Language & Communication 20 (2000) 329346 www.elsevier.

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Plato's pharmacy and Derrida's drugstore

Chris Mortensen*
Department of Philosophy, The University of Adelaide, North Tce, SA 5005, Australia

Abstract In a long essay Plato's Pharmacy, Jacques Derrida attacked Western metaphysics. This paper undertakes to defend Western philosophy from Derrida's arguments. It is shown that Derrida's arguments are very unsatisfactory. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In a long essay, Plato's Pharmacy, Jacques Derrida (1981) attacked Western philosophy for the crime of favouring speech over writing. In this paper I will defend Western philosophy from the arguments in that text. That is, I will be engaging primarily with a particular text. I am only secondarily engaged with what Derrida the author intended, and only to the extent that he is prepared to own that text. Plato's Pharmacy originally appeared in French, so this means that the question is partly clouded by the issue of translation, but no more so than any commentary on a translated text anywhere. We will see, however, that there is more at stake than the question of speech versus writing. I will be arguing that what is at stake is ultimately the method of philosophical analysis itself. Critical discussions of Derrida by analytical philosophers are frequently disappointing because they tend to focus on rebutting Derrida's claims or conclusions rather than considering the arguments by means of which Derrida reaches his conclusions. In turn this is perhaps because Derrida's prose style is unquestionably difcult to follow. Make no mistake, however, there are arguments in Plato's Pharmacy, contrary to what one sometimes hears from people who support Derrida. It is therefore instructive to consider those arguments in detail. I aim to show that the key arguments are identiable enough, but unsatisfactory nonetheless.

* E-mail address: cmortens@arts.adelaide.edu.au (C. Mortensen). 0271-5309/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0271-5309(00)00002-1

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2. Preliminary thoughts: speech and writing Before going any further, I want to try a small experiment, uncontaminated by anything said later. I want to ask anyone who has studied philosophy at a Western university, what you are inclined to think on the question of whether speech is in some overall sense superior to writing. Let me oer some thoughts, of my own or gathered from conversations with colleagues. Developmentally, speech precedes reading/writing. Children learn to talk and then later learn to read and write. A less plausible claim, is the claim that communication by sound preceded communication by sight in animals. But let us not unwarrantably stretch writing as far as any visual display. The issue concerns human language, that is the language of Western metaphysics. But I am sure that everyone capable of reading this will acknowledge that illiteracy is a terrible burden. A child who does not proceed in their development on to reading/writing is hugely disadvantaged. No philosopher that I have ever met has ever claimed the superiority of speech over writing in this sense. Of course, one should not always take the protestations of philosophers as canonical on the consequences of their own views, as Derrida reminds us, for these consequences may be hidden from them. How about the teaching and learning of Western philosophy then? Is that a place where we can get a view of philosophy's preferences from its practices? Well, note that we prize highly both tutorials and lectures, and also the reading of texts and writing of essays. Much assessment is written: how's that for privileging speech over writing? On the other hand, in current dicult economic circumstances, philosophy departments everywhere are loath to give up tutorials and lectures; after all, it is the Socratic method. The rapid feedback of a tutorial session is very ecient for diagnosing and correcting student misunderstandings, while a lecture is an important educational technique which utilises some of the dramatic methods of theatre. But notice this important point: philosophy at its best is written. By this I do not mean that the very best philosophy cannot be said. The very best philosophy can be either written or spoken, save of course for the limiting case where one is showing the dierence between speech and writing. What I mean is that written philosophy is the most considered philosophy. One tries out ideas in spoken seminars, subjects them to rapid feedback from the philosophical audience, thinks them through carefully, writes them up, and submits them to a journal or book publisher. Here is where speech and writing play complementary roles in philosophy: speech makes for rapid feedback-interchanges, useful with students and colleagues, while writing makes for measured, considered responses. In that sense, philosophical practice at its best is a written discipline. Of course, there have been singular individuals whose philosophical inuence was primarily spread by talk, Socrates and Wittgenstein among them; but notably not Plato, nor just about everybody else that we know of. Contrast the situation with mathematics. It is easy to imagine a wholly spoken philosophy lecture, but it is almost impossible to imagine a wholly spoken mathematics lecture. In that sense mathematics privileges writing, or at any rate spatial symbolic representation. Notice that logic is the branch of philosophy which partakes

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of mathematical techniques here, and logical techniques are applied throughout philosophy. Plato's Pharmacy is most contemptuous of Western logic, but one must leave open logic as that branch of Western philosophy most fully to exploit the distinctive features of visual representation. Far from condemning mathematics for being geometrical, Western philosophy has held mathematics in the highest respect, and been intensely interested to comprehend its possibility. There is one further sense in which one might note a dierence between speech and writing. It relates to an argument which Plato himself advances. This is, that there is perhaps a sense in which speech is closer to thought than writing is. The thesis that thought is subvocal speech was advanced by Ryle. That some thought is subvocal speech seems phenomenologically undeniable. Furthermore, there has been a major theme in cognitive science in recent decades, namely Fodor's Language of Thought hypothesis. But note that this is not the claim that thought is more like speech than thought is like writing. It is the claim that thought is structured in ways shared by both speech and writing. However, the idea that thought is more speech-like than writing-like simply omits to take into account the fact that our conscious lives are as much sensory as they are linguistic. Consciousness is multimodular. One of the modules is our capacity for inputting, storing, manipulating and outputting geometric information, by visual means. This is precisely what writing exploits. I reach, then, the following preliminary conclusions. There seems to be no meaningful overall sense in which Western philosophy privileges speech over writing. Each has their distinctive uses: the rapid feedback of speech has many uses; while the best, most considered philosophy is written. In particular, the idea that illiteracy is good for you is recognised by all literates to be an absurd proposition. Derrida claims the reverse about Western philosophy, however. So we will need to ask what are the reasons he oers for thinking so. To foreshadow later discussion, we will see that there is a doctrine at least arguably at the base of Western philosophy which Derrida attacks. It is the doctrine that there is a principled distinction between true and false. This dispute, at least, is familiar. It was, according to Plato, one of the central contentions between Socrates and the sophists, and a dispute which has reared its head many times since. Now it is fair to say, I think, that Western philosophers have by-and-large taken the view that there is a legitimate distinction between true and false. On the other hand, Derrida explicitly takes the part of the sophists against Socrates. His method of argument is distinctive, as we will see. He identies the speech/writing issue with the true/false issue, and then defends writing over speech, thereby concluding that one is not entitled to distinguish truth sharply from falsehood, nor to privilege truth over falsehood, contrary to Western philosophy. I pause one more time to ask for your preliminary intuitions. Is the question of whether speech is prior to writing essentially the same as the question of whether truth is distinct from falsehood? So that one might attack the ideal of truth by attacking the privileging of speech over writing? Anyone who is inclined to agree with the above observations about speech and writing, while supporting knowledge, truth and the exclusion of falsehood as among the goals of philosophy and science,

