Edition 14. L’Hiver 2021

Projection

«The situation is serious but not desperate»

 

This formula attributed to Napoleon could still be useful if it did not constantly lean towards its opposite: “the situation is desperate but not serious“, an assertion apparently made by Churchill (between two glasses of good whisky) but no matter how much it suits us here, it is important not to forget that time advances and that it weaves even without “us”, observe the different kinds of cemeteries littered with “indispensable” people and “impassable” theories.

 

However, like Sisyphus, Penelope, Atlas, let us always try to propose something rather than nothing, a symbolic drop of water in the ocean of signs, with the hope that the different reflections proposed here can not only strengthen our mental immune defenses early, but also sharpen them so that we can counter-attack: this way of doing things being the best according to the (true) strategists who still follow this other famous adage “of daring, again daring, always daring”.

However, if it is not a question of confusing courage and recklessness, it is nevertheless necessary to leave the beaten track in order to avoid these endless Maginot lines, literally speaking, and in its multiform sense; hence the idea of reflecting, of being already “questionist” (since criticism would be if not “conspiratorial” then at least “reassuring”); fresh again here; and this precisely on these questions of finality, meaning, link, purpose, in matters of health, history(ies), because it is not possible to believe yet that no well-grounded certainty wavers today, despite its institutional fortress behind which is still being discussed not only the Sex of the Angels but above all their “age” to be able to consume it.

It is possible to make fun, but “he who laughs last will laugh last” had undoubtedly said Churchill at the passage of the V2s going to bomb London. “We’re at war,” they claim. But who is this “we”, what “war” is he talking about? In what way the current situation, with its disproportionate responses, requires us to rethink a new Synthesis, to classify again what counts and takes into account, Dogma would like to be that sieve too, without demanding that others be silenced, since this other adage is dear to us, that of Tolerance, today defeated in breach under the pretext that there are houses of the same name, proclaims a new Inquisition that makes the old one seem more and more like craftsmanship, today, in the bio-digital Era. Globalized.

«La situation est grave mais pas désespérée»

Cette formule attribuée à Napoléon pourrait encore être utile si elle ne penchait pas constamment vers son contraire « la situation est désespérée mais non sérieuse » une assertion paraît-il prononcée par Churchill (entre deux verres de bon whisky) mais peu importe tant ce qui sied ici tient surtout à ne pas oublier que le temps avance et qu’il tisse même sans « nous », observez les différentes sortes de cimetières jonchés de personnes « indispensables » et de théories « indépassables ».

Pourtant, tels Sisyphe, Pénélope, Atlas, tentons toujours de proposer quelque chose plutôt que rien, une goutte d’eau symbolique dans l’océan des signes certes, avec cet espoir cependant que les différentes réflexions proposées ici puissent non seulement renforcer de manière précoce nos défenses immunitaires mentales, mais les aiguiser de telle sorte que nous puissions contre-attaquer : cette manière de faire étant la meilleure selon les stratèges (les vrais) toujours adeptes de cet autre adage célèbre « de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace ».

S’il ne s’agit cependant pas de confondre courage et témérité, autant faut-il pourtant sortir des sentiers battus afin d’éviter ces lignes Maginot sans fin, littéralement parlant, et en son sens multiforme ; d’où l’idée de réfléchir, d’être déjà « questionniste » (puisque la critique serait sinon « complotiste » du moins « rassuriste ») ; à nouveau frais ici ; et ce précisément sur ces questions de finalité, sens, lien, but, en matière de santé, d’histoire(s), parce qu’il n’est pas possible de croire encore qu’aucune certitude bien assise ne vacille aujourd’hui, malgré sa forteresse institutionnelle derrière laquelle se discute encore non plus seulement du Sexe des anges mais surtout de leur « âge » pour pouvoir le consommer.

Il est possible de se gausser, mais « rira bien qui rira le dernier » s’était sans doute dit Churchill au passage des V2 allant bombarder Londres. « Nous sommes en guerre » clame-t-on. Mais qui est ce « on », de quelle « guerre » parle-t-il ? En quoi la situation actuelle, aux réponses si disproportionnées, nécessite de repenser une nouvelle Synthèse, de classer à nouveau ce qui compte et tient, Dogma aimerait être ce tamis aussi sans pour autant exiger de faire taire autrui puisque cet autre adage nous est cher celui de la Tolérance aujourd’hui battu en brèche sous le prétexte qu’il existerait des maisons du même nom clame une nouvelle Inquisition qui fait de plus en plus passer l’ancienne pour de l’artisanat, aujourd’hui, à l’Ère bio-numérique. Globalisée.

Auteurs

Marco A. Andreacchio
Humanisme et mystère dans la philosophie de Pic de la Mirandole

Lucien Oulahbib
L’entéléchie juridique ou « peuple »

David Cumin
L’engagement de Carl Schmitt dans le national-socialisme

Isabelle Grazioli
Lire, relire Ernst Jünger

Lucien Oulahbib
« L’Allégorie de la Caverne » comme « vortex » cosmo-ontologique permanent ?

Lucien Oulahbib
Hommage à « Jean Martin » (feu) créateur du Site « Pensée Unique »

Michel Gay
L’agroécologie est-elle l’avenir de l’agriculture ?

Liliane Messika
L’hypocrisie, quand le pouvoir est impuissance

Claude Kayat
La Femme du Gardien de but (Nouvelle)

Jean-Pierre Lledo
« Les Berbères juifs »

La réponse avec Sylvain Gouguenheim
Notre-Dame de Paris, Big Ben, des édifices pas si chrétiens, vraiment?

