I have outlined. I have indicated that this year I would like to take up some of the questions that were left hanging in this itinerary, by laying stress precisely on some aspects, some questions, which give a better idea of the correlation of these three axes. I have, if you like, devoted myself mostly to studying each of these three axes in turn: that of the formation of the forms of knowledge and practices of verification; that of the normatively of behavior and the technology of power; and finally that of the constitution of the subject's modes of being on the basis of practices of self. I would now like to see how in actual fact the correlation is established, and try to grasp some points, elements, notions, and practices which indicate this correlation and show how in fact it can be carried out. And [...] in posing the question of the government of self and others, I would like to see how truth-telling (dire-vrai), the obligation and possibility of telling the truth in procedures of government can show hows the individual is constituted as subject in the relationship to self and the relationship to others. This is what I would like to say something about this year: truth-telling in procedures of government and the constitution of [an] individual as subject for himself and for others. So the lectures this year will no doubt be a bit discontinuous. Still, I would like to try to study some aspects of this general problem by considering some notions and particular practices. So the first domain, the first dossier I would like to open is one we came across last year in relation to spiritual direction and practices of self in Antiquity, in the first and second centuries C.E. You recall that we came across this rather interesting notion of parresia. One of the original meanings of the Greek word parresia is to "say everything," but in fact it is much more frequently translated as free-spokenness (franc-parler), free speech, etcetera. You recall that this notion of parresia, which was important in practices of spiritual direction, was a rich, ambiguous, and difficult notion, particularly insofar as it designated a virtue, a quality (some people have parresia, others do not); a duty (one must really be able to demonstrate parresia, especially in certain cases and situations); and a technique, a process (some people know how to use parresia and others do not). And this virtue, duty, and technique, must characterize, among other things and above all, the man [woman; person] who is responsible for directing others, and particularly for directing them in their effort, their attempt to constitute an appropriate relationship to themselves. In other words, parresia is a virtue, duty, and technique which should be found in a person who spiritually directs others and helps them to constitute their relationship to self. You recall that last year, we saw how, from the cla**ical epoch of Antiquity to Late Antiquity, and particularly in the first two centuries C.E., a certain culture of self developed which a**umed such dimensions that we could talk of a veritable golden age of the culture of self. In this culture of self, in this relationship to self we saw the development of a whole technique, an art that was taught and practiced. We saw that this art of oneself required a relationship to the other. In other words: one cannot attend to oneself, take care of oneself, without a relationship to another person. And the role of this other is precisely to tell the truth, to tell the whole truth, or at any rate to tell all the truth that is necessary, and to tell it in a certain form which is precisely parresia, which once again is translated as free-spokenness (franc-parler). With regard to this general them, you may particularly recall a text, Galen's On the Pa**ions and Errors of the Soul, which we looked at for awhile. It is a very interesting text in which we saw, first of all, the old traditional theme, or rather the double theme of care of self and self knowledge; the obligation for every individual to care about himself, which is immediately linked to its condition, self knowledge. One cannot take care of oneself without knowing oneself. This put us on the track of the interesting fact that the well-known and, for us, fundamental principle of gnothi seauton (self knowledge), rests on and is a component of what is basically the more general principle of caring for oneself. In Galen's text we also found the idea that one can only take care of oneself in a continuous and permanent fashion, and as in Plato's Alcibiades, at the adolescent's point of entry into public life and responsibility for the city; one must in fact take care of oneself throughout one's life, from youth to the culmination of old age. So, in Galen's text we saw that this care of self, which must be developed and practiced laboriously and continuously throughout life, cannot dispense with the judgment given by others. Those who wish to dispense with this judgment, in the opinion they form of themselves, Galen says, frequently fall–a phrase which will be frequently taken up again in a very different context: Christian spirituality will say that those who dispense with guidance