Michel Foucault: parrhesia and cynicism

Abstract

From the last course ministered in the Collège de France (january/march, 1984), Foucault intends to analyse the historicity of cynicism in the Greek-Roman antiquity and its importance in the modern world. The importance of this article lays in the new direction of Foucaults’ researches, focused on the history of thought, from the idea of games of truth. The parrhesia concept – brave act of true saying – is the central issue of the theorical core of the transhistoricity of the criticism of the cynical reason, allowing enlighten the ethical question of the free subject, known as empty form always ready to be an actual person on the social ground.