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The Government of the Self and Others #1
The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982–1983
This lecture, given by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France, launches an inquiry into the notion of parresia and continues his rereading of ancient philosophy. Through the study of this notion of truth-telling, of speaking out freely, Foucault re-examines Greek citizenship, showing how the courage of the truth forms the forgotten ethical basis of Athenian democracy. The figure of the philosopher king, the condemnation of writing, and Socrates' rejection of political involvement are some of the many topics of ancient philosophy revisited here.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2008
40 people are currently reading
889 people want to read
About the author
Michel Foucault
764 books6,498 followersPaul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 26, 2013
Great and inspiring stuff. Since it is transcription of lectures, the writing is less dense and more narrative like, which makes the whole thing much easier to grasp :-)
December 30, 2011
It's not in Foucault's last publications - The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self - that we should turn to look for the controversial thinker's views about what aspects of ancient ethics might serve as a model of resistance to self-subjugation, but in these later lectures on the government of the self and others. Foucault situates the lectures in terms of his interpretation of Kant's conception of critique or the critical ethos and takes up the examination of practice of truth-telling - understood as a form of self-formation - in ancient philosophy. In doing so, Foucault engages some of the key issues related to power, truth, and self-formation. The lecture will be of interest to anyone concerned with developing a deeper understanding of the Foucault and how his later turn to the Greeks is related to his general philosophical project and his views on the Enlightenment.
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November 11, 2023Whereas overtly zealous students are an annoyance for their contemporaries most of the time, they occasionally deserve gratitude by later generations for preserving the knowledge of their teachers. I at least feel this is true for the students at the Collège de France who from January to March of 1982 filled Michel Foucault’s lecturing desk with cassette recorders. Without these recordings, this volume of lectures in the translation of Graham Burchell and with a foreword by Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana would probably not exist.
I planned to only drop in to Foucault’s class for one or two weeks, to read what he has to say about Euripides Ion but was soon intrigued by Foucault’s way to extract conceptual nuances from ancient texts and trace their changes through time. His repetition of the most important themes, which are natural to any lecture, but not necessarily to a monograph, made it easy to follow Foucault’s train of thought and is a perfect introduction to his philosophy (at least it worked that way for me). Next to the philosophical content of these lectures, it is also the preservation of what else happened in the classroom - hints of the relationships he has to the students, little jokes he cracks spontaneously, audio malfunctions and the occasional reference to handouts that are being circled - that make these lectures so charming and allow for a vivid reading experience.
These 10 lectures are part of a bigger project of Michel Foucault, namely, to show on the basis of historical text how the problem of the relationship between the government of self and others historically has evolved. Even though he begins these considerations with an analysis of texts on enlightenment by Mendelssohn and Kant, he spends the majority of the winter term discussing texts from Greek antiquity. What he focusses on in the bigger question on the relationship of the government of self and others is the role of truth-telling, especially philosophical truth-telling. This leads him to the Ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, which lies at the heart of this book. His lectures can be roughly divided in three blocks: The beginning, in which he looks at historical writings by Plutarch and Polybius, the middle, where he analyses two dramatic texts of Euripides and the end, which revolve around Plato's philosophy.
He teaches first how Plutarch in the first century AD uses this term to refer to Dion, Plato's friend. After he, Dion, has seen how the tyrant Dionysus has sold Plato into slavery (essentially for calling him a bad person), he openly and boldly criticises the ruler. It is Dion's truth-telling, not that of Plato, that Plutarch calls an instance of parrhesia, and which lets Foucault conclude that in Plutarch’s time, the term refers to the ability and willingness to tell the truth although the price for it is unknown (and could include slavery or death). This statement of truth is of a special nature, Foucault tells us. It is in several ways different form a speech act and includes a "pact of the subject with himself" to be the person who will have said the parrhesiastic statement. The talk about parrhesia as a moral quality of individual people does only occur quite late and proceeds an earlier use of parrhesia for qualities of states and the political status of citizens. Next Foucault’s talks about is an earlier text from Polybius with which demonstrates the later point. Polybius characterizes the Achaeans states as having three qualities: demokratia, isegoria and parrhesia. What he means by this last term is the freedom of the citizen to speak in the assembly - a much narrower understanding than the later one of Plutarch.
