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PLATONISM I
The Paternal Thesis
How can we set off in search of a different guard, if the pharmaceutical âsystemâ contains not only, in a single stranglehold, the scene in the Phaedrus, the scene in the Republic, the scene in the Sophist, and the dialectics, logic, and mythology of Plato, but also, it seems, certain non-Greek structures of mythology? And if it is not certain that there are such things as non-Greek âmythologiesââthe opposition mythos/logos being only authorized following Platoâinto what general, unnamable necessity are we thrown? In other words, what does Platonism signify as repetition?
âDerrida, Dissemination, 167â68
Throughout his reading of Platoâs text, Derrida demarcates dissemination from the understanding of genesis that he calls âPlatonism.â I start my exploration of this reading by focusing on the earliest moment of it, the long essay âPlatoâs Pharmacy,â first published in Tel Quel (1968) and then included in Dissemination (1972). In this essay, Derrida describes Platonism as the thesis that the living logos, assisted by its father and determined by the traits of the noble birth and the body proper, is the element of all regional discourses, from linguistics to zoology, from cosmology to politics. He understands this thesis as the myth itself, the story that the logos tells (a mytho-logy) about its originâthat is, its originary and nonmetaphorical relation to its father. Platonism tends to annihilate what Derrida identifies as its anagrammatic structureânamely, the site of the concatenations of forms, of the tropic and syntactical movements, which precede and render possible the concatenation or movement of Platonism itself, as well as of philosophy in general. I examine âPlatoâs Pharmacyâ by taking as my point of departure session 2 of the recently edited course on Heidegger: The Question of Being and History (1964â1965). My argument is that the later essay can be reread as an elaboration of Derridaâs earlier analysis of Heideggerâs insight that philosophy demarcates itself from mythology for the first time in Plato. Therefore, a path between two notions of grammar, or syntax, awaits us. On the one hand, we have Heideggerâs search for a grammar for the destruction of the history of ontology and the demarcation of philosophy from mythology. On the other hand, we have grammar as the science of the concatenations of elements, invented by the Egyptian god Theuth, which, for Derrida, constitutes the science of the origin of the world, of the living as well as of the logos, of the disseminated trace.
A PROBLEM OF SYNTAX
In session 2 of Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, Derrida focuses on the problem of language concerning the destruction announced by Heideggerâthat is, the destruction of the history of ontology as âa covering-over or a dissimulation of the authentic question of Being, under not ontological but ontic sedimentationsâ (Derrida 2016, 1). In so doing, he brings to the fore an issue that Heidegger confines to a marginal place. As he acknowledges, the question âis posed in an added remark, which is a little surprising and, if I have forced Heideggerâs thinking, it is by placing this added remark in the foregroundâ (25). This remark is included in the final paragraph of the introduction to Being and Time, dedicated to the âExposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being.â Heidegger presents this paragraph as a supplementary remark on the style of his subsequent analyses, which he demands the reader to measure against the task that is being undertaken in the book. I propose inverting the movement of Derridaâs text by starting with the Heidegger passage that Derrida quotes and, from this, going back to the latterâs formulation of the problem of language. Heideggerâs remark reads:
With regard to the awkwardness and âineleganceâ of expression in the following analyses, we may remark that this is one thing to report narratively about beings another to grasp beings in their being. For the latter task not only most of the words are lacking but above all the âgrammar.â If we may allude to earlier and in their own right altogether incomparable researches on the analysis of being, then we should compare the ontological sections in Platoâs Parmenides or the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Aristotleâs Metaphysics with a narrative passage from Thucydides. Then we can see the stunning character of the formulations with which their philosophers challenged the Greeks. Since our powers are essentially inferior, also since the area of being to be disclosed ontologically is far more difficult than that presented to the Greeks, the complexity of our concept-formation and the severity of our expression will increase. (1996, 34)
In the pages that precede the quotation from Heideggerâs text, Derrida anticipates the problem of the language of destruction by highlighting the feature of the forms of concatenation (enchainement). âWhence are we to draw the concepts, the terms, the forms of linking [enchainement] necessary for the discourse of Destruction, for the destructive discourse?â (Derrida 2016, 23â24), he wonders. A few paragraphs later, he develops this reference to the forms of concatenation of language and discourse by reformulating the problem of the language of destruction as mainly a question of syntax, where syntax is implicitly understood to designate the science of the concatenation of concepts and words. The problem of language, he notes, âis not only a problem of philosophical lexicology, but it is a problem of syntax which concerns the forms of linkage [enchainement] of conceptsâ (25). Here Derrida sheds light on Heideggerâs introductory remark that the task of the subsequent analyses is jeopardized by a lack of syntax. In the following pages, he sets out a careful examination of this remark that takes his exposition beyond the boundaries of Heideggerâs text, toward a seminal reading of Platoâs Timaeus. This examination is developed under the heading âontic metaphorâ (26), which seems to resonate with the ontic and not ontological sediments that dissimulate the question of Being. Derrida reformulates, once again, the problem of language by linking it to Heideggerâs self-inhibition of narrative. âThe language difficulty,â he explains, âhangs, then ⊠on the fact that for the first time we are going to forbid ourselves resolutely and absolutely from âtelling storiesâ [raconter des histoires, as Derrida interprets the German ĂŒber Seiendes erzĂ€hlende zu berichten (the English edition has âto report narrativelyâ), which is translated literally, between parentheses, by âinformer en racontantâ (26)]â (26). Furthermore, he adds that narrativeânamely, telling storiesâhas a specific meaning for Heidegger here: it accounts for âphilosophy itselfâ as the ontic dissimulation of the question of Being and thus as âmetaphysics and onto-theologyâ (26). This suggests that, despite the discrimination between Platoâs and Aristotleâs analysis of Being and Thucydidesâs narrative, the former are still on this side of philosophy as telling stories.
