Location: Athens.
Characters: Phaedrus, Socrates, Kant, Derrida.
Socrates
… Shall we read the beginning of it again?*
Phaedrus
If you like; but what you seek is not in it.
Socrates
Read, that I may hear Lysias himself.
Phaedrus
You know what my condition is, and you have heard how I think it is to our advantage to arrange these matters. And I claim that I ought not to be refused what I ask because I am not your lover. For lovers repent of the kindnesses they have done when their passion ceases.
Socrates
He certainly does not at all seem to do what we demand, for he does not even begin at the beginning, but undertakes to swim on his back up the current of his discourse from its end, and begins with what the lover would say at the end to his beloved. Am I not right, Phaedrus my dear?
Derrida [interrupting]
If I may interject, dear Socrates, but beginning at the beginning is sort of overrated, don’t you think? Yet by phrasing the question in this particular way, or implying to phrase it as “does one not suppose to begin at the beginning?” are you not attempting to trick poor Phaedrus here into simply stating what you have always already inscribed in the very question?
Socrates
And who might you be, dear friend, I haven’t noticed you over there, come closer.
Phaedrus
This is a distant cousin of mine, Socrates, he was greatly impressed with your wit when I told him about our discussions.
Socrates [somewhat impatiently]
Well, I’d love to chat, son, but this is a dialogue between me and Phaedrus here, so you’ll have to wait until another time to interrogate me about beginnings and ends. What was I saying again, Plato?
Plato [reads from his moleskin notepad]
Something about undertaking to swim on the back up the current or something to that effect.
Phaedrus
Ah yes, Certainly that of which Lysias speaks is an ending.
Socrates
And how about the rest? Don’t you think the parts of the discourse are thrown out helter-skelter? Or does it seem to you that the second topic had to be put second for any cogent reason, or that any of the other things he says are so placed? It seemed to me, who am wholly ignorant, that the writer uttered boldly whatever occurred to him. Do you know any rhetorical reason why he arranged his topics in this order?
Derrida
“Wholly ignorant”? Give me a break, old man, everyone knows you’re being ironic and all. Why don’t you at least be somewhat less obvious about it? Paa-lease!
Phaedrus [ignoring the outburst, growing concerned, making motions]
Socrates, you flatter me in thinking that I can discern Lysias’ motives so accurately.
Socrates [uncomfortably glancing at Derrida]
But I do think you will agree to this, that every discourse must be organized, like a living being, with a body of its own, as it were, so as not to be headless or footless, but to have a middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole.
Phaedrus
Certainly.
Derrida
Go on, please, Socrates, I like that next part about the inscription on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.
Socrates
“Next part”? Of what? Of our conversation? How do you know what comes next?
[awkward silence, thumb twiddling, some whistling]
Kant [coughing slightly to draw attention]
If I may say so, illustrious Sirs, I am very intrigued by the imagery of the discourse organized “like a living being” myself. In fact, I think that under the government of reason our cognitions must constitute a system, in which alone they can support and advance its essential ends.
Socrates
System? What exactly do you mean by the word “system”?
Kant
I understand by the system, Socrates, the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea. This is the rational concept of the form of a whole, insofar as through this the domain of the manifold as well as the position of the parts with respect to each other is determined a priori. The scientific rational concept that contains the end and the form of the whole that is congruent with it.**
Plato [excitedly]
Idea! Form! I like it very much.
Socrates
Before you write it down and later claim I said that, Plato, let us further investigate the mysterious stranger. What does my image of the “living being” have to do with your presentation, in a rather strange way, of your own understanding of the system? It sounds to me as though you are simply suggesting that any unity of various elements based on an end is a system. Would thus an organization of keys on a keyboard be a system since there is a certain idea behind the organization, a certain organizing principle?
Plato [aside to Derrida]
How do you spell “keyboard”?
Derrida
K-e-y-b-o-a-r-d. Do you even know what that is?
Plato
Not really. I’ll just rework it later into some other sort of an example like a pile of stones or something.
Kant
Not quite, I think, since a simple putting together of things in an order does not constitute a system, but merely creates an aggregate. An aggregate, it seems, is not a simple pile of stones, but its principle is not given a priori, it’s an organization of some kind but not quite a system that has a unity of the end, to which all parts are related and in the idea of which they are also related to each other; such unity allows the absence of any part to be noticed in our knowledge of the rest, and there can be no contingent addition or undetermined magnitude or perfection that does not have its boundaries determined a priori. The whole is therefore articulated and not heaped together; it can, to be sure, grow internally but not externally, like an animal body, whose growth does not add a limb but rather makes each limb stronger and fitter for its end without any alternation of proportion. I have a word for all of this: architectonic.
Socrates [visibly flabbergasted]
It is a nice word, I think but if we may get back to the dialogue format for a second. Did Phaedrus leave already? But we’ve barely begun our exchange!
Derrida
It’s interesting that you should mention this, Monsieur Kant, I have also been quite interested in architectonic issues. I thought of it in terms of “deconstruction” – you see…
Plato [aside to Socrates]
Should I be writing this down?
Derrida [continues]
Deconstruction is not simply the decomposition of an architectural structure; it is also a question about the foundation, about the relation between foundation and what is founded; it is also a question about the closure of the structure, about a whole architecture of philosophy. Not only as concerns this or that construction, but on the architectonic motif of the system.***
Kant
So you’re not interested in specific “this” or “that” system but in the overall analysis of the conditions of possibility of any system?
Derrida
Precisely. The architectonic, as you know, is the art of the system. Deconstruction concerns, first of all, systems. This does not mean that it brings down the system, but that it opens onto possibilities of arrangement or assembling, of being together if you like, that are not necessarily systematic, in the strict sense that philosophy gives to this word. It is thus a reflection on the system, on the closure and opening of the system.
Kant
Well said, young man, but I am not sure if I understand why you interchange “systems” and “system” in your talk there as if to imply that there can be many difference systems of knowledge? Your view of the architectonic seems to be quite close to mine but with an essential difference: you don’t really see the system as a living body the way I and Socrates do… Where did he go?
[turns around, no sign of Socrates or any of the original spectators, Plato still writing things down but clearly it no longer has anything to do with the conversation]
Derrida
That’s awkward. It was sort of his dialogue, wasn’t it? Oh well, where were we again?
[inaudible]
__________________________________
*Phaedrus 263e-ff
** A832/B860ff
*** Points, 212ff