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rates has to empty himself, to free himself from himself in a
sui generis purification, in a cathartic vomiting of his self,
which is misconstrued as an “I,” in order to provide a place for
the other to speak through the other’s voice freely and without distortion.
In fact, Socrates assimilates himself to a pythia who rejects
herself, who rejects her sane mind, in order to allow the oracle
to pass through freely and become manifest in an uttered
word. Socrates thus impersonates the right and the true, to
alēthes, which is ascribed to the interest-free and thus nondistorting tradition of the oral or the “heard,” akoē. Modern
monological consciousness posits itself as monocon-sciousness, which is thus exclusive of the other, and which, consequently, is unable to open itself toward the oracle and
take it seriously as the voice of the other. Socrates, who is
now dialogically conversing with Phaedrus, substitutes one
of his own rejoinders for a whole dialogue, thus liberating
himself from himself. Subsequently, Socrates must interpret, together with his interlocutor, this transmitted and
retold dialogue as an oracle, i.e., not as his own, but as the
other’s word, as the dialogical word that, though he himself
has spelled it out, is utterly independent of himself.
1
The oracular or “heard” tradition of writing, which is now
paradoxically represented in a written conversation, assimilates the akoē to the very source of Greek book wisdom,
the Egyptian gods.
2
The interlocutors of the speech that Socrates retells in the Phaedrus are Theut (Thot) and Thamus (Ammon), who stand for the old political division between Lower
Egypt (Theut is from Naucratis) and the triumphant Upper
Egypt (Thamus is from the capital of Thebes).
3
Respectively, Theut is the one who invents number, calculation,
geometry, astronomy, draught, dice, and, above all, writing,
1
Cp.: Васильева Т.В. Афинская школа философии. М.: Наука, 1985. pp.
61 sqq. et passim.
2
Cp.: Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time
of the Pharaohs, trans. David Lorton (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002),
pp. 301–2.
1
Plato, Phaedrus 274c–d.
7171
the way to present a concept through a sign. Thamus, on the
contrary, is the one who judges, thus fulfilling one of the
most important functions of the king, namely, the ability to
tell right from wrong. Despite the fact that Theut appears to
be subordinate to Thamus, both mutually complement each
other (allos... allos): the one, Theut, produces the works
of art, i.e., assigns being to that which does not yet exist
(by nature); the other, Thamus, discriminates (krinein) between that which is produced by either granting or refusing
it a place in the order of that which properly exists (again, by
nature) and that which is harmful or useful. The (skillful) doer
does not judge; the (critical) teller does not produce. Again,
Achilles and Homer, the skillful producer and the wise judge,
need each other; they do not exist, i.e., are not capable of performing their proper functions, without each other.
Theut presents an invention that he considers to be
a curefor memory and wisdom (mnēmēs te... kai sophias
pharmakon).
1
He himself takes the invention, the scratch and
scribble, lines and letters, to be a “science,” mathēma, whereas Thamus takes it to be an “art,” tekhnē. The two designations do not stand in contradiction, however, for mathēma is that which can be taught and learned, teaching and
learning being precisely the purpose of writing, and tekhnē
is a skill that can strengthen one’s natural capacity, which
includes the capacity to teach and to learn. What is Theut’s
motivation for inventing new devices and giving them, as
Prometheus does, to people? It is eynoia, goodwill, literally,
“goodmind,” a conscious intention to provide the good, ey,
for the benefit of others. And it is exactly because of this good
intention that Theut does the opposite, for he misj udges
the real purpose of writing, or grammata. This missing of
the real purpose in and of that which is invented appears
to be precisely that which characterizes art, or tekhnē; for
even if the inventor has a (good and laudable purpose in
mind, the art itself still belongs to the imitative, which in
2
Plato, Phaedrus 274e. Cp. Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” in Dis-
semination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1981), pp. 63–171.
