LIFE AS A SCANDAL OF TRUTH: MICHEL FOUCAULT'S PHILOSOPHICAL TESTAMENT

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the last course taught by Michel Foucault at the Còllege de France, in 1984, extracting from it a kind of philosophical testament. I begin by seeking to emerge from this Foucaultian self-writing a parrhesiastical accountability, in which Foucault speaks frankly about the dimensions of his work and his horizon of concern with the intertwining of three major themes: truth, power and the subject. Subsequently, I analyze how these three themes are linked by Foucault around the central issue of his last course: parrhesia. I expose the development of the concept of parrhesia in connection with the theme of true life in the Socratic-Platonic tradition, in Cynicism and in primitive Christianity to, in the end, conclude that Foucault leaves us a vast legacy, including the legacy-mission of, from the tradition opened by Cynicism, promoting a rereading of the history of philosophy no longer as a metaphysics of the soul,  but as an aesthetics of existence.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2024.029-049