from others fall like the leaves in autumn. Well, Galen had already said: In the opinion we have of ourselves we frequently fall when we dispense with the judgment made by others. On the other hand, Galen says, those who submit to the declaration of their own worth to others are rarely deceived. So, starting from this principle, Galen said that clearly we must need to appeal to someone to help us to form our opinion of ourselves and to establish an appropriate relationship to self. We need to appeal to someone else. What should this person be? Here was one of the surprising elements in the text. You recall that Galen does not present the person to whom we must resort as a technician; he is not presented as a technician of the medicine of the body or as a technician of the medicine of souls, neither as a doctor nor as a philosopher. According to Galen's text, we should appeal to a man who has reached a certain age, has a sufficiently good reputation, and who possesses, in addition, a certain quality. This quality was parresia, free-spokenness. A man of a certain age, who has a good reputation, and who possesses parresia are the three necessary and sufficient criteria for the person we need to have a relationship to self. So we have, if you like, a whole structure, a whole bundle of important notions and themes: care of self, knowledge of self, art and exercise of oneself, relationship to the other, government by the other and truth-telling, and the obligation to speak the truth on the part of the other. You can see that with parresia we have a notion which is situated at the meeting point of the obligation to speak the truth, procedures and techniques of governmentally, and the constitution of the relationship to self. Truth-telling by the other, as an essential component of how he [she] governs us, is one of the essential conditions for us to be able to form the right kind of relationship to ourselves that will give us virtue and happiness. This was the general theme, if you like, that we found in Galen in the second century C.E. I would like to take this as my starting point, noting straightaway that this notion of parresia is something of a spidery kind of notion which, it must be said, has not been studied a great deal. It is a spidery kind of notion because, in the first place [although the] Ancients themselves often refer to it (we will see a whole set of texts concerning parresia, and the set I will use is far from exhaustive), there is nonetheless no, or anyway very little direct reflection on the notion. It is a notion which is used and is referred to, but is not considered directly or thematized as such. Among the texts which have come down to us, there is practically only one treatise actually devoted to parresia and this is in a fragmentary condition. This is the treatise of the most important Epicurean of the first century C.E. It is a treatise by Philodemus, some fragments of which have been published and can be found, in Greek and without translation, in the Teubner collection. Apart from this we possess no direct reflection by the Ancients on this notion of parresia. And on the other hand, it is a notion which, if you like, is not integrated in a clearly identifiable and localizable way within a particular conceptual system of philosophical doctrine. It is a theme which runs from one system to another, so that it is quite difficult to define its meaning precisely or identify its precise system. A bibliographical point on this notion of parresia. Apart, of course, from this text by Philodemus, there is hardly anything, or at any rate I know of hardly anything apart from, first, an article devoted to "parresia" in the Realencyclopadie (the Pauly-Wissowa), written a very long time ago (in 1938-1939) just before the war I think, by Phillipson. Then there is an important book written in Italy by Scarpat, published in 1964, in which there is an interesting and careful record of the notion of parresia, with a very strange elision of precisely all the meanings, values, and uses of the notion for individual guidance. While everything concerning its political and religious use is well covered, [the work] os extremely incomplete for individual spiritual direction. Finally, in the proceedings of the eighth congress of the Association Guillaume Bude, from 1968, there is an article in French by Macello Gigante devoted precisely to Philodemus and his treatise on parresia. What, from my point of view, is worth our attention in this notion of parresia–is first of all–and I am going to say some very elementary things–its very long life, its use throughout Antiquity, since–obviously we will come back to this in more detail today and next week–the use of the notion is already well-established, well-defined in the great cla**ical texts (Isocrates, Demosthenes, Polybius, Philodemus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus of Tyre, Lucian, and so on). Then you find this notion at the very end of Antiquity in Christian spirituality, in Saint John Chrysostom, for example, in his Letters to Olympia, the Letter from exile, or the Treatise on Providence. You also find a very important, rich and to a certain extent very new use of