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should answer ``no''. If one does answer no, then one should regard the identication of the two as a questionable step in Derrida's argument, so that it will require especial attention to its defence. 3. Plato's Phaedrus We turn then to the question of Plato's views on the matter of speech and writing. Plato's Phaedrus describes a conversation between Socrates and the youth Phaedrus. It falls into three natural parts. The rst half of the dialogue concerns love. The next 40% joins Socrates' usual battle with the sophists. The nal 10%, about 2000 words, takes up the specic issue of writing as distinct from speech. The rst part, on love, begins when Phaedrus reads out a speech which he has been memorising, written by another. It is a witty piece arguing that you should only go to bed with someone you do not love, and never with someone you do not love. Socrates applauds its rhetorical ourishes. Challenged to produce a counter-argument, Socrates improvises a denunciation of the evils of love, in which he more seriously rehearses arguments against paedophilia, love between an older man and a boy. However, then Socrates takes it back with the observation that love is divine and so cannot be evil, arguing in favour of the madness which is the gift of the gods. The second part focuses on the art of speech and its relation to the sophists. Socrates says that there is ``good and bad speaking and writing''. To be good, it is necessary that it arise from ``knowledge in the mind'' of the truth about the subject. Pericles had been the greatest orator because he also had a knowledge of nature. This is an appropriate comment on the fact that Phaedrus had read out loud his speech without having memorised it, let alone understood it. Socrates then attacks the ``scientic rhetoric'' of sophists such as Thrasymachus, also those ``experts in the art of speech'' who hold that nothing is true, only probable, and Tisias' denition of probability as ``that which commends itself to the multitude''. In the third part, Socrates turns to the dangers of writing. He relates a myth of a conversation between Theuth, the god of mathematics and writing, and the king. Theuth oers the king the gift of writing. The king rejects it, giving three reasons. The rst reason is that the danger of writing is that it will replace memory with reminder. If a person can recite something, it at least shows that there is something they remember (even if it is not known or understood), whereas if a person can at most read it out of a book, then that shows only that they can read. The king's second reason is that one drawback of writing is that it cannot reply when challenged. In more modern terms, as we noted in the previous section, speaking allows rapid feedback. The king's third reason is that writing is more likely to be fanciful. Plato is not very clear here, but seems to be running an argument like that about the artists in The Republic; namely that, again as we noted in the previous section, writing is more removed from the person than speech is, because speech is closer to its source, thought, than writing is. One thing is clear, though, namely that Socrates says that the common source, knowledge or thought, is of the greatest importance. Interestingly, his translator renders this as ``writing on the soul''.

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The concluding points in the Phaedrus maintain that discourses, whether spoken or written, are best when aimed at increasing knowledge, not mere persuasion. To the writers, he explicitly says that if you know the truth, can defend your position, and can demonstrate the inferiority of incorrect positions, then you are a ``lover of wisdom''. W.K.C. Guthrie (1975, Vol. 4) surveys the speech/writing issue in Plato (5659). Guthrie points out that this was a lively issue in Plato's time which he could be expected to be interested in, not least because of the inconvenience of extant book technology (papyrus rolls). Even so, I think that Guthrie over-interprets Plato. The central passage is at the end of the Phaedrus (278ce) where Socrates allows that writers who know the truth and can argue for and against are lovers of wisdom, despite being writers; while if a writer wastes their time in literary polishing they would have to be called a (mere) poet or speech writer or law writer. But in the context, the contrast is between attention paid to the detail of argument, and attention only being paid to rhetorical trickery or scientic rhetoric. Since the drawbacks of rhetoric are a major theme of Plato's dialogues, I suggest that this is a reasonable interpretation which makes sense of his remarks elsewhere in favour of writing, as well as his notable written practice. If Plato were claiming that speech is in some overall sense more fundamental than writing, then so much the worse for him since the arguments of the Phaedrus evidently do not establish the case. But it is hard to see that this was Plato's meaning. It is a straightforward interpretation of the myth of Theuth and the king that he was pointing to the drawbacks of writing, having already done so for speech. From this point of view, one can readily accept Plato's point that a drawback of writing and an advantage of speech is that feedback for speech is more rapid, while noting that speech is at the same time less considered. One can lament the loss of memory skills with the passing of the age of the great bards after the rise of printing: memory has to be better when one has no reminders. But, as Derrida himself argues (see next section), written reminders are stable and persistent and therefore more reliable as records. One can allow that written records and reminders can play a useful role of freeing the memory and understanding for other important tasks, without thinking that reminders destroy the memory: one can make decisions to le records as reminders, while reserving memory for other information. Again, one can assimilate Socrates' distinction between rhetoric and dialectic. One can readily agree with him that the danger of oratory is rhetoric, the use of irrational appeals to emotion and prejudice in order to persuade. One can also at least consider the proposition that thought is subvocal speech, which is a conceivable though unlikely hypothesis in cognitive science, without falling into the bizarre error of holding that intellectual life is diminished by literacy. And one can do all this in the name of Western philosophy. I conclude, then, that the simple and natural interpretation of this dialogue is not as an overall denunciation of writing. We must now turn to Derrida's arguments. 4. Derrida's drugstore Derrida's essay Plato's Pharmacy is about 50,000 words long, the length of a shortish book. In referring to it, I shall use conventions of two sorts: a page number

