Philosophical Analogy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Philosophical comparison - Essay ExampleWhile Plato was Aristotles mentor, Foucault was once Derridas teacher. Derrida and Foucault are both French philosophers who are part of 20th-Century-Western Philosophy. As would be expected, the latter philosophers would have a considerable amount of study on the works or references of the earlier theorists. Derridas work Platos Pharmacy is an attack to Platos famous work Phaedrus. While Foucault counters Aristotles enduring substances with his claim that everything is historically contingent.Platos Phaedrus is a rich and enigmatic text that treats a range of important philosophical issues, including metaphysics, the philosophy of love, and the relation of language to reality, especially in regard to the practices of rhetoric and writing (Zuern par. 1). In this particular dialogue, Plato through with(predicate) the character Socrates (with his conversation with Phaedrus) shows explicit criticisms on the art of rhetoric and writing. He argue s that rhetoric is not establish on truth but that rhetoric practitioners can and will make small things appear enormous and great things small, and adds that these people have discoered how to argue concisely and at infinite duration about any subject and usance words magic spell (267). His stance is that, rhetoric is misleading and alone aims to be persuasive to achieve its goal in whatever means, without being truthful. It is, as far as he is concerned, only dependent on language and words and not on truth.What Plato favors and promotes is the use of his dialectical method, the method which is capable of helping itself as well as the (person) who planted it and produces a seed from which much discourse grows in the character of others (277). The idea is that, compared to rhetoric (writing), the dialectical method (speech), can construe clearer definitions by means of producing further discussions, which would validate or not the claim of truth, and thus, would achieve value, with the truth it is affirming and not exclusively by the rhetoric of writing.This argument is deconstructed by Derrida in his work Platos Pharmacy, where he centralizes his analogy on Platos use of the term pharmakon in his works. With that analogy, Derrida highlights the ambiguity of Platos distinction of the sophists rhetoric from the philosophers dialectical method. Derrida questions Platos preference of living speech over dead writing. To understand the way of life Derrida deconstructed Platos Phaedrus, it is important to go back to the latters work and analyze the way pharmakon was used. primary off though, we have to establish what the term means prior to Platos context. Pharmakon is from a Greek word pith both poison and cure (Maslin par. 8). Thus, it has a neutral stance, it does not have a negative or a positive connotation attached to it. It can either be a harmful poison or a helpful medicine, making the word ambiguous and would only take its meaning depending on t he context of its use.The term is first encountered on Phaedrus, taking on a different form pharmacia. On their way to leave Athences, Phaedrus and Socrates came across the place where it was said that the mythic Oreithuia was taken away by Boreas. Socrates then goes to assume that perhaps a gust of the North Wind blew (Oreithuia) over the rocks where she was playing with Pharmacia and once she was killed that way people