The butterfly catcher

On Foucault, parrhēsia, and other provocations

From 1982-1984, Michel Foucault gave a series of public lectures at the Collège de France in which he pursued a single word, parrhēsia, from its first appearance in Euripides through Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and the Cynics to the Septuagint, the Acts of the Apostles, John Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nyssa—a span of about eight hundred years. It is traditional philology of the most satisfying sort. The lectures have been wonderfully edited by Frédéric Gros and translated by Graham Burchell under the two-volume header The Government of Self and Others, of which I have read the second volume, The Courage of Truth. I am waiting on the first. Notes for lectures that serve as a kind of bridge between the first and second year, delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, in late 1983, can be found here.

Foucault’s lectures on parrhēsia give the impression of a man in determined pursuit of a butterfly. He will chase the butterfly for miles, over centuries, wielding a wispy net, until he has it pinned to the page. In his determined pursuit of a single word, building on prior work by classists and theologians alike, Foucault pierces through the contradiction at the heart of Athenian democracy, a contradiction that applies to social media and the din of online platforms today, and winds up giving a history of what it means to pursue truth and the true life, beginning with the Cynics and ending in Christian mysticism.

There are four types of true speaking in classical Greek thought, he says: that of the prophet, who speaks for the gods and not for himself; that of the teacher transmitting technical instruction or facts; that of the sage, who gives wisdom when sought out, but otherwise lives in withdrawal and silence; and that of the parrhesiast, which is something entirely different.¹

The word parrhēsia, or speaking freely and boldly, is used in two senses in classical Greek, a positive and a negative one. In the negative sense, Foucault says in the Berkeley lectures, it is synonymous with athuroglossos and athurostomia, that is, having a “mouth without a door,” chattering, gossiping, or babbling anything that comes to mind without regard for rational discourse or the truth. In the positive sense, parrhēsia means courageous truth-telling. This sense has two additional requirements: in contrast to rhetoric, which is the art of speaking persuasively even if the speaker does not believe what he says, the parrhesiast must be speaking, clearly and without dodging, without covering anything up, what is genuinely his own belief and opinion, which he states as his own. Further, unlike a teacher who instructs a student in geometry, who is saying true things but without risk², parrhēsia requires risk.

For there to be parrhēsia, you recall—I stressed this last year—the subject must be taking some kind of risk [in speaking] this truth which he signs as his opinion, his thought, his belief, a risk which concerns his relationship with the person to whom he is speaking. For there to be parrhēsia, in speaking the truth one must open up, establish, and confront the risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him to conduct which may even be extremely violent. So it is the truth subject to risk of violence. For example, in the First Philippic, after having said that he is speaking meta parrhēsias (with frankness), Demosthenes [adds]: I am well aware that, by employing this frankness, I do not know what the consequences will be for me of the things I have just said.³

It is possible for the parrhesiast to frame his attempt in the form of what Foucault calls “the parrhesiastic game,” by saying explicitly that he is going to engage in parrhēsia, that he will tell the truth to the Assembly or to the tyrant, knowing that it will upset them, and that he might be severely punished as a result.⁴ This is an appeal to either the Assembly or the tyrant to match the parrhesiast’s courage in speaking—parrhēsia being a sign of what Aristotle calls “greatness of soul” in the Nicomachean Ethics—with their own courage and greatness of soul in hearing an unpleasant truth.

The technician’s and teacher’s truth-telling brings together and binds; the parrhesiast’s truth-telling risks hostility, war, hatred, and death. And if the parrhesiast’s truth may unite and reconcile, when it is accepted and the other person agrees to the pact and plays the game of parrhēsia, this is only after it has opened up an essential, fundamental, and structurally necessary moment of the possibility of hatred and a rupture.⁵

As Socrates’ situation illustrates, while the philosopher was able to successfully play the parrhesiast several times in his life, including in 409 B.C. when he was prytanis,⁶ in the end, after accusations from Meletus that he was corrupting the Athenian youth through his questions and teaching, the Assembly voted for his death.

