Frank Speech Research Articles

A parresía jornalística e Djamila Ribeiro: levantando-se contra o racismo bolsonarista nas páginas do jornal Folha de S.Paulo

The philosopher Djamila Ribeiro, a columnist for Folha de S.Paulo, has suffered several instances of racism throughout her life. Faced with the sequence of racist statements made by former president Jair Bolsonaro throughout his career in Brazilian politics, the philosopher used her parresía to denounce a resolution published by the government to remove quilombolas from the municipality of Alcântara, ignoring the history and cultural identity of the descendants of Brazilian slaves. Historically contextualizing the case and presidential racism, the columnist makes use of what we call journalistic parresía, presenting the five characteristics necessary for this: frank speech, coherence between discourse and way of life, use of frank speech in the public space, taking risks to make use of this frank speech in an act of courage.

Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions, by Rob Goodman

Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions, by Rob Goodman

Mexican American Parrhesia at Troy

In the late 1960s, Mexican American and Chicana/o students and faculty began to create new cultural and academic spaces at the University of Southern California (USC). As outspoken advocates, they promoted a collective social identity as they questioned USC’s commitment to fulfilling the moral and humanistic responsibilities of its educational mission. These students and faculty members took part in the formation of ethnic studies and Chicana/o studies on their campus and in higher education generally. Their activist contributions, however, have been ignored by USC and by most of the scholarly community. Yet, through their work and use of parrhesia (saying what one means with frank speech), the core Chicana/o movement concepts of Aztlán (the conception of a sacred homeland, borrowed from the Aztec cosmovision archetype of origins) and Chicanismo (a collective Chicana/o cultural nationalism) have been woven into the mythology of USC, creating a Chicana/o legacy of deep education and learning.

Let’s Be Frank: Revitalizing Frank Friendship in the Contemporary Philosophy Classroom

Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato’s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus’ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one’s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life.

“Des responses et rencontres”: Frank Speech and Self-Knowledge in Guillaume Bouchet’s Serées

Guillaume Bouchet’s Serées (1584, 1597, 1598) constitute an exercise in commonplacing framed as a collection of tales told around a Poitevin dining table. They engage in a form of quasi-philosophical thinking staged by and for an urban merchant community, the social world in which Bouchet operated. The second book opens with a discussion of frank speech. Writing amid civil war, Bouchet takes up this “chatouilleux” subject by turning to Plutarch, the classical authority on parrhesia (truth-telling). Recycling Plutarch, though, Bouchet does not ask how or when to speak frankly but instead examines responses to “franchise” both in the tales and from the storytellers themselves. Around Bouchet’s table, talk of frank speech leads to awkward silences and conversation grinding to a halt. This serée illuminates a context for parrhesia distinct from the familiar arena of nobles counselling autocrats or performing “liberté.” Here, philosophical self-knowledge slips uncomfortably into a feeling of social self-consciousness, revealing a distinct conception of the ethics and epistemologies surrounding frankness.

La epimeleia y la parrhesía: un estilo de existencia, un decir verdadero. Resistencia y ejercicio de la libertad en nuestra actualidad

Este artículo ofrece algunas reflexiones que establecen el hilo conductor que existe entre el “cuidado de sí” y el “hablar franco”. Michel Foucault ve en el “cuidado de sí” y en el “hablar franco” la condición de posibilidad de configurar otro modo de ser sujeto y, por tanto, devenir de otra manera. En consecuencia, la estilización de la existencia, esto es, el trabajo que el sujeto realiza sobre sí mismo, debe ser complementado y ampliado mediante el discurso veraz, conditio sine qua non es imposible resistir u oponerse a las tecnologías políticas que producen modos de existencia. En efecto, el propósito de las tecnologías políticas es la autorregulación de los sujetos, influir en sus deseos, esperanzas, decisiones, necesidades y estilos de vida conobjetivos gubernamentales fijados con anterioridad.

Parezja: ćwiczenia ze szczerości

Parrhesia: Exercises in Speaking Sincerely The paper examines the notion of parrhesia (from Greek ‘to speak everything’) as an exercise in speaking openly and sincerely. Leaving aside Michel Foucault’s treatment of this discursive activity, the main purpose of the article is to describe parrhesia in three domains: rhetoric, philosophy, and literature. As a figure of speech, it remains closely associated with rhetorical simulation and flattery. For many rhetoricians, for instance Quintilian or Jakub Górski, parrhesia may serve as a useful instrument of critical speaking. As a “spiritual exercise” in telling the truth, it plays an important role in transforming philosophy into a general way of life. In accordance with Philodemus’s beliefs on frank speech, one may argue that parrhesia helps in attaining wisdom in a student milieu. And finally, as a discursive strategy, it creates many possibilities for expanding the modes of linguistic expression, for instance in Horace’s ode to Virgil (Carmina I 24) or in Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski’s ode to Publius Munatius (Lyrica III 5). In both texts, parrhesia is involved in the discourse of friendship.

