A “CORAGEM DA VERDADE” E O RISCO DA PALAVRA EM MICHEL FOUCAULT

DEMOCRACIA E DEMAGOGIA

Abstract

In the final years of his work at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault problematizes the notion of parrhesia, or the “courage of truth,” by interrogating the relationship, at once conflictual and mutually reinforcing, between truthful discourse and Athenian democracy. Although democratic parrhesia rests on the prerogative that guarantees freedom of speech to all citizens, the parrhesiastic act – situated within the horizon of isegoria and marked by the risk inherent to truth-telling – already signals a certain ascendancy of the one who speaks. It is this political dimension of risk, located at the point of friction between the democratic game and its crisis, that we aim to explore, reconstructing the very figure of the parrhesiast in what distinguishes him from both the rhetorician and the demagogue.