柏拉图的药（一）

Abstract:Derrida renews and refines the materialist critique of the traditional platonic-idealist position that truth exists apart from and above signification in language，which is considered a merely derivative supplement to the true idea present in the mind or logos.Plato，in The Phaedrus，describes logos as “the Father”and “King”to suggest its authority in relation to writing，which should obediently represent truth but which can also lead truth astray.This was Plato's quarrel with the Sophists，who taught youth to use language to argue points without training them in proper reasoning.Only when ideas are present is there truth，and without true ideas the techniques of representation such as memorizing passages in order to repeat them are the bearers of falsehood.This is why Plato uses an ambivalent word — pharmakon，which means both poison and cure — as a metaphor for writing.Writing endangers true ideas by offering a simulacrum of truth that need not contain true ideas，yet it is an addition or supplement to true ideas that allow them to be communicated.

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