Continental Philosophy Review (2006) 39: 113–134

DOI: 10.1007/s11007-006-9009-2 c Springer 2006



Philosophical parrhesia as aesthetics of existence

JAKUB FRANĚK
Political Science Department, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill,
MA 02467
(E-mail: franek@bc.edu)

Abstract. According to some interpreters, Foucault’s encounter with the Greek and Roman
ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly
from Foucault’s last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault’s
turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as
its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue
that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be interpreted as Foucault’s philosophical apology,
as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism,
which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault
somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as
ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault’s apology
and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his
death.

Abbreviations: HS1-3 – History of Sexuality 1-3, OGE – On the Genealogy of Ethics: An

Overview of Work in Progress, ECS – The Ethics of Care for the Self as Practice of Freedom,
84/x,y – 1984 (spring semester) lectures at Collège de France (unofficial transcript), whereas
“x” indicates the number of the lecture and “y” the page of the transcript.

“For centuries, we have been convinced that between our ethics, our per-
sonal ethics, our everyday life, and the great political and social and eco-
nomic structure, there were analytical relations, and that we couldn’t change
anything, for instance, in our sex life or our family life, without ruining
our economy, our democracy, and so on. I think that we have to get rid of
the idea of an analytic or necessary link between ethics and other social or
economic or political structures. . . . What strikes me is the fact, that in our
society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not
to individuals, or to life. . . . Why couldn’t everyone’s life become a work
of art?” (OGE, 350).

Foucault’s suggestion that we should rid ourselves of the idea of a necessary

link between ethics and other social, political, or economic structures is sur-
prising – to say the least. Foucault is famous for claiming in the first volume of
The History of Sexuality – La volonté de savoir1 that power is omnipresent and
inescapable and that all interpersonal relations are power relations. Perhaps
more importantly, the central topic of the latter two volumes of The History
114 JAKUB FRANĚK

of Sexuality, the very books that are the subject of the interview in which he
makes his surprising suggestion, is the relation between the ancient sexual
morality and political power. Foucault’s earlier works and even The Use of
Pleasure and The Care of the Self imply that ethics and politics simply cannot
be disentangled. When Foucault in some of the last interviews he gave before
his death (OGE, ECF) suggests that we should abandon the idea of a necessary
link between ethics and politics, it therefore seems as if he wanted to indicate
that his study of the Greeks, his “trip to Greece” as he called it, led him to
reconsider his previous work and to start a wholly new line of inquiry.
Various interpreters, both friendly and critical, have indeed interpreted
Foucault’s “turn to ethics” as a “turn away from politics.”2 Foucault himself,
however, suggests continuity between the last stage of his thought, and his
earlier works:

“After first studying the games of truth (jeux de verité) in their interplay with
one another, as exemplified by certain empirical sciences in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and then studying their interactions with power
relations as exemplified by punitive practices – I felt obliged to study the
games of truth in the relationship of self with self and the forming of oneself
as a subject, taking as my domain of reference and field of investigation
what might be called ‘the history of desiring man.”’(HS2, 6)

Drawing most of its conclusions from his 1984 lectures on parrhesia,3 this
paper argues that Foucault’s turn to the formation of subjectivity and to ethics
should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous line of inquiry,
but rather as its logical continuation, and as an attempt to solve some out-
standing problems. The main topic of Foucault’s enquiries, starting with his
dissertation, was the connection between power and knowledge. While his
earlier works are focused primarily either on power (for example Discipline
and Punish), or on knowledge (The Order of Things), La volonté de savoir
finally addresses the relation of power and knowledge directly and, at least to
some extent, conclusively. However, as his critics point out, by concluding his
inquiries on power and knowledge and by finally establishing a connection be-
tween them, Foucault seems to have arrived at a vicious circle. Power depends
on knowledge, the formation of which is in turn determined by power. The
omnipresence of power makes liberation or freedom simply impossible and
the inevitable nexus of power and knowledge implies that there is no indepen-
dent vantage point from which one could criticise the existing configuration
of the power-knowledge matrix. According to critics like Michael Walzer4
or Charles Taylor,5 this position is both theoretically untenable and politi-
cally irresponsible. This paper argues that the “discovery of ethics” enabled
Foucault to find a way out of the vicious circle of power and knowledge,
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 115

and to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological

nihilism.
The suggestion that we should get rid of the idea of a necessary connection
between ethics and other social, economical or political structures should be
interpreted in a much less dramatic way than I originally suggested. In La
volonté de savoir Foucault argues that power relations are not determined by
‘great institutional structures,’ but are rather shaped on a micro-level by local
techniques of power. It appears that in On Genealogy of Ethics Foucault does
not propose radical disentanglement of ethics and politics, but rather a strategic
shift from criticism of the great social, economic and political structures, to
the everyday exercise of power in our personal lives. A conscious change in
the way we exercise power in our everyday life (for instance in “our sex life
or our family life”) would affect the existing power-relations on the micro-
level of local techniques of power. Nevertheless, the institutional framework
of the existing political and economical system, which in any case is not
that important, is presumably flexible enough to accommodate the changes of
power relations on the micro-level.
Foucault envisions a similar strategic shift at the end of La volonté de savoir,
where he suggests that “[t]he rallying point for the counterattack against the
deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.”
(HS1, 157) At first glance, this may seem to be simply a suggestion to aban-
don the artificial and arbitrary category of sex or sex-desire and to stick to
the presumably more concrete and “real” categories of bodies and pleasures.
However, as McWhorter demonstrates,6 our bodies and pleasures (or at least
the way we perceive them) are no more real than sex; the meaning of “bodies”
and “pleasures,” like the meaning of all other concepts, is determined by the
rules of a discourse in which these concepts are used. To put it more broadly:
one cannot escape the local techniques of power in modern disciplinary soci-
ety simply by challenging the truths of scientific disciplines or knowledge-s
(savoirs), on which these techniques are based. What is needed is a much
more radical change in the relation between theory and practice or, to put it
in Foucauldian terms, between power and knowledge. And it seems that the
study of Greek ethics provided Foucault with inspiration for such a radical
transformation.
Greek sexual ethics, as Foucault interprets it in The Use of Pleasure, was
closely connected with politics.7 One could even say that politics, or the con-
cern of the Greeks for their political freedom, was the raison d’être of the
Greek ethics of moderation and self-mastery: “If it was so important [for the
Greeks] to govern desires and pleasures ... it was [so] because they wanted
to be free and to be able to remain so.” (HS2, 78) An incontinent man, a
man who is not a master of his own pleasures and desires, but rather their
116 JAKUB FRANĚK

