Montaigne after Theory, Theory after Montaigne

5. Montaigne Parrhesiastes: Foucault's Fearless Speech and Truth-telling in the Essays

Montaigne Parrhesiastes foucault’s fearless speech and truth-telling in the ESSAYS Reinier Leushuis There is an ethics and also an aesthetics of the self in the sixteenth century , which refers explicitly, moreover, to what is found in the Greek and Latin authors I am talking about. I think Montaigne should be reread in this perspective, as an attempt to reconstitute an aesthetics and an ethics of the self.—Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject In European culture until the sixteenth century the question remains: “what effort do I have to submit myself to in order to be able and worthy to access the truth?”—Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits (my translation) In 1983 and 1984, Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures at the Collège de France and at the University of California at Berkeley in which he discussed the Greek notion of parrhesia, that is, “frankness in speaking the truth” (in French referred to as franc-parler or dire-vrai, and in English usually translated as “fearless speech”), a notion he had already significantly though tentatively addressed in his 1981–82 lectures at the Collège de France and at various venues in Europe and the United States. Foucault’s 100 5 untimely death prevented him from publishing this lecture material, which remains largely hidden in tape recordings that are currently being transcribed and edited. However, for my discussion, Joseph Pearson’s transcription of the Berkeley lectures,1 combined with the reflections on parrhesia from the 1981–82 Collège de France lectures (which have already been transcribed2), will form a reasonably reliable basis to understand Foucault’s analysis of the relationship between the subject, truth, and techniques of truth-telling, in view of a reading of Montaigne’s Essays from this theoretical framework. The validity of the lecture material within Foucault’s larger writings on truth and discourse lies in its emphasis on truth-speaking rather than on the nature of truth itself or its relation to knowledge, discourse, power, and sexuality. This distinction should be seen in the context of Foucault’s last years, when his interest shifted from the truth about the subject and its role for socio-political discourses and institutions (biopower), to the subject’s relationship with and construction of truth as part of a larger “care of the self” (le souci de soi).3 Foucault’s analysis of parrhesia falls into the latter framework: My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth-telling as an activity. . . . At issue for me was . . . to consider truth-telling as a specific activity or as a role. . . . Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth? . . . What are the consequences of telling the truth? . . . with the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the “critical” tradition in the West.4 In his typical methodological approach, that is, an inquiry as to why phenomena such as madness, crime, and sexuality have become a “problem ” in Western society, Foucault tackles the problematization of the function and consequences of parrhesia in Greco-Roman texts from the fifth century BC until the early Patristic era. A surprisingly linguistic and philological examination is the necessary core of this approach. Although Foucault ’s ultimate aim is an understanding of parrhesiastic behavior, his approach differs from the more socio-historical analyses of antiquity’s sexual and dietary practices as documented by medical and behavioral texts analyzed in his History of Sexuality—parrhesia’s problematization can only montaigne PARRHESIASTES / 101 be traced in subtle shifts in the word’s linguistic usage in the philosophical texts of a series of authors.5 This being said, his parrhesia lectures remain faithful to Foucault’s overarching desire to construct genealogies of modern Western thinking by taking us back to antiquity. Foucault’s understanding of parrhesia from this philological and genealogical perspective provides a relevant set of questions with which to revisit some enduring critical issues in Montaigne’s “book . . . written in good faith” [2],6 such as...