I would like to distinguish between the 'history of ideas' and the
'history of thought.' The history of ideas involves the analysis of a
notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of
other ideas, which constitute its context. The history of thought is
the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes
a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and
induces crisis in the previously silent behaviors, practices, and
institutions. It is the history of the way people become anxious, for
example, about madness, about crime, about themselves, or about
truth. Comprised of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel
Foucault while teaching at Berkeley in the Fall of 1983, Fearless
Speech was edited by Joseph Pearson and published in 2001. Reviewed
by the author, it is the last book Foucault wrote before his death in
1984 and can be read as his last testament. Here, he positions the
philosopher as the only person able to confront power with the truth,
a stance that boldly sums up Foucault's project as a philosopher.
Still unpublished in France, Fearless Speech concludes the genealogy
of truth that Foucault pursued throughout his life, starting with his
investigations in Madness and Civilization, into the question of
power and its technology. The expression "fearless speech" is a rough
translation of the Greek parrhesia, which designates those who take a
risk to tell the truth; the citizen who has the moral qualities
required to speak the truth, even if it differs from what the
majority of people believe and faces danger for speaking it.
Parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his
personal relationship to truth through frankness instead of
persuasion, truth instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of
self-interest and moral apathy.
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