slave, is likely to misuse the power of a political office and become a tyrant.
“[T]he exercise of political power required, as its own principle of internal
regulation, power over oneself.” (HS2, 81) The ethics of moderation as self-
mastery consisted of the exercise of practical reason and was subordinate to
the practical concern for the preservation of political freedom. Theoretical
reason or concern for metaphysical truth, according to Foucault, did not play
any role in the Greek ethics. This was changed by Plato, who in his erotic
dialogues in effect replaced the traditional concern for political freedom with
the concern for truth. For Plato, the primary objective of moderation is to
gain access to truth rather than to be a good citizen.(HS2, part V) Plato in-
troduced theoretical reason into Greek ethics and, at the same time, detached
the ethical inquiry from political concerns. Or, perhaps, I should rather say
that for Plato the political concerns cease to be the basis for the ethical re-
flection as the political values themselves become a subject of philosophical
scrutiny.
Plato, as the founder of the metaphysical tradition, introduced the desire for
knowledge, or the desire for truth, into moral and political thought. This desire
for knowledge, in the somehow perverse form of the desire for knowledge
about desire, is the driving force of the deployment of sexuality in modern
society, as Foucault describes it in La volonté de savoir. On a more general
level, we could say that Plato’s introduction of desire for truth into moral and
political thought led to the traditional claim of primacy of theory over practice
and to subordination of ethics and politics to metaphysics.
In La volonté de savoir Foucault challenges the traditional claim of primacy
of theory over practice, but does not offer any alternative. It seems that he
discovered such an alternative in the Greek ethics, which became the subject of
the belated sequel of La volonté de savoir. Foucault, who denied the existence
of metaphysical or any “objective” truth, was naturally attracted to Greek
ethics, which was based on purely practical and political concerns. (OGE,
ECS) Greek understanding of freedom as active participation in politics is
likewise closer to Foucault’s own understanding of freedom than the liberal
conception of freedom as absence of coercion.
Nevertheless, it is not the direct connection between the Greek ethics and
politics that Foucault finds so inspiring, but rather its aesthetic dimension:

“[T]he principal target of this kind of ethics was an aesthetic one. First,
this kind of ethics was only a problem of personal choice. Second, it was
reserved only for a few people in the population; it was not a pattern of
behaviour given to everybody. It was a personal choice for a small elite.
The reason for making this choice was the will to live a beautiful life, and
to leave to others memories of a beautiful existence.”(OGE, 341)8
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 117

It appears as if Foucault wanted to embrace the aesthetic form of Greek ethics,

while ignoring its grounding in political concerns. That, however, would be
absurd. Without its political foundations, ethics as aesthetics of existence
could easily cease to be ethical in the ordinary sense of the word. What else
would ensure that the artist of self-creation would respect others? Hardly a
concern for truth, since it is the traditional claim of the primacy of theory over
practice which Foucault challenges. Surprisingly enough, Foucault maintains
that the ethics as aesthetics of existence is connected to (or even grounded
in-?) concern for both freedom and truth. (Cf. ECS)
To understand the role of the ethical dimension in Foucault’s analysis of
power and knowledge, we have to turn our attention to his 1984 course on
parrhesia. Before we do so one more general remark is in place. The problem
of embracing the aesthetic form of Greek ethics while rejecting its political
foundation, as I described it above, is somewhat artificial. Foucault is not
suggesting that we should appropriate Greek ethics with or without its political
foundations:

“. . . you can’t find a solution of a problem in the solution of another problem

by other people. You see, what I want to do is not the history of solutions,
and that’s the reason why I don’t accept the word alternative. I would like
to do the genealogy, of problems, of problématiques.” (OGE, 343)

Foucault does not want to revive the Greek ethics, nor does he want to preach
some new ethical canon, some new moral code. What he finds inspiring is
rather the Greek approach to thinking about, or “problematising” of, ethical
questions.
I believe that Foucault’s 1984 course on parrhesia, which not only proved
to be the last course he taught before his death, but which was also planned
as the last in the series of courses on Greek thought, should be interpreted as
Foucault’s philosophical apology – as an attempt to explain and at the same
time conclude his life-long work. At the beginning of the first lecture of the
series Foucault suggests that the aim of the course is to tie together several
topics that have interested him already for some time:

“I believe that with that notion of parrhesia – with [its] political roots and
moral derivation ..... there is a possibility to pose the question of the subject
and of the truth from the point of view of a practice that we could call the
rule [gouvernement] of oneself and of others. .... It seems to me that by
examining a bit the notion of parrhesia we can see connecting together [se
nouer] the analysis of modes of truth-telling [veridiction], the study of the
techniques of governmentality, and the localisation [repérage] of the forms
of practices of the self.” (84/1, 15)
118 JAKUB FRANĚK

And he continues to claim that the junction between the modes of truth-telling,
techniques of governmentality, and the practices of the self, is at the core of
what he was always trying to do.
Parrhesia – free or frank speech, franc-parler – was the subject of
Foucault’s lectures already in 1983. However, while in 1983 Foucault taught
about parrhesia as a political practice,9 the 1984 course describes the displace-
ment of parrhesia to ethics. As Edward McGushin notes in his dissertation,
the original, political, meaning of parrhesia, which Foucault “excavates” from
various ancient texts, is in a way an “ideal concept” which is, to some extent,
Foucault’s own construct. It even seems that Foucault needed to construe this
ideal notion of parrhesia to be able to trace its displacement into ethics – and
to be able to address the relation of ethics and politics.
Let us now turn to Foucault’s definition of parrhesia, however artificial it
may be. Etymologically, parrhesia means an activity of ‘saying everything’
and parrhesiast is the one who ‘says everything.’ The term parrhesia was
used both with negative and positive connotations. Parrhesia in the negative or
pejorative sense, means to say whatever comes to one’s mind, without regard
to its reasonability or truth (84/1, 18), but also (and here the connotation
becomes even more negative) “to say whatever might be useful in the case
which one defends, whatever may serve the passion or interest of the speaker”
(84/1, 17). More important, however, is the positive usage of parrhesia. In
this sense, parrhesia means to say the whole truth, without dissimulation or
reserve, without hiding anything behind rhetorical ornaments. Nevertheless,
not all saying of the whole truth qualifies as parrhesia. The truth which the
parrhesiast announces must be his personal opinion. “The parrhesiast gives
his opinion, the parrhesiast says what he thinks, the parrhesiast in a certain
sense signs himself the truth which he pronounces and binds himself to this
truth.” (84/1, 20) The parrhesiast must also take certain risk by speaking the
truth. Typically, he is in a subordinate position to his addressee and the truth he
speaks is unpleasant, irritating or painful. By communicating an unpleasant
truth to his superior, the parrhesiast risks his relationship with his interlocutor
and, in extreme cases, even his life. Parrhesia requires certain courage. By
showing this courage, by telling openly an unpleasant truth and thus risking
the wrath of his interlocutor, the parrhesiast challenges his interlocutor to show
his courage and invites him to what Foucault calls a “parrhesiastic game.” If
he accepts the proposed game, the interlocutor, show must his courage by
listening to the parrhesiast without punishing him, no matter how painful the
truth he announces might be. The parrhesiastic game therefore requires certain
courage or magnanimity on the part of both interlocutors.
Parrhesia can be conceived of as a polar opposite of rhetoric. While a
rhetorician is “an effective liar (menteur) who constrains the others; the
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 119

