The "Undecidable" Pharmakon: Derrida's Reading of Plato's Phaedrus

This article challenges Derrida's approach to Plato's Phaedrus by placing into question the attribution of an essential "undecidability" to the word "pharmakon." The process of questioning is articulated at two levels. At the first level, it places into question Derrida's claim that the unity of a word "'precedes' the opposition between [its] different effects," that is, it precedes the multiplicity of its linguistic uses, thereby undermining any effort to make a word mean only one thing in actual discourse. Part of the aim of this presentation is to render obvious the effect of Saussurean linguistics upon Derrida's position, in particular, with the primacy that Saussure attributes to langue (the formal system of language) in relation to parole (the individual linguistic utterance). This is then complemented, and deepened, by a placing into question of the philosophical status which Derrida accords to this "undecidability" through the presentation of an alternative philosophical perspective (the "undecidability" of pharmakon is not of a linguistic nature but, rather, stems from the multiple perspectives from which its effects can be approached).