Sean Burke The Death and Return of the Author : Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida.

1994), pp. 1–37.
64. Derrida talks of the permanence of a Platonic schema that assigns the origin and power of
speech, precisely of logos, to the paternal position.' (76)
65. G.R.F. Ferrari almost goes so far as to endorse this reversal of the conventional association
of King Thamus with the Platonic viewpoint: 'If anything, the philosopher is a combination of
Thoth, the inventor, and Ammon, the judge of arts . . . for by attempting to judge the good life,
the philosopher brings it into being.'—G.R.F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Platos
'Phaedrus' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 281, n. 25.
66. This position is articulated in Ronna Burger, Plato's Phaedrus: A Defence of a Philosophic Art
of Writing (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1980). Neoplatonic thinkers also proposed that
the Phaedrus ultimately defends the Platonic writing: 'A Neoplatonic treatise refers to the aporetic
dilemma presented by the fact that while the master in the Phaedrus spoke so disparagingly
about writing, he still considered his own works as worthy of being written down. As a solution, it
is proposed that he also tried to follow the deity in this respect. Just as the deity created both the
invisible and what is visible to our senses, so he, too, wrote down many things and transmitted
others unwritten.'—Paul Friedländer, Plato I, op. cit., p. 124.
67. 'The authority of truth, of dialectics, of seriousness, of presence, will not be gainsaid at the
close of this admirable movement, when Plato, after having in a sense reappropriated writing,
pushes his irony—and his seriousness—to the point of rehabilitating a certain form of play.' (154)
This admirable movement, though, is countenanced by 'Plato's Pharmacy' only insofar as it
avoids the Socratic recapitulation (Phaedrus, 278b–d).
68. Derrida is aware that the issue is also one of social ordering, of morality and the city. Indeed,
near the start he draws attention to precisely what his reading will bypass in favour of a reflection
on the metaphysical dynamics of the speech/writing issue: 'the question of writing opens as a
question of morality. It is truly morality that is at stake, both in the sense of the opposition
between good and evil, or good and bad, and in the sense of mores, public morals and social
conventions. It is a question of knowing what is done and what is not done. This moral disquiet is
in no way to be distinguished from questions of truth, memory and dialectics. This latter question,
which will quickly be engaged as the question of writing, is closely associated with the morality
theme, and indeed develops it by affinity of essence and not by superimposition.' (74) Henceforth,
however, the metaphysical theme will everywhere subordinate the ethical concerns of the
Phaedrus.
69. Having questioned the epic, lyric and dramatic poets as to the meaning of their work,
Socrates lamented: 'It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have
explained those poems better than their actual authors . . . I decided that it was not wisdom that
enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers
and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they
mean. It seemed clear to me that the poets were in much the same case, and I also observed
that the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of
all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant.' (Apology 22b–c) This anxiety is
comparable to the Phaedrus's concerns that writing will allow men of opinion (doxa) to be taken
as authorities (275a–b). What Socrates encounters in the case of a poetic text is a structure of
words which is quite unresponsive in spite of its having been spoken, one which cannot explain
itself and if questioned keeps repeating the same answer over and over again, much as written
words 'go on telling you just the same thing forever'. (Phaedrus, 275d)
70. On Socrates as critic of poetry, see Nickolas Pappas, 'Socrates' Charitable Treatment of
Poetry', Philosophy and Literature, vol. 13, no. 2 (1989), pp. 248–61.
71. 'One of the main effects of this transitional section is to widen the area of discussion: not just
speech-writing as defined by Lysias' activity, but speaking and writing of all kinds.'—C.J. Rowe,
Plato: Phaedrus, with Translation and Commentary, op. cit., p. 192. Rowe also adds: 'If the
ensuing discussion begins with Lysias, it ends by being wholly general' (ibid., p. 193).
72. Ferrari also confirms this general observation, noting that 'speech' is often 'shorthand for
''speaking and writing"; for [Socrates] shifts between labels without making a point of the
difference.'—G.R.F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas, op. cit., p. 277, n. 1.
73. C.J. Rowe comments on 259e1–274b5: 'Throughout this section, speaking and writing are
taken together; "rhetoric" is to be understood as including both . . . In Greek as in English,