Câte ceva despre parrêsia și despre unii parrêsiaști exemplari
Something about parrêsia and about some exemplary parrêsiasts

Summary/Abstract: I depart in this text from the concepts of exousia and dynamis to arrive at parrêsia (“truth-telling”/ “free-spokeness”/ “outspokenness”/“to speak openly”), as the term is used in politics, philosophy and theology. The speaker of truth, the parrêsiast, is the one who practices parrêsia. He speaks the truth without concealment, without reservation, without figures of speech or rhetorical ornaments to hide it, he ”says everything” without hiding anything. Parrêsia as a naked statement of the truth is at first a political virtue (Pericles), then a philosophical one passed from political to moral (Socrates and Plato) and, finally, we find an apostolic sense of parrêsia as a fundamental feature of the words of Christ. This way of “telling it all” hides the fundamental ambiguity attached to the very notion of truth. However, telling the truth is not enough for parrêsia to exist. It is also necessary for the subject, speaking this truth, to assume a certain risk that refers to the very relationship he has with the one to whom he is addressing, hence a new feature of parrêsia that presupposes a certain form of courage whose manifestation it consists in the fact that the parrêsiast risks, in that he can be killed, canceling his action by suspending the relationship with the other, a relationship that just made his speech possible. Parrêsia is the courage of the truth in the one who speaks and takes the risk to say it in spite of everything, accompanied by the courage of the interlocutor who accepts to accept as truth the very painful truth he is listening to. Parrêsia is the quality of the free manʼs speech, it is effective and frees those who take risks even though nothing is more uncomfortable than being the messenger of truth when discomfort turns into danger.

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