parrhesiast would on the contrary be the courageous speaker of the truth

who risks himself and his relation with the other.” (84/1, 26) Parrhesia, in
contrast to the rhetoric, however, cannot be described as a technique or a pro-
fession. It is rather “an attitude, a way of being, which is related to truth,” a
“modality of truth saying” (modalité de veridiction) (84/1, 2), and as such it
should be defined in opposition to other modalities of truth-saying. Foucault
isolates (apart from parrhesia) three such modalities of truth saying, which
appear quite distinctively in Greek texts:10 the truth-saying of a prophet, the
truth saying of a sage, and the truth saying of a teacher or a technician.
The prophet does not speak in his own name; he is rather a mediator between
the god and the people who reveals what is hidden to most mortals, the future.
His revelations are always enigmatic and have to be further interpreted. The
sage, on the other hand, speaks in his own name, he reveals his wisdom. In this
respect, he is more similar to the parrhesiast than to the prophet. Nevertheless,
unlike the parrhesiast, the sage does not feel obliged to communicate his truth:
typically, he remains silent and speaks only when he is forced to do so; and
when he speaks, he usually speaks enigmatically. Sage’s truth concerns “the
form of the being itself of the things and of the world.” Parrhesiast’s truth, on
the other hand, refers to “what is in the singularity, in the singularity of indi-
viduals and situations and conjunctures” (84/1, 35), to what the Greeks called
éthos. (84/1, 40) “The parrhesiast does not reveal to his interlocutor what is,
he reveals to him or helps him to recognise, who he [the interlocutor] is.” The
technician transfers to his students or apprentices techné, knowledge in the
sense of know-how. This knowledge is not, strictly speaking, the technician’s
own opinion; it has been accumulated by previous practitioners, of this or
that techné.11 Each modality of truth-saying thus has its own field, or domain:
prophecy refers to destiny, sage’s truth saying refers to being, technician’s
refers to know-how or techné and parrhesiast’s truth-saying refers to éthos.
Parrhesia in the original or political sense was a highly valued right or a
privilege enjoyed by the free citizens of a polis. Foucault points out that Ion
in Euripides’s play of the same name did not want to return to Athens, if he
were to appear as a son of a father who was not an Athenian citizen and of an
unknown mother, since he would not be able to enjoy this privilege. Similarly,
Polynis in the Phoenicians says that exile is one of the toughest things one
can bear, because in exile one does not enjoy parrhesia, one does not have a
right to speak up, “one finds himself in a position of a slave, doulos of the
masters, and one cannot even defend oneself against their folly.” (84/2, 3)
Parrhesia was so highly valued, so precious a privilege, because it was the
basis of political freedom. To be free, to be able to participate in political life,
meant for the Greeks to be able to give one’s opinions and to participate in
collective decisions.
120 JAKUB FRANĚK

It could be objected that Foucault’s description of Athenian politics is

somewhat idealised. The deliberation at Athenian assembly, as it is described
for example in Plato’s dialogues, was conducted by the means of skilful per-
suasion, by rhetoric, rather than parrhesia. The point is that while Eurypides,
from whose plays Foucault construes his notion of political parrhesia, praises
and idealises Athenian democracy, Plato is one of its principle critics. Plato’s
critique of democracy, according to Foucault, belongs to a broader critical
movement, which he calls “crises of parrhesia.” (84/ 2, 4) This critique, which
Foucault draws from Pseudo-Xenophon’s Athenian Constitution, Aristotle’s
Politics, Plato’s Republic and other texts, describes the democratic parrhesia
as parrhesia in the negative sense. Parrhesia in the democratic regime is not a
privilege restricted to those “capable by their very origin, by their status, by
their position, to say truth and to speak in a way useful to the city” (84/2, 6) but
rather licence given to everyone, even foreigners and slaves, to say whatever
they want, whatever satisfies their interest or passions. Democratic regime is
on the other hand dangerous for the truly courageous parrhesiast. “The many”
(hoi poloi), who rule in democracy, are not capable of accepting the rules of
parrhesiastic game and pose real threat to the courageous parrhesiast. Fou-
cault invokes Plato’s image from Book 6 of the Republic of a democratic city
as a boat, in which the people are willing to listen to the orators who flatter
them, but would not to listen to the truth which they do not like, and react to
such truth with irritation and anger and expose those who say such truth to
vengeance and punishment (84/2, 8).
The “crises of parrhesia,” on the one hand, reveals democracy as an envi-
ronment completely hostile to parrhesia in the positive sense. On the other
hand,12 it praises tyranny or monarchy, which had been in the Greek literature
traditionally described as hostile to parrhesia, as a regime in which parrhe-
sia is possible. Tyranny can be more hospitable to parrhesia than democ-
racy because parrhesiastic game can take place only between two distinct
individuals.
Parrhesia can be effective in a monarchy because the truth the parrhesiast
communicates affects the soul, the psyché of the prince; it can influence the
“manner in which he [the prince] constitutes himself as a moral subject,” it
can influence his éthos. And the way in which the prince rules the country
in turn depends on his éthos (84/2, 52). Parrhesiast’s appeal is principally an
ethical appeal, which affects the soul of the interlocutor. Since the democratic
assembly lacks a “collective soul,” parrhesia cannot take place in democracy.
Foucault also says that the soul of the prince is capable of ethical differenti-
ation, which is the pre-condition of the development of his éthos (84/2, 47).
By ethical differentiation (différentiation ethique), Foucault means becoming
aware of oneself as a moral individual, gaining some sort of autonomy and
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 121

becoming capable of making moral judgements and of developing oneself as

a moral individual in one’s uniqueness. Parrhesia was said to be concerned
with “what is in the singularity, in the singularity of individuals and situations
and conjunctures.” Ethical differentiation hence seems to mean differentiation
of oneself as an individual, distancing oneself from the crowd, but also from
the polis or any other social group, as well as from the truths and opinions
prevailing in such a group.
The texts, which belong to what Foucault describes as “crises of parrhe-
sia,” lead to the transposition of parrhesia from politics to ethics. Or, rather,
they lead to the discovery of ethical differentiation and individual éthos as a
necessary medium for the political function of parrhesia in the positive sense.
(Parrhesia does not become a-political; however, the parrhesiast’s truth can
affect politics only by affecting the soul of the ruler who is capable of eth-
ical differentiation.) This transformation reveals three distinct dimensions,
or “poles” of parrhesia: the pole of aletheia and of saying truth, the pole of
politeia and of government, and the pole of the formation of éthos.13 These
three poles are at the same time “irreducible, and irreducibly tied to each
other.” (84/2, 57) The existence of the philosophical discourse from ancient
Greece to our days has been, according to Foucault, sustained by the ir-
reducibility and mutual interconnectedness of these three poles (84/2, 58).
Philosophical discourse, in contrast to scientific, political, or moral discourse,
cannot address any of these three poles without taking into account the other
two.