To explain what telling stories means, Derrida alludes to a distinction between origin and genesis, which, as we will see, is at work in a key moment of the Timaeus and, on my reading, grounds the interpretation of Platonism elaborated in âPlatoâs Pharmacy.â Derrida (2016) observes:
To tell stories is ⊠to assimilate being [ĂȘtre] and beings [Ă©tant], that is, to determine the origin of beings qua beings on the basis of another being. It is to reply to the question âwhat is the being of beings?â by appealing to another being supposed to be its cause or origin. It is to close the opening and to suppress the question of the meaning of being. Which does not mean that every ontic explication in itself comes down to telling stories; when the sciences determine causalities, legalities that order the relations between beings, when theology explains the totality of beings on the basis of creation or the ordering brought about by a supreme being, they are not necessarily telling stories. They âtell storiesâ when they want to pass their discourse off as the reply to the question of the meaning of being or when, incidentally, they refuse this question all seriousness. (29)
I highlight what interests us here: on the one hand, origin as the Being of beings, on the other, genesis as the transition from a being to another, as the becoming of things. Therefore, telling stories consists in the ontic explanation of the origin of beings. The recourse to the expression âtelling stories,â in order to interpret Heideggerâs remark, is made explicit a little later on, when Derrida turns to section 2 in the âIntroductionâ of Being and Time. In the passage recalled by Derrida, Heidegger borrows from Platoâs Sophist the determination of the ontic explanation of the origin of beings as a narrative, as telling a story.
The being of beings âisâ itself not a being. The first philosophical step in understanding the problem of being consists in avoiding the mython tina diÄgeisthai, in not âtelling a story,â that is, not determining beings as beings by tracing them back in their origins to another beingâas if being had the character of a possible being. (Heidegger 1996, 5)
As Derrida observes, philosophy demarcates itself from âtelling storiesâ when the Stranger in Platoâs Sophist claims to abandon the mythological discourse in order to address the problem of Being as such. Furthermore, in a remark on the translation of Heideggerâs passage, Derrida draws attention to the present tense âconsists,â observing that telling stories is âa gesture that always threatens the question of being, yesterday, now and tomorrowâ (2016, 31). The reading of âPlatoâs Pharmacyâ that I propose below interrogates the irreducibility of this threat. Unfolding Heideggerâs reference to the Sophist, in the seminar, Derrida explores how Plato takes the first philosophical step beyond mythology onto the question of Being. The renunciation of mythology is inscribed in the dialogue at the moment when, after the well-known refutation and parricide of Parmenides, the character of the Stranger sketches out a short history of past ontologies. Platoâs text reads:
As if we had been children, to whom they repeated each his own mythus or story [in the French edition quoted by Derrida: âils mâont lâair de nous conter les mythes (muthon tina ekastos phainetai moi diÄgeisthai),â Derrida 2016, 32]; one said that there were three principles, and that at one time there was war between certain of them; and then again there was peace, and they were married and begat children, and brought them up; and another spoke of two principles, a moist and a dry, or a hot and a cold, and made them marry and cohabit. The Eleatics, however, in our part of the world, say that things are many in name, but in nature one; this is their mythus, which goes back to Xenophanes, and is even older. Then there are Ionian, and in more recent times Sicilian muses, who have arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles is safer. (242câe)
It is worth reading what Derrida adds at the end of the first case of ontology recalled by Plato. He suggests that what the latter tells is the history/story of being as âthe history of being as a family history, as a family treeâ (Derrida 2016, 32), thus alluding to the ideas of genesis and becoming. The conclusion of the Strangerâs argument, Derrida summarizes, is that âBeing is other than the determination of the ontaâ and thus âone must be conscious of this alterity which is not a difference between onta, in order to transgress mythology when one asks what is the origin of beings in their beingâ (34). However, Plato too admits that the task of abandoning mythology is impossible for the philosopher. Derrida evokes the example of Timaeusâs preliminary remark in his discourse about the origin of the universeâabout âthe origin of the world, the origin of the beingsâ (35), as Derrida puts itâin Timaeus 27dâ29d. This remark is interpreted by Derrida as a âresponseâ to Socratesâs demand for âa true story (alÄthinon logon)â and not âa muthonâ (35), which precedes the discourse. Approving his interlocutorâs claim for the historical authenticity of the forthcoming discourse, Socrates observes: âThe fact that it isnât a made-up story but a true historical account is of course critically importantâ (Timaeus 26e). Timaeus begins by explaining that his discourse is marked by two related impossibilities: (a) the task of speaking about the father of the universe to everyone is impossible (28c); and, consequently, (b) it is impossible to give an account of the origin of the universe, namely, of the becoming of beings, that would be âaltogether internally consistent and in every respect and perfectly preciseâ (29c), for the very reason that it regards becoming and not Being. Derrida interprets Timaeusâs remark at different levels: as a direct response to Socratesâ...