track, separating the true from the false, dividing lucid con-
sciousness from the unclarity of poetry, dreams, and myth.
Banishing writing, as the Egyptian king perhaps should have
done, would bring us this lucidity.
But Socrates clearly says in the Phaedrus,in a passage
Derrida overlooks, that there is nothing reprehensible about
the written word as such, only about writing poorly or irre-
sponsibly (as Lysias has done in his wretched speech praising
the nonlover). Socrates remarks, “This much, then, is clear to
everyone, that in itself, at least, writing speeches is not some-
thing shameful....But what is shameful, I think, is speaking
and writing not in an acceptable way, but shamefully and
badly” ( 258 d). Socrates repeats aiskhron,“shameful,” the same
word he applied to the behavior of the bad horse in the myth
of the charioteer. Like the chariot of the soul, writing can turn
in either a good or a bad direction. In itself, though, writing is
a neutral vehicle, just like speech.
Plato underlines the fact that we are responsible for the
acts of rhetoric we commit, whether in speech or in print. To
reflect on this fact is to move from sophistic training to Pla-
tonic philosophy, with its psychological insight: we have begun
to address the state of our souls. Derrida, by implying that
the use and destiny of writing cannot be controlled, gives the
sophist an excuse and lets the blame for any corruption in
practice fall on the medium itself. The Derridean sophist
would claim that the vagrancy of writing, the supposed insta-
bility of written meaning, absolves the writer of the duties of
authorship. Writing’s shifting nature allows the sophistic rhe-
torician to evade the philosopher’s demand that speechmakers
not corrupt an audience, incite ruin, or inflame low passions.
In making this case, the sophist pleads, unconvincingly, a
merely technical innocence.
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 153