72
turn belongs to becoming, and thus the art can neither
adequately reproduce nor grasp the good, which pertains to
being and is disclosed within the realm of the the oretical
by discriminatory judgement. In this case, tekhnē as invention inevitably misses its target. Therefore, the doer, the inventor or artisan, needs a spectator to judge and to appreciate
what is invented.
Put in a rigid form and thus incapable of self-defense, the
written speech, originally intended as simply a fixation of
the oral speech, needs an interpretation and an interpreter
who would bring the written back into the live and ensouled logos. The written signs, however, are utterly immovable and inflexible (ametakinēton), and hence incapable of
self-explanation and self-defense, which is the main reason
for Plato’s preferring orality over and against writing in the
Seventh Letter.
1
Therefore, any consistent interpretation
of the written will do, because the written cannot argue.
Any interpretation is then always an interpretation, which
inevitably differs from the intention of the text. Precisely because of this, the author(s)’s own interpretation and understanding as it is meant in the written text is itself only an
interpretation, which already comes after the written text
is presented and read, which is why it might be said that no
original intention and meaning, as the intention, can or
should be ascribed to the written text.
Writing or graphē, the drawing of a portrait of a word, is
thus astonishingly similar to painting or zōgraphia: both
represent the living as living (hōs zōnta), but when you
question them, they solemnly keep silent (semnōs pany
2
sigai).
Writings or logoi speak as if they were thinking (hōs
phronoyntas), but when one tries to inquire into them, i.e.,
to communicate dialogically, they always say the same thing.
In this case, “saying the same” amounts to “keeping silent” in
a perplexing privation of speech. Being always the same, written logoi are destitute of otherness, which has to be brought
1
Plato, Epistola VII 342e–343a.
2
Plato, Phaedrus 275d-e.
73
in by the interpreters within a dialogue who discuss the written as that which is “painted.” In other words, the written
logoi lack live logos, and retain only its petrified remains.
The original, live, and ensouled logos, can only be transmitted by those who are or were present to it while it was
still alive and not yet written down. This is why, as the Anonymous Prolegomena to the Platonic Philosophy suggests,
instead of writing speeches, it is better to leave disciples
“live and living speeches” who can defend themselves, i.e.,
the oral.
1
Pythagoras and Socrates acted in exactly this
way, having left no written speeches but only like-minded
disci-ples who were capable of communicating their oral
teachings, not dogmatically, but rather aporetically, in and
through ongoing discussion.
2
The oral logos of the founder is
in this way transmitted not by being rigidly fixed within
a written form—perhaps, only mnemonically in shorter
sayings—but by remaining alive and thus by further developing, i.e., it always stays the same in its “nucleus” through
discussion, while, however, always being different.
The oral word, living through “living speeches” or disciples,
is precise, not literally (in its “letter”), but in its meaning
(in its “spirit”), which, however, is subject to revision over
and throughout the generations of tradition. Since the very
“life of the mind” consists in debate, in dialogical discussion,
there is no need for an ultimately fixed, dogmatic doctrine,
and this not as a starting point, but as a point of destination.
The oral logos, however, is universal in that it belongs to
everyone who participates in such discussion, and which has
only been first introduced by the figure of the founder (by
1
Anonymous Prolegomena, III.13.3 sqq.: “First we must answer the much
discussed question why he [Plato] thought it necessary to commit his teachings to writing. Plato himself in the Phaedrus, it is remarked, criticizes
writers of books because their writings [syggrammata], being lifeless, cannot
defend themselves when doubts are raised, as they always say the same thing
and cannot answer a difficulty [aporian] brought against them; therefore, he
says, we should not write books [oy dei oyn... syggraphein], but leave pupils,
who are living books [empsykha syggramata]. This was also the practice of
his predecessors: thus Socrates and Pythagoras left only pupils, not writings”
(Anonymous Prolegomena, trans. and ed. L. G. Westerink [Amsterdam: NorthHolland Publishing Company, 1962]; trans. mod.).
2
Plato, Phaedrus 275d.
74
Plato himself, or borrowed from another, e.g., from a sophist). The written text can then at best only be a reminder
(hypomnēsai) of him who knows what the writing is about,
i.e., of him who first brought the logos (universalizable in
the above sense) into discourse.
