4. And finally, the square of the earth or world. And no one will be allowed into this theatre if he does not know how to take the measurements of the earth squarely…
Jacques Derrida, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ in Dissemination:
Now, about this father, this capital, this good, this origin of value and of appearing beings, it is not possible to speak simply or directly. First of all because it is no more possible to look them in the face than to stare at the sun. On the subject of this bedazzlement before the face of the sun, a rereading of the famous passage of the Republic (VII, 515c ff) is strongly recommended here.
Thus will Socrates evoke only the visible sun, the son that resembles the father, the analogon of the intelligible sun: ‘It was the sun, then, that I meant when I spoke of that offspring of the Good (ton agathou ekgonon), which the Good has created in its own image (hon tagathon egennesen analogon heautoi), and which stands in the visible world in the same relation to vision and visible things as that which the good itself bears in the intelligible world to intelligence and to intelligible objects’ (508c).
How does Logos intercede in this analogy between the father and the son, the nooumena and the horomena?
The Good, in the visible-invisible figure of the father, the sun, or capital, is the origin of all onta, responsible for their appearing and their coming into logos, which both assembles and distinguishes them: ‘We predicate ‘to be’ of many beautiful things and many good things, saying of them severally that they are, and so define them in our speech (einai phamen te kai diorizomen toi logoi)’ (507b).
The good (father, sun, capital) is thus the hidden illuminating, blinding source of logos. And since one cannot speak of that which enables one to speak (being forbidden to speak to it face to face), one will speak only of that which speaks and of things that, with a single exception, one is constantly speaking of. And since an account or reason cannot be given of what logos (account or reason: ratio) is accountable or owing to, since the capital cannot be counted nor the chief looked in the eye, it will be necessary, by means of a discriminative, diacritical operation, to count up the plurality of interests, returns, products, and offspring: ‘Well, speak on (lege), he said, for you will duly pay me the tale of the parent another time – I wish, I said, that I were able to make and you to recieve the payment, and not merely as now the interest. But at any rate receive this interest and the offspring of the good. Have a care, however, lest I deceive you unintentionally with a false reckoning (ton logon) of the interest (tou tokou)’ (507a).
From the foregoing passage we should also retain the fact that, along with the account (logos) of the supplements (to the father-good-capital-origin, etc.), along with what comes above and beyond the One in the very movement through which it absents itself and becomes invisible, thus requiring that its place be supplied, along with differance and diacriticity, Socrates introduces or discovers the ever open possibility of the kibdelon, that which is falsified, adulterated, mendacious, deceptive, equivocal. Have a care, he says, lest I deceive you with a false reckoning of the interest (kibdelon apodidous ton logon tou tokou). Kibdeleuma is fraudulent merchandise. The corresponding verb (kibdeleuo) signifies ‘to tamper with money or merchandise, and, by extension, to be of bad faith.’
This recourse to logos, from fear of being blinded by any direct intuition of the face of the father, of good, of capital, of the origin of being itself, of the form of forms, etc., this recourse to logos as that which protects us from the sun, protects us under it and from it, is proposed by Socrates elsewhere, in the analogous order of the sensible or the visible. We shall quote at length from that text. In addition to its intrinsic interest, the text, in its official Robin translation [fr], manifests a series of slidings, as it were, that are highly significant. The passage in question is the critique, in the Phaedo, of ‘physicalists’:
Socrates proceeded: – I thought that as I failed in the contemplation of true existence (ta onta), I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only looking at the image (eikona) reflected in the water, or in some analogous medium. So in my own case, I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried to apprehend them with the help of the senses. And I thought that I had better have recourse to the world of idea (en logois) and seek there the truth of things…. So, basing myself in each case on the idea (logon) that I judged to be the strongest…’ (99d-100a).
Logos is thus a resource. One must turn to it, and not merely when the solar source is present and risks burning the eyes if stared at: one has also to turn away toward logos when the sun seems to withdraw during its eclipse. Dead, extinguished, or hidden, that star is more dangerous than ever.
We will let these yarns of suns and sons spin on for a while. Up to now we have only followed this line so as to move from logos to the father, so as to tie speech to the kurios, the master, the lord, another name given in the Republic to the good-sun-capital-father (508a). Later, within the same tissue, within the same texts, we will draw on other filial filaments, pull the same strings once more, and witness the weaving or unravelling of other designs.