pushing our reactions to the extreme, Plato teaches us about
our motives and interests and challenges us to develop them
further, under the tutelage of philosophy.
Derrida’s reading of Plato ignores this psychological di-
mension: the way that Plato makes us aware of our reactions to
his work, in order to instruct us. Derrida remains intent on
proving that Plato is a nostalgist who yearns for the perfect
presence of truth. Unable to achieve this perfection, Plato, in
Derrida’s view, rails against our fallen world, which obstructs
the realization of philosophical ideals. The same ignorant mob
that sentenced Socrates to death controls political life. If the
philosopher could conduct a dialogue within his soul and con-
tain it there—if he could dwell always in the serene empyrean
realm of ideas, unsoiled by the corrupt world of the city—then
his dream would be achieved.
Does Plato have such a fantasy? Does he want to purge
the city, in retaliation for its execution of Socrates, so that only
an elite mini-society of philosophers would be left? I argue
that he does not. Plato knows that the soul, the object of his
study, cannot be made pure. Neither can the city. Both social
life and the individual psyche are places of struggle, in his view.
In this sense, Plato is the precursor of Freud, with his tripartite
model of the mind composed of id, ego, and superego. In
Freud, each of the three psychic agencies strives for dominance,
and this war is never won. Our natures remain mixed, the self
a territory in dispute. Plato has a similar three-part division of
the soul in his Republic:appetite; manly courage or enthusi-
asm; and reason, the high will to knowledge. In the Phaedrus
the scheme is simplified. Here Plato divides us in two, into a
beastly and a godlike desire. The wrestling match between
these two opposing forces is vividly depicted in the rapturous
centerpiece of the Phaedrus,the myth of the charioteer.
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 143