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The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy6 7The recent turn to the issue of parrhesia in American Plato scholarshiplargely is due to a series of lectures given by Michel Foucault at Berkeley in1983 on the notion of parrhesia (an abridged version of the course offeredat the Collège de France on the same theme). 6 In these lectures, Foucaultpainted with broad brush strokes the history of ancient parrhesia, underscoringthree key moments: the Periclean moment (where parrhesia for the mostpart entails the right 7 of any citizen to address with frankness an assemblyor a jury); the Socratic-Platonic 8 moment (where political parrhesia undergoesa crisis, withdraws from the public sphere, and turns toward the soulof the prince or of any individual); and, finally, the Cynical moment (whereethical parrhesia becomes more radical and brutal). Since this essay is primarilyconcerned with Plato scholarship, we will focus on Socratic-Platonicparrhesia—which is, according to Foucault, to be envisioned primarily as anapproach to philosophy rather than an approach to politics. 9 What we will see,however, is that various students of Plato have appropriated Foucault’s workon Socratic-Platonic parrhesia in order to put forward a “democratic Plato,”a Plato who is sympathetic to democratic political practice. Indeed, contraryto Foucault (who insisted that Platonic parrhesia is hostile to democracy),Monoson and Saxonhouse believe that this hostility is not completely insurmountable,and that it is possible to see a subtle endorsement of democraticpolitics in Plato’s musings on parrhesia.Based on a reading of the Gorgias, this article seeks to show that the characterizationof Platonic philosophy and politics proposed by scholars suchas Foucault, Monoson, Euben, and Saxonhouse, while rich and inspiring,has a few flaws. First, it tends to underestimate the importance of Socrates’schampions of parrhesia in ancient Greece. Robert Wallace insists that these were numerous, whereasD. M. Carter has shown that, aside from Euripides, enthusiastic defenders of parrhesia were ratherrare (Carter, “Citizen Attribute, Negative Right: A Conceptual Difference between Ancient and ModernIdeas of Freedom of Speech,” in Free Speech in Classical Antiquity).6E.g., Foucault is often cited (or implicitly deployed) in the following: Saxonhouse, Free Speech andDemocracy; Elizabeth Markovitz, The Politics of Sincerity: Plato, Frank Speech and Democratic Judgment(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008); Sluiter and Rosen, eds., Free Speechin Classical Antiquity; Christina Tarnopolsky, “Platonic Reflections on the Aesthetic Dimensions ofDeliberative Democracy,” Political Theory 35, no. 3 (June 2007): 288–312.7Foucault is at times more hesitant on this issue, severing the notion of parrhesia from the languageof rights (preferring that of virtue and duty instead); elsewhere, however, he does use the word “right.”Compare, for instance, Le gouvernement de soi, 43 and 330.8I will use the words “Platonic” and “Socratic” interchangeably in this paper even though I am fullyaware of the complex questions of interpretation that this puts aside. I do so because, contrary to afew “democratic Platonists,” Foucault does not posit any clear-cut distinction between Socrates andPlato—he moves quickly between the two.9Foucault, Le gouvernement de soi, 299.