“[I]t can never ask the question of the truth, without asking about the
conditions of saying truth, which is the ethical differentiation that gives
the individual access to, which opens to the individual the access to that
truth; which also asks the question of the political structures within which
that saying of truth will have the right, the freedom, and the duty to be
pronounced.” (84/2, 59)

Foucault eventually modifies his description of the relation of philosophy to

the three poles of alethiea, polieteia, éthos. He distinguishes four basic philo-
sophical approaches, four ways of “connecting” these three poles. Each of
these approaches (which, again, should be conceived of as ideal-types, rather
than actual distinct traditions of philosophy) corresponds to one of modalities
of truth-saying that were defined earlier. The prophetic attitude in philosophy
promises and predicts future reconciliation of the modes of production of truth
(aletheia), of the exercise of power (politeia) and of the formation of morals
(éthos). The “sagely” attitude tries to unite the three poles in the present, it tries
to capture their fundamental unity. The technical approach to philosophy, on
the contrary, addresses the three poles separately. And finally, the parrhesiastic
122 JAKUB FRANĚK

approach to philosophy does not try to unite or detach the three poles, but in
turn preserves them in their necessary irreducibility and in their necessary re-
lation to each other. For the parrhesiastic philosophy it is impossible to think
of truth, power, or éthos without taking into account their necessary mutual
relations. (84/2, 62) The parrhesiastic approach to philosophy is thus the only
approach which really sustains both the necessary interconnectedness and the
mutual irreducibility of alethiea, politeia and ethos and, therefore, it is the
only authentically philosophical approach.
This approach to philosophy is also closest to Foucault’s own approach. In
the introductory lecture to the 1984 course Foucault claims that the junction
between the modes of the truth-telling, of the techniques of governmentality
and the practices of the self, has always been at the core of his endeavour.
This statement indicates that Foucault considers himself to be a parrhesiastic
philosopher – and/or philosophical parrhesiast (Cf. 84/3, 38). It also indicates
that the exploration of parrhesia is for Foucault not just a matter of academic
interest, but rather a way to explain himself, to explain what has always been
the objective of his inquiries. In the introductory lecture, Foucault also claims
that the interpretation of his thought as an attempt to reduce knowledge to
power misrepresents and caricatures his opinions. By defining the parrhesias-
tic approach to philosophy as an approach which acknowledges and sustains
the necessary tension and interdependence of aletheia, politeia and éthos,
Foucault in effect defends his own philosophy against the charges of reducing
knowledge to power.
This defence, however, remains at a fairly abstract level. How exactly
can the parrhesiastic philosophy sustain the tension between the three poles
(aletheia, politeia, éthos) without falling into some sort of a vicious circle?
Foucault’s preliminary answer to this question lies in his designation of the
“object” of the parrhesiastic truth, which always refers to “what is in the sin-
gularity, in the singularity of individuals and situations and conjunctures,” and
must be distinguished from the “useless truth” of the sage, which refers to
the “being of the things and of the world.” (84/1, 35) The parrhesiastic truth
is always context-dependent or situational. It is related to phronésis rather
than to sophia, to Kant’s reflective rather than determinative judgement, to
Nietzsche’s becoming rather than being. The contrast between the “useless”
truth of the perpetual or timeless forms of being, and the presumably “useful”
truth of what is in its singularity, also indicates the priority of ethical and/or
political questions over metaphysical or ontological questions.
In one of his interviews, Foucault suggests that the precondition of the care
of the self is knowledge of, or access to truth about, oneself. (ECS) Now,
however, he maintains that the parrhesiast reveals to his interlocutor who
he (the interlocutor) is. The parrhesiast seems to care about his interlocutor,
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 123

about the truth of his interlocutor’s self, rather than about his own self, to
shape others rather than himself as a work of art. Unless, of course, parrhesia
is the – or at least a – style of aesthetics of existence, which allows one to
shape his existence as a work of art without forgetting others, an aesthetics of
existence, which is at the same time ethics.
Parrhesia, or certain mode of parrhesia as taking care of oneself, as being
true to oneself by being truthful to others, is the theme of the third and fourth
lectures of Foucault’s 1984 course. These lectures are devoted to Socrates,
whom Foucault describes in concurrence with the traditional account as the
founder of the Western philosophy (84/3, 42), but also as the founder of
the “philosophical parrhesia.” (84/35, 38) (This is yet another indication that
philosophical parrhesia is the authentic mode of philosophy.) The first, and
for our purposes the most important Socratic text Foucault analyses, is Plato’s
Apology. Foucault begins his interpretation of Apology by calling our attention
to the very beginning of the text. Socrates starts his defence by announcing
that he is going to speak the truth. At the same time he refutes the claim of his
accusers that he is a skilled speaker. Socrates’s claims that he is not at all a
skilled speaker; however hand his accusers are supposedly such skilled orators
that they “almost made me forget who I am.” Foucault brings this sentence up
and announces that he is going to return to it; he also indicates (without further
developing the idea) that if the skillful speech could lead one to forget who
he is, the direct true speech, free of ornaments, i.e. the parrhesiastic speech,
could on the contrary reveal the truth about oneself (84/3, 4–5). We should
also keep this sentence in mind, since the notion of parrhesia as a tool of
discovering and affirming the truth of oneself turns out to be not only the key
to Foucault’s interpretation of Socrates’ philosophical parrhesia, but also to
our interpretation of Foucault’s philosophical parrhesia.
To distinguish Socrates’s philosophical parrhesia from political parrhesia,
Foucault brings our attention to the section of Apology (31b) in which Socrates
tells Athenians that he occupied himself with them, that he cared for them
like a father or an older brother. He then raises a possible objection against
himself: why, if I offered my councils to individuals did I never address the
people publicly and advised city? Why, as Foucault interprets this passage,
did I not play the role of a political parrhesiast? Socrates explains that certain
supernatural – divine or daimonic – voice, which he used to hear from time
to time, proscribed him from entering politics. And, Socrates explains, it was
for good reasons, for if he had entered politics and opposed the wrongs and
illegalities of the city, he would have lost his life a long time ago. Socrates,
as Foucault points out, supports his charge against democracy (or politics in
general) with two examples, two pieces of evidence’, these examples, some-
how paradoxically, are at the same time proofs and refutations of his claim.
124 JAKUB FRANĚK

