Elizabeth Markovits begins The Politics of Sincerity with an observation. Americans, like the ancient Athenians of the classical period, worry about the measure of deception that characterizes their popular political discourse. While they recognize that democratic discourse must utilize rhetorical modes of communication (whether direct or mediated by technology) and enjoy the spectacle of political battles, they are anxious about manipulative orators, spin doctors, and crafty panderers. Not surprisingly, and again in her view, like the that of Athenians, this anxiety generates a political ideal that manages the shape of political deliberations and helps citizens develop confidence in the quality of their polity's political discourse. That ideal, Markovits suggests, is “sincerity.” And she offers as evidence our veneration of “straight talk,” “plain speech,” “no spin,” and earnestness, all of which are, she proposes, “something like” the Athenian notion of parrhesia (frank speech) (p. 2). Witness, she says, the McCain campaign's “Straight Talk Express,” the popularity of blunt talk radio shows and, as an indication of how long-standing this is in American politics, Thomas Paine's Common Sense (she does not comment on its anonymous publication).
The idealization of a “sincerity ethic” in practical politics today deeply troubles Markovits. In her view, it has led to the “taming of truthfulness” in public discourse because it has itself become a powerful rhetorical trope (p. 2). In particular, she finds that speakers who pose as practitioners of an “anti-rhetorical rhetoric” (that is, who mobilize the trope of “hyper-sincerity” [p. 41–46]) “denigrate critics and hamstring deliberation” (p. 3). Appeals to “sincerity” drag debate out of the public realm of ideas, policies, common goals, and challenges and into the interior lives of others. Here again she finds a parallel with developments in Athenian history; specifically, invective becomes common in fourth-century-B.C.E. oratory. Her main aim is to expose the underside of a politics that revolves around invoking good intentions and raising suspicions regarding the motives of the participants, and to question a leading tradition of critical thinking about democratic deliberations—Habermasian discourse ethics. A Habermasian quest for communicative purity can bolster the disturbing trend in contemporary politics toward examining “the presumed interior [lives and moral qualities] of fellow citizens” (p. 182), rather than their public persons and views.
The main argument of this book is that “focus[ing] on the personal sincerity of a speaker perversely hinders our deliberative potentials” (p. 73). Markovits further argues that we can find in Plato's use of irony and mythmaking in the Gorgias and Republic a critique of Athenian practices of parrhesia that illuminates just why this is so, and that we need to look to the Arendtian idea of an “ethic of trustworthiness,” not discourse ethics, for help imagining an alternative to the deleterious sincerity ethic and the development of practices that exercise judgment.
There is a lot to admire in Markovits's book. She advances a bold thesis. Her critique of the ideal of Habermasian sincerity is strong. Her account of how “irony can be a vital component of a democratic civic education and deliberations” rings true in this era of influence for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Tina Fey's appearances on Saturday Night Live (p. 84). And, although the discussions of parrhesia unfortunately display little familiarity with ancient sources beyond Plato and make far too little use of Arlene Saxonhouse's splendid Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens (2006), the author's command of a wide range of scholarly studies rooted in various disciplinary traditions is apparent.
Nevertheless, one aspect of the work diminishes its power. Markovits often loses sight of how unlike are the contemporary sincerity ethic and parrhesia and thus also misses some of the critical purchase we can draw from this ancient ideal. She is right that they both inspire “anti-rhetorical” rhetorical posturing that may sometimes license personal abuse and excessive attention to motives. But practicing parrhesia cannot be reduced to a speaking strategy or effort to expose the morals of competing speakers. Parrhesia was a civic ideal that called upon democratic citizens not just to speak in a certain way (frankly) and with good will (meaning not only honestly but without seditious or treasonous intent) but, when necessary, to courageously utter a certain kind of content. As a civic ideal, parrhesia sanctioned dissenting and disquieting speech, speech that aimed to unsettle personal convictions and disrupt an orderly, fixed, established consensus. For example, if Thucydides represents Cleon in his speech about Mytilene as posing as a parrhesiastes, as Markovits suggests (p. 74–75), it is likely because he presents Cleon daring the Athenians to shake off the delusion that their empire is anything but a “tyranny” and not simply because he has Cleon deploy, perversely, a “rhetoric of anti-rhetoric” and indulge in invective. The ideal of parrhesia required citizens not just to “engage in speech devoid of rhetorical ornament” (p. 74), but to speak out against persistent illusions and complacency after having first interrogated their own beliefs and assumptions. This is the meaning Socrates engages. It is also what Cornel West finds so compelling about parrhesia in Democracy Matters (2004). And it is this meaning that Markovits neglects when she contends that Plato's demonstration of the enormous deliberative value of irony and mythmaking delivers not only a critique of some perversions of parrhesia, but a “subversion of parrhesia” (p. 91). Had she more carefully attended to parrhesia's difference from the sincerity ethic, she might have recognized that Plato's interest in irony and myth may be part of an engagement with parrhesia, that is, with the following question: What forms of discourse in what settings can deliver on the promise of parrhesia? Had Markovits considered Edward R. Murrow's journalism, a whistleblower's news conference, or Richard Pryor's comedy contemporary analogs of parrhesia, rather than the televised rants of Bill O'Reilly and Keith Oberman, she might have considered enlisting parrhesia in the project of improving public deliberation instead of suggesting that its valorization gives aid and comfort to its slayer.