On Dr. Stockmann’s Parrhesia: Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in the Light of Foucault

Abstract An honest intellectual dutifully standing with truth against lies and treacheries of his society is a parrhesiastic figure in Foucault’s terminology. Foucault takes parrhesia as the fearless and frank speech regarding the truth of something or a situation before truthmongering and public deception and he takes the parrhesiastic as the spokesperson for truth. In this light, Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People occupies a unique position within Ibsen’s political philosophy. Dutifully criticizing what the majority blindly take for granted from their liar leaders in the name of democracy, Dr. Stockmann fulfills the role of a parrhesiastic figure that stands against socio-political corruption. He enters a parrhesiastic game with both the majority and the officialdom to fulfill his democratic parrhesia as a truthful citizen before the duped community, while covertly preparing for his own philosophic parrhesia or self-care within the conformist community. However, his final failure lies in his confrontation with democracy itself, which wrongly gives the right of speaking even to the liars. This article thus aims at analyzing Ibsen’s play through a Foucauldian perspective regarding the concept of parrhesia and its relation to democracy. It is to reveal Ibsen’s satire on the fake ideology of democracy and highlight the necessity of humanity’s parrhesiastic self-care for the well-being of the self and the others.

“Only a God Can Resist a God.” Political Theology between Polytheism and Gnosticism

ABSTRACTSovereignty – based on a claim to irresistible authority – and “speaking truth to power” (or parrhesia) are evidently opposed and yet they seem to have a strange affinity with one another, at least if one follows Foucault’s last lectures on this motif of political philosophy. This article revisits Hans Blumenberg’s reconstruction of the meeting between the German poet Goethe and the French emperor Napoleon as an example of a parrhesiastic encounter between philosophy and tyranny. The article situates Blumenberg’s discussion of Goethe’s pantheism and polytheism in the context of his ongoing polemic with Schmitt’s conceptions of sovereignty and political theology. It argues that while both Blumenberg and Schmitt seek to offer responses to the Gnostic rejection of worldly power, a reading of Goethe in light of the discourse on parrhesia or frank speech lately revived by Foucault allows for the articulation of republican response to Gnosticism.

The polemical practice in ancient Epicureanism

The article explores the presentation methods of a philosophical doctrine in Greek and Roman Epicureanism; it is shown that for the ancient, middle, and Roman Epicureans a controversy with representatives of other philosophical schools was a typical way of presenting their own views. The polemical practice, in which the basic principles of Epicureanism were expounded through the criticism of other philosophical systems, first of all, Academics and Stoics, was considered not only as the preferred way of presenting the own doctrine, but also as the most convenient rhetorical device, which had, among other things, didactic significance. The founder of the school, Epicurus, often included in his texts the terms used in other philosophical schools, giving them a different, often opposite, content. While presenting his teaching in the treatise “On Nature” or in letters to his followers, Epicurus criticism of his opponents, often without naming them by name. His closest students and later followers — Metrodorus, Hermarchus, Colotes, Philodemus, Lucretius, Diogenes of Oenoanda — continuing the controversy with the Academics and the Stoics, more frankly expressed their indignation about the “falsely understood Epicureanism” or erroneous opinions. In their writings, satirical techniques and angry denunciations were often used to criticize opponents. The focus of the article is on the controversy of Epicurus with Plato; the interpretation of the concept of “anticipation” in Epicurus and the Stoics, the polemic controversies and the use of the principle of “refraining from judgment”, drawn from the Stoics, to criticize Academics. In addition, the article analyzes the rhetorical tricks of Philodemus, who believed that frank speech is not only the best way to heal the soul, but also a method of philosophical controversy.

Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Early Modern Europe by Cynthia N. Nazarian

Reviewed by: Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Early Modern Europe by Cynthia N. Nazarian Robert J. Hudson Cynthia N. Nazarian. Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Pp. xv + 299. The lyric, as conventionally understood, is the literary genre whose express purpose is to evoke poetically and thereby mitigate the individualized suffering of a subject for an inaccessible object. In her efforts to reconsider and recast the lyric in the early modern period from the singular to the collective—from the je to the nous—Cynthia Nazarian’s Love’s Wounds is nothing short of a revolutionary examination of the Renaissance lyric from Petrarch to Shakespeare. Moving [End Page 197] both northward and chronologically from the disquiet of trecento Italy, through the French kingdom of the Italian Wars and the Wars of Religion, and into the contentious debates of legitimacy in Elizabethan England, Nazarian demonstrates how the poets from these belligerent eras adroitly tapped into the rhetorically potent posture of the downtrodden lover. Progressively exaggerating the abjection and vulnerability of powerless desire, Petrarchan imitators extended the castigated body of the forsaken lover to the subjected body politic in a gesture of countersovereignty, through which they could challenge cultural, religious, and political authority. Across the four chapters of her volume, which treat 1) Scève’s adoption and adaptation of Petrarchan strategies and imagery of suffering in his Délie, 2) Du Bellay’s mimetic reenactment of violent imperial conflict in his L’olive, 3) the mortification and self-dissection of human anatomy in D’Aubigné’s verse, and 4) Spencer’s lyrical pleas in his Amoretti as resistance tactics in the face of tyranny and authoritarian government, as well as her conclusion, in which the flawed tragedy and satire of Shakespeare’s anti-Petrarchan forays are brought to the fore, Nazarian negotiates close readings of canonical writers admirably. Central to her argument of the rhetoric force of poetic violence is reading the lyric as agon (a space of struggle) that can be expanded to the collectivity and amplified via parrhēsia (bold or frank speech), as practiced by Petrarch. What’s more, she creates a convincing dialogue between key volumes in the amorous tradition, written in imitation of the Canzoniere, and political texts by the same authors (Du Bellay’s Deffence, D’Aubigné’s Les tragiques, Spencer’s The Faerie Queene), which are traditionally considered to be disparate, effectively establishing contiguity between the projects of the love poetry and the political writings (treatises, epics, manifestos) in meaningful ways. On the whole, this volume is exceptionally well-researched and annotated, as Nazarian leaves no theoretical stone unturned in making her arguments. New Historicism, gender studies, queer theory, deconstruction, imitation theory, and narrative studies each have their say and are intricately woven with the most contemporary essays of Nazarian’s peers. The resulting study is at the same time respectful of colleagues’ contributions and confident in its own innovative claims, highlighting the very best of the author’s comparatist training. At the same time, despite the richness of its synthesis, the text is beautifully written in crystalline prose with Nazarian’s original contributions featured preeminently. Indeed, the marginal stars, check marks, and exclamation points that illuminate nearly every page of my review copy stand as a tangible testament to the volume’s freshness and brilliance. Even if I would have liked to see a more focused examination of the formal aspects of the sonnet (or Scève’s dizain) in terms of the embedded violence within the quintessential Petrarchan structure, what Nazarian accomplishes in her examination of the political and ethical rhetoric of the early modern love lyric will cause generations of scholars to take pause and reconsider their understanding of the uses and intent of unrequited Petrarchan desire. [End Page 198] Robert J. Hudson Brigham Young University Copyright © 2019 L’Esprit Créateur

The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia

Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique for authenticating their speech – the specific problem that the move to ethical parrhēsia in ancient Greece was designed to solve – becomes intractable in a social media environment, even with the added Cynical move to pure visibility. The problem is that contemporary society overproduces visibility as a condition for participation, which means that the context for authenticating parrhesiastic speech is one in which visibility is banalized and in which there is a surplus of speech which presents as parrhesiastic. The problem of authentication is thus a serious one, one which social media makes particularly intractable.

The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia

Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique for authenticating their speech – the specific problem that the move to ethical parrhēsia in ancient Greece was designed to solve – becomes intractable in a social media environment, even with the added Cynical move to pure visibility. The problem is that contemporary society overproduces visibility as a condition for participation, which means that the context for authenticating parrhesiastic speech is one in which visibility is banalized and in which there is a surplus of speech which presents as parrhesiastic. The problem of authentication is thus a serious one, one which social media makes particularly intractable.

From climate skeptic to climate cynic

ABSTRACTWhilst we know quite a bit about organized forms of climate skepticism, very few studies focus on how disorganized climate skeptics seek an underdog position to speak truth to power. Hence, we investigate frank speech as updated ancient forms of truth-telling ‘parrhesia’, in two Swedish empirical sources that strongly question the climate change consensus. The first is a digital space for free speech, and the second a focus group of climate skeptics. Tracing ‘epistemic skepticism’ and ‘response skepticism’, we inquire into the attempts to counter scientific expertise and the different ways to refuse to act in accordance with officially sanctioned advice. We analyze the details of climate cynic truth-telling in relation to truth-telling as provocation, as ethical practice and as exhibition of a specific aim. We explore how the climate skeptic turns into a climate cynic, and discuss how alternative truth construction forms an anti-climate ethical selfhood. We end by problematizing how parrhesia is linked to ethical relativism, and argue that the recognition of climate cynicism facilitates our understanding of how conflicting political realities about climate change are produced.

Arendt’s Apology

In 1967, Hannah Arendt published an essay with the deceptively simple title “Truth and Politics” (1967). Most scholarly discussions of her essay consider her distinction between a traditional political art of limited, deliberate, strategic lying and modern, organised, global lying and self-deception and then evaluate her qualified defence of the virtues of mendacity. This article suggests, however, that her essay has a much broader ambit: viz., to defend the political value of truth-telling. The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate that she formulates her essay as an apology of the truth-teller in politics and of her own truth-telling in her controversial report of the Eichmann trial. It first surveys the personal motives of Arendt’s political defence of frank speech. It shows that in developing this defence she significantly revises her scepticism about the value of truth-telling in politics. She does so by identifying three different types of truth-teller with distinctive political roles: philosophers who exemplify the truth in their own lives, citizens who see the world from other people’s perspectives, and poets and historians whose stories reconcile citizens to the past. Finally, it argues that the tragic political perspective Arendt sought to revive requires acknowledging value of the emotions in making political judgments.

Funkce výrazu παρρησία a charakteristické příklady jeho uplatnění v homiliích Jana Chrýsostoma na Skutky apoštolů

The article consists of two parts. In the first one, it surveys usage of the word παρρησία and its verbal derivatives from the beginning in the late 5th century BC to the New Testament times. It deals with the political function of the expression in the Athenian democracy, with its subsequent shift to the private sphere and its value in the Hellenistic philosophy, and finally, with its satiric dimension. Then, it indicates some modification of its usage in the Septuagint and other works of Hellenistic Judaism and examines the meanings of the word in individual works of the New Testament. In the second part, the article illustrates how John Chrysostom used the expression in his 55 homilies on the Acts of the Apostles. It concentrates on the instances where the commentator exploited the classical meaning of the word, which refers to the frankness of public speech as well as to the use of frank speech in admonishing ethical discourse. These occurrences exemplify the in u- ence of Chrysostom’s secular rhetorical education to his exegetical perspective.

John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching by David Rylaarsdam

Reviewed by: John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching by David Rylaarsdam Paul R. Kolbet David Rylaarsdam John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 Pp. xxvi + 317. $105.00. One of the more welcome developments of the last decade or so in early Christian studies has been the sustained attention sermons long neglected have received. After all, this is a vast body of ancient literature that has been overlooked too often or only consulted as evidence confirming what has been discovered elsewhere. David Rylaarsdam’s monograph marks a significant advance not only in our understanding of John Chrysostom, but also of early Christian sermons in [End Page 635] general, and of the strategies employed by Christian leaders as they made their own the practices of Greco-Roman philosophers and rhetoricians. Rylaarsdam’s analysis yields a strongly sympathetic and positive reading of Chrysostom. It is not a skeptical account that draws heavily on evidence produced by Chrysostom’s powerful enemies. As with any true believing martyr, which Chrysostom no doubt was, it is not always evident what exactly it was that was so important that it was judged at the time to be worth dying for. This is a truly useful book for establishing Chrysostom’s intellectual horizon and recovering his best intentions. Rylaarsdam seeks to correct and overturn what he takes to be a mistaken and too common picture of John Chrysostom as an “anti-intellectual” scolding moralist whose fate resulted from an unfortunate combination of a “prickly personality” and “political naïveté” (10, 282). He accomplishes this by tracing the theological use of specific Greek terms found in the Hellenistic rhetorical and philosophical tradition through an impressively broad swath of Chrysostom’s writings. Synkatabasis (“accommodation” or “adaption”) does the most work here as an essential aspect of classical psychagogy (“soul-leading”). One of the great virtues of this approach is that it is not burdened by an unfounded opposition between Hellenism and Christianity. Instead, we have here a Chrysostom who masters his Hellenistic inheritance and uses it for Christian purposes with little or no ambivalence about that. Rylaarsdam challenges historicist readings of Chrysostom to take greater account of his theology and theologians to include Chrysostom within theological discussions as a legitimate intellectual. The slogan here is “neither theology nor rhetoric alone” (117). Rylaarsdam’s own theological fluency is evident in several passages, but that in no way prevents him from working carefully with original texts in their historical contexts on their own terms. What others have seen as a lack of theology, Rylaarsdam describes as an out-working of Chrysostom’s psychagogic theory where—following Paul “becoming all things to all people” (1 Cor 9.22)—Chyrsostom adapts his speech pastorally to the level and needs of his all too ordinary audience (214–15). Where others have seen superficial, chiding moralism, Rylaarsdam sees a fully worked out theology that implies its own ethics as a fully formed way of life (148). Where others have seen unvarnished hate speech directed at Jews, dissenting Christians, and any number of other people, Rylaarsdam finds the “frank speech” specified by the philosophical manuals for the moral reform of the most recalcitrant minds (274–82). In searching for Chrysostom’s theology, Rylaarsdam finds characterizations of his thinking as “Antiochene” to be remarkably uninstructive and overly simplistic (133, 140). Much to be preferred is the close reading of the many context specific adapted performances enshrined in Chrysostom’s texts. Shining through the—at times, murky—evidence is, according to Rylaarsdam, a coherent theology of the incarnation where the unknowable, incorporeal God reveals himself by becoming in Christ all things to all people in forms that we can understand (continuing to extend beyond Christ’s human flesh to encompass liturgy, words, sacraments, images, saints’ lives, and relics). Rhetorical norms, as a consequence, are not just the shaping influence of how Christ presented his own ideas or of how he was to be presented by his followers, but govern how Chrysostom construes [End Page 636] the infinite God’s self-presentation to finite creatures. Chrysostom’s theology is...