Socrates recalls two instances in which he was obliged (in one case by demo-
cratic regime, in the other by the regime of the thirty tyrants) to take part
in public life and in both cases he refused, risking his own life, to partake
in the injustices committed by the regime on other citizens. These examples
are proofs, insofar as they demonstrate the wrongs of political regimes (both
democratic and tyrannical or oligarchic) and the danger of opposing these
regimes by invoking truth. On the other hand, they are refutations, insofar as
they show that Socrates was willing to risk his life rather than commit injus-
tice, that he was willing, at least under certain circumstances, to play the role
of a political parrhesiast. (84/3, 13) Socrates refused to engage voluntarily
in political life not simply because of fear of death, but rather because if he
lost his life, he could not be useful to himself or to Athenians (as Socrates
himself explains – 31d). It was not Socrates’s relation to his death, Foucault
explains, but rather his “positive, useful, beneficiary” relation to himself and
to the Athenians, which prevented him from the “useless risks of politics”.
(84/3, 17)
Or rather, as Foucault puts it, it was the daimonic voice, which protected
Socrates against these risks in order to protect the positive task Socrates had
received from the god. The attention Foucault pays to Socrates’ references to
the daimon and other divine forces is rather suspicious. Socrates’ references to
the inner daimonic voice could be easily dismissed as a mere rhetorical device;
after all, Socrates states the real reason for his abstention from politics in his
“interpretation” of the daimonic prohibition. It seems that by underlining
the role of this voice, as well as of the Delphic Oracle, Foucault implicitly
acknowledges that Socrates had no other means of explaining sufficiently
his devotion to the justice and truth; except, of course, by resorting to some
ontology of the soul, which is indeed the way Socrates (or Plato) takes for
instance in the Republic. Yet it seems that Foucault prefers the path taken by
Socrates in Apology, the path which leaves the orientation towards the truth
and justice unexplained and unexplainable by means of human reason.
The Delphic Oracle did not charge Socrates with the task of interrogating
people, with examining their souls directly. In fact, it was not Socrates himself,
but his friend Chaerophon who asked the Oracle whether anybody was wiser
than Socrates. The Oracle replied that no one was wiser than Socrates. When
Socrates found out, he was baffled by the Oracle’s pronouncement and reacted
in a way which was quite usual for the recipients of enigmatic prophecies –
he started wondering what the god meant. (84/3, 19) According to Foucault,
however, Socrates’ way of finding out differed from the traditional approach.
The traditional approach was to interpret the prophecy, and then wait and
see whether it will get fulfilled or to try to avoid its fulfilment. (84/3, 22)
Socrates, instead, engaged in an inquiry, or quest, (recherche) which consisted
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 125

in “knowing whether the Oracle said truth – Socrates wanted to test what the
Oracle had said” (84/3, 20). Socrates decided to test the truthfulness of the
Oracle by trying to refute it, to question and test it in the “game of truth.”
He started questioning other people to find out if there is someone wiser than
himself; in the end, he concluded that he is wiser than others, since he is at
least aware of his own ignorance; he concluded that the Oracle charged him
with a task, with a mission, to take care of others and urge them “to occupy
themselves with themselves, and – as the text reads – with their reason, with
the truth and their souls – prhonésis, alétheia, psyché.” (84/3, 28) To take
care of oneself, to make correct decisions, one needs practical reason, or
phronésis. Phronésis is related to truth, it aims at truth (alétheia) to which
we are in a certain sense related by our soul (psyché). By performing his
mission of philosophical parrhesia, by taking care of others, Socrates takes
care of himself, of his soul. By his activity, he relates himself to the truth,
seeks truth and phronésis. “[P]hilosophy as courageous truth-saying, as non-
political parrhesia ... unfolds itself along what we could call the great chain of
care” (84/3, 37) The god who cares about the humans turns to Socrates – the
wisest of the humans; the god cares about Socrates and Socrates, in response
to this care, cares about knowing what the god wanted to say. He starts his
quest by which he takes care of himself, and by doing so, he cares for others.
The daimonic voice prevented Socrates from getting engaged in politics,
in political parrhesia, so that he could devote himself to his task – to the
ethical or philosophical parrhesia. The very situation in which Socrates makes
his speech shows that this kind of parrhesia also requires courage and that
philosophical parrhesiast is not immune to political persecution. Philosophical
parrhesia is also no less useful to the city, to polis, than political parrhesia. As
Socrates keeps repeating throughout Apology, by taking care of the citizens he
renders service to the whole city since it is in the interest of the city to protect
the true discourse which urges the citizens to take care of themselves.(84/3,
37) As we know, Athenians did not have much appreciation for Socrates’
care. They found his parrhesiastic activity suspicious and subversive. And
although Foucault does not make this point explicitly, he implies that the
charges raised against Socrates were not completely groundless. Although he
did not teach what is below the ground and in the skies, he did not deny the
existence of gods and – at least not intentionally – did not corrupt youth, the
Athenians correctly sensed that Socrates’ philosophical parrhesia undermines
all authority: authority of the elder, of the political regime, as well as of the
established religion.
Although Foucault does not use that term, Socrates’ parrhesia could be
called negative parrhesia. For Socrates did not teach any truth, he rather cast
doubt on all established truths, on all uncritically accepted opinions. Socrates’
126 JAKUB FRANĚK

wisdom consisted, according to his own statement, in the awareness of his

own ignorance. Socrates not only explicitly rejects the charge that he taught
about things below the earth and in the skies, but as Foucault points out, he
makes it clear throughout Apology, that he was concerned not with the “being
of the things and order of the world”, but with the examination of souls.
(84/3, 34) This examining of souls was not supposed to reveal ontological
truth about the nature of the soul, but to reveal the truth about oneself in the
given situation and to enable one to make a decision how to face this situation.
Socrates’s ethics, as Foucault describes it in his interpretation of Apology, does
not depend on the knowledge about the nature of the soul; it is not connected
with metaphysics (or, as Foucault calls it, with sage’s approach to philosophy)
but rather with parrhesiastic philosophy.
The truth with which Socrates (of Apology) is concerned with, his par-
rhesiastic philosophy and his ethics are radically different from the truth,
philosophy and ethics Foucault ascribes (on the basis of his interpretation of
Symposion and Phaedrus) to Plato in The Use of Pleasure. This does not mean
that Foucault is contradicting himself; he rather believes that Plato established
both the tradition of parrhesiastic philosophy and the metaphysical tradition,
both the tradition of the hermeneutics of the self and of the care for the self.
In the 1984 course Foucault traces these two traditions to two dialogues: to
Alcibiades and Laches.
Both of these dialogues are concerned with giving account of oneself, with
taking care of oneself, both of them are concerned with ethics, but also with
politics. And in both of them Socrates figures as a parrhesiast. However, there
are also important differences. In Alcibiades, Socrates urges the young am-
bitious would-be politician to take care of his soul, which is described as a
reality “ontologically distinct from the body,” as a reflection of the divine. The
contemplation of his soul should lead Alcibiades in his care for himself. This
conception of giving account of oneself leads to the metaphysical tradition
concerned with the ontological foundations of human being, which in turn
leads to the notion of ethics as rules of conduct. (84/5, 6–7) In Laches, on the
other hand, taking account of oneself and taking care of oneself is not related
to the soul as an entity ontologically distinct from the body, but to the way
one lives one’s life. To know oneself, to give an account of oneself, in Laches
does not mean to give an account of the being of one’s soul, but to give an
account of one’s life, of one’s actions. Knowing oneself is not related to the
contemplation of the soul as a reflection of the divine, but to action, to the for-
mation of one’s life. This conception of giving account of oneself leads to the
tradition of aesthetics of existence (84/5, 7–9); or rather it connects the older
tradition of aesthetics of existence with the preoccupation of truth-saying.
(84/5, 13)
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 127