From this, Foucault moves even further back to a text which will occupy him for quite some time -Euripides' play Ion, written in the 5th century BC. He understands the tragedy as structured around the theme of truth-telling and does not only explain Euripides use of parrhesia but also gives a rich literary analysis of the play. The core insights for the goal of the lecture are that Euripides in the Ion understands parrhesia as a privilege that can only be obtained through ancestry. This provides also a mythical explanation of how parrhesia and isegoria are connected to democracy, which is the triangulation that Polybius has pointed out - because Ion needed to secure his Athenian genealogy to gain parrhesia, he could become the mythical founder of Athenian democracy afterwards. Foucault refers to a second Euripidean play, the Orestes, which in his analysis shows the awareness that parrhesia in a democracy can be practiced by good people and by bad ones, too. That Euripides picked up on something that was visible to Athens at the time is also shown by Pericles, who represents the productive and constructive side of parrhesia and by Isocrates criticism of the demagogues in 'On Peace', who use their right to speak to flatter the demos and thus endanger the democracy. This problematic internal structure of democracy is described by Foucault in the clairvoyance that is ever-present in these lectures:
The last third of the lecture is mainly devoted to Plato and showing how the concept of parrhesia becomes a specific philosophical meaning. To Foucault there seems to emerge another form of truth-telling, namely that of the philosopher talking to the (future) ruler. He contrasts Plato's way of doing this with Dionysus, which he reflects upon in the 7th letter, and Socrates way of doing this which is presented by Plato in the Alcibiades. They differ, Foucault points out, in that Socrates focuses on eros and the beauty of the young man in his education, whereas Plato chooses Dionysus more methodological basis. Nonetheless, Plato fails with Dionysus as Socrates did with Alcibiades. Foucault explains that for Plato this became obvious when Dionysus wrote a book about philosophy, while philosophical knowledge cannot possibly be transferred by the written word. Nonetheless, Plato's educational endeavour and political engagement to Foucault marks a new era, in which philosophy plays a political role, not through telling it what to do, but through defining, advising and educating the political ruler. Plato does this in Foucault’s analysis analogous to a doctor who first diagnoses and then prescribes medicine. In a similar way, Plato also identifies the political illness of Syracuse and then prescribes the measures that should be taken. Most importantly, however, he asks the ruler to work on himself, as a Syracuse according to him, remains in conflict as long as its ruler is not in harmony with himself.
Foucault looks at the Apology to point out how, according to Plato the philosophical discourse, the parrhesiastic truth-telling is different rhetoric flattery in democracies. Socrates characterises his own speech in three ways: it uses everyday language (instead of an embellished one), it uses the language as it appears, and he trusts that the words will come as a consequence of his stance toward truth. This differentiates philosophical parrhesia from rhetoric in three regards: One, that it does not happen in a strictly political realm, two, that its goal is not to persuade and three, that it presupposes an ongoing test of the person who speaks and who is spoken two. Foucault further pushes the point of Plato's disapproval of rhetoric by reading Plato’s Phaedrus as a demonstration of how persuasiveness always depends on a dialectical ability which makes rhetoric a mere embellishment.
What stands out for abou Foucault’s lectures in hindsight is his ability both for detailed readings, that always consider the historical and political conditions under which they were written, and his ability to recognize bigger patterns in the history of concept and ideas and sketch them out in broad strokes. To watch him do this in lectures, much closer to 'real time' than a monograph allows the reader a better opportunity to grasp how the artist is working. I strongly recommend the lectures to anyone who is interested in the history of political thought or who works with historical philosophical texts.
I planned to only drop in to Foucault’s class for one or two weeks, to read what he has to say about Euripides Ion but was soon intrigued by Foucault’s way to extract conceptual nuances from ancient texts and trace their changes through time. His repetition of the most important themes, which are natural to any lecture, but not necessarily to a monograph, made it easy to follow Foucault’s train of thought and is a perfect introduction to his philosophy (at least it worked that way for me). Next to the philosophical content of these lectures, it is also the preservation of what else happened in the classroom - hints of the relationships he has to the students, little jokes he cracks spontaneously, audio malfunctions and the occasional reference to handouts that are being circled - that make these lectures so charming and allow for a vivid reading experience.
These 10 lectures are part of a bigger project of Michel Foucault, namely, to show on the basis of historical text how the problem of the relationship between the government of self and others historically has evolved. Even though he begins these considerations with an analysis of texts on enlightenment by Mendelssohn and Kant, he spends the majority of the winter term discussing texts from Greek antiquity. What he focusses on in the bigger question on the relationship of the government of self and others is the role of truth-telling, especially philosophical truth-telling. This leads him to the Ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, which lies at the heart of this book. His lectures can be roughly divided in three blocks: The beginning, in which he looks at historical writings by Plutarch and Polybius, the middle, where he analyses two dramatic texts of Euripides and the end, which revolve around Plato's philosophy.