this notion of parresia in Doretheus of Gaza. The theme is, of course, found in Latin texts, although the translation of the term parresia is not entirely stable and somewhat fluctuating. It is found in Seneca, in the historians also of course, and in theories of rhetoric like Quintilian. And then there are many translations with words like licentia, liberates, orate libber, etcetera. So, the notion has a very long life. Second, the notion is found on a number of different levels, since it has been possible to find quite clearly and well-defined in the practice of individual guidance, but also in the political field. And here too, it has a multiplicity of interesting meanings which undergo a significant evolution from Athenian democracy to the Roman Empire. And–this is one of the things I will try to study in the lectures–it is on the borders of what could be called individual guidance and the political field, and specifically around the problem of the Prince's soul: How should one guide the Prince's soul, and what form of true discourse does the Prince need, as an individual, to form an appropriate relationship to himself that will guarantee his virtue, and also such that, thereby and through this teaching, he is formed as a morally worthy individual, as a governor who takes responsibility for and care of others as well as himself? What then is the type of discourse which is such that the Prince will be able to take charge of himself, to take care of himself as well as those he governs? How can one govern the Prince in such a way that he will be able to govern himself and others? This is one of the points I would like to stress. And then this notion is also found in the field of religious experience and the religious theme where there is a very strange and interesting change, a slippage almost a reversal of the poles of this notion of parresia. To start with we find parresia meaning that the master is obliged to tell the disciple all the truth that is necessary, and then we find it again with the idea that it is possible for the disciple to tell the master everything about himself. That is to say, we pa** from a meaning of the notion in which parresia refers to the master's obligation to tell the disciple what is true, to a meaning which refers to the disciple's obligation to tell the master the truth of himself. Finally, a third source of the richness of this notion is that however general and constant its valorization (I have said that it is a virtue, a quality), it is in fact surrounded by a great deal of ambiguity, and its valorization is not entirely constant or h*mogeneous. We will see, for example, that Cynic parresia, Cynic free-spokenness, is far from being an absolutely univocal notion or value. And we will see that in Christian spirituality parresia may well have the sense of indiscretion, in the form of chattering about everything concerning oneself. All this must seem to you to be at once abstract, imprecise, rough, and loose. So let's try to make some headway and be a more precise. I don't want to go over the history of the notion in detail here today. I will take an average text, if you like, an average case, an average example of parresia from almost exactly mid-way between the cla**ical age in which we see this notion of parresia at work in a traditional but very well-defined field of philosophy. I take this example of parresia from a text by Plutarch, an average author in every sense of the term. There are a great many texts by plutarch, and we will come back to this, which are devoted [or rather] which use this notion of parresia, since it is in the Lives, in Dion, paragraph v, page 960a. You can see more or less of who Dion is: he is the brother of Aristomache. But you probably do not know who Aristomache was. Aristomache was one of the two official wives of Dionysus, the tyrant of Syracuse. Dionysus had two wives. One of these was Aristomache, and Dion was her younger brother. Dion, who in relation to Dionysus the Elder, and especially in relation to Dionsysus the Younger, will play an important part in the life of Syracuse, will be Plato's disciple, correspondent, sponsor, guarantor, and host when Plato comes to Sicily. Plato's real, effective relationship with the political life of Syracuse and the tyranny of Dionysus comes alone through Dion. So, in this text devoted to Dion, Plutarch recalls that this younger brother of Aristomache was a boy endowed with fine qualities: generosity of spirit, courage, and the ability to learn. However, living as a young man at the court of a tyrant like Dionysus, he had gradually become accustomed to fear, "servility," and pleasure. As a result, he was "full of prejudices," that is to say–clearly referring to Stoic or Stoicizing themes–while the quality of his nature had not been undermined, some false opinions had been deposited in his soul, until when by chance–a benevolent "spirit (daimon)" Plutarch says, brought Plato to the shores of Sicily. It is there that Dion meets Plato, becomes his pupil, and benefits from his master's lessons. At this point his true and good nature reappears and he says–and here we come to it–"in his soul's youthful ingenuousness," Dion expected that "under the influence of the same lessons" as those he had received from Plato, his uncle, the tyrant Dionsysus, might experience "the same feelings" and "might easily let himself be improved in the good. In his enthusiasm, he set about doing all he could that Dionysus might enter into a relationship with Plato and hear his lessons." And now Plato, Dion, and Dionysus arrive on the scene. "Their conversations having got under way, the basic theme of the discussion was virtue, but more especially courage. Plato showed that tyrants were anything but courageous; then, moving away from this subject, he elaborated on justice and showed the life of the just man was happy and that the unjust man was unhappy [a lesson, then, on virtue and its different elements, its different components, its different forms: courage justice; MF]. The tyrant could not bear these remarks [concerning the fact that the life of the just was happy and that of the unjust was unhappy] which he thought were directed at him, and he did not conceal his displeasure at seeing the other admiring auditors being charmed by the discourse of the great man. Finally, filled with anger and exasperation, Dionysus asked Plato: "What have you come to Sicily for?" And Plato replied: "I am looking for a good man. The tyrant replied: "By the gods, it is clear that you have not yet found one!" Dion thought that Dionysus' anger would end there, and he put Plato, who was in a hurry ot leave, on a trireme taking Pollis, the Spartan, back to Greece. But Dionysus secretly asked Pollis to k** Plato on the journey, if it was possible, and if not, at least to sell him into slavery. "This will do him no harm," he said "and insofar as he is a just man, he will be just as happy, even as a slave." It is said that Pollis hastened to sell Plato in Aegina, for Aegian was then at war with Athens and according to an Aeginetan decree any Athenian taken on their territory was to be sold. These incidents did not diminish Dion's enjoyment of the favor and confidence of Dionysus. He was charged with important missions and when he was sent to Carthage he attracted extraordinary admiration. He was pretty well the only person whose parresia Dionysus tolerated and was allowed to speak his mind boldly, as is evidenced by their discussion concerning Gelon [Gelon was a Syracusean who exercised power before Dionysus]. It seems one day Dionysus ridiculed Gelon's government, which he said had been the laughing stock of Sicily [actually, this is a play on words: in Greek, to laugh is gelan, hence Gelon: Gelon/gelan so Dionysus made some silly puns on Gelon and said he had been the laughing stock of Sicily]. The courtiers seemed to admire this play on words and Dion was the only one to show his disapproval. "Nevertheless," he said, "you are a tyrant thanks to Gelon, who inspired a confidence from which you have benefited; but after having seen you at work, no one will be trusted again." [And Plutarch comments on Dion's parrhesiastic statement to Dionysus and says:] For it is clear that Gelon made a town governed by a monarchy the most beautiful sight, whereas Dionysus made it the most dreadful." Well, I think that in a way is an exemplary scene of parresia: a man who stands up to a tyrant and tells him the truth.We should examine this a bit more closely. You can see first of all the scene is divided in two as it were. Two individuals give proof of parresia in turn. Plato speaks the truth, giving his cla**ical and famous lecture on the nature of virtue, courage, and justice, and on the relationship between justice and happiness. He tells the truth in his lesson and also in his sharp reply to Dionysus when the latter, annoyed by plato;s lessons, asks him what he is doing in Sicily: I came looking for a good man (letting it be understood that Dionysus is not such a man). You see that the word parresia is not used with reference to Plato, although this is really a sort of matrix scene of parresia. Then, in the second element or moment–or rather, extension–of the scene, also Plato's departure and punishment, Dion, Plato's disciple, appears as the one whom notwithstanding such a visible and spectacular punishment, nevertheless continues to tell the truth. He tells the truth and his situation in relation to Dionysus is somewhat different from Plato's. Dionysus, as a courtier and relative, his brother-in-law, takes it upon himself to tell him the truth, give him advice, and possibly reply to him when the tyrant says something false or uncalled for. It is with regard to Dion that the word parresia is actually uttered: close to Dionysus and after Plato's great lesson, Dion is the one who uses parresia. He is the parrhesiast; he is truthful. Dion, the truth-teller. I would like–because the idea came to me late (or more exactly early: this morning)–to bring this scene together with another scene in which there is a similar distribution of the characters, since it involves a tyrant (turannos), the brother of his wife, and the person who tells the truth. I do not know how far it would be worth an*lyzing the structural an*logy between these two scenes a little more closely. You are familiar with the scene in which the