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is given by a simple number in parentheses, while in an Appendix to this paper there are collected a number of longer quotes, which I shall refer to in parentheses by a page number prefaced by a ``D''. Plato's Pharmacy argues for a number of claims. These can be summarised as: 1. Plato's Phaedrus is best interpreted as the claim that speech is privileged over writing. 2. This is essentially the same as the claim that truth excludes falsity and is privileged over it. 3. These claims underly all Western metaphysics. 4. But they are wrong. We have been discussing the rst claim, and we have seen reason to doubt it. We have also seen preliminary reason to doubt part of the third claim, namely that the priority of speech over writing, whatever it might mean, underlies all of Western metaphysics. Derrida reminds us that the interpretation of a text such as Plato's dialogue is not a simple matter of what Plato ``meant-to-say'' (95). It is more a question of the conceptual connections between ideas, or as one might say, the logical implications of concepts. Alternatively, there is the possibility that Plato did not consciously see the consequences of his words, or even that Plato saw them but chose to exclude them. However, Derrida also describes Plato's dialogue as a ``diatribe'' (D106) against writing. Plato ``plays at saving writingF F Fcausing it to be lost'' (67), and to ``F F Fput writing out of the question'' (158). Yet Derrida also concedes that ``It is later conrmed that the conclusion of the Phaedrus is less a condemnation of writing in the name of present speech than a preference for one sort of writing over another'' (149). Derrida approvingly quotes another dialogue, the Laws, where Socrates gives his ``heartiest support'' (113) to writing as providing robust records. He also approvingly quotes Plato's Timaeus for commending the clarity of writing (162). So perhaps Derrida is not after all interpreting Plato as we thought. If so, well and good for Derrida. Derrida links the speech/writing distinction with Plato's conception of the pharmakon. This translates as ``drug'' but also as ``medicine'', ``poison'', ``antidote'', ``philtre'', ``recipe''. Theuth oers the king the benecial medicine of writing, which is rejected. Derrida then argues that no drug is wholly benecial, there is always some harm attendant (D99). This is a surprising claim. I suppose it might be true as a matter of fact, though I see no logical reason why some cure or some hallucinogen, say, might have no long-term adverse consequences. But Derrida is making a stronger counter-claim, intended to be representative of concepts in general. Derrida's arguments are that no drug is harmless are twofold. Firstly, ``the benecial essence or virtue of a pharmakon does not prevent it from hurting'' (99). Secondly, anything articial is harmful (D99). It is apparent that these two arguments are very weak. On the rst argument, from the fact that a remedy does not prevent hurting, it does not follow that a remedy always or even ever hurts. The second argument is just an unsubstantiated assertion.

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These arguments form a microcosm of Derrida's general a priori assault on the categories of Western metaphysics. Derrida identies a series of binary oppositions which he proposes as representative of one another, including writing/speech, remedy/poison, good/evil, true/false, philosopher/sophist, rst/second, present/ absent, essence/appearance, being/non-being, inside/outside. Derrida disclaims any attempt to argue for these links in detail (D107). However, particularly, the last of these is distinctively representative of the others, since inside/outside is the ``matrix of all possible opposition'' (103). All these distinctions represent an exclusion of some Other, from the inside to the outside. ``To keep the outside out. This is the inaugural gesture of `logic' itself'' (128). He then proceeds by attacking the distinction between inside and outside. Here, one is inclined to ask: is he saying that one should not arbitrarily choose to prefer inside over outside, or is he saying that there is no proper distinction between inside and outside? The answer is, I think, both. But one can see that the former is prima facie more plausible than the latter: one can imagine circumstances in which there is a fence too high to climb, but no overall sense in which it is better to be on one side rather than the other. Of course, certain insides might be overall preferable, but not solely by virtue of being insides. Indeed, an inside can be a prison; and whoever thought that it was better to be inside prison than outside it? The real culprit for Derrida is the act of exclusion. But again we can see two distinguishable charges against exclusion: exclusion is arbitrary decision, and exclusion is impossible. On balance, his view seems to be that one can make a decision to exclude, but that this will always be arbitrary (D129). He refers to ``the major decision of philosophy'' (111). Comprehending the pharmakon is ``domination and decision'' (117). On the other hand, he also allows that the pharmakon, any drug necessarily both benecial-and-dangerous, is ``on the boundary line of inside and outside'' (133). This is more like the claim that the world defeats the attempt to exclude. Or again, the pharmakon is ``that dangerous supplement that breaks into the very thing that would have liked to do without it'' (110). Exclusion is closely connected with negation, and thus with falsity and its opposite truth. Exclusion is a kind of genus, with outsides and falsehoods being distinguishable sub-species. Here we have a characteristic Derridean move: each distinction represents the other distinction, each is a metaphor for the other, because there is a genus under which both fall. Thus one may discredit or invert one of the distinctions by discrediting or inverting another. This is the heart of the deconstructive technique, I think. It is what enables him to attack the true/false distinction by means of attacking the speech/writing distinction and the remedy/poison distinction. In disputing the remedy/poison distinction, Derrida characteristically turns it into a point of interpretation of Plato, by arguing that to translate the god Theuth's oer of a pharmakon as ``remedy'', i.e. purely benecial, is ``not inaccurate'' but ``F F Ferases, in going outside the Greek language, the other pole reserved in the word pharmakon. It cancels out the resources of ambiguity and makes it more dicult, if not impossible, an understanding of the context'' (97). It is often not clear whether Derrida is attributing views to Plato, or defending those views himself. The best understanding here is both; but notice that it enables Derrida to get away with