He teaches first how Plutarch in the first century AD uses this term to refer to Dion, Plato's friend. After he, Dion, has seen how the tyrant Dionysus has sold Plato into slavery (essentially for calling him a bad person), he openly and boldly criticises the ruler. It is Dion's truth-telling, not that of Plato, that Plutarch calls an instance of parrhesia, and which lets Foucault conclude that in Plutarch’s time, the term refers to the ability and willingness to tell the truth although the price for it is unknown (and could include slavery or death). This statement of truth is of a special nature, Foucault tells us. It is in several ways different form a speech act and includes a "pact of the subject with himself" to be the person who will have said the parrhesiastic statement. The talk about parrhesia as a moral quality of individual people does only occur quite late and proceeds an earlier use of parrhesia for qualities of states and the political status of citizens. Next Foucault’s talks about is an earlier text from Polybius with which demonstrates the later point. Polybius characterizes the Achaeans states as having three qualities: demokratia, isegoria and parrhesia. What he means by this last term is the freedom of the citizen to speak in the assembly - a much narrower understanding than the later one of Plutarch.
From this, Foucault moves even further back to a text which will occupy him for quite some time -Euripides' play Ion, written in the 5th century BC. He understands the tragedy as structured around the theme of truth-telling and does not only explain Euripides use of parrhesia but also gives a rich literary analysis of the play. The core insights for the goal of the lecture are that Euripides in the Ion understands parrhesia as a privilege that can only be obtained through ancestry. This provides also a mythical explanation of how parrhesia and isegoria are connected to democracy, which is the triangulation that Polybius has pointed out - because Ion needed to secure his Athenian genealogy to gain parrhesia, he could become the mythical founder of Athenian democracy afterwards. Foucault refers to a second Euripidean play, the Orestes, which in his analysis shows the awareness that parrhesia in a democracy can be practiced by good people and by bad ones, too. That Euripides picked up on something that was visible to Athens at the time is also shown by Pericles, who represents the productive and constructive side of parrhesia and by Isocrates criticism of the demagogues in 'On Peace', who use their right to speak to flatter the demos and thus endanger the democracy. This problematic internal structure of democracy is described by Foucault in the clairvoyance that is ever-present in these lectures:
[T]here is no democracy without true discourse, for without true discourse it would perish; but the death of true discourse, the possibility of its death or of its reduction to silence is inscribed in democracy. No true discourse without democracy, but true discourse introduces differences into democracy. No democracy without true discourse, but democracy threatens the very existence of true discourse.
The last third of the lecture is mainly devoted to Plato and showing how the concept of parrhesia becomes a specific philosophical meaning. To Foucault there seems to emerge another form of truth-telling, namely that of the philosopher talking to the (future) ruler. He contrasts Plato's way of doing this with Dionysus, which he reflects upon in the 7th letter, and Socrates way of doing this which is presented by Plato in the Alcibiades. They differ, Foucault points out, in that Socrates focuses on eros and the beauty of the young man in his education, whereas Plato chooses Dionysus more methodological basis. Nonetheless, Plato fails with Dionysus as Socrates did with Alcibiades. Foucault explains that for Plato this became obvious when Dionysus wrote a book about philosophy, while philosophical knowledge cannot possibly be transferred by the written word. Nonetheless, Plato's educational endeavour and political engagement to Foucault marks a new era, in which philosophy plays a political role, not through telling it what to do, but through defining, advising and educating the political ruler. Plato does this in Foucault’s analysis analogous to a doctor who first diagnoses and then prescribes medicine. In a similar way, Plato also identifies the political illness of Syracuse and then prescribes the measures that should be taken. Most importantly, however, he asks the ruler to work on himself, as a Syracuse according to him, remains in conflict as long as its ruler is not in harmony with himself.
Foucault looks at the Apology to point out how, according to Plato the philosophical discourse, the parrhesiastic truth-telling is different rhetoric flattery in democracies. Socrates characterises his own speech in three ways: it uses everyday language (instead of an embellished one), it uses the language as it appears, and he trusts that the words will come as a consequence of his stance toward truth. This differentiates philosophical parrhesia from rhetoric in three regards: One, that it does not happen in a strictly political realm, two, that its goal is not to persuade and three, that it presupposes an ongoing test of the person who speaks and who is spoken two. Foucault further pushes the point of Plato's disapproval of rhetoric by reading Plato’s Phaedrus as a demonstration of how persuasiveness always depends on a dialectical ability which makes rhetoric a mere embellishment.
