Parrhesia: Kynicism and truth-telling

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Rebecca Higgie
2000: 53). It involves a strong relationship between belief and truth a parrhesi- ast
2
does not speak what he or she does not believe, unlike a rhetorician, who can disguise both opinion and truth. Parrhesia is blunt and risky truth-telling: no amount of harm or insult to the parrhesiast or the parrhesiast’s interlocutors can serve as an excuse to refrain from telling the truth. Furthermore, the parrhesiast is always less powerful than the one to whom they speak parrhesia comes from below as it were, and is directed towards above (Foucault 2001 [1983]: Simply telling the truth does not make one a parrhesiast. To clarify this,
Foucault defines three other types of classical truth-tellers. The first is the prophet who tells the truth not in his own name, as does the parrhesiast, but as a mediator between the principle speaker and his auditors (Flynn 1988: 104), such as God and the people. The prophet is more ambiguous than the parrhe- siast, potentially hiding or veiling as much as or more than is revealed. The second truth-teller, the sage feels no obligation to share wisdom. Their truth is spoken in general terms. The parrhesiast, on the other hand, has a duty to speak. The third is the “teacher-technician,” whose truth-telling is a technical skill learned through training. The teacher-technician aims for clarity and, like the parrhesiast, has a duty to speak the truth. However, this group faces no danger in their truth-telling: teacher-technicians are always superior, their knowledge coming from above and being directed below. The ancient Athenians saw the acceptance and tolerance of parrhesia as a sign that political life was free from tyranny. More than an ideal about speaking frankly, it was a democratic practice extended to all Greek citizens. Assembly debate granted citizens two rights isegoria or equality, the right of every citizen to contribute to public life on an equal footing, and parrhesia. While isegoria granted every citizen the right to speak, it did not guarantee the quality or integrity of the speaker. Athenians were said to be particularly suspicious of self-interest disguised by flattery and expert oratory, fearing that such speech could corrupt the deliberations, leading to the neglect of the public interest and, perhaps, to disastrous decisions and actions (Monoson 2000: 59). Parrhesia was seen as a countermeasure to this. The very invocation of parrhesia asserted the personal integrity of the speaker because the risk involved in speaking frankly was seen to affirm one’s commitment to truth (Monoson 2000: Louisa Shea argues that parrhesia was a notion transformed by the Cynics from this state-sanctioned right of a few to speak on matters of governance to the
2 The spelling of parrhesiast varies between sources. In the English translation of Foucault’s
Fearless Speech, it is spelled “parrhesiastes” and is rarely, if ever, used in the plural. In Flynn’s chapter on Foucault’s discussion of parrhesia in The Last Foucault, the spelling “parrhesiast” singular) and “parrhesiasts” (plural) is used. I have chosen to use Flynn’s spelling.

Kynical dogs and cynical masters 189
prerogative, indeed duty, of all human beings . . . to speak one’s mind in any and all circumstances, on public as well as private matters, whether formally invited to do so or not (2010: 11). To the Cynics, parrhesia was paramount, above even personal or social preservation. When Alexander the Great inquired why Diogenes was searching through a pile of bones, Diogenes responded that he was looking for the bones of Alexander’s father but could not distinguish them from those of a slave (Wilson 2009: 73). He risked death at the hand of the powerful sovereign because the parrhesiast prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself (Foucault 2001 [1983]: 17). While Sloterdijk and Chaloupka both identify the kynic’s moral streak
(Chaloupka 1999: 208), they also stress that it differs dramatically from the Platonic, Socratic and more contemporary notions of morality. Kynical or parrhesias- tic morality is not about what is right or wrong, but rather what is true, and frequently the moral struggle towards the truth involves challenging another morality. Furthermore, kynicism’s commitment to the truth should not be mistaken as a sense of idealistic hope or indeed a solution that brings about more truthful or honourable conduct. While maintaining that there are better ways of doing things, kynics do not provide advice about how this might be achieved.
Diogenes’s impoverished life may have illustrated his commitment to live according to his doctrine but his public performance of this commitment was a subversive act that exposed social hierarchies rather than replaced them. As Bosman observes, Whether Diogenes intended his ideal audience to turn to the radical Cynic lifestyle is debatable his real audiences certainly did not. Rather, they would typically have responded the way audiences of political satire in repressive societies normally do they returned to society, albeit with a wider perspective on themselves and a measure of irony towards their world, and feeling more in equilibrium because of it. . . . The Cynic position induces laughter of excessive nature to those able to recognize the artificiality of societal conventions, at the same time excluding those who remain merely shocked at the lack of propriety. (2006: Diogenes is said to have satirically subverted Plato’s claim that man is a two-footed, featureless animal by plucking the feathers from a chicken and bringing it to Plato’s school, proclaiming, This is Plato’s man (Laërtius 6.6).
Diogenes provided challenge, not theory. Instead of providing solutions to the injustices or untruths that kynicism aims to subvert, it shows that there are other ways to live – other bases for moral claims, other ways to frame expectations, other ways to imagine politics (Chaloupka 1999: 209). Instead of providing hope, solutions to political and social injustice or amoral code, kynicism seeks only truth.

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