7 March 1984

Abstract

FORGIVE ME, I HAVE taken too long with this general presentation of Cynicism. I would like now to return to the problem which concerns and interests me, and for and in which Cynicism plays at least an important, if not exclusive role. The problem is the following. As I was saying last week, Cynicism presents itself essentially as a certain form of parrhēsia, of truth-telling, but which finds its instrument, its site, its point of emergence in the very life of the person who must thus manifest or speak the truth in the form of a manifestation of existence. Everything I have just been saying to you was a way of finding in the general characteristics of Cynicism the elements which enable us to understand how [and] why the Cynic’s truth-telling takes the privileged form of life as testimony of the truth. From one end to the other, from Diogenes, to whom Lucian attributes the assertion that he is the prophet of the truth (very precisely of parrhēsia: prophetēs parrhēsias), to Gregory of Nazianzus saying of Maximus, both Christian ascetic and true philosopher, that he is marturo-n alētheias (bears witness, testifies to the truth),² Cynicism appears as this way of manifesting the truth, of practicing alethurgy, the production of truth in the form of life.