What stands out for abou Foucault’s lectures in hindsight is his ability both for detailed readings, that always consider the historical and political conditions under which they were written, and his ability to recognize bigger patterns in the history of concept and ideas and sketch them out in broad strokes. To watch him do this in lectures, much closer to 'real time' than a monograph allows the reader a better opportunity to grasp how the artist is working. I strongly recommend the lectures to anyone who is interested in the history of political thought or who works with historical philosophical texts.
June 27, 2012
It all happens in the lecture courses. I'm telling you.
June 10, 2018
Instances of parrhesia are discussed whose kinship are too remote to justify much.
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March 13, 2022MECLAP reading - la edición de Akal traducida por Horacio Pons.
Es el curso del College de France 1982-83. Tanto en este como en el siguiente se ocupa de los cambios que sufre la práctica discursiva de la parrhesia. La lectura de Foucault sobre el Ion se invierte a la que realiza del Edipo Rey en la verdad y las formas jurídicas. Impresiona también la lectura de textos como la Carta VII de Platón o el discurso de Pericles. Tiene un proceder inteligentísimo.
Es el curso del College de France 1982-83. Tanto en este como en el siguiente se ocupa de los cambios que sufre la práctica discursiva de la parrhesia. La lectura de Foucault sobre el Ion se invierte a la que realiza del Edipo Rey en la verdad y las formas jurídicas. Impresiona también la lectura de textos como la Carta VII de Platón o el discurso de Pericles. Tiene un proceder inteligentísimo.
October 9, 2025
Potser aquest curs, centrat en la noció de parrhesía, recorregut històric de la parrhesía des de la dimensió del mite fins a, podem dir, la preparació per al salt que farà al cristianisme, no ha estat tant revolucionari com d’altres. Es tracta, de nou i com els anteriors sobre les tekhné perí bíon, de la mostra d’un procés d’interiorització, d’abandó de l’espai públic o l’àgora coextens a la caiguda de les democràcies gregues sota el pes dels imperis i els reis: de la transformació del discurs honest, amb el cor obert, amb la vida exposada, de l’espai públic, per tal de transformar-lo, de fer-lo just, de prendre la millor decisió possible, a l’espai privat, a la subjectivitat, en la relació mestre-deixeble lligada per l’Eros tal i com l’enuncia Plató, tal i com la prendran estoics i epicurs, i tal i com serà absorbida pel cristianisme en la pràctica confessional. Interessant, però molt en la línia dels darrers cursos i, per tant, un xic fatigós.
August 3, 2017
"Throughout Antiquity philosophy is really lived as the free questioning of men's conduct by a truth-telling which accepts the risk of danger to itself." (346)
Painstaking inquiry into the nature of Ancient philosophy, and of philosophy as such,through a close study of transformations in the sense and practice of parrhesia--frank speech--from a "Periclean" or properly political form of rhetorical contest for influence over one's fellow citizens in a democratic polity, to a "Socratic," parapolitical form of dialogue and advice, which aims at the soul of the ruler, to transform him (or her) into someone capable of self-government and thus fit to govern others.
Painstaking inquiry into the nature of Ancient philosophy, and of philosophy as such,through a close study of transformations in the sense and practice of parrhesia--frank speech--from a "Periclean" or properly political form of rhetorical contest for influence over one's fellow citizens in a democratic polity, to a "Socratic," parapolitical form of dialogue and advice, which aims at the soul of the ruler, to transform him (or her) into someone capable of self-government and thus fit to govern others.
December 4, 2023
Parrēsia, I think there is more productive work to be explored. Reading these lectures is enjoyable to me at least, it is a window into another time and culture. Foucault is a fairly complex individual, I am not certain he would be the person he we know him, if he were born say 40 years later. He seems hyper-sensitive to the cultural context he moved through.
January 24, 2022
Un libro q debe ser leído para entender la dinámica y la narrativa de la investigación, desde la perspectiva de la historia
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2016
This book was awesome. Especially as someone who is an aspiring counselor, this book has some very interesting lessons about the role of philosophy, and that the ultimate goal should the work of self on self. This book will be a constant part of my work moving forward. Loved it! Looking forward to reading The Courage of Truth next.
June 22, 2025
Muy bien Foucault, pero realmente es un docente aburrido, repetitivo y lento. Que sea una transcripción sólo lo hace más tedioso. Por lo demás, cuando por fin deja de repetirle a sus alumnos una y otra vez la misma cosa y otra vez retoma el tema y avanza, está muy bien. Sin duda uno de los libros más maduros de Foucault.
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