Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Seeing It All, Doing It All, Saying It All: Transparency, Subject, and the World

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

Abstract

This chapter situates the debate on transparency in a larger context by comparing three epistemological or practical attitudes of the subject towards the world: the ability of “seeing it all” linked to the ideal of transparency, the courage of “saying it all” epitomized in “parrhesia” or free speech, and the power of “doing it all” labeled as “panourgia” in Greek. By analyzing a vast array of sources reaching from Sophocles and Euripides to Descartes, Diderot, and Bentham, Thomä identifies the sharp differences between those three attitudes. They represent competing ways of reading the subject and its outreach to the world. These findings are instrumental for addressing the recent success story of transparency and its discontents.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Inevitably, this semantic setting brings to mind another, equally prominent example from Greek literature. Homer, in the very first line of his Odyssey, calls Odysseus polutropos and introduces him as a master of schemes, a versatile hero turning many ways: “Polytropy is synonymous with […] ‘cunning,’ ‘shrewdness’ ” (Pucci 1987: 16). Compared to polutropos, the meaning of panourgos is decidedly more negative though. Here the idea that “everything” can be done is paired with the suspicion that such delimitation leads to crime and mischief. This negative image is not carved in stone though: The most prominent example for a far more generous account of panourgia is the intriguing figure of Panurge making its appearance in Rabelais’s novel Gargantua et Pantagruel.

  2. 2.

    Many widely used translations come up with versions similar to the one by Lloyd-Jones: Antigone is presented as “dar[ing] the crime of piety,” “committing a holy crime,” or acting as a “sinless sinner” (Sophocles 2013: 24, 2003: 56, 1952: 321). The exception that proves the rule is an online translation by William Tyrrell which reads: “I have done anything and everything holy.” (Sophocles 2002)

  3. 3.

    Another poet remains in Hölderlin’s footsteps. Bertolt Brecht’s adaptation of Sophocles’ play is largely based on his translation and reads: “Hinter mich hab ich/Heilig’s gebracht ” (Brecht and Neher 1949: 116).

  4. 4.

    It should be mentioned that Stanley Cavell takes side with the performative reading of Descartes in order to draw him back into the parrhesiastic camp (without labeling it in this manner). Cavell links subjective self-assertion to the courage to take a stance and speak up. His reading is based on a reference to Descartes in Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance:” “At the center of the essay is a paragraph that begins: ‘Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.’ […] Now I think one can describe Emerson’s progress as his having posed Descartes’s question for himself and provided a fresh line of answer, one you might call a grammatical answer: I am a being who to exist must say it exist, or must acknowledge my existence—claim it, stake it, enact it” (1988: 106, 109).

Works Cited

  • Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aristotle. 1954. The Works, Vol. 9: Ethica Nicomachea—Magna Moralia—Ethica Eudemia. Ed. W.D. Ross. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, Francis. 1858. The Works, Vol. 6. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. London: Longman and Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belavusau, Uladzislau. 2013. Freedom of Speech: Importing European and US Constitutional Models in Transitional Democracies. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentham, Jeremy. 1995. The Panopticon Writings. Ed. Miran Božovič. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Božovič, Miran. 1995. Introduction. In The Panopticon Writings, ed. Miran Božovič and Jeremy Bentham, 1–27. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brecht, Bertolt, and Caspar Neher. 1949. Antigonemodell 1948. Berlin: Weiss.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchheim, Thomas. 1994. Die Vorsokratiker: Ein philosophisches Porträt. Munich: Beck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavell, Stanley. 1988. In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colclough, David. 1999. Parrhesia: The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Early Modern England. Rhetoric 17 (2): 177–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Descartes, René. 1641 [1996]. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. and Ed. John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diderot, Denis. 1876. Œuvres complètes, Vol. 14: Encyclopédie, C-E. Ed. Jules Assézat. Paris: Garnier Frères.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Rameau’s Nephew: A Multi-Media Edition. Ed. Marian Hobson, Trans. Kate E. Tunstall and Caroline Warman. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diogenes, Laertius. 1925. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Vol. II. Trans. R.D. Hicks. London and New York: Heinemann/Putnam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eggers, Dave. 2013. The Circle: A Novel. New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, Ralph Wald. 1987. Essays & Lectures. Ed. Joel Porte. New York: Library of America.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erasmus. 1514. Parallels. Parabolae sive similia. Trans. R.A.B. Mynors, in Erasmus, Collected Works, Vol. 23, ed. Craig R. Thompson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978: 122–277.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1961 [1988]. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1975 [1977]. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Fearless Speech. Ed. Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. The Courage of Truth (The Government of Self and Others II): Lectures at the Collège de France 1983–1984. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 2005. Selected Poetry. Trans. David Luke. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haupt, Friederike. 2015. Videportal “You Now:” Zeig doch mal deine Beine. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/familie/was-eine-14-jaehrige-auf-dem-videoportal-younow-macht-13441879.html. Accessed 15 Mar 2017.

  • Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1835 [1975]. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. I/II. Trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1927 [1962]. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1950 [2002]. Off the Beaten Track. Ed. and Trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1961 [1991]. Nietzsche, Vol. III/IV: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysiks—Nihilism. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1985. The History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Trans. Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, Jaakko. 1962. Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance? Philosophical Review 71 (1): 3–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hölderlin, Friedrich. 1992. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Vol. II. Ed. Michael Knaupp. Munich and Vienna: Hanser.

    Google Scholar 

  • Honig, Bonnie. 2013. Antigone, Interrupted. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hülsewiesche, Reinhold. 2002. Redefreiheit. Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 44: 103–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lang, Bianca. 2017. Instagram-Star Caro Daur: Die Daur-Werbesendung. http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/instagram-star-caro-daur-die-daur-werbesendung-a-1155916.html. Accessed 10 Jul 2017.

  • Locke, John. 1690a [1975]. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1690b [1988]. Two Treatises on Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lupton, Deborah. 2015. Digital Sociology. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyon, David, ed. 2006. Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Cullompton: Willan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945 [2005]. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgenstern, Christian. 1933 [1963]. The Gallow Songs: A Selection. Trans. Max Knight. Berkeley and Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1882 [1974]. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pingeot, Mazarine. 2016. La dictature de la transparence. Paris: Laffont.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pucci, Pietro. 1987. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reinbold, Fabian. 2015. YouTube-Star Bibi: “Daran ist doch nichts verwerflich”. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/youtube-star-bibi-ueber-duschschaum-bibiphone-produktplatzierungen-a-1067059.html. Accessed 15 Mar 2017.

  • Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2006. La contre-démocratie: La politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, Manfred. 2013. Transparenztraum: Literatur, Politik, Medien und das Unmögliche. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, William. 1998. Complete Works. Ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shea, Louisa. 2010. The Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1994. The Works. Ware: Wordsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sophocles. 1952. Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone. Trans. F. Storr. London and New York: Heinemann and Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library, 1st ed. 1912).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1994. Antigone. Women of Trachis. Philoctetes. Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2002. Antigone. Trans. William Blake Tyrrell. https://msu.edu/~tyrrell/antigone.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2017.

  • ———. 2003. Antigone. Trans. Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Antigone. Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Elizabeth Wyckoff, David Grene, and Robert Fitzgerald. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steiner, George. 1984 [1996]. Antigones: How the Antigone Legend Has Endured in Western Literature, Art, and Thought. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomä, Dieter. 2018. The Troublemakers: A Philosophy of “puer robustus”. London: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Bernard. 1978 [2005]. Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerberg, Mark. 2017. Building Global Community. https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634. Accessed 15 Mar 2017.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Dieter Thomä

Authors
  1. Dieter Thomä
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dieter Thomä .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Emmanuel Alloa

  2. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Dieter Thomä

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Thomä, D. (2018). Seeing It All, Doing It All, Saying It All: Transparency, Subject, and the World. In: Alloa, E., Thomä, D. (eds) Transparency, Society and Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation