In rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: "to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking". This Ancient Greek word has three different forms, as related by Michel Foucault. Parrhesia is a noun, meaning "free speech". Parrhesiazomai is a verb, meaning "to use parrhesia". Parrhesiastes is a noun, meaning one who uses parrhesia, for example "one who speaks the truth to power".
Parrhesia was a fundamental component of the democracy of Classical Athens. In assemblies and the courts Athenians were free to say almost anything, and in the theatre, playwrights such as Aristophanes made full use of the right to ridicule whomever they chose. Elsewhere there were limits to what might be said; freedom to discuss politics, morals, religion, or to criticize people would depend on context: by whom it was made, and when, and how, and where. If one was seen as immoral, or held views that went contrary to popular opinion, then there were great risks involved in making use of such an unbridled freedom of speech, as Socrates found out when he was sentenced to death for not adoring deities worshiped by the Athenians and for corrupting the young.
A related use of parrhesia is found in the Greek New Testament, where it means "bold speech", the ability of believers to hold their own in discourse before political and religious authorities. It also is used to describe the reply Jesus made to the Pharisees.
Usage in rabbinic Jewish writings
Parrhesia appears in Midrashic literature as a condition for the transmission of Torah. Connoting open and public communication, parrhesia appears in combination with the term , translated coram publica, in the public eye, i.e. open to the public. As a mode of communication it is repeatedly described in terms analogous to a commons. Parrhesia is closely associated with an ownerless wilderness of primary mytho-geographic import, the Midbar Sinai in which the Torah was initially received. The dissemination of Torah thus depends on its teachers cultivating a nature that is as open, ownerless, and sharing as that wilderness. The term is important to advocates of Open Source Judaism. Here is the text from the Mekhilta where the term dimus parrhesia appears. Explanation: Why was the Torah not given in the land of Israel? In order that the peoples of the world should not have the excuse for saying: `Because it was given in Israel's land, therefore we have not accepted it. The term "parrhesia" is also used in Modern Hebrew, meaning public.
Modern scholarship
developed the concept of parrhesia as a mode of discourse in which one speaks openly and truthfully about one's opinions and ideas without the use of rhetoric, manipulation, or generalization. Foucault's use of parrhesia, he tells us, is troubled by our modern dayCartesian model of evidential necessity. For Descartes, truth is the same as the undeniable. Whatever can be doubted must be, and, thus, speech that is not examined or criticized does not necessarily have a valid relation to truth. There are several conditions upon which the traditional Ancient Greek notion of parrhesia relies. One who uses parrhesia is only recognized as doing so if holding a credible relationship to the truth, if one serves as critic to either oneself or popular opinion or culture, if the revelation of this truth places one in a position of danger and one persists in speaking the truth, nevertheless, as one feels it is a moral, social, and/or political obligation. Further, in a public situation, a user of parrhesia must be in a social position less empowered than those to whom this truth is revealed. Foucault sums up the Ancient Greek concept of parrhesia as such: and Foucault sums up that:
