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

12 January 1983 Second Hour So, in order to try to begin to disentangle the general and rather shaky formula I have just put forward–by [taking as] a limit-situation [that] of the parrhesiast who stands up, speaks, tells the truth to a tyrant, and risks his life–I will take as a point of reference (it has become an old chestnut, but maybe it's handy), as a counter example, as a form of enunciation which is exactly the opposite of parresia, and which has been called for some years now the performative utterance. You know that a performative utterance requires a particular, more or less strictly institutionalized context, an individual who has the requisite status or who is in a well-defined situation. Given all this as the condition for an utterance to be performative, [an individual] then makes this statement. The utterance is performative inasmuch as the enunciation itself effectuates the thing stated. You are familiar with the extremely ban*l example: the chairman of the meeting sits down and says: "The meeting is open." Despite its appearance, the statement "the meeting is open" is not an a**ertion. It is neither true nor false. What is essential is simply that the formulation "the meeting is open" opens the meeting. Or again, in a much more weakly institutionalized context, but one which nevertheless implies a set of rituals and a well-defined situation, when someone says, "I apologize," he has in fact apologized, and the enunciation, "I apologize," effectuates what is stated, namely that someone has apologized to someone else. So, in the basis of this example, let us take up the different elements of parresia again, of the statement of trite and especially of the scene in which parresia is effectuated. In Plutarch's text–and yo some extent here is an element in common with performative utterances here– we find ourselves in a typical, familiar, and institutionalized situation of the sovereign. The text clearly shows this situation: the sovereign surrounded by his courtiers. The philosopher arrives to give his lesson and the courtiers applaud the lesson. The other scene in the text is very similar, hardly different: it is still the tyrant Dionysus in his court. The courtiers present are laughing at Dionysus' puns and someone, Dion, stands up and speaks. It is a cla**ical scene of sovereign, courtiers, and the person who tells the truth (the scene also, you recall, of Oedipus the King). However, there is a major and crucial difference. In a performative utterance, the given elements of the situation are such that when the utterance is made, the effect which follows is known and ordered in advance, it is codified and this is precisely what constitutes the performative character of the utterance. In parresia on the other hand, whatever the usual, familiar, and quasi-institutionalized character of the situation in which it is effectuated, what makes parresia is that the introduction, the irruption of the true discourse determines an open situation, or rather opens the situation and makes possible effects which are, precisely, not known. Parresia does not produce a codified effect; it opens ip an unspecified risk. And this unspecified risk is obviously a function of the situation. When one finds oneself in a situation like this, the risk is in a way extremely open, since Dionysus' character, his unlimited tyrannical power, and his excessive temperament, the pa**ions which drive him, may lead to the worst effect, and as actually happens, to him wanting to k** the person who has told the truth. But you see that even when the situation is not as extreme as this, even when it does not involve a tyrant with the power of life and d**h over the person who speaks, what defines the parrhesiastic statement, what precisely makes the statement of truth in the form of parresia something absolutely unique among other forms of utterance and other formulations of the truth, is that parresia opens up a risk. Although it states the truth, there is no parresia in the progressive steps of a demonstration taking place in neutral conditions, because the person who states the truth in this way does not take any risk. The statement of the truth is only an element in a demonstrative procedure. But, whether the truth is internal–think of Galileo–or external to a demonstrative procedure, we can say there is parresia when the statement of this truth constitutes an irruptive event opening up an undefined or poorly defined risk for the subject who speaks. In a sense, therefore, it is the opposite of the performative, in which the enunciation of something brings about and gives rise to a completely determined event as a function of the general code and institutional field in which the utterance is made. Here, on the contrary, it is truth telling, and irruptive truth telling which creates a fracture and opens up the risk: a possibility, a field of dangers, or at any rate, an undefined eventuality. This is the first thing, the first characteristic. Second–still comparing parresia with the performative–you know that the subject's status is important in a performative utterance. The person who opens the meeting simply by saying "the meeting is open" must have the authority to do so and be the chairman of the meeting. The person who says "I apologize" only makes a performative utterance when he is actually in a situation of having offended his interlocutor or one in which he could or should apologize to him. The person who says "I baptize you" must have the status that permits him to baptize, namely, he must be a Christian, etcetera. But although this status is indispensable for the effectuation of a performative utterance, there does not have to be an, as it were, personal relationship between the person making the utterance