That accusation and vote, I think, exemplify the fundamental conflict that Foucault traces in Greek thought between parrhēsia and Athenian democracy, which is also a conflict between the two meanings of parrhēsia. On the one hand, Athens prided itself on being a democracy where anyone could say anything, even foreigners and slaves, in contrast to other cities where parrhēsia was only the birthright of citizens born to families not in disgrace. But where anyone can say anything, and everyone does in fact say everything, regardless of truth, merit, or usefulness—this is parrhēsia in its negative sense of babble—there is no way to distinguish truthful speakers worth listening to from liars, flatterers, and those jockeying for power and personal gain. (Note that this is the unsolved, likely unsolvable problem of TikTok, Twitter, and similar platforms.) To do so requires some degree of what Foucault calls “ethical differentiation,” some way of lifting the worthier speakers above the noise. But this does not exist in Athenian democracy, and in fact is opposed to it—of which more in a moment.

Worse, in a democracy, where the will of the majority prevails, more people will prefer the pleasant words of flattering orators, even if those orators lead the city into disaster, than the painful words of parrhesiasts. For this reason there is a sense, among those Greek authors writing about parrhēsia and democracy, that it is dangerous to practice the positive, courageous form of parrhēsia in a democracy, where one is likely to offend a vindictive majority of listeners who by being a majority have the power to end the speaker’s life. Paradoxically, it can be safer to practice parrhēsia in the role of a counselor to a tyrant, insofar as that tyrant is an individual who can be taught wisdom and discernment, and who may choose, as an individual, to rise to the demands of the parrhesiastic game.⁷

Athens had a habit of voting for the ostracization of any particularly eminent or virtuous citizen, not because of a crime or offense but “because his prestige, his excellence, and the personal qualities of which he has given proof raise him too far above other citizens.”⁸ Ostracization could be, and was, orchestrated by individuals to destroy political rivals; Plutarch notes that it was also generally used to vent envy and jealousy. The option to ostracize a citizen came up once a year, and if the decision received six thousand votes, recorded by writing the name of the person to be ostracized on a potsherd (ostrakon), the targeted Athenian was exiled from the city for ten years on pain of death. I am reminded of Plutarch’s account of the ostracization of Aristides, who was called “The Just” for his high degree of virtue, not mentioned by Foucault:

Now at the time of which I was speaking, as the voters were inscribing their ostraka, it is said that an unlettered and utterly boorish fellow handed his ostrakon to Aristides, whom he took to be one of the ordinary crowd, and asked him to write Aristides on it. He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. ‘None whatever,’ was the answer, ‘I don’t even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called ‘The Just’.’ On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back. Finally, as he was departing the city, he lifted up his hands to heaven and prayed—a prayer the opposite, as it seems, of that which Achilles made—that no crisis might overtake the Athenians which should compel the people to remember Aristides.⁹

Ostracization was one way of solving the problem that unequal merit presented to Athenian democracy, according to Aristotle. He makes this observation in two different ways. On the one hand, ostracization could prevent an ambitious person from becoming powerful enough to seize control of the government, and thereby preserve democracy. On the other hand, if a truly virtuous person were to arise in Athens, the only reasonable thing for Athenians to do would be to make that person king and obey him, thereby destroying democracy. If Athenian democracy were to recognize and honor virtuous and worthy people rather than exiling them, creating the grounds of ethical differentiation that make it possible for courageous parrhēsia to be elevated above the babble, then Athens would no longer be a democracy. This was the fundamental inconsistency between parrhēsia and democracy.¹⁰ (Not mentioned is the counterbalancing fact that, without courageous parrhēsia and equal courage in the Assembly to hear the truth, a democracy tends to crumble and be taken over by tyrants like Pisistratus, the oligarchs of the Thirty, or invading forces. The Athenian form of democracy is, in other words, a fairly unstable structure.)

In the conflict between the individual parrhesiast and the Athenian democracy as represented by the Assembly, while the individual may succeed in making himself heard now and then, in the long run the majority drifts toward rhetoric and away from truth. Ostracism was not the worst outcome. Here is Socrates, in Benjamin Jewett’s translation of Plato, defending himself at the trial that results in his death:

How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was—such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth [alēthēs]. But many as their falsehoods were, there was one of them which quite amazed me—I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency… unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth [alēthēs]; for then I do indeed admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs!

