The subject of this book is parrhêsia, free or, as the author sometimes prefers, frank speech. Through close readings of stories by Plato and Homer, she identifies free speech with shamelessness and self-exposure, claiming that “[s]hame and free speech represent opposing points in the political order that play off one another in the construction of a stable democratic polity” (p. 8). However, the ambitions of this book go well beyond the historical account of what happened in Athens. Rather, the author argues “there is a congruence between the Athenian version of freedom of speech, of philosophy, and democracy, all exhibiting a common hostility to hierarchy and to history or the past” (p. 36).
The analysis of free speech in the first chapter contrasts our contemporary understanding of free speech as a right, or a means of thwarting the power of the government, with the Athenian version, which “is the affirmation of the equality of participation and self-rule” (p. 24). The author then is able to connect this, the Athenian conception of democracy, to Socratic philosophy, thereby providing the central comparison on which the book turns: “To rule themselves, the people must liberate themselves from what has been, just as the interlocutors in the Platonic dialogues must shed the chains of past opinions to engage in the pursuit of what is true” (p. 40). For the rest of the book, democracy and philosophy are portrayed as disciplines that allow individuals to engage in the common enterprise of releasing themselves from the past through a shameless exposure of their opinions, in pursuit of the city's good or in pursuit of the truth (p. 159).
Although she does not make this same comparison, think of the boldness of the Athenians in the Melian dialogue of Thucydides and Thrasymachus's speech, which she does examine, in the Republic. Both are shocking in their frankness, in their parrhêsia. Yet both fail. The Athenians so horrify the Melians with their frankness that a peaceful surrender is not achieved, and Thrasymachus is silenced by Socrates for the remainder of a very long dialogue when the philosopher makes him blush.
Shame, it turns out, cannot so easily be overcome by free speech. The love of the old ways and the hiding of certain acts serve to bind people together in a political community. The central question of the book then becomes: “[I]s democracy grounded on the communitarian individual who experiences shame in a historical context or on the liberal individual who is free from both history and shame?” (p. 77). The lesson the author draws from Thucydides's account of Athenian democracy seems to be that democracy is grounded in neither but exists in a precarious balance between the two. On the one hand, democracy demands that citizens expose themselves to others through their shameless parrhêsia, looking forward and never backward, never being held to tradition or custom. On the other, the most successful democratic leaders often speak no more frankly than the ironic Socrates, appealing to shared beliefs such as the praise for parrhêsia rather than practicing it (p. 157). In a central example, Diodotus shames the Athenians into changing their mind in regards to the Mytileneans (p. 160).
Free speech in the assembly is also supposed to be true speech, not deceptive speech. The ideal of parrhêsia demands that the speaker reveal his—or her (p. 134f)—most deeply held, authentic views on the subject, which gives it an ambiguous role in a representative system (p. 24). Rhetoric is a perversion of parrhêsia because it is intentionally deceptive (p. 92), even when such deception is necessary for the good of the city, as Nicias failed to understand (p. 171). Thus, despite the many ways in which democracy does not and may not ever succeed in living up to the goal it shares with philosophy (pp. 171–73), the two share more than might at first appear to be the case.
There is a great deal more to this book than I have been able to mention, especially as regards the role of parrhêsia in philosophy. Nevertheless, the true accomplishment of this book is to reveal the connection between democracy and philosophy through their common dependence on parrhêsia. Each relies on frankness in speech and a willingness on the part of the speaker to expose his or her self to the criticism and, at its best, the instruction of others. However, democratic polities must rely on more than parrhêsia to preserve themselves: They also rely on its opposite, on shame. Because “parrhêsia cultivate[s] its own abuses” (p. 209), we learn that the philosophic pretenses of democracy will and can never be met.
The question that this book—like all the best books on democracy—leads us to ask is whether democracy can achieve even its political ambitions through its own practices. The author only motions toward an answer. At a time when philosophical liberalism and deliberative democracy compete for supremacy in the academy, the great regret in reading this book is that, out of philosophic irony or concern for the city, she is not more frank about providing an answer.
