Parrēsia, Foucault, and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition

Abstract

In his last seminars, Michel Foucault analyzed parrēsia (frank speech) in classical Greece and Rome, a subject also addressed by classical rhetoricians. Foucault regards parrēsia as an idealized modality of truth telling—unartful, sincere, courageous speech that tells an unwelcome truth to power. Aligning rhetoric with flattery, Foucault excludes rhetorical parrēsia from his history of thought. This essay offers an alternative analysis of parrēsia from the perspective of classical rhetoric. Drawing especially on the comprehensive description in the Rhetorica Ad Herennium, this essay identifies within the classical tradition a feigned parrēsia as well as a sincere one and a rhetorically artful parrēsia as well as the unartful, bold one that Foucault favors. Furthermore, the essay traces a genealogy that highlights changes in the practice of parrēsia as the term is conceptualized in the context of friendship, at which point parrēsia takes on an unmistakably rhetorical character.

Notes

¹Rhetoric scholars have (productively) debated the question of whether the postmodern Foucault can be reconciled to a rhetorical tradition that operates within a classical, Aristotelian ontology and epistemology. In addition to Barbara Biesecker, see Carole Blair and Martha Cooper, Martha Cooper, Robert Danisch, Cheryl Geisler, Christian Lundburg and Joshua Gunn, Rayme McKerrow (“Critical Rhetoric”; “Critical Rhetoric in a Postmodern”), John Muckelbauer, and Bradford Vivian; Gae Lynn Henderson, Dave Tell, and Carlos Lévy bring Foucault's later lectures into the discussion.

²Two collections published by Brill are evidence of this interest: Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech: Studies on Friendship in the New Testament World, ed. John T. Fitzgerald (Leiden: Brill 1996) and Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, ed. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph M. Rosen (Leiden: Brill, 2004). See also the work by David Colclough, Christopher Gilbert, Matthew Landauer, Carlos Lévy, Edward F. McGushin, S. Sara Monoson, Herman Nilson, and Arlene W. Saxonhouse in References.

³Lévy cites passages from Demetrius's On Style and from “Letter II” (attributed to Aeschines), in which a parrhesiast's claims of speaking only the truth and the whole truth are treated with suspicion; he thus offers a counter to Foucault's more univocal reading of the Ancients. And Lévy characterizes Socrates, who for Foucault is the foremost philosopher of parrēsia, as “full of defiance before a concept he began to reform without ever having integrated it into his own vocabulary” (321–322).

⁴Plato's visits to Sicily are described in several ancient sources—including Plutarch's life of “Dion”; Diogenes Laertius's life of “Plato” and life of “Aristippus”; Diodorius's Historical Library; and perhaps most famously in Plato's letters, Epistles 7 and 8. Although the details in the several sources differ, the consensus is that Plato made three visits to Sicily—one while Dionysius I was ruler and two after his death when his son, Dionysius II, ruled. The visits were encouraged by Dion, the brother-in-law of Dionysius I and a former student of Plato's. Dion hoped that Plato would influence Dionysius II. But his efforts were resented by members of Dionysius's court, who saw Dion's intervention as an effort to turn Dionysius II toward constitutionalism and therefore as a threat to their power and positions. This put Dion and Plato in danger; Dion was eventually banished and killed. In Diogenes Laertius's account, although not in Plato's letters, Plato too was banished and sold into slavery by Dionysius, although he was subsequently “purchased” and released (Diogenes Laertius, “Plato,” 3.18–19).

⁵Plato's authorship of the letters attributed to him is a matter of scholarly controversy. According to R. G. Bury in his introduction to the Loeb edition, the seventh and eighth letters have the greatest claim to authenticity of the thirteen (391–392). Cicero assumed authenticity of Epistle 7 (Tusculan Disputations 5.35) as did Plutarch. But Aristotle never mentions Plato's letters. Recent scholars are skeptical that any of the letters were written by Plato (George Boas, Ludwig Edelstein, Malcolm Schofield); Glenn R. Morrow is an exception, accepting the authenticity of at least Epistle 7. Foucault accepts Epistles 7 and 8 as at least reflecting the general view of Plato and his school (Government of Self and Others 210).

⁶Isocrates likely wrote On the Peace as a companion piece to his Archidamas, another fictional speech, in this case put into the mouth of the Spartan king, Archidamas III, who, in contrast to the speaker in On the Peace, exhorts the Spartan Assembly to fight to the death if necessary rather than accept the terms of a peace treaty with Corinth. See Phillip Harding; Arthur Walzer.

⁷Col VII B, p. 103. In the edition by David Konstan et al., On Frank Criticism is a collection of 93 fragments and 24 columns. “Col.” indicates “column” and Fr.” “fragment” in this edition.

⁸Philodemus' On Rhetoric, Books I and 2 was translated by Clive Chandler (New York Routledge, 2006). Chandler based his translation on the text of the first two books created by Francesca Longo Auricchio; “Longo” indicates line numbers in this text. See Chandler, “Philodemus on Art and Rhetoric,” 81–103.