8 February 1984

Abstract

[I WOULD LIKE TO take up this problem of] parrhēsia from where I left it last year, and try to present a somewhat simplified account of what I think was an important transformation in this history of parrhēsia, that is to say, the transition from a practice, right, obligation, and duty of veridiction defined in relation to the city, its institutions, and the status of the citizen, to a different type of veridiction, a different type of parrhēsia, which will be defined not in relation to the city (the polis) but to individuals’ ways of doing things, being, and conducting themselves (ēthos), and also to their formation as moral subjects. And, through this transformation of a parrhēsia oriented towards and correlative to the polis into a parrhēsia oriented towards and correlative to ēthos, I would like to show you today how Western philosophy, at least in some of its fundamental features, may have been constituted as a form of practice of true discourse.