Addressing power: from Prince's tutor to political advisor

Xenophon, Isocrates, Cicero, Seneca, or Plutarch... the central role played by the imperial advisor, tutor, or friend of the Prince (Grimal 1976) is underlined as early as Greco-Roman antiquity. This exclusive relationship is manifested in specific literary compositions: the mirror of princes, Fürstenspiegel (Hadot 1972; Anton 2006) or Tugendkatalog (Jónsson 2006). These didactic treatises on morality and ethics are sometimes encomiastic, sometimes severe - an ambivalence of tone (placere et docere) that is also to be found in the medieval period. While the tradition of the humanist tutor continues, Machiavelli's Prince represents a turning point in the edification of Princes while explaining how to maintain power even in difficult circumstances (Bock/Skinner 1993). These legitimately expressive figures are holders of the skeptron, the ritual stick that is passed to those who are to speak to mark that they are authorised to do so (Bourdieu 1982). In a word, they have the right to say everything, and more precisely to speak the truth, what Foucault calls parrêsia (Foucault 2012). But today, these savants are replaced by other figures. To the philosopher or the historian advisors such as Seneca for Nero or Isocrates for Nicocles, we can contrast the current professionals of communication: PR experts, political consultants, or spin doctors (Grunig/Hunt 1984). Concerning the relationship with the demos, Pliny the Younger's Panegyric of Trajan, addressed primarily to the Prince, thus took the Senate as much as its readership as a witness; today's journalists seem to address the people because the rulers no longer want to listen, thus making the editorial the new democratic matrix (Damien 2003). Finally, regarding the construction of new epistemic communities: the emergence in the contemporary era of the figure of the specific intellectual (Foucault 1994) runs counter to the humanist ideal of the Renaissance scholar (Bakhtin 1984); and yet, only economists seem to be listened to in a privileged way by the powerful of the contemporary era (Méda 1999), from Roosevelt's Brain Trust to Thomas Piketty via David Ricardo. Who then has the Prince’s ear, i.e. who has the right and who knows how to speak to him? We shall first see in more details who these moral entrepreneurs are (Becker 1963). We will then look at their relationship with truth, honesty, and free speech (Eagleton 1996). Finally, we will see how they function, today as in the past, as guarantors of a virtus (McDonnell 2006). The aim of this contribution is to build bridges between past and present. Based on the assumption that past historical facts and their reception by philosophy and literature can shed light on the institutionalization of the connections between knowledge and politics, we will use a comparative historical analysis (Mahoney 2004) to study the reconfigurations over time of these (literary) genres and (modes of) expression. Finally, this contribution will open the debate on the power relations between the scholar from humanities and social sciences and the political decision-maker, between fascination and repulsion (Fassin 2000).