05.10.2026 Diary XXXV Parrhesia: when speaking has a price

05.10.2026 Diary Page XXXV

It is not enough for a sentence to be true. What the speaker loses counts too.

Monday. This morning in a meeting I spent seven seconds between saying something and not saying it.

The thing to be said was simple: the deadline is not realistic. I was not the only one who knew this, at least two other people in the room knew. The silence was shared.

After seven seconds I said it. After I said it the atmosphere hardened for a moment, then eased, then the date changed.

It ended well. But what occupied me all day was not the outcome, it was those seven seconds.

Saying everything

The Greeks have a separate word for this: parrhesia. Pan is everything, rhema is speech. The literal equivalent is "saying everything."

At first the word described a citizen's right to speak before the assembly in Athenian democracy. Later its meaning narrowed and it began to describe a particular way of speaking.

Foucault devoted the last lectures of his life to this concept and reduced its description to five conditions. The speaker says what they believe to be true. What they say does not please the person facing them. The speaker is in a weaker position than the listener. They are not obliged to say it, they choose to. And their speaking has a price.

The last item is the decisive one. Speech that costs nothing is not called parrhesia. Anyone can say a costless truth.

How it differs from rhetoric

The distinction Foucault dwells on is useful to me.

Rhetoric tries to persuade the person opposite and for that it shapes speech. Parrhesia does not try to persuade; it says. Not speech given form, but bare speech.

Flattery is the exact opposite: it says what the person opposite wants to hear and protects the relationship.

Parrhesia puts the relationship at risk. That is why Foucault builds it not as a right but as a courage.

My seven seconds

This is what I was calculating in those seven seconds, without being aware of it.

If I say it, what do I lose? The comfort in the room. The "difficult person" label. Not being asked for the next job.

If I do not say it, what do I lose? Three weeks. Sleep. And, when the unrealistic date arrives, the reason for not making it being counted as me.

The second list is longer, and for years I chose the first list.

There is a reason for choosing the first list, and it is not shameful, it is logical. As I described in the masking article, someone who has paid the price of saying they are struggling many times learns to keep quiet. Keeping quiet is a learned behavior and it once worked.

Three everyday forms

This concept does not seem far away to me, because within the week it meets me in three separate places.

Disclosing a diagnosis. To an employer, a teacher, a friend. What you say is true, the other side may not want to hear it, you are in the weaker position and it has a price. All four conditions are met. I wrote about this in detail in the article on disclosing your diagnosis.

Asking for accommodations. Extra time at university, written instructions at work, a quiet hall in the exam. The sentence said here is "I need this," and building that sentence is counted as declaring a deficiency. As I wrote in the article on the unit at the university, the system asks for the clearest petition from the person who is struggling most.

Setting a boundary. Saying that a job is too much, that a time is not enough, that a request cannot be done. I described the work side of this in the article on setting boundaries with clients.

All three have the same structure. You say something you know to be true, in a place where saying it may cost you dearly.

But not every silence is cowardice

Liking this concept too much is dangerous, because it leads to reading every silence as a moral deficiency.

The Greeks thought about this too. For parrhesia to be a virtue it has to be said at the right time, to the right person, in the right measure. Saying everything in every setting is not called virtue, it is thoughtlessness.

In me this distinction stands like this. Not everything I do not say is out of fear. Some of it is out of calculation. Saying in writing, two days later, what will not be said in a meeting is not running away; it is knowing that the channel works better.

The difference shows here. The one who is silent out of calculation says it at another time. The one who is silent out of fear never says it and finds the reason for the silence anew every time.

The question I asked myself was this: am I leaving saying this to another time, or by saying "another time" am I never saying it?

Shortening the seven seconds

Let me write down what worked today, because it will be needed tomorrow too.

I had built the sentence before the meeting. Exactly, word for word. It was written in the margin of the notebook.

The seven seconds were not the time of building the sentence. They were the time of deciding whether to say it or not. Because the sentence was ready, those seven seconds stayed seven seconds; if it had not been ready, while I was trying to build the sentence the subject would have changed and it would have gone unsaid.

I described this as a method in the meetings article. Today I saw its difference: preparation does not produce courage, it lengthens the window in which courage can be used.

Diogenes and the shadow

The best-known scene of this concept is the meeting of a philosopher and a king.

Alexander the Great goes to visit Diogenes. Diogenes is lying in the sun. Alexander comes up to him and says he can give him whatever he wants.

Diogenes' answer is one sentence: step aside a little, you are blocking my sun.

This scene has been told for centuries and is generally read as an example of courage. The side that struck me is different.

Diogenes is not demanding a right. He is not reporting an injustice either. He is only describing the situation: when you stand there, the sun is blocked.

There is no accusation in what he says. There is no steering of what the other side should feel either. He says the fact, and the fact itself makes the power difference between them visible.

I thought again about the sentence I said in today's meeting from this angle.

"The deadline is not realistic," I said. The things I did not say were these: you did not ask us when you set this date, it was like this last time too, this burden is staying on me. All three were true.

Had I said all three, the sentence would have stopped being parrhesia and turned into a complaint. A complaint puts the other side on the defensive, and no one on the defensive changes the date.

I describe the difference between them like this. Parrhesia says a fact, in a place where saying it comes at a price. A complaint says a feeling, hoping to find an answer in the other side.

There is nothing wrong with the second; a person complains too. It just does not work in a work meeting.

In Foucault's late lectures this concept moves from politics to ethics and begins to mean honesty toward yourself. This is the hardest one for me.

I learned to say to someone else "this date will not hold." I still have not learned to say it to myself. When writing in the calendar, I always assume that I am someone who will do that job on my best day.

The listening side

Today I realized this concept is not for one person, and this is the hardest side of the matter.

Foucault says parrhesia requires an agreement of two sides. The speaker takes a risk, true. But the listener also does something: they agree to hear.

If the listening side does not agree to this, what is said is not even recorded as parrhesia. It becomes insolence, incompatibility, being a difficult person.

This explains why the decision to disclose a diagnosis is so hard. Because the decision is not only "shall I say it." It also contains the question "will this person be able to hear," and the answer to that question is not with me.

I had set this up as a risk calculation in the article on disclosing your diagnosis. What I saw today is that one variable of the calculation can never be known.

This leads to the following conclusion. Saying it and being badly received does not mean having made a wrong decision. At the time of deciding there was a piece of information I did not have, and I still do not have it.

I need to say this to myself, because every time I was badly received in the past I recorded it as "I should not have said it." A wrong record. The right one is this: that person did not agree to be the listening side.

Today in the meeting it was agreed to. Next time it may not be. The difference between the two is not my courage.

What I listened to today

Arvo Pärt — Summa.

It is actually the Latin Credo text set to music; versions arranged later for strings were also written. What is sung in its vocal version is a declaration of belief: the person lists in order what they believe.

The reason I found it fitting for today is how the music carries this text. It never rises. No emphasis, no peak, no place that tries to persuade. The declaration is counted as enough because it is a declaration.

I would have liked the sentence I said to come out like that. It did not; my voice shook a little. But the sentence was true, and a sentence's truth is not affected by the shaking of the voice.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Tuesday. The measure I set myself as I start this week is this.

At the end of the week I will ask: is there something I needed to say and did not? If there is, I will write the reason. If the reason is "it was not the time," I will also write when its time will come.

A time that is not written never comes.