and the utterance itself for the latter to be performative. In other words, purely as a matter of fact, it does not matter whether the Christian who says "I baptize you" and makes the appropriate signs does not believe in God or the Devil. When he has actually made the gesture and uttered the words, he will have baptized, and the utterance will have been performative. It does not matter whether the chairman who says "the meeting is open" is really bored by the meeting or if he dozes off he will have opened the meeting. The same goes for the apology: what makes "I apologize" performative is not at all the subject's sincerity when he says "I apologize." It is just that he utters then sentence, even if he says to himself: I'll wait for my chance and then you'll see. In parresia, on the other hand, and what makes it parresia, is that not only is this indifference not possible, but that parresia is always a sort of formulation of the truth at two levels. A first level is that of the statement of the truth itself (at this point, as in the performative, one says the thing, and that's that). The second level of the parrhesiastic act, the parrhesiastic enunciation is the affirmation that in fact one genuinely thinks, judges, and considers the truth one is saying to be genuinely true. I tell the truth, and I truly think that it is true, and I truly think that I am telling the truth when I say it. This doubling or intensification of the truth by the statement of the truth of the fact that I think this truth and that, thinking it, I say it, is what is essential to the parrhesiastic act. In Plutarch's text these two levels are not, of course, explicitly distinguished, as is the case most of the time, moreover the second level (affirmation of the affirmation) frequently being implicit. Nevertheless, it remains the case that is you look at the elements of the scene which constitutes parresia, it is quite clear that something in them indicates this affirmation of the affirmation. This is essentially the public character of the affirmation, and not only the public character, but the fact that here–and this will not always be the case–parresia takes place in the form of a scene in which there are: first, the tyrant; then, confronting him, the person who speaks, who stands up or gives his lesson and tells the truth; and then, around these, the courtiers, whose attitude varies according to the moment, the situation, who is speaking, and so forth. WHat this kind of joust or challenge shows is this solemn ritual of truth-telling in which the subject commits what he thinks in what he says and attests to the truth of what he thinks in the enunciation of what he says. In other words, I think that there is something in the parrhesiastic utterance that could be called a pact: a pact of the speaking subject with himself. It is a pact which has two levels: that of the act of enunciation and then [that], explicit or implicit, by which the subject binds himself to the statement he has just made, nit also the act of making it. This is what makes the pact double. On the one hand, the subject in parresia says: This is the truth. He says that he really thinks the truth, and in this he binds himself to the statement and to its content. But he also makes a pact in saying: I am the person who has spoken the truth; I therefore bind myself to the act of stating it and take on the risk of all its consequences. Parresia therefore [includes] the statement of the truth, and then, on top of this statement, an implicit element that could be called the parrhesiastic pact of the subject with himself by which he binds himself both to the content of the statement and to the act of making it: I am the person who will have said this. And this pact is demonstrated here [through] the joust, the challenge, the great scene of man standing up to the tyrant and telling the truth before the eyes and ears of the whole court. Third difference between the performative and parrhesiastic utterance: a performative utterance a**umes that the person speaking has the status which permits him to carry out what is stated by making his utterance; he must be the chairman really to open the meeting, he must have suffered an offense to be able to say "I forgive you" and for "I forgive you" to be a performative utterance. What characterizes a parrhesiastic utterance, on the other hand, is not the fact that the speaking subject has this or that status. He may be a philosopher, the tyrant's brother-in-law, a courtier, or anyone whomsoever. So status is not important or even necessary. What characterizes the parrhesiastic utterance is precisely that, apart from status and anything that could codify and define the situation, the parrhesiast is someone who emphasizes his own freedom as an individual speaking. After all, if Plato, by virtue of his status, had to teach his own philosophy–this is what he was asked to do–then when Dionysus asked him a question he was entirely at liberty not to reply: I have come to Sicily in search of a good man (and–by implication–I have not found him). In a way, this reply was supplementary to Plato's statutory teaching function. In the same way, Dion's function as the tyrant's courtier and brother-in-law, etcetera, was to give good advice and counsel to Dionsysus so that the latter could govern properly. After all, only Dion's freedom was involved in his decision to say: When Gelon governed things were fine, now that you are governing the town is in a disastrous state. Whereas the performative utterance defines a definite game in which the status of the person speaking and the situation in which he finds himself determine precisely what he can and must say, parresia only exists when there is freedom in the enunciation of the truth, freedom of the act by which the subject says the truth, and freedom of the act by which the subject says the truth, and freedom also of the pact by which the subject binds himself to the statement and enunciation of the truth. To that extent, it is not the subject's social, institutional status that we find at the heart of parresia; it is his courage. Parresia–and I am summarizing here, asking you to forgive me for having been so slow and plodding–is therefore a certain way of speaking. More precisely, it is a way of telling the truth. Third, it is a way of telling the truth that lays one open to a risk by the very fact that one tells the truth. Fourth, parresia is a way of opening up this risk linked to truth-telling by, as it were constituting oneself as the partner of oneself when one speaks, by binding oneself to these statement of the truth and to the act of stating the truth. Finally, parresia is a way of binding oneself to oneself in the statement of the truth, of freely binding oneself to oneself, and in the form of a courageous act. Parresia is the free courage by which one binds oneself in the act of telling the truth. Or again, parresia is the ethics of truth-telling as an action which is risky and free. To that extent, if we give this rather broad and general definition to the word "parresia"–which was rendered as "free spokenness" (franc-parler) when its use was limited to spiritual direction–I think we can propose to translate it as "veridicity" (veridicite). The parrhesiast, the person who iuses parresia, is the truthful man (l'homme veridique), that is to say, the person who has the courage to risk telling the truth, and who risks this truth-telling in a pact with himself, inasmuch as he is, precisely, the enunciator of the truth. He is the truth-teller (le veridique). And (maybe we will be able to come back to this, I don't know if we will have the time) it seems to me that Nietzschean veridicity (veridicite) is a way of putting to work this notion whose distant origin is found in the notion of parresia (truth-telling) as a risk for the person who states it, a risk accepted by the person who states it. Forgive these delays, the question of parresia had to be put in the triple context which form the starting point from which I would like to approach it. First of all, you see of course that a fundamental philosophical problem arises if we adopt this definition of parresia. At any rate, we see that parresia brings into play a fundamental philosophical question, which is no more or less than that of the connection between freedom and truth. This is not the familiar question of how far the truth limits of constrains the exercise of freedom, but is in a way the opposite of this: how and to what extent is the obligation of truth–the "binding oneself to the truth," "binding oneself by the truth and truth-telling"–at the same time the exercise of freedom, and the dangerous exercise of freedom? How is [the fact of] binding oneself to the truth (binding oneself to tell the truth, binding oneself by the truth, by the content of what one says and by the fact that one says it) actually the exercise, the highest exercise of freedom? I think that the whole an*lysis of parresia should basically be developed around this question. Second, there is an even tighter and closer methodological context of the an*lysis, which I would like to condense or summarize very schematically in the following way. If we adopt this general definition, starting from the example from Plutarch, we see that parresia is therefore a certain way of speaking such that the statement and the act of enunciation will produce some kind of "retroactive effects" on the subject himself, but not of course in the form of the consequence. Maybe I have not been clear enough on this point, but, if you like, parresia does not exist as a result of the fact that [Dionysus] wanted to k** Plato for what he said. There is parresia from the moment Plato actually accepts the risk of being exiled, k**ed, sold, etcetera, in telling the truth. So parresia is really that by which the subject binds himself to the statement, to the enunciation, and to the consequences of this statement and enunciation. So, if this is parresia, you can see here that we have a whole stratum of possible an*lyses concerning the effect of discourse. What is it that we call, or anyway what we could call, the pragmatics of discourse? Well, it is the an*lysis of what is in the real situation of the person speaking that affects and modifies the meaning and value of the utterance. To that extent, as you can see, an*lyzing or locating something like a performative falls squarely in the domain of a pragmatics of discourse. You have a situation, and a status of the subject speaking such that the statement "the meeting is open" will have a certain value and meaning, and a value and meaning which will not be the same if the situation and the subject speaking are different. If a journalist in the corner of the room says "the meeting is open," he is observing that the meeting has just been opened. If it is the chairman of the meeting who says "the meeting is open" then you know full well that the utterance does not have the same value or meaning. It is a performative utterance which actually opens the meeting. All this is known. You can see that the an*lysis of the pragmatics of discourse is the an*lysis of the elements and mechanism by which the situation and the enunciator modifies the value of the meaning of the discourse. The discourse changes meaning as a function of this situation, and the pragmatics of this os: how does the situation or the status of the subject speaking modify or affect the meaning and value of the statement? With parresia we see the appearance of a whole family of completely different facts of discourse which are almost the reverse, the mirror projection