He is not, of course, successful in his defense, losing his life by approximately thirty votes.

For reasons of length I will not follow Foucault on the passage of parrhēsia through the Cynics, who did not bother to write very much down, and were more written about than otherwise. They did, however, try to embody the truth, to live out parrhēsia in addition to speaking it, which is the necessary turn for what follows.

Near the end of the last lecture, the second hour of March 28, 1984, Foucault notes the final form of parrhēsia in the positive sense, in the Christian tradition. It has inherited much of the classical Greek meaning, as shown by John Chrysostom’s On the Providence of God: “Think what profit watchful men have undoubtedly drawn from these examples, seeing an invincible soul, a wisdom which refuses to be enslaved, a tongue full of courageous boldness [parrhēsia].”¹¹ He says of this passage from Chrysostom: “You see that the word parrhēsia refers to one’s courage in the face of persecutors, a courage one exercises for oneself, but also for others, and those one wishes to persuade, convince, or strengthen in their faith.” But Christian parrhēsia also involves, in addition to courage in the face of persecution, “a confidence in God… which enables an apostle or a martyr to speak the truth with which he has been entrusted.”¹²

This confidence brings verticality, what Foucault describes as “a kind of ascending impulse of this pure soul which lifts it up to the Almighty,” to what had previously been a horizontal relationship. “So parrhēsia will no longer be situated, if you like, on the [horizontal] axis of the individual’s relations to others, of the person with courage vis-à-vis those who are mistaken. It is now situated on the vertical axis of a relation to God.”¹³ He cites Philo and the Septuagint’s use of the word in translating the Old Testament, specifically תִּתְעַנָּ֑ג in Job 22:26, הוֹפִֽיַע in Psa 94:1, and תִּתֵּ֥ן קֹולָֽהּ (my best guess) in Proverbs 1:20.¹⁴

I think he misses a tiny thing here, which is that the change is not so much a temporal one, a gradual shift in usage, as an abrupt hybridization of the coexistent Hebraic and Hellenic traditions, which Erich Auerbach described four decades earlier in “Odysseus’ Scar” in Mimesis. Looking at the Homeric and Old Testament epics, Auerbach observes of Homer that the narrative is continuous, foregrounded, horizontal, while “[t]he greater the separateness and horizontal disconnection of the stories [of the Old Testament]… in relation to each other, the stronger is their general vertical connection, which holds them all together and which is entirely lacking in Homer. Each of the great figures of the Old Testament, from Adam to the prophets, embodies a moment of this vertical connection.”¹⁵ I suspect that the vertical change in parrhēsia at the point of the Septuagint, somewhere in the second century B.C., is entirely due to its use to translate incommensurate Hebrew words, in addition to what I am guessing are interpolations in Psalm 12:6 and Proverbs 20:9 and probably other instances, and that all subsequent shifts in meaning refer back to those extremely specific translation choices in that specific text.¹⁶

At any rate, Foucault suggests that this modified sense of parrhēsia is at the root of the Christian mystical tradition, summarizing the vertical relationship expressed by the word in this way:

To whoever has sufficient confidence in God, to whoever has a heart pure enough to open itself to God, God will respond with a movement which will assure that person’s salvation and allow them access to an eternal face-to-face relationship with [Him]…. Only by deciphering the truth of self in this world, deciphering oneself with mistrust of oneself and the world, and in fear and trembling before God, will enable us to have access to the true life. It was by this reversal, which put the truth of life before the true life that Christian asceticism fundamentally modified an ancient asceticism which always aspired to live both the true life and the life of truth at the same time, and which, in Cynicism at least, affirmed the possibility of leading this true life of truth.¹⁷

He then concludes his lecture with the last words he will ever speak in public:

There you are, listen, I had things to say to you about the general framework of these analyses. But, well, it is too late. So, thank you.¹⁸

At this point I should emphasize that Foucault’s accounts of the word’s usage have been descriptive, with no unscholarly endorsement either of the Cynics’ approval of incest or of what he writes here, and no insertion of personal views.¹⁹ This is simply where the butterfly has led him. All he has done is follow. It is nevertheless a surprise to find him directing his attention to such a place, at the end of his life: the living of a true life and the discernment of truth; the Socratic origins of philosophy in the care of the soul; and the Catholicism that he was raised in, that he rejected, yet never stopped exploring.