Foucault explains that the two traditions he traces back to Laches and Al-
cibiades, the tradition of giving account of oneself as aesthetics of existence
on one side and as ontology of the soul on the other, are not contradictory
or incompatible. In fact, there are only few ontologies of the soul which are
not associated with a certain style of existence and there are very few styles
of existence which do not refer to a certain ontology of the soul (84/5, 15).
Nevertheless, it seems that Socrates’s philosophical parrhesia, as Foucault
describes it in his interpretation of the Apology and of Laches, is one of those
few aesthetics of existence that are tied with truth-saying, with “saying truth to
others, with saying truth to oneself, with saying truth about others, with saying
truth about oneself”(84/5, 14), but which are not tied with any ontology of the
soul. And it seems that Foucault, who himself does not embrace any ontology
of the soul, who believes that truth is always connected with power and who
therefore deems the truth about the (perpetual) forms of being of things and
the order of the world not useless, but self-deceptive or deceiving (and – in
its claims for absolute, timeless validity – false), feels a rather close affinity
to this Socratic philosophical parrhesia. To put it bluntly, Foucault’s interpre-
tation of Socrates’s Apology should be read as Foucault’s own philosophical
apology.
Foucault’s inquiry into Socratic philosophical parrhesia is not motivated
by merely antiquarian interests. By construing philosophical parrhesia as a
distinct modality of truth-saying and by distinguishing parrhesiastic approach
to philosophy from other approaches, Foucault tries to explain and justify what
has been the concern of his philosophical inquiries. Just as Socrates, who has
been charged with denying the existence of gods, appeals in his apology to the
god, Foucault, who has been charged with being a nihilist, with denying the
possibility of the quest for truth and of philosophy, appeals in his apology to
Socrates – the very founder of Western philosophical tradition.14 The Socratic
tradition of parrhesiastic philosophy, according to Foucault, never completely
disappeared. Although parrhesia as a distinct modality of truth-saying has
disappeared in modernity, it appears in, or takes form of, other discourses:
“the philosophical discourse as analysis and reflection of the human finitude
and critique of everything that could, either in the order of knowledge or
in morality, overflow the limits of the human finitude – I believe that the
philosophical discourse which plays this role plays a role of parrhesia” (84/1,
50). The ‘philosophy as analysis of human finitude and critique of anything
which overflows this finitude in the field of knowledge’ could be also described
as a critique of the possibilities or boundaries of human reason.
These remarks point to Kant, or rather to certain tradition of critical phi-
losophy that was established by Kant. In his 1984 essay “Qu’ est-ce que les
Lumières?” Foucault suggests that Kant founded two traditions of critical
128 JAKUB FRANĚK

philosophy, between which modern philosophy is divided. On the one hand,

Kant’s critical project established the tradition of philosophy “which asks the
question of the conditions under which the true understanding (connaisance
vrai) is possible,” the tradition of philosophy as “analytics of truth.” On the
other hand, Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment? ” and the second part of
the Conflict of the Faculties led to a different tradition, which asks the ques-
tion: “What is our present (actualité)? What is the current field of possible
experiences?”.15 Foucault himself subscribes to this second tradition, which
he calls “ontology of the present” or “ontology of ourselves, ” and which
he traces to Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber and the Frankfurt school. This whole
tradition of critical philosophy as ‘ontology of the present’ seems to belong
to the Socratic tradition of parrhesiastic philosophy.
At the beginning of his interpretation of Apology, Foucault brought up
Socrates’s suggestion that the skilful speech of his accusers almost made him
forget who he is, and suggested that if rhetoric can make one forget who he
is, parrhesia can perhaps on the contrary reveal the truth about who one is.
Socratic parrhesia can really be understood as “giving account of oneself.”
Socratic parrhesia cannot discover or affirm one’s true self, the knowledge
of which could be fixed and would function as a guidance for one’s action.
Parrhesia rather keeps asking the question ‘who am I?’ or, better, ‘who should
I be? who should I become?’ over and over. Giving account of oneself consists
in taking care of oneself, in taking care of one’s existence; and to take care of
one’s existence one must keep asking the question ‘who should I become?’
‘what should I do?’ face to face situations that come to him. Socratic parrhesia
hence refers to becoming rather than being oneself. We could say that the aim
of Foucault’s philosophical parrhesia, of his genealogies, is to escape the
definitions that others impose on him, to escape grip of the discourses which
define him. In the introduction to The Use of Pleasure, Foucault says that what
motivated him to write that book was: “curiosity – the only kind of curiosity,
in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the
curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that
which enables one to get free of oneself” (HS 2, 8; emphasis mine).16
I have suggested that Foucault’s last course should be interpreted as his
philosophical apology, as an attempt to explain and at the same time conclude
his life-long work, to defend himself against the charges of moral and epis-
temological nihilism by fixing theoretically the epistemological framework
of his previous enquiries. Perhaps, I should go a step further. Socratic philo-
sophical parrhesia, as Foucault construes it, is not just a particular approach
to philosophy, a particular philosophical style; it is at the same time a way
of life or a style of aesthetics of existence. Foucault’s course on parrhesia
should therefore be read not only as his philosophical apology, but also as
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 129

his personal apology. Foucault explains and vindicates not only his scholarly
work, but his life as such. The two things, scholarly activity, or pursuit of
philosophy and ethics as formation of one’s self, as practice of freedom, in
Foucault’s case, however, collapse into each other.17
Foucault claims that he wrote The Use of Pleasure, and I believe that this
applies to his other texts as well, in order to get free of himself. For Foucault,
the only way to be free and to remain true to himself is to keep becoming
free, becoming free of himself, of definitions others impose on him; or, rather,
I should say to escape the definitions and limitations of possibilities of his
being that are imposed on him by various discourses, by various regimes of
truth. Foucault rejects the possibility, or at least the relevance, of absolute
timeless truth and rejects the traditional claim about the primacy of theory;
in effect, he collapses the difference between theory and practice, between
knowing and being. Hence, he cannot escape the definitions and limitations
that are imposed on him by simply ignoring them. Foucault does not have the
recourse to the inner freedom of stoics and/or sage’s seclusion from polis and
assurance of his jealously guarded truth. He can become free and can remain
true to himself only by constantly re-creating himself. He can free himself
from the definitions and limitations imposed on him by others, by the current
regime of truth, only by challenging this regime and, in effect, by redefining
and, at least potentially, liberating others.18
I have argued that Foucault’s last lecture course should be read as his
philosophical as well as personal apology, as his defence against the charges
of epistemological and moral nihilism. Although I believe that the lectures
on parrhesia, together with Foucault’s other late works, do answer various
questions and objections raised by Foucault’s critics in response to his earlier
work, I do not find his apology fully convincing. By constantly challenging the
current regime of truth, Foucault is redefining not only himself, but also others.
Such redefining of others can have a liberating effect on the others, it can, so to,
say invite them to try to redefine themselves, to practice freedom themselves.
Redefining others by a Foucauldian parrhesiast could, however, also result in
their manipulation, rather than liberation. Foucault underlines that Socratic
parrhesia is useful both for Socrates and for the polis. By taking care of his
souls, Socrates also took care of the souls of his fellow citizens. Foucault,
who appeals to Socrates as his example, tries to persuade his audience that his
parrhesia is likewise useful not only for himself, but also for others and for
the polity.19 Nevertheless, his more severe critics, such as Wolin, could still
reply that Foucault in his questioning of accepted opinions resembles more
Gorgias than Socrates. And even the more friendly critics, such as Taylor, who
do recognise altruistic motivation and ethical dimension of Foucault’s critical
project, but claim that Foucault on his own terms cannot provide basis for
130 JAKUB FRANĚK