of what we call the pragmatics of discourse. In fact, parresia involves a whole series of facts of discourse in which it is not the real situation of the person speaking which affects or modifies the value of the statement. In parresia, in one way or another both the statement and the act of enunciation affect the subject's mode of being and, taking things in their most general and neutral form, quite simply mean that the person who said something has actually said it, and by a more or less explicit act binds himself to the fact that he said it. I think it is this retroaction–such that the event of the utterance affects the subject's mode of being, or that, in producing the event of the utterance the subject modifies, or affirms, or anyway determines and clarifies his mode of being insofar as he speaks–that characterizes a type of facts of discourse which are completely different from those dealt with by pragmatics. The an*lysis of the facts of discourse, which show how the very event of the enunciation may affect the enunciator's being, is what we could call–removing all pathos from the word–the "dramatics" of discourse. It seems to me that parresia is exactly what could be called one of the aspects and one of the forms of the dramatics of true discourse. Parresia involves the way in which by a**erting the truth, and in the very act of this a**ertion, one constitutes oneself as the person who tells the truth, who has told the truth, and who recognizes oneself in and as the person who has told the truth. The an*lysis of parresia is the an*lysis of this dramatics of true discourse which brings to light the contract of the speaking subject with himself in the act of truth telling. In this way I think one could make an an*lysis of the dramatics of true discourse and its different forms: the prophet, the seer, the philosopher, the scientist. In fact, whatever the social determinations defining their status, all of these involve a dramatics of true discourse, that is to say they have a way of binding themselves as subjects to the truth of what they say. And it is clear that the subject does not bind himself to the truth of what he says in the same way in each of these different ways of speaking as seer, prophet, philosopher, or scientist in a scientific institution. I think this very different mode of the subject's bond to the enunciation of the truth opened the field for possible studies of the dramatics of true discourse. And so I come to what I would like to do this year. Taking the philosophical question of the relationship between the obligation of truth and the practice of truth as the general background, and taking what could be called the dramatics of true discourse as the methodological point of view, I would like to see whether, from this double, philosophical and methodological point of view, we might not undertake the history, the genealogy, etcetera, of what could be called political discourse. Is there a political dramatics of true discourse, and what different forms, what different structures of the dramatics of political discourse might there be? In other words, when someone stands up, in the city in front of the tyrant, or when courtiers approach the person who exercises power, or when the politician mounts the tribune and says "I am telling the truth," what type of dramatics if true discourse is he putting to work? So what I would like to do this year is a history of the discourse of governmentally which would follow the thread of this dramatics of true discourse, which would try to locate some of the major forms of the dramatics of true discourse. As a starting point I would like to take the way we see this notion of parresia taking shape: how can we locate in Antiquity the formation of a particular dramatics of discourse in the political domain; that of the counselor? How did we pa** from a parresia which, as you will see in a moment or next week, characterizes the public orator, to a conception of parresia which characterizes the dramatics of the Prince's counselor, speaking and telling him what he must do? These are the first two figures that I would like to study. Second, I would like to study the figure of what I will call simply, somewhat schematically–obviously all these words are somewhat arbitrary–the dramatics of the minister, that is to say, that new dramatics of true discourse in the political order which appeared around the sixteenth century, when the art of governing began to acquire its eminence and autonomy and to define its own technique in terms of the nature of the State. What is this true discourse addressed to the monarch by his "minister" in the name of something called raison d'Etat and in terms of a particular form of knowledge, that is to say knowledge of the State? Third, we could but I do not know if we shall have time, see the appearance of a third figure of the dramatics of true discourse in the political domain, which is the figure of, let's say, "critique:" what is the critical discourse in the political domain that we see forming, developing, or anyway a**uming a certain status in the eighteenth and on through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? And finally, of course we could locate a fourth major figure in the dramatics of true discourse in the political domain, which is the figure of the revolutionary. What is this person who arises within society and says: I am telling the truth, and I am telling the truth in the name of the revolution that I am going to make and that we will make together? This is, if you like, something of the general framework of this year's studies. Then I am both behind and ahead. I am behind with regards to what I wanted to say, and ahead if I wanted to finish at this point[...] So, the first set of studies, or first considerations of the way in