Derrida, commenting on the medieval picture of Soc-
rates writing with Plato standing behind him, explores the
possibility that Plato is sexually molesting his revered mentor:
“For the moment, myself, I tell you that I see Platogetting an
erection in Socrates’ back and see the insane hubris of his prick,
an interminable, disproportionate erection... slowly sliding,
still warm, under Socrates’ right leg” ( 18 ). In addition to
sodomizing Socrates, Plato, we are told, is riding a skateboard
( 17 ); also, he is a tram conductor ( 17 ); and finally, he “wants to
emit... to sow the entire earth, to send the same fertile card to
everyone”( 28 ). “Imagine the day,” muses Derrida, “when we
will be able to send sperm by post card” ( 24 ).
Derrida’s fantasies may seem infantile or merely random,
but they bear a relation to the Platonic idea that philosophy
sows a seed of truth in the listener or reader. Socrates, whom
Plato saw as the father of his discourse, his logos, has become
a source of wisdom inherited by everyone who reads and seri-
ously ponders the Platonic dialogues. Derrida also alludes to a
passage in Plato’s Second Letter (a text whose authenticity is
disputed) in which we are told, “There is not and will not be
any written work of Plato’s own. What is now called his is the
work of a Socrates grown young and beautiful.” Plato wants,
then, to become Socrates; or, perhaps, he wants Socrates and
himself to be a single person. (Derrida, disappointingly, pre-
tends to see this desire of Plato’s as a wish for revenge on
Socrates: this is a parody of psychology rather than the real
thing.)
Derrida’s Post Cardpresents an idiosyncratic version of
philosophical esotericism, and as such it responds to Plato.
There is a long tradition that Plato’s true teaching consists not
in his published writings, stunningly beautiful as they are, but
rather in the hidden lore passed down orally among his disci-
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 173