Parrhesiastic honesty

The closest 'guaranteed' form of honesty.

The word “parrhesia” has been around a long time (around some 400 BC), and roughly means “speaking candidly.”

I don’t mean ‘candidly’ in the way we have it now, which is still couched in quite a bit of tact and consideration for external environment, expectations, others’ mindset/experience/perception; it is raw honesty independant of anything outside the speaker.

Concepts like ‘truth’ or ‘empathy’ always get thrown around a lot, and philosophy (existential philosophy in particular) spends a lot of time developing guarantors to know (or know as closely as we can know) that these concepts are being practised.

One of the closest guarantors of truth we have, is when it poses a risk to the speaker.

You can assume a subject who criticizes a tyrant in their presence is speaking truth, because he/she is risking death to speak it.

I’ve been always fascinated by this concept ever since I read Michel Foucault’s Fearless Speech, which really leans into the idea of “speaking Truth to Power.”

‘Speaking Truth to Power’ is a phrase some of you might have come by, but it is a key aspect of parrhesiastic honesty - usually there is a power disparity between the speaker/truth-teller and the listener/truth-receiver.

I’ve held this aspiration to parrhesiastic honesty for nearly a decade now, with the full acknowledgement that none of us are meant to absolutely occupy it. Everyone who calls themselves ‘honest’ is not ‘absolutely' honest. They’ve settled on an acceptable degree of honesty, and this is simply because of our function as social creatures.

Think about it for a second - parrhesiastic honesty would mean letting someone know immediately that they’ve pissed you off, regardless of the time and place.

It means if you see someone attractive, and you have the thought, you immediately express your sense of physical attraction - wherever you are, no matter the familiarity you have with the person.

Parrhesiastic honesty is thus near diametrically opposed to diplomacy, or tact, which focus on making sure the message is as well received as possible.

On the contrary, this form of honesty is meant to be as raw and crude as it occurs to you, stripped of all the frivolities - all the refining - your mind puts it through before it leaves your mouth.

To truly speak your mind is absurd, and that realm of absurdity is where parrhesiastic honesty resides.

So what’s the point of thinking of it? It comes back to the idea of degrees of honesty.

To assess the honesty of speaker

Whenever you’re listening to someone - whether in a one on one conversation, or even a presenter on stage - ask what risks they’re taking to speak what they’re speaking. If all that’s being said only confers advantage to the speaker, it’s generally far removed from parrhesiastic honesty. That doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re dishonest - just that these conversations should not be taken at face value.

Often times, we can understand and accept that the other person has their own agenda, and still find value in what’s being said. We don’t require parrhesiastic honesty in our lives.

To investigate our own thoughts

Yes, to practice parrhesiastic honesty in our daily external lives would be anarchy if everyone did it, and counter-intuitive to nearly every goal you have in life that involves interaction with other human beings.

But it holds immense value in the internal dialogues of our minds - practice openly acknowledging the raw truths you have in your head. If you hate someone or something, accept it in its purest form. If you are jealous, accept it. If you are frustrated, accept it. This doesn’t mean act on it - it means know it.

What we don’t realize is that we actually police our own thoughts and already work with a refined version of it. We justify our emotions and thoughts, we rationalize it, we vindicate it, we do all sorts of things to it, to make it align with the set of principles we aspire to (all of which are arbitrary or conditioned to begin with, but that’s another topic).

We justify our emotions and thoughts, all while it’s STILL in our heads.

Once you do accept the thoughts you have - as ore rather than processed metal, for a simile - you can begin to shape it in whichever direction you like. This will give you a greater understanding of how you yourself respond to anything external, and understanding is crucial to influencing your thoughts and emotions.

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There are a lot of other facets to parrhesiastic honesty (ex. speaker considers their own beliefs as truth - lack of doubt), but these are the functional ones I refer to now and again. We may never be that open, but there is merit in striving to narrow the gap - both in our own utterance, and in our reception of other people’s words.