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unsatisfactory arguments for his position, just by deecting the notice onto Plato. It is Derrida who is making these claims to the eect that conceptual exclusion is illegitimate, so one must suppose that Derrida is willing to own these arguments unless it is explicitly indicated to the contrary. Derrida's actual defence of writing against the alleged privileges of speech need not detain us overlong, since we have seen good reasons to believe its conclusion. Even so, his arguments are by and large dierent from those canvassed in Section 2 above. He oers ve arguments. First, he refers to the ``contradiction'' between Plato's denunciation of writing and the fact that he did it in a written dialogue (D158). This is weak, since it depends on the very point which is in question, namely whether Plato really was making a ``diatribe'' against writing. A much more reasonable view is that Plato's practice of writing is evidence against the diatribe thesis. Second, he refers to the ``construction of a literary work' (158), but does not develop the point. Third and fourth, he makes points similar to those made above about the stability of the written record (113) (which, you will recall, had Socrates' heartiest support in the Laws); as well as the clarity of writing (162), again as Socrates did elsewhere. Fifth, he defends writing as more democratic. Now there is a sense in which the written word is more democratic, I suppose, namely that it can be scrutinised by all at their leisure instead of having to be there, where the action was. But this is something we should hardly wish to deny or disapprove of. 5. Truth and falsity This brings me to what I signalled earlier as a central issue, that of the true/false distinction. First, we have another hermeneutical curiosity. The most direct link that Derrida makes between the speech/writing distinction and the true/false distinction, is via the role of the sophists. He represents the sophists as being for writing and against speech, and sides with them. Now an over-simple interpretation of the sophists might have them lining up just the opposite to what Derrida claims, namely for speech and against writing. After all, it was the sophists who according to Plato were the champions of rhetoric, persuasion and demagogy; as against truth and cool, considered reason. But, as Plato well knew, the sophists also wrote books. His condemnation of sophists was for their lack of real knowledge, their belief that wisdom could be taught, their relativism, scepticism and nihilism. He denounced the arts of speech to the extent that they lead to oratory, which uses non-rational means of persuasion, and is a ``powerful lord'' (Gorgias) (116). Plato commended any writing which arose out of a love of truth, knowledge, wisdom and logic. Furthermore, we must acknowledge the sophists' positive side. For one thing, they were hardly a unied school, and to the extent that they had common themes they seemed to favour naturalism over superstition. Indeed, any culture which can give rise to a class of entrepreneurs of rhetoric, public speaking and the law is already highly civilised. Plato's view of the sophists is generally regarded as somewhat jaundiced, perhaps understandable in the circumstances.

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Recall, too, Plato's description of thought as writing on the soul. On this, Derrida comments, ``at the moment Plato seems to be raising writing up by turning live speech into a sort of psychic graphe he maintains this movement within a problematic of truth'' (154). This seems to be the argument that Plato did not take a positive view of writing, because speech/writing is the same distinction as true/false and he did not take a positive view of falsehood. If so, it puts the cart before the horse. It is precisely the claim that the one distinction is somehow equivalent to the other which is being contested. Now, as I said, Derrida makes the links the opposite way. According to him, a defence of writing over speech is a defence of the sophists over Socrates and Plato. On the other hand, he concedes that the diatribe against writing is not aimed at the sophists but ``F F Fseems to proceed from them'' (108). This is what one would expect if my earlier dissociation of sophistry from writing is correct. His answer is to accuse Plato of ``appropriating'' the sophists! (108). Similarly, he concedes that ``the sophists are indisputably men of writing at the moment they are protesting they are not. But isn't Plato one, too?'' (112). This is again a paradoxical admission for Derrida to make. Surely it precisely weakens his claim that Plato was an enemy of writing? But this is not the conclusion Derrida draws from the practice of Plato the writer. Rather, Derrida's conclusion (D158) is that Plato contradicted himself! It must be acknowledged, however, that not all of Derrida's arguments about the true/false distinction are so analogical. He has a more direct argument aimed at showing that the exclusion of falsity by truth, like the exclusion of the outside by the inside, is an error. This argument essentially derives from Derrida's deconstruction of ``include/exclude''. In discussing the pharmakon, he argues that ``F F Fthis elimination, being therapeutic in nature, must call upon the very thing it is expelling, the very surplus it is putting out. The pharmaceutical operation must therefore [sic] exclude itself from itself'' (128, italics in the original). This seems to be the argument that if I attempt to use a concept such as ``remedy'' which excludes another concept such as ``poison'' I presuppose the meaningfulness of the excluded concept. Thus remedies and poisons, and any pair of binary opposites, in some sense imply each other. At its most extreme, it might even yield the conclusion that since X cannot ever properly exclude not-X, all concepts are contradictory. But it is an erroneous argument. From the meaningfulness of X I can certainly deduce the meaningfulness of not-X. But I cannot even deduce that there are any non-Xs in the world, let alone deduce that X is really a little bit non-X, that not-X cannot be excluded from X. Even Derrida's favourite concept of a drug counts against the argument. The meaningfulness of good drug or remedy allows the meaningfulness of bad drug or poison, as well as the possibility that a drug might be a bit of both. But it simply does not follow that any, let alone every, remedy is a poison. Although Derrida's argument is thus defective, we should note his positive view of the semantic status of these concepts. In its contradictory instability, the pharmakon ``constitutes the original medium of that decision, the element that precedes it, comprehends it, goes beyond it, can never be reduced to itF F F'' (99). It ``opens up the very possibility [of oppositions] without letting itself be comprehended by them'' (103); it ``properly consists in a certain inconsistency, a certain impropriety, this nonidentity-within-itself always allowing it to be turned against itself'' (119). It has

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no ``stable essence, no ``proper'' characteristics, it is not in any senseF F Fa substance'' (125126), but ``antisubstance itself'' (70). Behind concepts there is the ``prior medium in which dierentiation in general is produced'' (126), the ``medium in which opposites are opposedF F Fwithout being anything in itself'' (127), which we can also call ``arche-truth'' (166), which is a ``more subtle excess of truthF F Fsome entirely-other of both sophistics and Platonism'' (108; see also D168). These views are very obscurely put. In what sense is there some common ground between X and not-X? More to the point, Derrida nowhere argues for the legitimacy of such metaphors. The existence of the entirely-other, some common ground of sophistics and Platonism, is asserted. But what could it be? Derrida gives us no clue. Now drawing on twentieth-century semantics, we can in point of fact nd a kind of ``common ground'' between truth and falsity. That which is either true or false, that which permits each, is a meaning or a proposition. This amounts to a recognition that what is in common between X and not-X is their meaningfulness. The common ground between truth and falsity is that which allows either, but not that which forces both, and that would be meaning. But this is hardly a paradoxical discovery. It precisely does not show that somehow it is illegitimate to exclude not-X in trying to describe something as X. The description of something as X goes further than the mere meaning of X. It precisely puts X forward as true; the very same X which in a dierent act could be denied, or put forward as false. X and not-X overlap in meaning, but mutually exclude as descriptions. That is why exclusion is possible. Of course, it remains open which way things should be privileged. Now it is necessary to consider something which up to now has been deferred, the real status of the true/false distinction in Western philosophy. This will require me to come clean a bit. Derrida takes it that Plato ``would like to isolate the good from the bad, the true from the false'' (169). But this allows for some subtlety in what one thinks of the relation between truth and falsity. Let us consider some of the views here. First, perhaps in talking about arche-truth, Derrida has in mind some version of the view that there is always a grey area between pairs of binary opposites, where it is indeterminate which applies. Now, the idea that truth and falsity are not exhaustive has a long history in Western philosophy. Aristotle argued that at least some future-tensed statements, such as that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow, are neither true nor false until they occur. The twentieth-century mathematicians Brouwer and Heyting ran a similar line about mathematical statements. This has more recently been modernised and generalised to include both sorts of statements, by Michael Dummett. Philosophers have always found denying the Law of Excluded Middle, the doctrine that truth and falsity are exhaustive, easier to contemplate than denying the Law of Contradiction, the doctrine that truth and falsity are exclusive. Thus Peter Strawson argued that a statement such as ``All John's children are asleep upstairs'', uttered in the context where John has no children, has to be regarded as neither true nor false. Somewhat dierently, there is the problem of vagueness. The existence of vague or fuzzy concepts such as bald/hairy, having indeterminate borderlines, has long been recognised. The sorites paradox, according to which a vague concept modied almost imperceptibly by small degrees cannot exclude its ``opposite'', has

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had a long history. Indeed, it arguable that all concepts pertaining to ordinary human life are vague. If there are any precise concepts, then arguably they arise in logic, mathematics and the physical sciences. We can conclude, then, Western philosophy is not founded on the view that truth or falsity are always applicable. Western philosophy has not fallen apart under the postulation of truth-value gaps. Finally, we come to the tricky question of whether a contradiction, or truth-value glut, might be true. The idea that some statement might be true and false, that the Law of Contradiction does not hold, equally goes back to the ancient Greeks. It nds a recent theme in the tradition of Hegelian philosophy, including Marx and Engels, according to which every concept has an historical/logical development, as a struggle with its antithesis, leading to a higher synthesis. Derrida's views on contradiction are evidently Hegelian in spirit. Now this idea has been worked out carefully over the last thirty years or so by the paraconsistency movement in modern logic. Before that, the theory of inconsistency was largely incoherent intuitions. Since then, however, many hundreds of scholars have worked in this logical paradigm. Suce it to say that the best arguments for there being some true contradictions arise from several sources: (1) semantical arguments, such as the Liar Paradox, according to which Epimenides the Cretan asserts ``All Cretans are liars''; (2) physical arguments, such as the persistence of anomalies in our best theories of physics, e.g. the theory of black holes, or the incompatibility between the Theory of Relativity and the Quantum Theory; (3) metaphysical arguments, such as the claim that change, especially motion, is an inconsistent process; (4) mathematical arguments, such as the argument that there exist interesting inconsistent mathematical structures, or the argument that the foundations of mathematics must be inconsistent. Plato's Pharmacy does not address any of these arguments. Nor do they turn on any arbitrary decision to exclude falsity from truth, since they are all intended to have the force of being logically conclusive. Nor do any of them have any conclusion as strong as that all concepts are contradictory: in each case the range of inconsistency is carefully circumscribed. Finally, you may be relieved to learn, Western metaphysics is not showing any signs of buckling under the strain of incorporating and including this increasingly-popular position. 6. On privileging the truth We saw earlier a distinction between two dierent positions: one that truth is distinct from falsehood, the other that truth is more important than falsehood. We have just been discussing the rst of these. But there is something dierent to say about the second. This will also serve as a example of the usefulness of making distinctions, the analytical method, which we will discuss in the following section. Accepting the true/false distinction then, with whatever qualications to the Laws of Excluded Middle and Contradiction that we allow, we can ask whether there is reason to place one of them over the other. The answer is yes and no, with appropriate qualications.

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First of all, no philosopher I have ever met or read maintains that one should spend one's whole time doing philosophy. Sometimes one has other aims: playing, reading novels and poetry, making models, doing scientic experiments, bushwalking, going to the theatre, making love. Hume recommended bouts of drinking and backgammon with friends. Yet Derrida complains that Plato, along with all of Western philosophy, has ``sent o'' play, simulacrum, myth and metaphor (68). But all these phenomena have been acknowledged and extensively studied by philosophers! To take just one example, the very idea of simile, that it can be correct to say that X is like Y without X being Y, has been known since Plato. Socrates made extensive use of simile. The theory of metaphor has had a long history. Even so, there is a danger in the use of metaphor over simile. If I say X is Y, when all that is true is that X is like Y in some respect, then I am more likely to commit the fallacy of concluding that X is like Y in every other respect. I obviously do not mean never use metaphors; just that we should be aware, that is all. Again, the theory of possibility has long recognised that the interesting cases are false possibilities. The training of young philosophers often uses the device of conceiving of imaginative false possibilities as a way of separating concepts or demonstrating that certain arguments are invalid. Both these areas require an explanation of the human capacity to simulate false-possibles, which contemporary simulation theory is looking at. What Derrida seems to mean is that philosophy does not admit the playful spirit as part of its methods. Maybe he is right, and we should lighten up a bit. But here again, I must beg to dier. Play is a part of philosophical activity, I suggest. Playful speculation is obviously useful in the context of discovery, and certainly part of the social fun of philosophy. But there is, I suspect, an exclusion of sorts: of play as ever being a substitute for, or overriding, rationality. If that is what is at stake, then it should be reected that it is a trivial truth that anything which diers from our best epistemological eorts, is ipso facto less credible. If you blur your eyes when you are trying to nd something out, you are likely to miss seeing something important. But this is hardly an objection to play and rational investigation as complementary aspects of human life. Guthrie (1975) also takes up the serious/play distinction in Plato (6065). While Plato certainly was aware of the distinction, as well as the connection between play and mimesis, there is no question that he saw seriousness and play as complementary. Socrates was noted for his playfulness and jokes, as should be obvious to anyone who reads the dialogues. Plato held that children should never be forced to learn, the best lessons are those which take the form of play (61). He even described the discussion of law as ``the rational play of old persons'' (62), and writing as ``the wise person's play'' (63). He also wrote that seriousness should never become tasteless, that seriousness and play are sisters, and that ``the most truly wise person is playful and serious at the same time'' (63). Plato himself was a brilliant writer whose prose has been described as ``vivacity in the conversationsF F Fpungency of satire, delicate persiage, and idiomatic raciness of phrase'', also ``comic'' and sometimes ``farcical'' (63). Guthrie sums up that ``All that Plato wrote is permeated with that seriousness which is no stranger to the MusesF F Fand the play that is sister to it'' (63).

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Even so, there is a clear sense in which belief in that which is true, and not belief in that which is false, is the precondition of successful action. In this sense, truth really is to be preferred over falsehood, because truth permeates our whole existence. With apologies to relativism, the world is not so much under the control of your will. To the limited extent that humans have been eective in the world, it is because they have managed fairly successfully to represent the world in their central nervous systems and elsewhere. That is, human action has been successful because of our abilities to take account of the way the world is, and exploit it accordingly. Contrary to Foucault, power derives from possessing the truth, not the other way around. Those unwilling to take account of the constraints that the universe imposes on them will not last very long. It follows that in any activity, with any aim, if we seek to perform any action successfully, we are constrained by the correctness of our representations of the world. It does no good to kick about this. You cannot make it come out any other way. There is a further important sense in which we prefer truth over falsehood. Humans are curious. That is, humans desire knowledge for its own sake. Doubtless this has arisen because the desire to know the truth necessarily has survival value, which in turn is explained by the fact that truth is a precondition for successful action. The desire for knowledge is something which favours truth over falsehood; although it also favours truth over skydiving, sex and strawberry sorbet. A nal word on ``privilege''. It is another one of these metaphors which incorrectly identify distinct concepts. The dierence between ``privilege' and ``prefer'', is that the former carries the suggestion that, like the children of the nobility born to privilege, it is unearned or undeserved, that is, arbitrary. It suggests that if one asserts X, then one has arbitrarily chosen X over not-X. In my experience, the extra suggestion of arbitrariness is never defended. Indeed, it seems to come as a surprise that it should be contested. But arbitrariness is precisely what one does not want to say about those conclusions which one reaches as a result of careful rational reection, and the considered actions which one performs on the basis of those conclusions. To conclude this section with a brief technical digression, there is the related controversy about Plato's ``unwritten'' metaphysics, discussed by Guthrie (1978, Vol 5, Chapter 8). Since 1959, a vigorously-defended position, originating from Tubingen, has argued for the existence of certain positions which were defended by Plato in lectures at the Academy without appearing in his dialogues. Now it must be stressed that these are not supposed to be hidden doctrines, especially given that one of the two sources of evidence was a large public lecture. Rather, they would represent additional information on the master's views, recorded as lecture notes by students. The primary evidence is from two places, inevitably indirect. In one place, Aristotle, who spent 20 years in the Academy, refers to ``Plato in what are called the unwritten doctrines''. Elsewhere, Aristoxenus, a student of Aristotle, tells the story of Plato giving a lecture on an unexpected topic. In each case, the position advanced is a technical issue in the theory of Forms, namely the thesis that the forms are identical with numbers, which is rather contrary to what is in his dialogues. Since this is a theory which has some connection with the Pythagorean school, it might be argued that Plato was a mere accumulation of pre-Socratic philosophy, on whom Socrates

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made little impression. In an excellent survey, Guthrie points out that of course Plato took account of the pre-Socratics; but that the primary evidence, that of Plato's written dialogues, places Socrates at the centre of the inuences on Plato. Guthrie concludes (p. 418) by quoting Tigerstedt: ``It seems an odd perversity to reject or to depreciate a philosopher's ipsissima verba in favour of obscure and contradictory second or third hand reports of what he possibly might have said.'' (I am indebted for this aside to discussions with my colleague M.C. Bradley). 7. Conceptual analysis The method of conceptual analysis is at the core of the dispute with Derrida, I claim. By conceptual analysis, I mean the recognition that distinctions may need to be made, because apparently similar questions can have signicantly dierent answers. A glance at the pages of any journal of analytical philosophy, or attendance at any conference of analytical philosophers, should suce to convince one that the method of making distinctions to solve philosophical problems is ubiquitous. Reading Plato should suce to convince one that the method goes right back to Socrates. Some people fear that the analytical method is misapplied in making too many distinctions, or unnecessary distinctions. This is an occupational hazard of the method, I am sure. But it is not one that people are unaware of. There is even the injoke which identies this practice as ``chisholming'', cutting up a concept so nely that the overall point gets lost. Young philosophers are well advised not to have a ``distinction without a dierence''. On the other hand, it should be clear that if making a distinction is relevant to the kind of answer one gives to a problem, then failure to make the distinction is likely to make solving the problem impossible. Of course, the problems which interest philosophers are not necessarily those that interest others. No one is forced to make distinctions if solving the problem is not an interest. Sometimes, of course, ``unnecessary'' distinctions are those which have little or no direct bearing on everyday life. But philosophy of whatever kind has always been subject to this criticism from people only interested in the problems of everyday life. Another variant of this concern is that analysis, breaking a concept into its parts, is apt to lose the whole. But we should reect that ``breaking up into parts'' is a metaphor which misleadingly suggests that the idea has somehow had its parts moved apart, changed in some way, and cannot be put back together again. A better model is to say that if a distinction is legitimate, then there really is a dierence (interesting or no) in the thing being described; but that no one should omit also to consider the relations between the dierent parts, since that is what constitutes the whole. Furthermore, it precisely rigorous and clear analysis which uncovers such relations. The theory of parts and wholes, mereology, is a well-developed branch of philosophy which is able to shed light on many of these problems. Derrida's method is the opposite of analysis. He wants to run concepts together, so that they represent each other. He rejects marking distinctions because, as you will recall, ``it cancels out the resources of ambiguity, thereby making more dicult

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an understanding of the context''. As I said before, this is what enables him to deconstruct distinctions by means of attacking distinctions which he claims they represent. We might even give it a name, the method of synthesis. (In these terms, analysis might be described as the true method of dierence, since it says that if a relevant dierence exists, it should be noticed.) Richard Harland (1993) describes Derrida's method usefully: Let us take two other senses listed for the word pharmakon: the sense of `philtre' (ie. `love-potion') and the sense of `recipe'. Perhaps these two other senses did not seem particularly oppositional when listed above? But suppose we attend to eects and principles. Since `philtre' has to do with illicit sexual desire, we may immediately draw o from it the general principle of `debauchery'. And since the `recipe' has to do with cookery, we may immediately draw o from it the general principle of `domesticity'. `Debauchery' versus `domesticity': is there already not a contrast looming here? Another small step, and we have discovered the ultimate oppositions of sin versus duty, danger versus safety, the intense versus the mundane, the forbidden versus the conventionalF F Fabstractions can always be made to meet up in oppositions if developed on a large enough scale (p. 217). Now, looking for unexpected parallels is a useful heuristic. But it is better suited to the context of discovery than the context of justication. This useful distinction resolves many philosophical diculties, I nd. As is well known, Popper held that discovery is subject to few rules, perhaps no wholly general rules. On the other hand, when it comes to judging the truth of one's own half-baked and fanciful speculations, criticism and justication should be as rigorous, rational and logical as possible. If, in the context of justication, one deliberately blurs relevant distinctions, one is apt to commit widespread fallacies of ambiguity. Small wonder, then, that Derrida identies himself as a friend of the sophists and an opponent of the truth. For it is the aim of truth which drives distinctions, rationality, criticism and justication. Conversely, however, it is also a mistake to expect rigorous analytical rules to govern the context of discovery. Whatever works, use it. Derrida's deliberate disarrangement of the semantic senses may well be better than many. 8. Concluding unscientic postscript (with apologies to Kierkegaard) This essay could properly nish at this point, with nothing more said. I have tried to discuss these matters as dispassionately as possible, unclouded as little as possible by emotion. However, I wish to conclude by passing some remarks of a more emotional kind. It is easy to be annoyed by some of Derrida's statements. Perhaps the most annoying is that he writes that Socrates deserved to be put to death. ``What is at stake in this overturning is no less than science and death. Which are consigned to a single type in the structure of the pharmakon, the one and only name for that potion that must be awaited. And even, in Socrates' case, deserved'' (119). This is dishonourable.

