Parrhèsia socratique et parrhèsia cynique : le cas de l’injure

• Published in: Cahiers Mondes Anciens
• Main Author: Suzanne Husson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques 2014-02-01
• Subjects: Socrates; dialogue; dialectic; cynicism; parrhesia; Plato
• Online Access: https://journals.openedition.org/mondesanciens/1256

May philosophical parrhesia be a good reason to insult our fellow men ? For Plato, it would seem, at a first glance, that it is not the case, but further analysis shows that educative insult is not rejected for reasons of principle, but because it seems to be an impediment to dialectical progress. Conversely, in ancient Cynicism, where there is no dialectical aim anymore, insult is a rightful way to show moral truth. For Plato, there are only two cases of rightful frankness : when a morally superior person speaks to someone of a lower level (in an ethical sense) or when the two are equal. Insult is suppressed in Plato’s city, as it is drawn up in the Laws, because these “abusive words” are expressed by anger, in order to be harmful. Anger in the cause why interlocutors of Socrates (particularly Callicles in the Gorgias) become insulting, but Socrates defuses it when he interprets their insults as results of parrhesia and educative benevolence. So direct criticism, expressed in public, is not excluded from education on principle, but Socrates avoids it in order to carry on the dialectical work. In Cynicism, educative insult is celebrated, both in cynic literature and in the chreiai, and the name of the school was at the beginning an insult. Rejection of conventional social rules is applied to speech acts, but the aim is not to allow a spontaneous expression of the self without any limitation, but to improve moral progression, as part of the parrhesia.