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1. Neoliberalism and ethicsIn this paper I will examine the differences between the autonomous neoliberal subject, and

Foucaults reflexive (ethical) subject constituted through the care of the self. The contrast between a

(docile) subject constituted through disciplinary techniques, and the ethical self constituted through

techniques of the self is quite clear. However, with the advent of neoliberalism, which precisely

stresses the autonomy of its subjects (and even with the injunction to take care of itself), it becomes

more difficult to distinguish the two. Based on a reading of Foucaults late work Fearless Speech I

will argue that the difference lies in their specific relation to truth. While the neoliberal subject is

caught in a neoliberal regime of truth, the ethical subject only comes into being by practicing

techniques of the self that relate to a different truth: a particular truth constituted simultaneously

white the constitution of the ethical selfa truth that only exist the practices of the self.

2. Foucault and truthFoucaults states in Fearless Speechhis aim in most of his works was to analyze the process of a

certain problematizationwhich means how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes)

became a problem(173). Fearless Speechitself is an analysis of the problematization of truth

telling: who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to

power? (169). In this paper I will argue that fearless speech is Foucaults attempt to deal with our

contemporary problematization of Truth. If the postmodern condition means a suspicion of any notion

of a Universal Truth, truth telling becomes a problem: there is no (preexisting) universal Law or

discourse with regard to which one can judge if someone tells the truth. This is similar to the problem

of truth telling in Greek society at the end of the 5thcentury B.C. In Athenian democracy, Parrhesia

(truth telling) becomes unlinked from a certain privileged status (the gods and the aristocracy), a

status that before was a sign of parrhesia. How can one know whos speaks truth in a democracy?

While isonomia (the equality of all citizens in front of the law) and isegoria (the legal right given to

everyone to speak his own opinion), could be clearly defined in institutional terms, parrhesia itself

could not. The problem for the Greeks was that the conditions or laws for truth telling could not be

institutionalized. How is it possible to give legal form to someone who relates truth? There are formal

laws of valid reasoning, but no social, political, or institutional laws determining who is able to speak

the truth(72). However, the solution was not sought in the rejection of the possibility truth telling as

such (as in the postmodern solution), but in the ethics of the care of oneself, an ethics that tries to find

a techniques and practices with the aim to be able to relate to truth, to be able to tell the truth, and to be

able distinguish between true and false speech (Foucault locates this moment as the origin of thecritical attitude in the west). Ethics, the constitution of the self as a work of art, is driven by this

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relation of the self to truth. Far from being a relativist, Foucault tries to rehabilitate a notion of truth as

a force in ethics. In order to tell the truth in postmodernity, one cannot take recourse to a totalizing

metanarrative (i.e. Marxism or religion). Rather, one has to carefully examine ones relation to truth

(do I speak on behalf of my self-interest, someone elses,or do I tell the truth?), and through ethical

practices, give place to truth as a force in ones actions.

Consider this quote of Foucault, where he talks about Senecas care of the self:

His pleasures are not the means of revealing what Christians later call concupiscensia (lust). For

him, it is a question of his own state and of adding something to the knowledge of the moral precepts.

This addition to what is already known is a force, the force which would be able to transform pure

knowledge and simple consciousness in a real way of living . . . Seneca has to give a place to truth

as a force.