The Dangerous Supplement: Derrida, Plato, and the Death of the Author

 Deconstructing Authorship from Socratic Dialogue to Literary Theory

Introduction

Throughout the history of Western thought, the question of authorship has haunted philosophical inquiry. Who speaks, and from where does meaning emerge? In Plato’s dialogues—particularly Ion and Phaedrus—a clear opposition is drawn between knowledge grounded in rational method (techne) and inspiration derived from external or divine forces (enthousiasmos). This suspicion toward inspired speech extends to writing itself, which Plato, through the voice of the Egyptian king Thamus, considers a poor substitute for memory and understanding. Jacques Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacy, a landmark in deconstructive philosophy, re-examines this binary and exposes its instability. His notion of the pharmakon, meaning both cure and poison, destabilizes the privileged position traditionally granted to speech. Roland Barthes, writing in the twentieth century, revisits similar issues through his distinction between the author and the scriptor, challenging the sanctity of individual expression. What links these perspectives is a shared awareness that meaning is not anchored in a sovereign origin but scattered across a chain of signs, differences, and supplements.

Techne and Possession in Ion

In Ion, Socrates interrogates the rhapsode Ion, who claims expertise in the recitation and interpretation of Homer. Socrates, however, undermines Ion’s authority by arguing that the rhapsode does not speak from knowledge (episteme), but from divine inspiration (enthousiasmos). Ion becomes a conduit in a magnetic chain extending from the Muse, through the poet, to the performer. As Socrates puts it: “You are not speaking about Homer with knowledge… you are possessed.”¹ This moment introduces a central philosophical concern: can someone be the source of meaning if they cannot account for their words? The poet, lacking techne—a rational and systematic understanding—cannot offer grounded knowledge.² In Socrates’ view, poetry, like writing in Phaedrus, is a form of imitation or reproduction, disconnected from genuine understanding and truth.

Writing as External Supplement in Phaedrus

Plato’s Phaedrus continues the interrogation of expression by presenting a myth in which the Egyptian god Theuth offers writing to King Thamus as a gift to enhance memory. Thamus famously rejects it: “This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it.”³ Writing, for Plato, threatens the internal recollection (anamnesis) that defines true knowledge. It is an external image of truth, offering only the appearance of wisdom. Thus, writing becomes a supplement—not merely additive, but fundamentally disruptive, introducing the possibility of illusion in place of presence. As Derrida later argues, this supplement does not simply displace an original presence but reveals that the supposed origin was already inhabited by difference.⁴

Derrida and the Deconstruction of Presence

Derrida’s reading of the Phaedrus in Plato’s Pharmacy challenges the foundational binaries of Western metaphysics: speech/writing, presence/absence, truth/seeming. Central to this critique is the figure of the pharmakon, a word which in Greek signifies both remedy and poison. Writing, according to Derrida, is not simply a failed or secondary substitute for speech, but the very condition that renders speech meaningful. He writes: “The pharmakon is the movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference.”⁵ What Plato seeks to expel—writing—is in fact inscribed within speech itself. All signification depends on repetition, différance, and spacing.⁶ There is no pure origin, only the trace of an origin that is always deferred. Meaning does not emerge from presence but from the iterable structure of language itself.

Barthes and the Scriptor

Barthes extends the deconstructive logic into the realm of modern literary theory. In his seminal essay, “The Death of the Author,” Barthes contests the traditional view of the author as the source of meaning and authority. Instead, he introduces the figure of the scriptor, who does not precede the text but emerges simultaneously with it. The scriptor assembles, recombines, and redistributes existing signs; they are not an origin but a node in the textual network. As Barthes famously states: “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”⁷ Meaning is not produced through expression but through interpretation. The text becomes a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable cultural codes.⁸ This resembles the role of the poet in Ion, who cannot explain his meaning and therefore forfeits epistemic authority. Meaning is not sovereign but dispersed—activated in the space of the reader.

Socrates as Pharmakon

Socrates himself may be read as a pharmakon—a figure who destabilizes the very categories he invokes. Though remembered as a founder of rational philosophy, Socrates consistently claims to possess no knowledge, attributing his insights to a daemon that speaks within him. He presents himself as a midwife (maieutic), not a master; a questioner, not a teacher.⁹ Like the scriptor, Socrates generates meaning through dialogue rather than assertion. And like the pharmakon, he confuses the boundary between cure and poison, truth and illusion. He introduces disorder into established forms of knowing, only to enable a deeper interrogation of knowledge itself. As Derrida suggests, the pharmakon resists binary categorization: neither simply beneficial nor merely harmful, it embodies the play of difference.¹⁰ In this light, Socrates' method of elenchus becomes a proto-deconstructive practice.

Conclusion

From Plato to Derrida and Barthes, the Western tradition has wrestled with the question of origin. Whether in the inspired poet, the written sign, or the authorial presence, each presumed source is ultimately revealed to be derivative, supplemental, or distributed. In dismantling these hierarchies, Derrida and Barthes illuminate the fundamental instability of meaning. The pharmakon, the scriptor, and the possessed rhapsode all point toward the same insight: there is no final authority behind the text, no single origin of truth, only a network of traces in perpetual play.

Related Post

The Author Who Knows Nothing: Socrates, Techne, and Barthes’ Scriptor

https://derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-author-who-knows-nothing-socrates.html

References

1. Plato, Ion, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato, ed. R.E. Allen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 533e.
2. On the distinction between techne and divine inspiration in Ion, see Andrea Nightingale, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 45–52.
3. Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato, ed. R.E. Allen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 275a–277a.
4. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 144–146.
5. Ibid., 125.
6. Derrida develops the concept of différance most fully in “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1–28.
7. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 148.
8. Ibid., 146.
9. Plato, Theaetetus, trans. M.J. Levett, revised by Myles Burnyeat (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992), 150b–151d.
10. Derrida, Dissemination, 130–131.