Plato’s commitment to absolutes, his need to define con-
cepts in a rigorous and universally applicable way, makes him,
in Derrida’s eyes, an arch-metaphysician. By addressing Plato
in his work, Derrida tackles his exact opposite: the philosopher
who believes that truth, justice, and virtue are stable, definable
entities. Derrida takes aim at Plato the logocentrist.
But this picture of Plato is far from accurate. Plato’s use
of a literary form, the dialogue, indicates that his thought re-
lies fundamentally on conversation and on the dramatic irony
that goes along with conversational interaction. Instead of the
dogmatist that Derrida sees in him, Plato is an artist of human
character; he looms as the most literary of philosophers, the
one most interested (along with Nietzsche and Søren Kierke-
gaard) in psychological portraiture. It is Plato’s profound in-
terest in the psyche that Derrida deliberately misses, as he
misses it in Austin, Nietzsche, and Freud.
I will first try to give Plato consideration in his own right,
as I have with Husserl and Freud, before addressing Derrida’s
treatment of him in his renowned essay on the Phaedrus,
“Plato’s Pharmacy” ( 1968 ). Because Derrida gives relatively
short shrift to so many of the major emphases of the Phaedrus,
I will provide a rather substantial account of Plato’s dialogue.
Attending to the parts of Plato’s Phaedrusthat Derrida slights
will enable us to understand the limits of the deconstruction-
ist perspective. I devote more space to Plato than to Derrida’s
other philosophical ancestors because Plato remains, for Der-
rida as for us, the ultimate source of Western thought.
Plato is often thought of as the father of philosophy.
There were thinkers before him, of course: not just his beloved
mentor Socrates but also the dark and obscure Heraclitus and
the deeply puzzling Parmenides. Plato’s breadth and richness
are unrivaled in Greek philosophy or any that followed. His in-
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 141