- Chiefly rhetorical word for frankness or boldness of speech.
Michel Foucault analyzed the ancient ideal of parrhesia, “truthful speaking”, regarded as a central political and moral virtue during his lessons in Berkeley in 1983: "Parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth through frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy" (see: Fearless Speech, 2001, Semiotext(e))

Translated by: ROBERT GRIGOR BAXTER

• Etymology: med.L f. Gk parresia free-spokenness, f. as PARA- + rhesis