From Socrates to Rousseau: Toward a Genealogy of Logocentrism in Nietzsche and Derrida

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Introduction

The critique of reason as the gravitational center of Western culture has been developed through multiple genealogies. Jacques Derrida, in Of Grammatology, denounces "logocentrism": a structure of thought that privileges speech over writing, presence over absence, and origin over supplement. But long before Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche had already sketched a structural critique of the dominance of rationality in the history of art, particularly in The Birth of Tragedy. His diagnosis of Socrates as a symptom of cultural decline and his suspicion of reason as a tyranny disguised as truth anticipate, in different terms, a proto-deconstructive approach. This article explores how Nietzsche and Derrida disarticulate two analogous hierarchical inversions: that of reason over instinct, and that of speech over writing.

Socrates as Symptom: Nietzsche's Diagnosis

Nietzsche does not view Socrates as a model of virtue but as the symptom of a cultural malady. In preparatory texts to The Birth of Tragedy, such as "Socrates and Tragedy," he describes him as a "monstrous phenomenon," a sign of inverted aesthetic and vital values in Greek culture. Socrates represents, for Nietzsche, "the turning point, the shift toward decadence."[1] His insistence on reason, discursive clarity, and logical explanation marks the beginning of a cultural suspicion toward art as a form of knowledge. Greek tragedy, which had emerged from Dionysian forces of instinct and intoxication, is distorted by the moral and rational imperative of Socratic thought.

Euripides: The Rationalist Playwright

Nietzsche extends his critique to Euripides, whom he describes as the "unconscious disciple" of Socrates. In The Birth of Tragedy, he argues that Athenian tragedy lost its instinctual and symbolic depth when subjected to the criterion of comprehensibility. Euripides introduces the "rational spectator" and rewrites tragedy in logical terms: characters who reason, present arguments, and appeal to the audience's judgment. Art, which for Nietzsche should "justify existence" and reconcile us with its horrors through aesthetic illusion, is reduced to moral pedagogy. As he writes: "Socrates is the adversary of Dionysus: the new god of logical thought opposes the dark god of vital intoxication."[2]

The Daimon and the Return of Instinct

However, Nietzsche does not present Socrates as a mere avatar of reason. There remains in him a vital residue, an impulse resisting his own rational discourse: his daimon, that inner voice guiding him without reasons. This mysterious and pre-discursive element disrupts the dominion of logic. Nietzsche notes this with ambivalence: "Socrates found in himself a power superior to his reason: his demon. In decisive moments, he did not reason, he obeyed."[3] What is revealed here is the persistence of a non-rational instance, a kind of vital unconscious that survives even at the heart of rationalism. Socrates obeys without understanding, as if instinct broke through under the mask of consciousness.

From Reason to Logos: Transition to Derrida

What Nietzsche detects in Socrates is not merely an individual anomaly but a structural logic: the hierarchical inversion that subordinates the obscure to the clear, the bodily to the spiritual, the aesthetic to the moral. This structure parallels the logocentrism dissected by Derrida. In Of Grammatology, Derrida argues that from Plato to Rousseau, philosophy has privileged the spoken word as the bearer of the presence of thought, while writing is perceived as a secondary, dangerous, and perverted copy. But—as Nietzsche with the daimon —Derrida finds that this hierarchy cannot be maintained without contradiction: the logos depends on its supplement. Spoken language relies on writing to survive, just as Socratic reason depends on the irrational impulse that inhabits it.

Rousseau and Writing as Supplement

Derrida chooses Rousseau as a paradigmatic case. In the Essay on the Origin of Languages, Rousseau declares writing a "dangerous invention," a substitute for the living voice. However, in narrating the origin of language, he ends up assigning writing a foundational function: “It is not on a few scattered leaves that one must look for the law of God, but in the heart of man, where His hand deigned to write it.”

The voice—supposed guarantor of authenticity—needs its double to sustain itself. Derrida identifies a general structure here: the supplement appears as an addition but proves to be a condition of possibility. "The supplement supplants," he writes, "adds only to replace."[4] Just as Nietzsche's daimon destabilizes the empire of reason, Derrida's writing decomposes the metaphysics of presence.

Conclusion: Nietzsche as Proto-Deconstructionist

Nietzsche does not formulate a theory of writing, but his critique of Socrates and the rationalization of art constitutes a genealogy of logocentrism. Like Derrida, he perceives that binary oppositions (reason/instinct, speech/writing, form/life) are unstable, and that the subordinated term returns as a condition of possibility. Both thinkers work against the grain of Western metaphysics: Nietzsche through the body and art, Derrida through language and the sign. From Socrates to Rousseau unfolds a history of suppressions and displacements, where the excluded returns to found what appeared to be original. In this convergence, philosophy becomes the archaeology of its own traces.

References

Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1999). The Birth of Tragedy (R. Geuss & R. Speirs, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1980). Kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. 1 (G. Colli & M. Montinari, Eds.). Berlin: de Gruyter.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1998). Essay on the Origin of Languages (J. H. Moran & A. Gode, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Footnotes

[1] Nietzsche, F. (1980). KSA, Vol. 1, Nachlass 1870.

[2] Nietzsche, F. (1999). The Birth of Tragedy, §14.

[3] Nietzsche, F. (1980). KSA, Vol. 1, Nachlass 1870.

[4] Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology, p. 145.