Dissemination

Rating:
Summary: How Form Has Triumped Over Substance
Review: In regard to the two seminal essays that make up the 100 or so pages of "Plato's Pharmacy" - these are reprints of articles published in the late 1960s, and presumably based on research dating back even earlier.

The historical research behind these essays has dated badly. Much of the argument rests on the notion that, for the Greeks, "pharmakon" signified remedy or poison. It did, but it also could mean painters pigment, perfume, magical talisman (both medical or non-medical, as for example for spell-casting) or intoxicant. The Greek understanding, which continually blurred the understanding of these functions is so significant that is requires extensive analysis (perfumes were frequently added to wines, for example). It is certainly true for Plato. And is not the Republic's "noble lie" described by Plato as a pharmakon? How could Derrida miss that? Plato's Pharmacy, ironically, with its emphasis on this false "remedy" vs. "poison" dichotomy, reproduces Western binary "logocentric" reasoning that deconstruction supposededly circumvents, evades, folds back upon itself, or whatever. For anyone who has followed the current research in cultural anthropology, the history of pharmacology, medicine, and the like, "Plato's Pharmacy" cannot but produce a mix of mirth and annoyance. The Phaedrus, the Platonic dialogue discussed throughout most of "Plato's Pharmacy", is permeated with language and allusions drawn from the Eleusian Mysteries, yet Derrida doesn't even mention this as I recall, nor does he comment on the "potion" of Eleusis, the "kykeon" - now widely believed to have contained ergot of barley, a substance similar to LSD-25. I'd recommend reading The Road to Eleusis - Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, if you want the proper contextual background to Plato's "pharmacological" reading of the Phaedrus. "Plato's Pharmacy" may be a classic of deconstructionist methodological form, but any connection with Plato's world, or the substance of Plato's thought, is at best tenuous, and certainly suspect.

Rating:
Summary: Barbara Johnson provides an erudite translation.
Review: Reading most of Jacques Dierrda's body of work is a task akin to Chinese water torture. Dierrda's project is to debunk the foundation of Western philosophy by subverting it's classic texts. Dierrida uses deconstructive readings of these texts to point out logical flaws, indeterminate meanings and self referrential errors which call into question all that we understand about the structuralist notion of the relationship of the self to the other. In short, Dierrda may be the most radical thinker in modern history, because the success of his project would leave western civilization in the lurch. If Plato was wrong, then all we have learned from the beginning of philosophy is rendered useless. Barbara Johnson's translation of this difficult text is the best grip on Dierrda's project that I have ever read. Stay away from other intrepetations of Derrida, Johnson's translation is elegant and erudite.

Rating:
Summary: This made my head spin!
Review: This book was cool man! It's like forget everything because nothing exists, right? I think the only other time I had this much fun was when I whooped Gabe's arse in Power Stone 2.