such altruism, would probably not be fully persuaded by Foucault’s apology

in his last course.
It would be unfair to expect Foucault’s personal and philosophical apology,
as he delivers it in his 1984 course, to be definite and perfect. The 1984
lectures, as well as Foucault’s other lecture courses at Collège de France, were
essentially reports on work-in-progress and were not intended for publication.
Foucault was prevented from formulating the thoughts which preoccupied him
in the last years of his life in a more definite form by his death. Nevertheless,
there are some hints as to where his thoughts would lead. My interpretation
of the philosophical parrhesia as ethics of the aesthetics of existence leaves
one important question open. It is not clear what makes parrhesia as a way
of life and ethics aesthetic. According to O’Leary, Foucault uses the term
“aesthetics” rather loosely. What is supposedly important about the “aesthetics
of existence” is not shaping one’s life into some definite form that could be
judged as beautiful or ugly, but rather the creative process of self-formation
itself. I am not sure whether such loose reading of “aesthetic” is justified. While
it is true that Foucault is interested mostly in the process of self-formation, it
is also important for him that this process results in a beautiful life. He says
explicitly that the Greeks practiced moderation because they wanted to live a
beautiful life and leave memories of a beautiful existence.
In the absence of absolute moral standards, as well as any absolute stan-
dards of truth, aesthetic of quasi-aesthetic criteria might be the only available
standards for judging someone’s existence. However, these are only my spec-
ulations. Foucault himself does not fully develop his notion of the aesthetics of
existence and fails to fully persuade his audience that philosophical parrhesia
is necessarily ethical.20
Indeed, there can be no theoretical proof of the ethical character of par-
rhesia. Parrhesia is a mode of truth saying, not a system of true proposition.
Given the overall character of his work, we cannot expect Foucault to provide
theoretical foundation for the ethical dimension of his critical work.
As we have seen, Foucault himself underlines that parrhesia is not con-
cerned with perpetual truth of being but with the truth of what is in its singu-
larity and contingency. Rather than focussing on the absence of some moral
or ethical system in Foucault’s work, Foucault’s critics should perhaps try to
appreciate the ethical dimension of his critical philosophy in its concreteness.

Notes

1. The English title of this work History of Sexuality: Introduction – is misleading. Since
Foucault later reconsidered the whole project, the first volume of The History of Sexuality
is an introduction to a non-existent series.
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 131

2. According to Richard Wolin, Foucault’s turn to ethics of the aesthetics of existence merely
confirms the anti-political and a-moral Nietzschean stance, which was supposedly latently
present already in his earlier work. Foucault’s aesthetics supposedly leads to “forms of life
that are manipulative and predatory vis-à-vis other persons.” (Richard Wolin, “Foucault’s
Aesthetic Decisionsim” in: Barry Smart (ed.), Michel Foucault : Critical Assessments,
London, New York: Routledge, 1994: 262.) Alexander Nehamas in his much friendlier
interpretation recognises that Foucault’s work as a whole is politically relevant and that
the works from Foucault’s latest “ethical” stage complement the earlier critical work with
a positive or programmatic dimension. Nevertheless, Nehamas underlines the differences
between Foucault’s earlier and later works and interprets Foucault’s turn to ethics primarily
in biographical terms. Foucault supposedly turned to ethics because he became interested
in shaping his own life as a work of art. According to Nehamas, the political and ethical
charge of Foucault’s thought is an important, but ultimately only accidental attribute of a
fundamentally individualistic enterprise of philosophy as “art of living.” This position is
surprisingly close to Wolin’s claim that Foucault was never seriously interested in politics.
Interpreters like O’Leary, Coles or Bernauer and Mahon interpret the turn to ethics as a
continuation of Foucault’s earlier work, rather than as a turn “away from politics.” O’Leary
nevertheless underestimates the political dimension of Foucault’s interpretation of Greek
ethics. (See note 7.)
3. The 1984 lectures, which should eventually appear in the Gallimard series of Foucault’s
lecture courses, have not been published yet. So far, they are officially available only in
Foucault’s archive in Paris. I worked with an unofficial, but – judging from quotations
in the secondary literature – reliable transcript of the lectures, that was made available
to me by Professor James Bernauer. The limited availability of the text may explain the
very small amount of secondary literature available on this topic. Thomas Flynn’s article
provides a very good summary of the course, as well as some very interesting insights. The
chapter on Foucault in Alexander Nehamas’s The Art of Living, which draws in part from
the 1984 lectures, provides a very insightful interpretation of Foucault’s late work and of its
position within Foucault’s work as a whole. James Bernauer in his essay Michel Foucault’s
Philosophy of Religion – An Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life interprets the last lecture
of the series, which deals with parrhesia in Christianity, in the context of Foucault’s earlier
writings on Christianity. Arpad Szakolczai refers to the 1984 lectures in an article which
explores certain similarities between the work of Foucault and Patočka.
4. Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
5. Charles Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” Political Theory 12 (1984).
6. Ladelle McWhorter, Bodies and Pleasures (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press,
1999).
7. Interpreters often ignore or play down the importance of the political dimension in Fou-
cault’s interpretation of Greek ethics. For instance Richard Wolin claims that “It is not
the political aspect of this impressive display of self-restraint . . .. that interests Foucault.
Rather, it is self-control for theatrical effect that seizes his imagination.” (Wolin, 261.)
Wolin draws this conclusion from various articles and interviews written after The Use
of Pleasure, in which Foucault indeed underlines the aesthetic dimension of the Greek
ethic. Nevertheless, he fails to mention that in The Use of Pleasure itself, Foucault under-
lines the political, rather than the aesthetic dimension of Greek ethic. Similarly, O’Leary
criticises Foucault for supposedly playing down the political dimension of Greek ethic in
The Use of Pleasure. On the other hand, Bernauer and Mahon concur with my reading of
The Use of Pleasure when they note that “[t]he central problematic of this pre-Platonic
132 JAKUB FRANĚK