The interpreter of a written
text, on the contrary, mostly misses the original logos,
substituting it with his own private logos, for everyone tends
to see and read into a text that which they already un knowingly presuppose and implicitly have in mind.
1
The oracle is dead. Authority of the written text. The rigidity and stiffness of writing is further exemplified in its
tendency to become a sacred text (which Plato’s own dialogues later became for the Platonic tradition) and to present
itself as an unshakeable authority. In such a text nothing is
to be changed, and the written is to be accepted in its entirety as the text itself, which is always already given in advance
and is the primary reality, the ultimate source of reference
that provides all possible interpretations of the world, both
physical and thinkable, as it is represented in the social and
the political. The written speech, graphein, frozen into the
text, if it does not fully substitute “what is,” then it at least
makes it accessible only in an inevitably distorted way through
the prism of “culture,” through another written and interpretive
speech, made canonical, that has risen on the basis of the
sacred text itself. Once the written gains such full advantage
over the oral, the oracle is dead, just as is any prophetic oral
utterance. The oracle is not heard, because it is not questioned. Only interpretations, both oral and written, make
sense and still survive in the writing-oriented speech, which
are interpretations of past oracles, fallen silent long ago.
A sacred text is its own author. Thought, as that which
is understood, and the oral, as that which is said, thus never
fully fit into the written. That which is inexpressible, or
catachrestic, in the sacred text, and which remains within
1
Cp.: D. Nikulin, On Dialogue (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), pp.
151–4.
7575
the domain of the oral, is easily reinterpreted as the text’s
hidden meaning that lies “behind” the literal one. Such nonevident meaning, which is a matter of shared interpretation
within a narrow community of those who take the given
text to be sacred, may be further construed as that which
points to the very source of the sacred text, which in turn is
not always evident within the writing itself. Since everybody
within the interpretative community can have access to
the interpretation of the text, the text becomes prior to
any interpretation, which becomes just an explanation
among others. And since everybody can claim equal right
in deciphering a common text, which is now the text, the
author himself does not have any advantage in construing
his own text, i.e., in construing it as that which he himself
has produced. In this sense, the written text can be taken
as primary, prior even to the author.
The incapacity on the part of writing-oriented thinking
to listen to that which is oral results in the death of the oracle.
1
In the Phaedrus Socrates ironically reproaches the “new” for
being “wise,” which here means being “rhetorically wise,” i.e.,
strong in persuasion, and yet he also reproaches them for
drawing their wisdom from writings, whose purpose is merely
to remind the readers of him who knows the sense of that
which is written, having, as it were, produced the writing
himself. Because of this, the “literate,” those who read and
write, are incapable of listening to and understanding oracular speech, logos mantikos, and they are unaware of the reasons that are given for not writing, which are presented in the
oracles of Ammon (Ammōnos manteia) through Socrates.
2
That the oracle is dead means a naïve, simple-minded, and
straightforward acceptance of the authority of anybody or anything (even of a tree or a rock) who speaks or utters, provided that
he, she, or it speaks sincerely and correctly (alēthē).It means,
moreover, that this authority of the oral oraclegiver is substituted for by the authority of him who writes, i.e., of him who is
1
Already Cicero says that the oracle at Delphi has long ago ceased to exist.
See De divinatione II.117.
2
Plato, Phaedrus 275b–d.
76
capable of a primarily written interpretation of an already given
(sacred) text in and through one that is newly produced.
This latter kind of writing-based authority, that of the
hommes des lettres, excludes the oracle as undermining and
potentially dangerous, because the oracle that speaks rightly
is always unexpected (or never expected) and nobody can
predict, usurp, or set the proper time, kairos, for such speech.
The “wise” and sophisticated, writing-minded “moderns”
(hoi neoi), however, accept and recognize authority on the
basis of a careful discrimination concerning who speaks
and whence that which is said or written comes (tis ho
legōn kai podapos), i.e., which school of interpretation and
writing the interpreter comes from, and what position the
one who so intereprets has. This determines whether or not
the others among the literate will recognize the authority
of an interpretation of the written in and by the written.
The oracle becomes mute once it is written, i.e., written
down and usurped by a whole class of priests, of the literate
who take over the privilege of interpreting that which is
pronounced. This reference to the “whence” of writing and to
a succession of authoritative interpretations, to a succession
of scholars and illustrious writers, treats writing as though
it were autonomous, and thus completely disregards the
unsophisticated and sincere right of the oral as it is originally
discussed in the allonomous oral dialogue, i.e., the alēthē of
the oracle, no matter who says or utters it.
Alcidamas. The “wise” and “new,” whom Socrates has
in mind when he makes his ironic reference, are first and
foremost the Sophists, who are wise in writing and strong in
composing beautiful persuasive speeches. Commentators
point out similarities between Socrates’ philippics against
writing in the Phaedrus and the speech of Alcidamas, who
was a student of Gorgias, entitled, On those who write their
speeches, or on Sophists, which was written against Isocrates and from which Plato most probably borrowed.
1
1
Alcidamas, Peri tōn toys graptoys logoys graphontōn ē peri Sophis-tōn,
esp. 27-33, in Antiphon, Orationes et fragmenta, adiunctis Gorgiae Antisthenis Alcidamantis declamationibus, ed. Fr. Blass (Leipzig: Teubner,
77
Alcidamas argues that it is not even proper to call written
speeches “speeches” at all, for they are only inert images and
appearances and imitations of speeches (eidōla kai skhēmata
kai mimēmata logōn), the way bronze statues imitate living
bodies.
1
As the bronze images are beautiful but utterly useless, so are the written speeches. The oral speech is pronounced from understanding and is ensouled (empsykhos),
alive, keeping pace with the circumstances in which it is
set. This is why the oral speech is similar, for Alcidamas, to
living and ensouled bodies, whereas the written one is only
a lifeless imitation thereof, destitute of any actuality and
frozen in a lack of any activity.
2
Plato’s agrapha dogmata. Thus, both Alcidamas and Plato
agree that the written speech, as an imitation of the oral,
inevitably betrays live speech.
3
Alcidamas’ attempt is paradoxical and self-defeating, for he criticizes and opposes
writing in and by writing. For Alcidamas, writing in general,
as an enterprise, is meant to be, if not rejected, then at
least severely limited by his particular speech, which is a
performative self-contradiction. Indeed, in order to properly
criticize writing, one has to do it in oral speech, which is not
1908), pp. 193–205; 202–204. There might also be some similarity in the
defense of orality against writing between Plato and Isocrates’ First Letter to
Dionysius. Cp. Платон. Федр. Комм. Ю. А. Шичалина. (Москва: Прогресс,
1989), с. 94–95; and L. Robin, commentary to the Phaedrus, in Plato, Œuvres
complètes, vol. 4, pt. 3 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), p. clxvi.
2
Alcidamas, Peri sophiston 27.
3
“[H]o de gegrammenos eikoni logoy tēn physin homoian ekhōn hapasēs
energeias amoiros kathestēken” (Alcidamas, Peri sophiston 28). The utter
incapacity of lifeless letters to hold the live spirit of the oral prescriptions is
also ascribed to the Pythagoreans and to Numa. See Plutarch, Numa XXII.
4
Hans-Georg Gadamer (Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik [Tübingen: Mohr, 1990], p. 374) takes Plato’s
criticism of writtenness (Schriftlichkeit) as an attempt to answer the Sophists’
interpretation of texts, at the time when philosophy and poetry turn into
literature (Literaturwerden), especially to counter the interpretation of poetry
for pedagogical purposes, and to overcome the weakness of the sophistic
logoi, bringing language and its notion back to the original movement of live
speech in his own dialogical literary work (Dialogdichtung). This, however,
would make Plato overcome one kind of writtenness, the Sophistic written
logoi, by yet another one which is equally unsuitable for transmitting and
embracing the oral.
78
preservable long enough and eventually will be lost. Alcidamas does not resolve this fundamental problem, leaving us
his own speech as written, not only preserved in a written
medium, but already intentionally written as in fact a written
speech, one which he carefully and beautifully composed
on purpose. The minimal compromise between that which
is written, and that which, in vain, is written in order to be
both self-opposed and self-canceling, is that at least the
speech of Alcidamas is relatively short.
In his Seventh Letter Plato further insists that the remarkably flexible oral logos cannot fit the Procrustean couch
of a rigidly fixed text. Moreover, even the oral logos is not
adequate enough, for Plato, for expressing what and how
it is, which requires not reading, but rather a constant effort
of thinking that might suddenly and unexpectedly give light
to an understanding of “what is,” and that which “is,” to an
understanding of the arrhēta, which is neither properly sayable nor representable within discursive logical thinking;
it is an understanding of that which does not strictly follow
from any previously discursive oral or written reasoning, for
it cannot fit either one.
1
Here the argument of the Seventh
Letter differs from that of the Phaedrus in that the latter creates an opposition between the oral and the written, whereas
the Seventh Letter further accentuates the opposition within
the oral alone, between that which is merely thought and
understood, on the one hand, which itself further includes
the opposition between the non-discursive eidos and the
discursive logos, and the uttered, spoken logos, on the other.
There is thus a “true foundation or reason” (logos alēthēs),
an ineradicable obstacle and a hindrance for anybody who
intends to write: the written, being itself only an imitation
of the oral, is as though “twice” or doubly inflexible and unfit
to represent that which is thought, for even the oral, as spoken and uttered, cannot adequately express what is understood in the thought. For this reason, Plato himself stresses
that he prefers not to leave any writings (syggramma) about
1
Plato, Epistola VII 341b–342a; 343a; cp. 343d.
7979
those matters that are discussed in the Academy, and to keep
the orally debated teachings, agrapha dogmata, detached
from writing, i.e., to leave them unwritten.
1
Why write? But what, then, is the purpose of writing?
Why does Plato himself write dialogues while having pronounced (equally in written form) his verdict against writing and having stressed that the written, the text, is itself
neither the primary reality, nor that which may sufficiently
represent such reality under any circumstances? Is it not a
performative contradiction, seen equally in Alcidamas, to write
about the impossibility of writing; and would it not be better
just to remain silent?
There might still be a reason for writing as that which
overcomes or cancels itself in and by the very act of writing.
First of all, in an appeal to memory as that which preserves
being in its “was,” the very arguments against writing, if
themselves not written, might soon be forgotten once the
succession of disciples and followers is extinguished and dissipated. Thus, it might be better at least to keep a recollection
of the arguments, if not their memory or mnēmē proper,
then at least a faint reminder, or hypomnēsis. And it might
be better to put such a reminder in writing, because that
which is written in the form of a dialogue allows for
repetition in a joint looking, in discussing and just gazing at
the text, and this unlike live oral dialogue, which is unique,
irreversible, and unrepeatable. One can always return to the
written word both in oral discussion and in another text,
whereas the oral word is transient and momentary, it is fully
1
Cp. Aristotle, Metaphysics 987a29 sqq. See also Hans Joachim Krämer,
Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics, trans. John R. Catan (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 191–217. Cp. Thomas Alexander Szlezák, Platon und
die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Interpretationen zu den frühen und mittleren Dialogen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985). Szlezák traces the arguments
against writing in detail and shows that Plato was critical of writtenness from
the beginning of his work (ibid., pp. 7 sqq.). Cp. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über
die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 19 of Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), p. 69: “Das dogmatische Werk Platons über die Ideen ist verloren; in seinen mündlichen Reden verfuhr er auch systematisch.” The New
Academy members of the time of Carneades do not write either, though
for a different reason: being skeptics, they deny any possibility of firm sure
knowledge, which thus makes any written fixation meaningless.
80
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