8 February 1984

Abstract

I SAID TO YOU, when starting, that the problematization of parrhēsia in the fourth century had two aspects. [The first was] a criticism of democracy’s claim to be the political framework in which parrhēsia [can be] both possible and effective: democracy is not the privileged site of parrhēsia, but the place in which parrhēsia is most difficult to practice. I would now like to move on to another aspect of this problematization of parrhēsia, which is its complementary or positive side. If democracy is increasingly discredited as the possible, privileged site of parrhēsia, conversely another type of political structure, or rather, another type of relationship between true discourse and government increasingly appears as the privileged site of parrhēsia, or at any rate, as the site favorable for parrhēsia and truth-telling. And this other relation—I referred to this last year, and this was where we had got to—is that between the Prince and his counselor. It is no longer the assembly; it is the court, the Prince’s court, the group of those to whom he is prepared to listen. It is within this framework, it is in this form that parrhēsia can and has to find its place.