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To what extent does Platonism arise out of fear of contaminants, of miasma, of impurity? On Derrida's reading, Plato dreams of an uncontaminated origin and presence that can never be arrived at or achieved, and he sees every supplement as an unhappy contamination of the purity of the origin. That sounds a lot like a rarefied philosophical version of Pharisaism. Perhaps Porter's book on Miasma and Greek conceptions of uncleanness would shed some light. One could probably write an entire history of Western philosophy from this perspective. "Pure reason," the Cartesian ego, and so on and on: The rhetoric betrays them all. Philosophy is constituted by its fear of dirt. And then here comes Derrida saying that we can't get rid of it, that dirt is always already there, under the rug and in the corners. But he still calls it dirt.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 at 04:27 PM
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