brother-in-law tells the tyrant the truth, in which the tyrant does not want to hear the truth, and in which the tyrant says to his brother-in-law: You do not really want to tell me the truth for good reasons, but because you want to take my place.To which the brother-in-law replies: But not at all, just think of my case, consider this first of al. "Do you think anyone would prefer to rule in constant fear when he could sleep peacefully while enjoying the same power? I myself was not born with the desire to be king, but rather with the desire to live like one. It is the same for anyone endowed with reason. Today, I get everything from you without having to pay for it with fear; if I myself were to rule, what things would I have to do against my will! So how could the throne be preferable to a power and authority which bring me no cares? I am not so deluded as to what more than honor combined with profit. Today I am at ease with everyone, everyone greets me, and whoever needs you calls on me at home; their success depends on this. Would I give all this up for that? No, reason would not become madness. I have never had any taste for such an idea. And nor would I agree to ally myself with anyone who would act in that way." So he says: Have no fear, you accuse me of wanting to take your place by telling you to seek the truth. I have no wish to replace you; I am fine where I am in this privileged situation, one of the top rank in the city, alongside you. I do not exercise power, but just traditional authority. As for you, well, go to Pytho first of all and ask if I have reported the oracle exactly. Seek the truth yourself. I have told you the truth that comes from Pytho. if you do not believe me, go yourself. This is, of course, Creon speaking got Oedipus. Up to a point, and in the same way, we are dealing here with that sort of typical, exemplary situation of the tyrant who exercises power, of the blind exercise of power, and of someone close to him, who happens to be his brother-in-law (the brother of his wife), who tells the truth. He tells the truth and precisely the tyrant does not listen tot it. Well, we find this oedipal scene again, set out in more or less the same way, in Plutarch's text. Now let us try to see what this parresia is in Plutarch's text. How should we characterize it? Forgive me if I am a bit plodding and go very slowly, but I would like things to be quite clear. We must be prudent when defining the nature of parresia an advance step by step. What makes Plutarch say that Dion practices parresia? He practices parresia, as does Plato moreover, although the term is nt applied to Plato. Well, in the first place, parresia is the fact of telling the truth. What distinguishes Dion from the courtiers around Dionysus is precisely that the courtiers laugh when Dionysus makes a sill pun and pretend they see this as a mark of wit, not because it is true, but because they are flatterers. The parrhesiast is someone who tells the truth and consequently distinguishes himself from any untruthfulness and flattery. Parresizesthai, that is to say, the truth. And it is clear, for exempt, that what Plato said in one of his dialogues that the life of the just is happy and of the unjust unhappy, and God knows he said it enough, he was not giving proof each time of parresia. Or again, Dion gives proof of parresia when he says to Dionysus: Gelon inspired confidence in the town and then it was happy; but you no longer inspire confidence in the town, and consequently it is unhappy. But Plutarch is only taking up din's idea when he says: In fact, the town governed by Dionysus was the most dreadful sight. He repast the idea,but he does not thereby give proof of his own parresia. So we can say that parresia is a way of telling the truth, but what defines it is not the content of the truth as such. Parresia is a particular way of telling the truth. But what is "a way of telling the truth"? And how can we an*lyze the different possible ways of telling the truth? Where can we situate the way of telling the truth that characterizes parresia? Let us begin, if you like, by quickly eliminating some hypotheses. Schematically, we can say that ways of telling the truth are usually an*lyzed either in terms of the structure of the discourse itself, or in terms of the purpose of the discourse, or if you like, in terms of how the purpose of the discourse affects its structure, and then discourses are an*lyzed in terms of their strategies. Different ways of telling the truth may appear as many forms of a strategy or demonstration, or persuasion, or teaching, or debating. Does parresia belong to one of these strategies? is it a way of demonstrating, persuading, teaching, or debating? Let us look quickly at these four questions. It is clear that parresia does not come from a strategy of demonstration; it is not a way of demonstrating something. This is quite clear from Plutarch's text in which there is a whole series of examples of parresia. Plato demonstrates, of course when he puts forward his great theory on the nature of virtue, justice, and courage, etcetera. But he does not give proof of parresia just by this demonstration; his gives proof of parresia in his