Historicizing Parrhesia: Athenian Democracy and Philosophy

Parrhesia originated as part of Athenian democracy as a duty embedded within the responsibilities of citizenship and public oratory. Pericles and Demosthenes exemplify the classical political practice of parrhesia in Athens and the way parrhesia was imagined as deeply embedded in the ethical practice of rhetoric. Overlapping with the concept of parrhesia in the public, political realm, parrhesia also developed contemporaneously within the more private, philosophical domain, influenced by shifts in the political climate of Athens, a state critiqued by both Isocrates and Plato. Parrhesia as enacted by the Cynics takes on characteristics of both the private and the public in the blunt, confrontational rhetorical tactics of Diogenes of Sinope. While many of these acts of parrhesia occurred within the context of democracy, it also existed in an altered form within autocracies, a model that will be seen in other contexts through history when freedom of speech is not permitted. Athenian Democracy offers the foundation for a genealogy of parrhesia where the various conceptual strands of meaning split and wove their way through discursive history, reaching forward into the next era and forming the basis of how we can understand parrhesia today.