En av Michel Foucaults föreläsningar vid Collège de France har (den översatta) titeln: ”The Courage of Truth”. Han gav den i februari 1984. I denna föreläsning diskuterar han parrhêsia, ett fenomen med ursprung i antiken, som handlar om att säga sanningen. Jag finner såväl hans diskussion som fenomenet i sig fascinerande.

En aspekt som Foucault tar upp är att fenomenet har en negativ och en positiv sida. Så här beskriver han den negativa:

Used in a pejorative sense, parrhêsia does indeed consist in saying everything, but in the sense of saying anything (anything that comes to mind, anything that serves the cause one is defending, anything that serves the passion or interest driving the person who is speaking). The parrhêsiast then becomes and appears as the impenitent chatterbox, someone who cannot restrain himself or, at any rate, someone who cannot index-link his discourse to a principle of rationality and truth. There is an example of this use of the term parrhêsia in a pejorative sense (saying everything, saying anything, saying whatever comes to mind without reference to any principle of reason or truth) in Socrates, in the discourse entitled Busiris in which Isocrates says that, unlike the poets who ascribe everything and anything, absolutely every and any qualities and defects to the gods, one should not say everything about them. Similarly, in Book VIII of The Republic (I will give you the exact reference shortly because I will come back to this text) there is the description of the bad democratic city, which is all motley, fragmented, and dispersed between different interests, passions, and individuals who do not agree with each other. This bad democratic city practices parrhêsia: anyone can say anything.

Detta får mig att tänka på två saker. Det första är att pladder – att säga precis allt som kommer för en – torde ha fått ett uppsving i vår moderna tid, genom Internet och sociala medier, i synnerhet där anonymitet föreligger. Många häver ur sig allt möjligt som de tycker är sant och viktigt, men detta leder sällan till något gott utan mest till att trötta ut andra och till att det som verkligen är viktigt – grundat i förnuftsmässiga överväganden – lätt försvinner i bruset. Det andra är att beskrivningen från Platons Republiken kan vara applicerbar på vår tid den också, i det att det demokratiska samtalet i många länder tycks ha urartat och blivit en fråga om att hävda sitt intresse och skrika högst (vilket kan tala emot normativa teorier om deliberativ teori), istället för att försöka anta ett allmänintresse och evidensbaserade resonemang.

Foucault fortsätter med att beskriva den positiva aspekten av sanningssägande:

But the word parrhêsia is also employed in a positive sense, and then parrhêsia consists in telling the truth without concealment, reserve, empty manner of speech, or rhetorical ornament which might encode or hide it. “Telling all” is then: telling the truth without hiding any part of it, without hiding it behind anything. In the Second Philippic, Demosthenes thus says that, unlike bad parrhêsiasts who say anything and do not index their discourses to reason, he, Demosthenes, does not want to speak without reason, he does not want to “resort to insults” and “exchange blow for blow” (you know, those infamous disputes in which anything is said so long as it may harm the adversary and be useful to one’s own cause). He does not want to do this, but rather he wants to tell the truth (ta alethe: things that are true) with parrhêsia (meta parrhêsias). Moreover, he adds: I will conceal nothing (oukh apokhrupsomai). To hide nothing and say what is true is to practice parrhêsia. Parrhesia is therefore “telling all,” but tied to the truth: telling the whole truth, hiding nothing of the truth, telling the truth without hiding it behind anything.

However, I don’t think this suffices as a description and definition of this notion of parrhêsia. In fact —leaving aside the negative senses of the term for the moment— in addition to the rule of telling all and the rule of truth, two supplementary conditions are required for us to be able to speak of parrhêsia in the positive sense of the term. Not only must this truth really be the personal opinion of the person who is speaking, but he must say it as being what he thinks, [and not] reluctantly — and this is what makes him a parrhêsiast. The parrhêsiast gives his opinion, he says what he thinks, he personally signs, as it were, the truth he states, he binds himself to this truth, and he is consequently bound to it and by it. But this is not enough. For after all, a teacher, a grammarian or a geometer, may say something true about the grammar or geometry they teach, a truth which they believe, which they think. And yet we will not call this parrhêsia. We will not say that the geometer and grammarian are parrhêsiasts when they teach truths which they believe. For there to be parrhêsia, you recall—I stressed this last year—the subject must be taking some kind of risk [in speaking[ this truth which he signs as his opinion, his thought, his belief, a risk which concerns his relationship with the person to whom he is speaking. For there to be parrhêsia, in speaking the truth one must open up, establish, and confront the risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him to conduct which may even be extremely violent. So it is the truth subject to risk of violence. For example, in the First Philippic, after having said that he is speaking meta parrhêsias (with frankness), Demosthenes [adds]: I am well aware that, by employing this frankness, I do not know what the consequences will be for me of the things I have just said.

Att kunna anförtro sig i denna anda av totalt öppenhet och fullständigt sanningssägande till en annan person, med utgångspunkt i ens person, ens jag, förefaller mig vara en ytterst viktig aspekt av ett gott liv. Man behöver dryfta sina innersta tankar; man behöver kloka reaktioner på dem. Att ha modet att säga sanningen, eftersom det innefattar en risk för avståndstagande och t.o.m. attack, bör därför ses som en tillgång. Men det kräver förstås någon, vilket Foucault också påpekar, som har modet att lyssna. Jag ser detta som en del av sann och djup vänskap.

Dostojevskij tar dock upp frågan: Finns det tankar så dubiösa att man inte vågar tala om dem för någon annan? Kanske inte ens för sig själv? Hur går man vidare från en sådan situation? Hur kan man då nå parrhêsia?

HT: Richard Swedberg.