Socrates or Derrida's Parasite
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Abstract
In this work I aim to present an analysis based on Derrida’s reading of the Platonic Phaedrus in his essay La pharmacie de Platon. In three sections, Derrida elaborates on the concepts of phármakon, pharmakeus and pharmakós. However, it seems that the concept of phármakon is presented as a hierarchical phenomenon compared to the other two concepts. The richness of this term lies in its ambiguity and impossibility to be translated, since it has a double “nature”: that of poison and that of remedy. I am interested in showing that, despite the “undecidability”, polysemy and inability to be translated of the phármakon, there are reasons to think that the pharmakós, a word never used by Plato (and nevertheless not absent in his work) is the other side of the phármakon. The pharmakós is known as the “scapegoat” in ancient Greece. It is a subject who, as part of a communal Greek purification ritual, is expelled from the city in order to erradicate the evils that afflict it. I therefore seek to rescue the importance of the pharmakós, embodied in the character of Socrates, understood as a parasitic existence that, through the phármakon, is eliminated from the city.
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