It is pure speculation on my part, but the original drift of the work seems to be to present Socrates, the father of philosophy, and to a lesser extent others, like Diogenes, as a figure in the pre-Christian era embodying most of the characteristics attributed to Christ, supplanting the usefulness of Christ as a model of virtue. (The latter is, whether for reasons of historicity or superfluity, notably absent from the text, referred to only once in a description of the Cynic Peregrinus, who followed “the person Lucian calls the sophist crucified in Palestine.”²⁰ ) And yet the final impression given by the lecture series is that of the Christian mystic as the culmination and perfection of the philosophical tradition of pursuing truth and the true life, which is so uncharacteristic of the author that I am doubtful that the impression I have received is correct.

Although it was the path taken, I am not persuaded that the word parrhēsia, even in all its meanings, is sufficient to describe the path to the true life. There is something essential missing. To put the pin in the butterfly, so to speak, here is Simone Weil:

Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul, and social degradation, all at the same time, is a nail whose point is applied at the very center of the soul…. The man to whom such a thing happens has no part in the operation. He struggles like a butterfly pinned alive into an album. But through all the horror he can continue to want to love. There is nothing impossible in that, no obstacle, one might almost say no difficulty. For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause the soul to faint, does not touch the acquiescent part of the soul, consenting to a right direction.

It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul….

He whose soul remains ever turned toward God though the nail pierces it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe…. It is at the intersection of creation and its Creator. This point of intersection is the point of intersection of the arms of the Cross.²¹

Socrates expresses care and concern for others in the last moments of his life, and a wise resignation to death, expecting to be cared for by the gods and to find friends in the other life hereafter; but he does not go this far. To apply Weil, and to make present what was absent in Foucault, it is not enough to walk around saying “Truly, truly,” and speaking of God. It is not enough to suffer, which any animal can do. To live the kind of true life that can renew the world, that has an excess and overflow of true life, it is necessary but not sufficient to reject both the political authorities who laugh at the idea of truth and wash their hands of the violence they permit, and the religious authorities who delight in stoning women and persecuting others. It is necessary but not sufficient to bear the penalty for that rejection.

What is essential²² is the love that, hearing a friend deny you as you are taken to be spat on and scourged, persists in loving; the love that will, days later, after intense suffering, after a death, prepare breakfast for that friend; the love that wills God’s forgiveness for the hand that drives the nail into one’s own. Weil thinks this is easy. I think this is nearly impossible.

But the provocation of Christianity is its assertion that this is not only possible but in fact has already been done, and that one person has lived a true life in this way, with such a surplus (John 10:10) that that life has become accessible to all. Recall what Aristotle says in Book III, 1288 of Politics should be done to such a man, who surpasses everyone else in virtue and merit: “Hence it only remains for the community to obey such a man, and for him to be sovereign not in turn but absolutely.”

And so that is one answer to the problem of governing self and others, one way of attending to and caring for the psuche—butterfly and soul.

Apologies to paid subscribers for the delay on the February essay. It required about a thousand pages of reading, of which I have two hundred left. There will be two paid essays in March. January’s essay was On publishing nonfiction.

1. Michel Foucault, trans. Graham Burchell, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 25.

2. He jokes about this—the book is transcribed from cassette tapes recording his live college lecture, cross-checked against his lecture notes—saying, “Everyone knows, and I know first of all, that you do not need courage to teach.”

