Cynicism and Parresía: A Parallel between Foucault and Montaigne

Abstract

The final period of Foucault's work in the Collège de France can be interpreted, in part, as the result of an intense influence of Pierre Hadot in the development of his thought and as an attempt to regain the lost wisdom of the Hellenist and Roman philosophers. Both consider Montaigne as one of the pioneers, perhaps the only modern philosopher who has understood the extreme relevance of this question. The Essays create a concrete historical basis, for they establish an intimate dialogue with the Hellenistic and Roman tradition, thus producing something unique in the context of Renaissance literature. The plan of this essay is to explore more specifically cynicism and one of the fundamental principles of this school, the notion of parresía (frank speak), in an attempt to understand how the cynical example of life was assimilated by Foucault and Montaigne. By focusing on the subject of care of the self, Foucault reveals his disenchantment with the obscurantism of Christian philosophy and with the blindness inherited from the mechanicism of Cartesian philosophy. The way to reverse this would be to look back and Montaigne would be the right way to go.