Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [59]
“The WØRD”: Parrhesia
The ancient Greek ideal of free speech, “parrhesia,” focused on promoting criticism of political orthodoxy. We think this notion promotes values important to contemporary democracy. We also think that Stephen Colbert’s style of satire promotes these values in something like the parrhesiastic tradition. So what is parrhesia?
Parrhesia is not just saying what is true; it is saying it because it is true. This notion of free speech promotes democratic values, in part, by defining the proper means of critiquing political orthodoxy. There are three conditions of parrhesia to consider independently when reconstructing its traditional relationship to the practice of democracy: (1) speaking the truth freely, (2) criticism, and (3) the duty to speak the truth.117 These three aspects capture the external, interpersonal, and internal conditions of free speech that give content to the idea that parrhesia is the purview of responsible democratic citizenship. Thought of this way, parrhesia is a central ideal of freedom that democratic institutions intend to support, but might rarely achieve.
Free Speech Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Speaking the truth freely refers to the external conditions in which individuals engage in political dialogue with one another. Freedom to speak is obviously threatened by direct prohibitions like state censorship, suppression of free press, and threats of violence against those speaking out. Such restrictions may be explicitly articulated by the state, but they may also be implicit to an ethical way of life in which social norms encourage complicity and acquiescence. An example of this would be a deeply entrenched caste system that denies some people access to political dialogue, thereby restricting their ability to speak freely about conditions within the caste system. This doesn’t mean parrhesia can’t be practiced at all in such a society, because privileged classes might not face such restrictions on their ability to speak. So while parrhesia is contextual with respect to the conditions under which individuals may speak freely, it makes no claims about who has this power or why. The concept itself is not committed to any particular viewpoint or political interest.118
The relationship of the speaker to the truth is another external condition of parrhesia. Individuals fail to be parrhesiastes, truth-speakers, when they lack sufficient access to the truth, or are otherwise provided with false information. The fact that this external condition is an obstacle to free speech suggests that parrhesia might be thought of as positive freedom, requiring more than negative liberty.119 Rather than protecting individuals from obstacles to speak freely, parrhesia implies that they actually have something to speak about.
The ancient Greeks believe that proof of access to the truth is provided, in part, by possession of a good moral character. This presupposes a relationship between knowledge and virtue that is not widely accepted in the modern scientific worldview, where facts and values are distinct. Like the Greeks, we believe that free speech requires more than just being allowed to speak. But modern speakers see access to information, from multiple reliable sources, as a credential for truth speaking. How much access to good information one requires (and what counts as good information) is not always clear. But individuals who “speak freely” might be doing so without certainty, or they might be offering an opinion freely without being properly informed of the subject matter. Thus, parrhesia requires that some external conditions obtain, such as individuals not being physically prevented from speaking or otherwise denied reasonable access to facts. However, as the next few conditions of parrhesia make clear, access to “the Truth” is not always necessary to fulfill the obligation to engage in substantive criticism of political orthodoxy.
Talking Is a Gateway to Thinking
The second condition of parrhesiastic speech is its function as a form of criticism