3. Ibid. 11.

4. Examples of this “challenge-blackmail” given much later in the lectures include Demosthenes in the Third Olynthiac, 3.3, 22, 32: “I must ask you to bear with me if I speak frankly, considering only whether I am speaking the truth, and speaking with the object that things may go better in the future; for you see how the popularity-hunting of some of our orators has led us into this desperate predicament…. But ever since this breed of orators appeared who ply you with such questions as “What would you like? What shall I propose? How can I oblige you?” the interests of the state have been frittered away for a momentary popularity. The natural consequences follow, and the orators profit by your disgrace… You cannot, I suppose, have a proud and chivalrous spirit, if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit. …I should not wonder if I got rougher treatment from you for pointing out these faults than the men who are responsible for them. For you do not allow liberty of speech on every subject, and indeed I am surprised that you have allowed it now.”

Also Demosthenes in the Third Philippic, 2-4: “…[T]his condition of our affairs may be attributed to many causes and not just to one or two, but a careful examination will convince you that it is above all due to those who study to win your favour rather than to give you the best advice. Some of them, Athenians, interested in maintaining a system which brings them credit and influence, have no thought for the future [and therefore think you should have none either]; while others, by blaming and traducing those in authority, make it their sole aim that our city shall concentrate her attention on punishing her own citizens, while Philip shall be free to say and do whatever he pleases. But such methods of dealing with public affairs, familiar though they are to you, are the cause of your calamities. I claim for myself, Athenians, that if I utter some home-truths with freedom, I shall not thereby incur your displeasure…. Hence the result is that in the Assembly your self-complacency is flattered by hearing none but pleasant speeches, but your policy and your practice are already involving you in the gravest peril. Therefore, if such is your temper now, I have nothing to say; but if, apart from flattery, you are willing to hear something to your advantage, I am ready to speak. For though the state of our affairs is in every way deplorable, and though much has been sacrificed, nevertheless it is possible, if you choose to do your duty, that all may yet be repaired.”

I pulled the texts above from Perseus to see the original context of the brief quotes Foucault gave, and winced; the speeches are still sharp and applicable and worth reading in their entirety.

5. Foucault 24-5.

6. Plato has Socrates tell this story in his Apology (for those without a classics background, “apology” originally meant “defense,” and kept this meaning until the 1700s), 32b-d, trans. Benjamin Jowett: “I was the only one of the Prytaneis who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and when the orators threatened to impeach and arrest me, and have me taken away, and you called and shouted, I made up my mind that I would run the risk, having law [nomos] and justice [dikē] with me, rather than take part in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death.

This happened in the days of the democracy. But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was in power, they sent for me and four others into the rotunda, and bade us bring Leon of Salamis, as they wanted to execute him. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were always giving with the view of implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and then I showed, not in words only, but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous [non-dikaios] or unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might have lost my life, had not the power of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end.”

7. Foucault 40-44, 60-61.

8. Ibid. 50.

9. Plutarch, trans. Bernadotte Perin. Aristides, 7.5-6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914). Perseus. Earlier sections of chapter 7 describe ostracization.

10. Foucault 50-52.

11. Ibid 331-2.

12. Ibid 332, 337.

13. Ibid 326-7. Socrates, like other Greeks, traveled to the oracle at Delphi to communicate with the gods, and spoke to a human oracle; this relationship remains horizontal.

14. I can’t read Hebrew, but isolated these words by comparing the interlinear Septuagint with the interlinear Hebrew for all of the Abbott-Smith cross-references for parrhēsiázomai.

15. Erich Auerbach, trans. Willard R. Trask. Mimesis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, 17.

16. Someone who can read Hebrew should correct me if my guess about interpolation is incorrect.

17. Foucault 337.

18. Ibid 338.

19. To be even stricter, it should be noted that Foucault, along with other French writers and intellectuals—among them Deleuze, Althusser, Barthes, Lyotard, Derrida, de Beauvoir—signed a 1977 petition to the French parliament to abolish age of consent laws and decriminalize pedophilia, so it is entirely possible that he was sympathetic.

20. Foucault 181.

21. Simone Weil, trans. Emma Craufurd, “The Love of God and Affliction,” in Waiting for God (NY: HarperPerennial, 2009) 82.

22. There is a brief mention of it in Epictetus' observation that the Cynic “must be beaten like an ass and, being beaten, must love those who beat him as though he were the father and brother of all.” Discourses III. xxii, quoted in Foucault 300. Otherwise it is absent. Parrhesiasts are not required to love their executioners.