First, we must examine the ways in which Plato “sets the stage” for this dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus because if indeed it is Plato’s intention to condemn the written word, then it is important to see how he prepares for the condemnation to perform as a literary function of the text. Derrida points out that, “Only a blind or grossly insensitive reading could indeed have spread the rumor that Plato was simply condemning the writer’s activity”; therefore, it is important to first give Plato the benefit of the doubt before resigning him to the mere vilification of the written word. It is quite clear from the outset that the dialogue is meant to mimic the spoken words of Socrates and Phaedrus. Their banter at the beginning and throughout the dialogue gives a good indication of this point. If Plato had written this as a treatise, moments such as Socrates teasing Phaedrus about concealing Lysias’ speech under his cloak would have been stricken because in the form of a treatise, they would have served no function; however, in the form of a dialogue meant to mimic or be a “recording” of actual speech, they function well.
As part of the narrative of the dialogue, Plato stages situations right from the start that begin to chip away at writing. The conversation begins with Phaedrus informing Socrates that he as come from Lysias, a speechwriter. Socrates notes, “it is obvious that Lysias entertained [Phaedrus] with his speeches” (138). Phaedrus offers to recite one to Socrates, but Socrates catches him with a written copy hidden under his cloak. Phaedrus then offers to read the speech to Socrates. It is at this point that the two discuss the myth of Boreas and Oreithyia and Plato introduces the concept of Pharmacea: “a blast of Boreas, the north wind, pushed her off the neighboring rocks as she was playing with Pharmacea, and that when she died in this manner she was said to have been carried off by Boreas” (140). In terms of literary form, Derrida makes an important point: “The fable [. . .] would not have been recounted, Socrates would not have been incited to tell it, if the heat, which weighs over the whole dialogue, had not driven the two friends out of the city, into the countryside, along the river Ilissus” (1834). The entire dialogue is staged, in part, to benefit the condemnation of writing. Following the telling of the myth, Socrates compares the written manuscript that Phaedrus has brought to the Pharmacea. The written speech is the equivalent of a drug—something that, in the case of Oreithyia, leads to death.
However, we must remember that Plato is not simply condemning writing here—not yet. If he were, then it would be clear that Socrates’ message is that all writing is the pharmakon; however, that is not the implication. According to Derrida, “Operating through seduction, the pharmakon makes one stray from one’s general, natural, habitual paths and laws” (1835). This is clear in the particular piece of writing in question, a copy of Lysias’ speech—one that Phaedrus treasures very much. When he finishes his reading, he asks, “What do you think of the discourse, Socrates? Is it not wonderful, especially in diction?” (142). Socrates replies, teasing Phaedrus: “I saw that you were delighted by the speech as you read. So thinking that you know more than I about such matters, I followed in your train and joined you in the divine frenzy” (142). By calling Phaedrus’ reaction to the text a “frenzy,” Socrates implies that the speech has acted as the pharmakon, pulling Phaedrus away from what Derrida calls his general, natural, habitual paths and laws. Socrates is teasing Phaedrus not simply because he has put so much stock in a written speech but because Phaedrus has not taken the time to think about what Lysias has actually said in the speech. Jasper Neel points out that Phaedrus, “sets out not to think about [the speech] or learn from it but to memorize it parrotlike” (4). Therefore, this instance could be read as a condemnation of the type of rote writing for memorization that Phaedrus has engaged in specifically, but not necessarily a denunciation of the entire enterprise of writing.
Yet Derrida still provides a powerful observation regarding Phaedrus’ recitation of Lysias’ speech, which does apply to the enterprise of writing, though it is in the guise of condemning rote memorization. Derrida asserts that for Socrates, “A spoken speech—whether by Lysias or by Phaedrus in person—a speech proffered in the present, in the presence of Socrates, would not have had the same effect” (1836). Derrida is pointing out that while Socrates may be concerned with young Phaedrus’ practice of rote memorization, there is a larger issue: writing is not present the way speech is. When Socrates tells Phaedrus, “I’m going to keep my head wrapped up while I talk, that I may get through my discourse as quickly as possible and that I may not look at you and become embarrassed,” he is disowning the speech he is about to make—that is he is removing presence from the speech.
This concept of presence is vitally important in examining the literary form of the dialogue because it sheds light on the foundation of the contradiction found within the text. We must remember in instances like this that Socrates himself is not intending these effects. There is a man behind his words whose own motives can make the meaning of the text duplicitous. Neel’s fascinating study on the Phaedrus points out that “every word has the capability, even the probability, of meaning something different from what it says,” precisely because Plato is writing a dialogue of a conversation that never literally took place, but one that could have taken place—Plato is writing in 367 BCE a dialogue that would have occurred in 410 BCE (8). Therefore Plato is not present in the dialogue that he is writing. Rather than Plato himself write a treatise using his voice from his time, he chooses to “replace [it] with already dead voices from four decades before. And at this point the text begins to complicate itself in a variety of ways as we hear a voice that is the replacement of a voice—the dead Socrates replaces the living Plato” (8). However, this relationship becomes even more complicated because Socrates’ “voice” is in reality Plato’s. Neel sees this as a clever ploy on the part of Plato to “remove” his voice from the dialogue without actually removing it. The example of Socrates’ removal of presence from the speech he delivers about lover and the nonlover is a case in point. Within the narrative of the dialogue, Socrates is merely teasing Phaedrus; however, when we take into consideration the voice behind the voice—Plato—then we can see that there is more at stake here: the presence of speech versus the non-presence of writing. Of course the question then becomes: How is it that Plato can condemn the non-presence of writing when he himself is not present within a dialogue he has written?
Derrida begins to answer this question. In his discussion of the passages mentioned above, he further develops the connection between books (“biblia”) and pharmakon that seems to arise before the “overt presentation of writing as a pharmakon arises in the middle of the myth of Theuth” (1837). Derrida argues that for Socrates, the biblia is “dead and rigid knowledge, [. . .] piles of histories, nomenclatures, recipes and formulas learned by hear” (1837). The recognition of Plato as the voice behind Socrates forces the reader to recognize the Phaedrus as part of the biblia. It too is a book, and Plato certainly intended the knowledge he imparted to remain rigid—primarily because we know that it has for the last twenty-three centuries. For Derrida, it is no coincidence that this connection between book and drug is made early in the dialogue. It is a part of the strategy of the narrative—a method of foreshadowing. Neel further notes that “once one undoes the first knot in the tapestry by asking the questions Who wrote what when? and Where am I when I read? it is quickly apparent that Phaedrus is writing” (14). In other words, the incongruity of reading the text as though it is Socrates and Phaedrus having an actual conversation in 410 and simultaneously recognizing that it is in fact Plato writing in 367 giving voice to two characters, makes it impossible not to see Phaedrus as a written, constructed text.
Finally, the myth of Theuth that Socrates relates to Phaedrus essentially concludes the dialogue. It is at this moment that Socrates (or Plato, rather) makes his strongest and most overt point about writing. Derrida notes that, “This time it is without indirection, without hidden meditation, without secret argumentation, that is writing is proposed, presented, and asserted as a pharmakon” (1837.) For Derrida, this becomes the core of his project. Socrates is presupposing, as was alluded to earlier, Being-as-self-presence because “within the tradition of Western thought, Being is revealed most clearly in the spoken word” (Frentz 253). Therefore, his telling of this myth is the focal point for Derrida with regard to the Phaedrus. In the context of literary form, the telling of the myth and the assertion of writing as inferior to speech is almost an afterthought. Right before it, Socrates says, “We have, then, said enough about the art of speaking and that which is no art” (165). He turns to writing. At the end of the myth, the king tells Theuth, inventor of writing, “You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise” (165). Judging by the myth alone, Socrates is now openly condemning what he had condemned by implication earlier: the tendency not to study the written but to simply memorize it. However, Socrates does not stop there. He tells Phaedrus, “He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person” (166). Plato, thus, establishes two ideas about writing. First, in the myth, the king of the gods has examined writing, its proposed function and has rejected it. Derrida calls the king “The Father of Logos”; in other words, he is the father of the spoken word (139). He writes that, “The value of writing will not be itself, writing will have no value, unless and to the extent that god-the-king approves of it” (1840). Writing is reduced to “product,” non-essential, and secondary to speech.
If we return the earlier analysis, this assertion becomes extremely problematic. First what Plato has created here is a mimic of speech—a product. It is meant to resemble speech, but we cannot deny that it is not, in fact, speech. It is not even a record of historical speech; it is a literary narrative devised and executed by Plato through Socrates and Phaedrus. Plato attempts to achieve two things, primarily, through this. First, writing the dialogue as a literary text purporting to be a historical record allows Plato to prepare the reader for this final conclusion, without the sense that this purpose is in mind from the beginning. Neel asserts that, “Plato’s text would have us believe that no one is in control, that it is a disinterested movement toward truth set in operation and kept in motion by the power of dialectic as exercised by the superior philosopher, Socrates” (14). However, because the reader can acknowledge the fact that Plato is composing this as a literary work, he can see that the text is deliberate and Plato is in control. Second, in appropriating Socrates’ voice, Plato attempts to remove himself completely from the dialogue, which returns us back to Neel’s point. It is meant to read and flow—to mimic—a real conversation. But it is not. Plato is absent from his text construction that affirms a metaphysics of presence.
With specific reference to the word pharmakon, Derrida finds the heart of the problem. Plato attempts, throughout the dialogue to separate the sliding meanings of pharmakon: “medicine and/or poison” (Derrida 1835). Plato attributes the meaning of medicine to speech and poison to writing, but for Derrida, the control over these signifieds continually escapes Plato, to the point where he has Socrates say, “The word [logos] is written with intelligence in the mind of the learner” (166). Therefore, as Thomas Frentz points out, “If speech is ‘written on the soul,’ then writing is already inside of ‘living’ speech (256). Thus, Plato, through this one line, has imploded the speech/writing opposition that he sets up from the beginning from within his own text. The balance that was thought to be held between the two is ruptured. It is not that writing becomes primary to speech, or even that the two are now equal. It is simply that through Plato’s own words, the reader finds the terms are supplementary. They add to each other’s value and meaning.
Simply referring to Plato’s text as contradictory would be a mistake. Such a perfunctory reading of the text ignores the literary quality of the text. This quality is important, not only because it gives context to an examination of the text, but because it is that very quality that helps to illuminate the breadth and depth of the contradictory and paradoxical nature of the text. It focuses attention on Plato’s absence from a text that upholds a metaphysics of presence, and it brings light to the problem of a written text, which, while it purports to be a record of the spoken word, condemns written texts.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. “Dissemination/Plato’s Pharmacy.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leicht. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1830-76.
Frentz, Thomas S. “Memory, Myth, and Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 36 (2006): 243-62.
Neel, Jasper. Plato, Derrida, and Writing. Carbondale: U of S Illinois Press, 1988.
Plato. Phaedrus. The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 138-68.
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