response to Dionysus. And as for Dion, he does not demonstrate anything but confines himself to giving advice and uttering aphorisms, without any demonstrative argument. So, parresia may actually use elements of demonstration. After all, when Galileo writes in his Dialogues, he gives proof of parresia in a demonstrative text. But this is not the demonstration or rational structure of the discourse that is parresia. Second, is parresia a strategy of persuasion? Does it fall under an art: the art of rhetoric? Things are clearly a bit more complicated here because, as we shall see, on the one hand parresia as a technique, a process, and a way of saying things can and frequently must make an effective use of resources of rhetoric; on the other hand, parresia (free-spokenness, veridicity) is found in some treatises of rhetoric as a figure of style, and as a figure of style which is, moreover, somewhat paradoxical and strange. [When] Quintilian–in the second chapter of Book IX, paragraph 27–gives parresia (veridicity, free-spokenness) a place among what he calls the figures of thought (we will come back to to all this), he presents it as the plainest of all the figures of thought. What is more plain, he asks, than true libertas? From Quintilian's point of view parresia is a figure of thought, but it is like the most basic form of rhetoric, where the figure of thought consists in not using any figure. It ramming nevertheless, as you can see, that between parresia and rhetoric there is a focal point of questions, a network of interactions, proximities, and intrications, etcetera, which we will have to try to disentangle. But in general terms we can say that within the field of rhetoric parresia cannot just be defined as an element falling within the province of rhetoric. On the one hand this is because, as you have seen, parresia is fundamentally, essentially, and primarily defined as truth-telling, whereas rhetoric is a way, an art, or a technique of arranging the elements of discourse in such a way as to persuade. It is not essential to rhetoric that this discourse speak the truth. On the other hand parresia may take completely different forms, since there is parresia in both Plato's lengthy discourse and Dion's aphorisms or brief rejoinders. There is no form of rhetoric specific to parresia. Above all, it is not so much or not necessarily a matter of persuasion in parresia. Certainly when Plato gives Dionysus a lecture, he is trying to persuade him. When Dion gives advice to Dionysus, it is so that the latter will follow it and to that extent parresia does [correspond], like rhetoric [to] the will to persuade. It could, it has to call upon methods of rhetoric. But this is not necessarily the objective and purpose of parresia. When Plato answers Dionysus that he has come to Sicily in search of a good man, implying that he has not found one, it is clear that this involves some kind of challenge, irony, insult, or criticism. He is not trying to persuade him. Similarly, when Dion points out to Dionysus that his government is bad, while that of Gelon was good, it is against a judgment, an opinion, and not an attempt to persuade. So I do not think that parresia should be cla**ified or understood from the point of view of rhetoric. Nor is parresia a way of teaching; it is not necessarily a way of teaching him. One may teach him, which is what Plato wants to do, but in the scenes I have been talking about there is a rough, violent, abrupt aspect of parresia which is completely different from a pedagogical approach. The parrhesiast, the person who tells the truth in this form, throws the truth in the face of the person with whom he is in dialogue, or to whom he is speaking, and there is none of the progression peculiar to pedagogy, pa**ing from the unknown to the known, from the simple to the complex, or from the part to the whole. To some extent we can even say that there is something in parresia which is completely contrary to some pedagogical procedures. In particular–and this will be an important point to which we will have to return–nothing is more distant than parresia from the well-known Socratic, or Platonic-Socratic irony. Socratic irony involves a game in which the master pretends not to know and leads the student to formulate what he, the student, did not know that he knows. In parresia however, as if it were a veritable anti-irony, the person who tells the truth throws the truth in the face of his interlocutor, a truth which is so violent, so abrupt, and said in such a peremptory and definitive way that the person facing him can only fall silent, or choke with fury, or change to a different register from being someone who, through irony, discovers in himself the truth which he did not know that he knows, the person addressed is faced with a truth with which he cannot accept, which he can only reject, and which leads him to injustice, excess, madness, blindness...We are dealing here with an effect which is quite precisely not only anti-ironic but even anti-pedagogical. The fourth question: Is parresia, then a way of discussing? It does not fall within the provinces of demonstration, rhetoric or pedagogy. Could we say that it falls within the province of erisitic? Is it not, in fact, a particular way of confronting an adversary? In parresia, is there not an agonistic structure between two characters confronting and struggling with each other over the truth? In a sense i think we are muc closer to the value of parresia when we emphasize its agonistic structure. But I do not think that parresia is part of an art of debating insofar as this enables the triumph of what one believes to be true. In fact, the two figures we have here–Plato facing Dionysus and Dion facing Dionysus–there is not really a debate in which one discourse seekf to prevail over the other. On one side one of the interlocutors tells the truth and he is basically concerned with telling the truth as quickly, loudly, and quickly as possible. Then, facing him, the other interlocutor does not reply, or he replies in a way other than through discourse. You can see how it plays out if we look at the important episode of Dionysus and Plato. One the one hand, Plato teaches. Dionysus is neither persuaded, nor taught, nor defeated in a debate. At the conclusion of the teaching, Dionysus substitutes for language, for the formulation of the truth in language, a victory which is not the victory of logos, of discourse, but the victory of violence, and of pure violence, since DIonysus has Plato sold as a slave in Aegina. Let us sum up; it has been a bit slow, but I think all this had to be excluded. Let's say that parresia is a way of telling the truth and we have to find out what this way of telling the truth is. But this way of telling the truth does not fall within the province of eristic and an art of debate, of pedagogy and an art of teaching, of rhetoric and an art of persuasion, or an art of demonstration. Or again, I do not think we find the nature of parresia in the an*lysis of the internal forms of discourse, or in the effects which this discourse sets out to scheme. It is not found in what could be called discursive strategies. In what, then, does it consist, since it does not consist in the discourse itself and its structures? Since we cannot situate parresia in an end envisaged by the discourse where can we situate it? Let's consider the scene again, or the two scenes of parresia, and try to isolate the elements from which it is composed. Plato and Dion are people endowed with parresia, who make parresia in very different forms, in lessons, aphorisms, replies, advice, judgments. But whatever the forms in which this truth is spoken, whatever the forms employed when one resorts to parresia, there is always parresia when telling the truth takes place in conditions such that the fact of telling the truth and the fact of having told it, will, may, or must entail costly consequences for those who have told it. In other words, if we want to an*lyze the nature of parresia, I do not think we should look to the internal strcuture of the discourse, or the aim to which the true discourse seeks to achieve vis-a-vis the interlocutor, but to the speaker, or rather to the risk that truth-telling opens up for the speaker. We have should look parresia in the effect that its specific truth-tellling may have on the speaker, in the possible backlash on the speaker from the effect it has on the interlocutor. In other words, telling the truth to the tyrant Dionysus, who gets angry, opens up a space of risk for the person who tells the truth; it opens up a danger, a peril, in which the speaker's very life will be at stake, and it is this that constitutes parresia. Parresia, therefore, is to be situated in what binds the speaker to the fact that he has told the truth and to the consequences which follow from the fact that he has told the truth. In this escenes Plato and Dion are people who practice parresiazesthai, who practice parresia, inasmuch as they actually, presently, tell the truth, and in telling the truth lay themselves open to the risk of having to pay the price or a certain price, for having done so. And it is not just any price that they are ready to pay and that in telling the truth they are ready to pay: the price is d**h. We have here, if you like–and this is why i take this scene as a matrix, exemplary scene for parresia–the point at which subjects willingly undertake to tell the truth, while willingly and explicitly accepting that this truth-tellilng could cost them their life. Parrhesiasts are those who, if necessary, accept d**h for having told the truth. Or more precisely, parrhesiasts are those who undertake to tell the truth at an unspecified price, which may be as high as their own d**h. Well, this seems to me to be the crux of parresia. Obviously, I would not want us to stop at this somewhat pathetic formulation of the relationship between truth-telling and the risk of d**h, but this is what we should now start to disentangle. I'm bothered. Without acting like Pierre Bellemare and introducing a commercial break, there is all the same something of a natural scansion in what I want to say. So, if you like, we will take a five minutes rest, and then continue. Because unless we do so I risk running on for half or three quarters of an hour and this may be a bit tiring. We will come back in five minutes.