Author(s): Michel Foucault

Publisher: Ediciones Akal

Publication date: 2014-06-04

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 352

Language: es

The course titled The Courage of Truth is the last one Michel Foucault gave at the Collège de France, between February and March 1984. Foucault died shortly after, on June 25. This context invites us to listen to these classes as a philosophical testament, especially since the theme of death is very present in them, mainly through a rereading of Socrates’ last words: “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius,” which Foucault, together with Georges Dumézil, understands as the expression of a profound gratitude to philosophy, which cures the only serious illness: that of false opinions and prejudices. This course continues and radicalizes analyses carried out the previous year. At that time, the aim was to examine the function of parrhesia – “truthful speech” – in politics, in order to establish, for democracy, a series of ethical conditions irreducible to the formal rules of consensus: courage and conviction. For this, Foucault proposes a lighthearted study of ancient cynicism as practical philosophy, an athleticism of truth, public provocation, ascetic sovereignty. By turning his gaze back to the Cynic school, Foucault bets on the scandal of the true life, the displaced life, the “other” life, the provocative life. For the first time, he proposes a genealogy of the cursed artist, the revolutionary activist, the philosophical hero. “There is no establishment of truth without an essential postulation of otherness; truth is never the same; there can only be truth in the form of the other world and the other life.” M. F.