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Few, if any, people would wish Derrida dead for his sophistical denial of truth, and certainly not myself. No one should. One might excuse Derrida on the grounds of an over-enthusiastic slip, if it were not the case that he continues to crow over Socrates' death. In Plato's Apology, Socrates argues to the jury that he should not be put to death because he is a gift to them from God, sent to awaken them like a stinging y. Derrida quotes this passage, but interprets it thus: ``Let us listen to him in his prison cell. His ruse is innite and therefore naive or null (keep me alive since I am already dead for you)'' (D147). You should really read the Apology and the Crito if you want to be convinced that this is a clear misrepresentation of Socrates. Socrates deed his accusers almost to the point of recklessness, and twice rejected clear opportunities to escape. But you do not need to read the Apology to pick up Derrida's mocking tone here. Then there is Derrida's overly dramatic use of emotionally-loaded words like ``violence''. He repeatedly describes the general dispute between philosophy and sophistics as violent. Now as a simple working denition of violence, we might oer ``causing bodily or mental harm''. Certainly Socrates' death was violent in this sense, though it was something done to Socrates. But of course it was unfortunate that it took place at all. More to the point, it is clear that Derrida's aim is much more general, at the whole disagreement, whereas we have no reason to think that violence has arisen elsewhere between philosophers and sophists, and every reason to wish it not to happen. You should not kill people for holding dierent philosophical views from you. Long ago, philosophy realised that raising the emotional tone of a dispute clouds questions of what is true. It is hardly that emotions are wrong, so much as that emotional excess on inappropriate occasions is apt to interfere with our best judgements of how things are. Emotional self-control can be wise advice. Derrida's rhetoric here is a microcosm of his general method: violence is an appropriate metaphor for rational intellectual debate, because both are a kind of exclusion. It should be apparent that this equation invites an illegitimate inference: rational debate is violence, violence is bad, so rational debate is bad. This has been the method of propagandists the world over: use an emotionally-loaded metaphor to raise the emotional tone, cloud the minds of the audience, and discredit opposing views. But if you aim at knowledge, truth and justication, you should avoid such tricks yourself, and be aware of them in others. Unfortunately, I think that some people fear reasoned argument for some such motive, because they feel that being challenged by clear arguments is an emotionally bruising experience and thus a kind of violence. However, this is a dangerous standpoint, because it encourages a retreat from reasoned discussion, which in turn makes the violent solution of social dierences more likely. If we have learned anything from the Enlightenment, it is surely that violence should be a last resort, that it always better to sit down and talk it through. The remedy is to make a clear distinction between oneself and one's opinion. I do not mean that one does not own one's opinion. In fact, to the contrary: if one owns one's opinion, if it is a mere possession, then one will be able to relinquish it if one nds good reasons to do so. As Plato saw, there is a nobility in being able to acknowledge another's arguments, to set aside one's own errors, to face the truth bravely, without being diminished by it.

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Appendix A. References from Plato's Pharmacy D85: ``Plato had to make his tale conform to structural lawsF F F'' D89: ``This process of substitutionF F Fpure play of tracesF F Fcould be judged ``mad'' since it can go on innitelyF F Fis not any reality foreign to the ``play of words'' that ThothF F F'' D99: ``There is no such thing as a harmless remedy. The pharmakon can never be simply benecial.'' D99: ``F F Fthe pharmaceutical remedy is essentially harmful because it is articial.'' D106: ``For it is above all against sophistics that this diatribe against writing is directed.'' D107: ``(It could be shown, but we shall spare ourselves the development here, that the problematic that today, and in this very spot, links writing with the (putting in) question of truth and of thought and speech, which are informed by it must necessarily exhumeF F F all the buttresses erected by Platonism.'' D109: ``And writing appears to Plato (and after him to all of philosophy, which is as such constituted in this gesture) as that process of redoubling in which we are fatally (en)trainedF F F'' D129: ``Plato does not make a show of the chain of signications we are trying progressively to dig upF F Fit would be impossible to say to what extent he manipulates it voluntarily or consciously, and at what point he is subject to constraints weighing upon his discourse from ``language''F F Fto follow the constraints of a language would not exclude the possibility that Plato is playing with them, even if his game is neither representative not voluntary.'' D147: ``Let us listen to him in his prison cell. His ruse is innite and therefore naive or null (keep me alive since I am already dead for you): Remember my request to give me a hearing without interruptionF F FI assure you that if I am what I claim to be, and you put me to death, you will harm yourselves more than meF F F If you put me to death, you will not easily nd anyone to take my place. It is literally true, even if it sounds rather comical, that God has specially appointed me to this city, as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging y. It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the oce of such a y, and all day long I never cease to settle here, there, and everywhere, rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you. You will not easily nd another like me, gentlemen, and if you take my advice you will spare my life. I suspect, however, that before long you will awake from your drowsing, and in your annoyance you will take Anytus' advice and nish me o with a single slap, and then you will go on sleeping till the end of your days, unless God in his care for you sends someone to take my place (epipempseie). If you doubt whether I am really the sort of person who would have been sent to this city as a gift from God, you can convince yourselves by looking at it in this way. Does it seem natural that I should have neglected my own aairs and endured the humiliation of allowing my family to be neglected for all

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these years, while I busied myself all the time on your behalf, going to see each one of you privately like a father or an elder brother (hosper patera e adelphon presbuteron), and urging you to set your thoughts on goodness?'' (Apology, 30c31b). (Note that, contrary to Derrida, this speech does not take place in a cell, but in open court facing 500 jurors. It is the Crito which takes place in a cell. CM) D158: ``F F Fa `contradiction': the written proposal of logocentrism; the simultaneous armation of the being-outside of the outside and its injurious intrusion into the inside.'' D168: ``Nontruth is the truth. Nonpresence is presenceF F FIt appears, in its essence, as the possibility of its own most proper non-truthF F F'' References
Brouwer, L.E.J., 19751976. In: Heyting, A. (Ed.), Collected Works, vol. 1. North-Holland, Amsterdam. Derrida, J., 1981. Plato's pharmacy. In: Dissemination. The Athlone Press, London (B. Johnson, Trans.). Dummett, M., 1977. Elements of Intuitionism. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Fodor, J., 1976. The Language of Thought. Harvester, London. Foucault, M., 1973. Madness and Civilisation. Vintage Books, New York (Howard, Trans.). Guthrie, W.K.C., 19751978. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vols. 4 and 5. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Harland, R., 1993. Beyond Superstructuralism. Routledge, London. Plato, 1952. Phaedrus. Cambridge and New York (Hackforth, Trans.). Popper, K., 1972. The Logic of Scientic Discovery (6th impression revised). Hutchinson, London. Ryle, G., 1949. The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson, London.