Notes from 11/2/11, The Courage of the Truth, 1 February 1984 lecture

CGC Meeting November 2, 2011

Discussion of the first lecture, 1 Feb 1984, of Foucault's The Courage of the Truth

Questions

Distinction on page 3 between epistemic structures and alethurgic forms? Does Foucault think these are separable in practice or is the distinction for analytic purposes?

On pp 25-26, F goes through four things – not historically distinct social types – rather modes of veridiction – what are these? Are these not social types? What is at stake? What kind of analytic grid and what are its possible objects of analysis?

If parrhesia is somewhere where authenticity is catalyzed by risk – how is this connected to veridicality or truth as adequation? To what extent is what is happening there necessarily connected to a notion of truth that puts words and reality into some kind of relation to that equation?

What does it mean for the parrhesiatic modality to have disappeared as such (30)?

On page 24 – teaching is not included in parrhesia – does it not take courage to teach? What does it mean to make this claim, could we do the analysis in Foucault’s terms today and reach the same conclusion? 

Distinction between modality and technique?

P 28 – ethnocentrism?

Difficulty of analyzing the historical-empirical content – can we instead draw a square of four modes of veridiction and try to find more recent examples, work with the concepts? Combination of prophetic and ontological e.g.? MAP!

Discussion

Question about alethurgic – making speech acts as experts or non-experts? Are alethurgic claims similar to expert speech acts?

-         Through these fearless acts the subject constitutes himself as the subject of a discourse of truth. Considers himself a certain type of subject through doing this.

-         Which subjectivity is constituted? Whose? By whom? Both speaker and listener have subjectivity constitutued.

-         P. 9 summary – triple shift – relation

-         Epistemology is something about relations between truth claims, knowledge claims, economies of truth; alethurgic involves relation between forms of truth and forms of subjectivity and its emergence. Non-expert speech a better paradigm? Truth is coming into being and this is tied to emergence of subjectivity?

-         F not making an ontological truth claim – this is a way of analyzing a phenomenon of parrhesia?

Is glen beck/sean hannidy a parrhesiast?

Parrhesia is more than authenticity plus sincerity plus risk.

Reflections on alethurgy – definition given – appositive – production and manifestation. Are these in conflict? Disclosure is a production.

-         His analysis of rhetoric in antiquity is a misrepresentation in some ways.

-         Does this issue of accuracy matter?

-         Why is production vs. manifestation an issue?

-         Rhetoric as an art of producing convictions (13) vs parrhesia as production of truth. Speech that works to produce effect in audience vs speech that works to produce truth of one’s self?

-         Rhetoric is a technique and not a mode of veridiction.

Modes of veridiction

Ways of truth-telling and being recognized as a truth-teller.

Why is parrhesia a special mode of veridiction? Perhaps because of the relation, of the two people being involved in an important interactive and intersubjective way. Potentially breaking a relationship, so there must be one

Maybe F is interested in this because it could be a forgotten resource, it has disappeared as such in modernity (30). Has to be intersection with other modes.

If epistemological analysis is about what is taken as true (analytic – is it true? Other  - what is taken as true?), Alethurgic – how is it produced?

Difference between ‘what’ and ‘how’ of truth.

Recasts his former work as analysis of modes of production of truth – its how-ness not its what-ness.

Truth-telling. What is significant about telling?

We may not be receptive to truth-telling in the parrhesiatic modality. Are people who act parrhestiatically taken seriously by intellectuals?

Parrhesia requires 3 things (11):

-         Bond between truth and belief of speaker

-         Challenge to bond between interlocutors and it requires courage to challenge the bond

-         Person puts his life at risk

Do these requirements line of up the three on page 8? Does this map on?

Develops in context of care-for-the-self, and later gets reorganized around the axis of knowing-for-one’s-self. A pre-history of confession. But also note that medieval Christianity is an important step or link – because in antiquity parrhesia is intermeshed with wisdom, and in mideval wisdom is linked with techne – courage gets replaced by obedience in the confession (8-29, historical narrative).

Where there is obedience, there is no parrhesia – says at the end of the book.

Modes of veridiction: truth-telling as an acting in a way, a stance, in parrhesia it is a courageous way of acting akin to virtue. But the other three other modes seems to have more stability. Uses roles as examples of the modes.

NOT ROLES or social characters! Transhistorical phenomenon? – essentially modes of veridiction – 26. What are roles? Why are they not roles? This is an analytic framework.

Analytic – concept of mode of veridiction

Object – 4 modes of veridiction

Cannot be roles because they are aspects of roles. And also because they are occasional – do not define a subject exhaustively.

When you find the modality now it is interpenetrated with other modalities.

Character traits? Courage – in action or in character/person?

How do we make sense of the disappearance of this mode?

Is it no longer possible to recognize ourselves as acting in this mode of veridiction?

Something is at stake for critical philosophers if critique is an activity dependent on these other activities and targets – ontology, prophecy, and technics.

Self-affirmative rather than self-denunciative?  This potential for subjectivity isn’t available as such?

Do we agree with the claim that it has disappeared as such?

-         Martin Luther King?

-         Rush Limbaugh?

-         Hitler?

-         Crazy person? Probably not. Possibly lacks necessary requirement of community.

-         Diogenes – there was a space back then. Now, because this isn’t a recognized modality of truth-telling, these people are seen as crazy.

How do media institutions work and intersect in forming a context that may or may not have to do with the intelligibility and possibility of parrhesia?

Roles as recognizable vehicles for modes of acting?

What is the truth-value in a parrhesiatic act? Not parasitic on common beliefs?

Criteria on page 16. The parrhesiast helps in blindness and leaves a moral task.

Do our institutions not let us have these acts be successful anymore?

Spirituality allows parrhesia. Foucault also gives the example of spiritual advisor. Prophet, overlap?

Interlocutor has to be willing to play the game. Can we put pressure on the reception? Is success in Austinian terms epistemology? Possibility of success – veridiction; successful or not – epistemological. Can’t only be production because the possibility of felicity must be there.

Does this not exist for the academy or in intellectuals?

Public vs. private. Is political speech necessarily co-opted? Has the parrhesiatic form of truth-telling become rarified? Privatized?

Families and friends? Gadamerian conversation or He’s Just Not That Into You. P. 6 of the text – a friend.  

Modes of veridiction depend on conditions of possibility.