ethic was [according to Foucault] the proper use of pleasures so that one could achieve
the mastery over oneself that made one fit to be a free citizen worthy to exercise authority
over others.” (James Bernauer, Michael Mahon, “The Ethics of Michel Foucault” in: Garry
Gutting (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994.)
8. Although these words refer to stoic ethics, they capture what Foucault found attractive
even about the Greek ethics of the classical period. In the same interview he says, this time
about the Greeks: “The third thing is that what they worried about, their theme, was to
constitute a kind of ethics which was an aesthetics of existence.”
9. I do not have access to the transcript of the 1983 course. Nevertheless, Foucault summarises
its content in the first lectures of the 1984 series. We can also assume that the material
covered in the 1983 lectures at Collège de France, at least to some extent, overlaps with
the material he covered in his 1983 seminar at Berkeley. The transcript of the Berkeley
lectures was published as Fearless Speech (Los Angeles, 2001).
10. It should be noted that all four modalities of truth saying, not just parrhesia, are ideal-types
which are isolated or constructed by Foucault. In reality, these forms appear usually in
various combinations. (84/1, 42)
11. Techné corresponds rather closely to Hannah Arendt’s concept of knowledge (as opposed
to thinking).
12. This strand of the “crises of parrhesia” is represented for example by Plato’s Seventh Letter
or by Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens.
13. Thomas Flynn points out that Foucault elsewhere (in his Afterword to Dreyfus’s and
Rabinow’s Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneuitcs, 2nd ed.) argues
that these three poles constitute three possible domains of genealogical analysis. (Thomas
Flynn, “Foucault as Parrhesiast,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 12, 1987: 305.)
14. As Nehamas points out, Foucault in his last lectures “accommodates” himself with Socrates
so much that he often blurs the lines between quoting (Plato’s) Socrates, interpreting
him and setting forth his own ideas. The distinction between Foucault’s and Socrates’
ideas, and indeed between Foucault and Socrates becomes obliterated and Foucault in
effect takes “another’s self as one’s own.” While Nehamas calls this identification with
Socrates “one of the most attractive features of Foucault’s last lectures,” his observations
also contain hidden criticism. Foucault, who presents Socrates as his model, apparently
fashions his model according to his own-self understanding, rather than the other way
around and thus misrepresents Socrates’ position. Nehamas’ Socrates is much more self-
centred, much more concerned with his own life and less concerned with others, than
Foucault’s. (Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living, Berkley: University of California
Press, 1998: 183) See also note 16.
15. Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?” in: Michale Foucault, Dits et écrits v. 4
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994, edited by D. Defert & F. Ewald): 687.
16. Cf. also the following passage from the Introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge
(London, 1972), p. 17: “I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face.
Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and
our police to see that our papers are in order.”
17. This point should perhaps be made more strongly. It is not just an accident that the pursuit of
philosophy and the way of life in Foucault’s case fall together. As I have argued, by defining
the parrhesiastic philosophy as the only mode of philosophy that preserves the mutual
interconnection and irreducibility to each other of the three poles of politeia, alétheia,
and éthos, Foucault implies that parrhesiastic philosophy is the only true or authentic
 PHILOSOPHICAL PARRHESIA AS AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE 133

philosophy. If, as I have argued, he at the same time implies that parrhesiastic philosophy
is a way of life or a style of aesthetics of existence, it follows that true philosophy has
to be a way of life. James Bernauer makes the point that “Facing his death, [as he was
delivering his last lectures, he was dying of AIDS] Foucault continued to try to return
philosophy to being a way of life and not just a university discipline.” (James Bernauer,
“Michel Foucault’s Philosophy of Religion – An Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life” in:
James Bernauer, Jeremy Carette (eds.), Michel Foucault and Theology, Hampshire, U.K.:
Ashgate Publishing, 2004.)
18. James Bernauer (2004) points out that Foucault’s famous announcement of the “imminence
of the death of man” from The Order of the Things should be read as an expression of
optimism, rather than pessimism: “[f]or Foucault modern man and anthropology were
prisons.” Parrhesia could then be interpreted as a modality of truth-saying which enables
man to break out of such prison.
19. Alexander Nehamas criticises Foucault from the opposite direction than I do. He does not
criticise Foucault for failing to prove that his critical philosophy is as useful for the polity as
Socrates’ parrhesia, but for misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding Socrates. According
to Nehamas, Socrates was primarily concerned in leading a good life, in taking care of
himself and not of others. His enterprise was “an essentially individual undertaking.”
Socrates was supposedly “using” the others and often “discarded them once they were
no longer useful to him” and the usefulness of his activity for the polis is also much
less obvious than Foucault presents it. I must admit that I find Foucault’s presentation of
(Plato’s) Socrates more plausible than Nehamas’. But that is not the issue. The point is that
Nehamas’s own interpretation of Socrates’s philosophy as the “art of living” influences his
interpretation of Foucault’s philosophy and in particular of his “turn to ethics.” Nehamas
interprets Foucault’s turn to ethics in personal terms. Foucault in the last years of his life,
supposedly being inspired by the self-absorption of his Californian friends, got personally
interested in the idea of the care of the self and started shaping his own life as a work of
art. Nehamas does not deny that Foucault’s late work continued to be politically relevant.
Nevertheless, he presents Foucault’s turn to ethics as an essentially private project of self-
fashioning, which was incidentally also useful to the public: “Foucault, who gradually came
to see his writing as part of philosophy understood as the art of living, also believed that the
philosophers of his sort, self-fashioners who create new possibilities for life, are directly
useful to public.” (168, emphasis mine) Nehamas, as is apparent from his interpretation
of Socrates (who is the archetype of such philosophers) does not share this belief. My
interpretation of Foucault’s turn to ethics stresses more Foucault’s theoretical, rather than
personal concerns. I argue that for Foucault the turn to ethics is a way out of an impasse, into
which his earlier critical work led. I do not want to question by any means the importance
of the personal concerns that Nehamas stresses. On the contrary, I agree with Nehamas that
what makes Foucault so powerful, is the unity of his life and work. The difference between
Nehamas’ and my own interpretation of Foucault’s turn to ethics is therefore largely a matter
of emphasis. Nevertheless, it is not entirely unimportant. In his last lectures Foucault does
not present Socrates or himself as “self-fashioners” but as parrhesiasts, as critical and
politically engaged thinkers. Foucault desperately tries to prove that the philosophical
parrhesia is beneficial for the polis and that the care of the self is also care of the others. In
Foucault’s own eyes, it is the political and ethical charge of his work that makes it valuable.
20. Wolin reads Foucault’s remarks about ethics as aesthetics of existence and about life as
a work of art as a proof of Foucault’s supposed Nitzschean a-moralism. O’Leary replies
to this and similar charges partly by an extremely loose reading of the term “aesthetics”.
134 JAKUB FRANĚK

One could, however, proceed in an opposite way; a form of life that is “manipulative and
predatory vis-à-vis other persons” could hardly be judged as beautiful.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to James Bernauer, Susan Shell, Monicka Tutschka and the anonymous reviewer
for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript.

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