Whistleblowing, Parrhesia and the Contestation of Truth in the Workplace

In this paper, we develop an approach to the study of whistleblowing as a critical practice that is involved in the contestation of truth and power in the workplace. We situate our analysis in the context of practice-based thinking and specify the social practice of whistleblowing with reference to Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘parrhesia’ (frank speech). We then introduce the case of Guido Strack, a former European Union official who worked as section leader at the Office des Publications Officielles des Communautés Européenne from 1995 to 2002. Strack spoke out against malpractice in the EU in 2001 and officially reported alleged financial misconduct in 2002. In our analysis, we focus on the interplay between and effects of different modes of truth-telling in the context of this specific organization – a context marked by the uneasy coexistence of different normative and discursive frames. We argue that the parrhesiastic modality of truth-telling threatens the established ‘working solutions’ that reconcile the tensions inherent in the regime of practices and thus introduces a ‘critical opening’ that harbours the potential for both personal and organizational transformation. We conclude by highlighting the potential of a nuanced understanding of parrhesia for studying ‘critical practices’ more generally.

Politics of change: the discourses that inform organizational change and their capacity to silence.

Changes in healthcare organizations are inevitable and occurring at unprecedented rates. Such changes greatly impact nurses and their work, yet these experiences are rarely explored. Organizational change discourses remain grounded in perspectives that explore and explain systems, often not the people within them. Change processes in healthcare organizations informed by such organizational discourses validate only certain perspectives and forms of knowledge. This fosters exclusionary practices, limiting the capacity of certain individuals or groups of individuals to effectively contribute to change discourses and processes. The reliance on mainstream organizational discourses in healthcare organizations has left little room for the exploration of diverse perspectives on the subject of organizational change, particularly those of nurses. Michel Foucault's work challenges dominant discourse and suggest that strong reliance's on specific discourses effectively disqualify certain forms of knowledge. Foucault's writings on disqualified knowledge and parrhesia (truth telling and frank speech) facilitate the critical exploration of discourses that inform change in healthcare organizations and nurses capacities to contribute to organizational discourses. This paper explores the capacity of nurses to speak their truths within rapidly and continuously changing healthcare organizations when such changes are often driven by discourses not derived from nursing knowledge or experience.

W poszukiwaniu utraconej bezczelności. „Ferdydurke” i cynizm

This article is an attempt to interpret Witold Gombrowicz’s first novel in the context of cynicism, which is first conceptualized within the Foucauldian tradition as a practice of “frank speech” (parrhesia), and then, according to Peter Sloterdijk’s critical philosophy, as a form of modern consciousness based on inverted idealism. The opposition between an ancient subversive cynicism and its modern schizoid form allows one to analyze the complexity of Ferdydurke. In the course of interpretation it turns out that there are some intersecting planes: the protagonist searches in vain for lost insolence, but it is the author who manages to find it at the end of the novel.