which this personage is formed, this genre of the dramatics of discourse exemplified by Dion in Plutarch's text. The scene I am talking about dates from the fourth century B.C.E. (but Plutarch wrote it at the beginning of the second century C.E.). We see the figure of the Prince's counselor, close to him, his relative even, coming forward and telling him the truth. And he tells the truth in a mode of discourse that Plutarch calls precisely parresia. I have tried to give you a general idea of tho notion and the types of problem it may raise. But, nonetheless, when we take up the diachronic history of the notion of parresia, we should not forget that in the cla**ical texts of the fourth center B.C.E., the word does not have the meaning that Plutarch gives it when he employs it with reference to Dion. To use the word parresia in the cla**ical texts is a bit more complex and rather different. Today and next week I would like to indicate some of the usages. First, whereas in Plutarch's text–and in terms of what I told you when I tried to elucidate this notion–parresia seems to be linked to a virtue, a personal quality, a courage (courage in freely telling the truth), the use of the word parresia in the cla**ical epoch does not include, at least not primarily, fundamentally, and essentially this dimension of personal courage, but is much more a concept related to these two things: first, a particular, characteristic political structure of the city-state; and second, the social and political status of some individuals within the city-state. First, parresia as a political structure, I will make just one reference, which is not from the fourth century moreover, since it is from Polybius, but which helps us situate the problem. In the text by polybius [Book II, chapter 38, paragraph 6], the Achaean regime [is defined] by three major characteristics. He says that Achaeans have city-states in which one finds demokratia (democracy), isegoria, and parresia. Demokratia, that is to say, the participation not of everyone, but of all the demos, that is to say all those who are qualified as citizens, and so as members of the demos, to participate in power. Isegoria is related to the structure of equality which means the right and duty, freedom and obligation are the same, are equal, once again for those who are part of the demos and so have citizen status. And finally, the third characteristic is that there is parresia in these states. We find parresia, that is to say, the freedom of citizens to speak, and of course to speak in the political field, understood as much from the abstract point of view (political activity) as very concretely: the right even of someone who does not hold any particular office and is not a magistrate, to get up and speak in the meeting of the Assembly, to tell the truth, or claim and a**ert that one is telling the truth. This is parresia: a political structure. Now, [as] is quite clear from several texts by Euripides, there is a whole series of other uses of the word parresia which are related less to this general structure of the city-state than to the status of individuals. First, in the tragedy Ion, 668-675, you find the following text: "If I do not find she who bore me, my life is impossible; And if I might permit myself a wish, may this woman [the whom who bore me and whom I see; MF] be Athenian, so that through my mother I have the right to speak freely [hos moi genet metrothen parresia: so that parresia comes to me through my mother's side; MF]. If a stranger enters a town where the race is without stain, the law may make him a citizen, but his tongue will remain servile; he does not have the right to say everything [ouk ekhei parresian: he does not have parresia; MF]." So, what is this text and what do we see in it? We see someone in search of his birth, who does not know his mother, and so who wants to know what city and community he belongs to. Why does he want to know that? He wants to know precisely so that he knows if he has the right to speak. And since he is searching for this woman in Athens, he hopes that the mother he eventually will discover will be Athenian and thus belong to this community, this demos, etcetera, and that, by virtues of this birth, he himself will have the right to speak frilly, to have parresia. For he says in a town "without stain," that is to say, precisely in a town which keeps the traditions, in a town which the politeia (the constitution) has not been debased by tyranny or despotism, or by the abusive integration of people who are not really citizens, so in a town which has remained without stain and in which the politeia has remained what it should be, only those who are citizens have parresia. Beyond this general theme which structures the search for the single personage's mother and which links the right to speak to membership of the demos, it is worth keeping hold of two things. The first is that the right to speak, parresia, is transmitted in this case by the mother. Second, you see that the stranger's status is denied and appears in contrast with that of citizens who have the right to speak, and so far as the town is without stain, his tongue is servile. Exactly: to ge stoma doulon– his mouth is slave. That is to say, the right to speak, the restriction on the freedom of political discourse is total. He does not possess this freedom of political discourse; he does not possess parresia. So: membership of a demos; parresia as a right to speak, inherited through the maternal line; and finally exclusion of non-citizens whose tongue is servile. This is what appears.] Listen, I would like to stop there now, although I have not completely finished, but I am very aware that if I launch myself into the comparison between these and other texts in Euripides...So I will resume next week, thank you.