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8 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2Foucault suggests that the Athenians possessed a solid proof of the virtue andauthority of the parrhēsiastēs that was Socrates: the harmony between hisactions and his words. 60 Indeed, it is not the fact that Socrates showed courageon a battlefield that authorized him to speak of courage in front of twomilitary figures in the Laches, but rather the fact that he demonstrated, in hisdaily life, a concord between “sa manière de dire les choses et sa manière devivre. La parrêsia socratique comme liberté de dire ce qu’il veut est marquée,authentifiée par le son de la vie de Socrate lui-même.” 61 It is therefore thepresence of a harmony between discourse (logos) and actions (ergon) thatallows one to distinguish the good parrhēsiastēs from the ignorant chattereror the ambitious demagogue.Foucault insists on the great significance of the fact that Socrates’s soulis tuned in a particular musical mode: in the Laches, we learn that Socrates’ssoul is tuned in a Dorian mode (188d). Foucault insists that it is this Dorianmode (a “genuinely Greek” mode, says the Laches) that lends Socrates’s discourseauthenticity and legitimacy, and that gives him the right to speakabout courage with authority. Laches describes Socrates as follows:Such a man seems to me to be genuinely musical, producing the mostbeautiful harmony, not on the lyre or some other pleasurable instrument,but actually rendering his own life harmonious by fitting hisdeeds to his words in a truly Dorian mode…in the only harmony thatis genuinely Greek. (188d)The reason this particular passage is so dear to Foucault is that the Greekscommonly associated the Dorian mode with the virtue of courage. 62 On thebasis of this fairly traditional association, Foucault draws an important (ifincorrect) conclusion: what Plato is trying to indicate via this explicit referenceto the Dorian mode is that the main or most important virtue of thephilosopher is courage. 63Now, putting aside the fact that it is Laches (a military man), not Socrates,who suggests that the “genuinely Greek” mode is the Dorian one, there are60Compare the analysis of Franěk, who insists on the fact that there cannot be a proof of a standard ofjudgment (“Philosophical Parrhesia,” 130).61Foucault, Le courage de la vérité, 138.62See M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Andrew Barker, ed., Greek MusicalWritings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Jacques Chailley, La musique grecqueantique (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979); F. A. Gevaert, Histoire et théorie de la musique de l’antiquité(Hildesheim: Olms, 1965).63Foucault, Fearless Speech, 100.