Fear and Self-Truth: Parrēsia in Augustine’s Doctrine of Emotions

Abstract

Fear, as a kind of human emotion, has a close relation with the ancient Greek parrēsia since it can be rendered as “fearless speech.” To investigate this concept, Foucault brings the obligation to truth and the practices of confession of early Christians in late antiquity into the spotlight, from which Augustine is, however, almost absent. The reason Foucault excludes Augustine from his study, which, on the other hand, highlights Augustine’s particularity regarding the experience of parrēsia, is his attention to cordis affectus. This paper brings the perspective of emotion theory to bear on the study of Augustine’s practice of confession. The study is divided into three parts: First, I analyse the relationship between the self-truth and God, the Truth itself, with Foucault’s study of parrēsia of early Christianity, and draw attention to Augustine’s concern with the inner emotions in confession. Second, considering Augustine’s theory of emotions, I examine how fear relates to love and how fear functions in conversion through the power of the Holy Spirit. Finally, I explore how fear interacts with the disclosure and manifestation of the truth about the self in Augustine’s own conversion described in Book VIII of the Confessions. The study concludes that Augustine’s confession, a kind of parrēsia full of fear, is basically in line with the Christian experience of parrēsia in the ascetic tradition described by Foucault but that his focus on fear makes his practice of confession distinctive.