Abstract
In this chapter, I aim to reconceptualise the basis for trusting accounts, proposing a move away from trust based on ‘absolute accuracy’ to a trust encapsulated in the practice of parrhesia. On the surface, parrhesia appears to be the opposite of Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. Paradoxically, however, our attempts to be sincere in our accounts are inevitably tainted by bad faith. This tension is especially evident in autobiographical writing, as explored here through Sartre’s own autobiography, Words. The existence of these tensions does not mean that we should abandon trust in these accounts, however. Rather, parrhesiastic practices in autobiographical writing can offer a different understanding of how we account for ourselves and our practices, one that does not pertain to a narrow definition of truth as accuracy, but instead leads to a form of self-criticism where one situates oneself in relation to the ‘truth’ of their accounts in new ways. Towards the end of the chapter, I explore three ‘parrhesiastic techniques’ and their relationship to accounting for oneself as a teacher, to reimagine these techniques from technicist to existential ways of relating to our practices, a distinction more fully examined in the final chapter.
This chapter has also been published as: Brady, A. (2021). Accounting for Oneself in Teaching: Trust, Parrhesia and Bad Faith, Studies in Philosophy of Education, 41, pp. 273–286. CC-BY 4.0
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Notes
- 1.
These contrasting ideas of trust are explored widely in the epistemology of testimony which, due to space limitations, is not discussed here. For a start, see Lackey and Sosa (2006).
- 2.
In Truth and Existence, Sartre (1995) clarifies his position against those who argue that his view makes a ‘common world’ impossible, given that, for him, my relation with others is always in conflict. In turn, this allows Sartre to accept an intersubjective understanding of truth and meaning. Catalano (2007) has attempted to summarise this position on truth, where he argues that, for Sartre, truth is (always) a relation between for-itself and all of human reality – it is ‘what happens to reality when it encounters human existence’ (Catalano, 2007, p. 49). Since all human reality is constituted by ‘social facts’, such facts are also truth, and not simply what we call ‘brute’ facts (See, for example: Sartre, 1973).
- 3.
In fact, Foucault never quite denied this agency, but merely shifted his emphasis in his later years. Unlike Sartre, who later claimed that all power is ‘evil’, Foucault sees power as a given – neither good nor bad, existing across all relations and not simply in relations between individuals and institutions. For a more thorough examination of this, see Foucault (1987).
- 4.
Some accuse the later Foucault of not recognising intersubjectivity in the formation of subjects, and since such self-indulgence is insufficient in dismantling power relations, it is also depoliticising. According to Wong (2013), however, such criticisms represent a misunderstanding of what Foucault means by ‘ontological priority’.
- 5.
Although Wong (2013) disagrees with this assertion.
- 6.
For Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019), this care for the ‘something’ in education is ontologically prior to the care for others in the educational context, a care that is equated with care for oneself as a teacher (where the ‘object’ of teaching is not distinct from the ‘teaching self’), something that they accuse certain thinkers of missing out on – e.g. Biesta (e.g. 2017) in his relational view of teaching. Bonnett (2010) also makes a similar argument.
- 7.
Of course, truth can be understood in different ways – or, at least, it has different stakes depending on the context. The ‘medicalisation of madness’, for instance, purports a ‘truth’ in order to normalise behaviour. Truth in the field of mathematics arguably does not serve the same function, or at least is circumscribed by a very different truth-power relation. See Foucault (1987, 2006)
- 8.
Rhetorical devices are also used by Socrates, as well as Beauvoir, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but with a different purpose in mind – they encourage rather than neutralise debate, forcing individuals to take up a relation to truth.
- 9.
Foucault uses the example of a mathematics teacher teaching a theorem to children. The teacher knows that what he is teaching is the truth. There is no real risk in him teaching this concept to the children, and it is therefore not a parrhesiastic form of truth. Of course, there are examples that show that speaking certain (e.g. scientific) truths does require courage, where doing so involves a threat to one’s life. Hence, the separation of Cartesian truths and truth in a parrhesiastic sense is not absolute. If speaking scientific truths involves risk and courage, one is also practising a form of parrhesia, since this involves a form of commitment to the value of the truth where there is something at stake.
- 10.
A discussion on this can be found in Hodgson (2010). For the purposes of this paper, I will focus primarily on the personal sense of parrhesia as a form of reflexive self-criticism rather than on the political sense – although, notably in the case of Socrates, these two are not wholly separate.
- 11.
Rather than resolving these dichotomies, Sartre attempts to maintain an ambiguous tension between both, as indicated in one revealing section: ‘When I was in a good mood, everything came from myself… an obedient child, I would obey until I died, but I would obey myself. When I was depressed and aware of the sickening feebleness of my availability, I was able to soothe myself only by forcing it on predestination… I was merely the product of collective demand. Most of the time, I achieved peace of mind by taking care never to exclude altogether either the freedom which exalts or the necessity which justifies.’ (Sartre, 2000, p. 109)
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Brady, A.M. (2022). Parrhesia, Bad Faith and Accounting for Oneself. In: Being a Teacher. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_8
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