Lucien Samir Oulahbib
Hommage à David André Belhassen

Abdelkader Bachta
La pensée de Morin comme position d’équilibre entre le cartésianisme et l’hégélianisme

Michel Gay
Le général de Gaulle et l’esprit du siècle

Elvira Grözinger
Zwei jiddische Heilergeschichten — aus dem Orient und aus Aschkenas Wundererzählungen zwischen Tradition und Moderne

Lucien Oulahbib
L’évaluation des théories est-t-elle morte? De la stagnation contemporaine

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International Interdisciplinary conference “Sketch a subculture”

When: February 21-26, 2021
Where: Online

International interdisciplinary conference “Sketch a subculture” is designed to create conditions for a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue of scientists, researchers, experts about subculture.

WHAT exactly do we define as a “subculture”? What do we know about their types of formations, hierarchies, origin and philosophical components? Why is this definition not just a subject of cultural studies, religious studies, philosophy, and other human sciences or sociopolitical disciplines, but requires a holistic and interdisciplinary approach? In other words, we need to find out how “subculture” differs from other concepts. In this distinction, we need the help of fundamental characteristics. Every phenomenon continuously has a set of indispensable traits that allow it to be distinguished from the rest. One way or another, every object, phenomenon and category has a distinctive and individual system of differentiating peculiarities that distinguish one phenomenon from another. What are these attributions, characteristics, signs or parameters in subcultures? The question is open. Equally, the open question relates to the method and methodology of research deserving of a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach.

These and many other questions require innovative approaches and an unbiased dialogue in an understandable scientific language. We invite leading experts, scientists, researchers, practitioners, journalists, photographers, and thinkers ready to support the discussion in the pursuit of truth and scientific patterns of human and social development!

Website of the conference: https://subculture.euasu.org/

 

Edition 13. Automne 2020

Si l’actualité internationale est assurément une source vive d’enseignements et de réflexions, ce nouveau numéro de Dogma, votre revue en ligne, porte lui-même – une fois n’est pas coutume – sa propre part d’actualité intrinsèque. Mais assez de mystères ! En voici la raison : d’une part, vous l’aurez remarqué, notre portail a été entièrement refait. Nous espérons que vous apprécierez ce nouvel environnement de lecture. Ensuite – et peut-être surtout – nous sommes particulièrement heureux de vous présenter dans ces pages, deux nouvelles : c’est la première fois que nos colonnes accueillent de la fiction… ou supposée telle.

Car inutile de préciser que les fictions dont il est question ici portent assez mal cette désinence littéraire, tant elles interpellent bel et bien sur le réel, sur le présent, en un mot, sur le “monde comme il va”, comme disait Voltaire. Des fictions, donc, au sens érudit, mais qui ouvrent grand l’esprit et les sens aux bruissements du temps, ou peut-être – plus judicieusement – à ses fracas.

Car il faut bien le constater, nombre d’événements récents ont bien la nature de fracas : de la soudaine recrudescence d’attentats terroristes aux affres d’une certaine élection en bras de fer, difficile de rester serein… surtout peu après la (re)suppression de nos libertés élémentaires, au premier rang desquelles celle de se déplacer en citoyens adultes et responsables de leurs actes… Vous l’aurez deviné : de l’humanisme des Lumières au transhumanisme, en passant par le post-structuralisme ou la Pensée complexe, cette nouvelle édition de Dogma a pour ambition d’alimenter vos réflexions critiques et – bien sûr – toujours constructives ! Nous vous en souhaitons une agréable lecture.

L. Oulahbib / I. Saillot

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Édition Printemps – Été 2020

Édition Printemps – Été 2020

Nous vous avions quittés, chers lecteurs, en vous souhaitant une bonne année 2020. Force est de constater que nos vœux n’ont pas encore atteint l’objectif désiré. Par bien des aspects, ce premier semestre est l’un des plus sombres que notre histoire ait connus depuis longtemps. De la gestion calamiteuse d’une certaine épidémie aux dernières manifestations racistes ou exaltées, notre monde vit des soubresauts qu’on n’attendrait pas, aujourd’hui, d’un siècle éclairé. Faut-il pour autant s’avouer vaincu, baisser les bras ? Certes non ! Vous trouverez justement dans ce nouvel Opus de notre revue, des pistes de réflexion originales et pertinentes pour penser la situation récente, actuelle et surtout, future. Des réflexions qui devraient également guider vos actions, car l’Intellectuel du XXIème siècle ne doit-il pas mettre sa connaissance de l’histoire et – peut-être surtout – son esprit critique, au service des évolutions de son temps, comme bien de nos anciens maîtres nous l’ont enseigné ? Bonne lecture à toutes et à tous.

Articles

  • Nommer le monde : pour une suite guenonienne
    David Cumin

    Abstract
    Any division and any denominaton of the world is based on a “world vision” or a “geo-vision”. This is obvious for East and West, since there is no East or West Pole, but also for North and South, even if there is a North Pole and a South Pole. Instead of cardinal points, do the elements provide objective criteria?…

  • Estragos supremacistas de la doxa victmista
    Teresita Dussart

    Abstract
    An outbreak of racialism like never before threatens peaceful coexistence in several democratic countries in the northern hemisphere. The rise of the antifa discourse of hyperbolization of racial identity, or rather, of skin color as a totalizing reference of the human person, erases decades, if not centuries of post-ethnic national integraton. Faced with the manifestations of anti-black and anti-white racism, the destruction of statues that are part of the intimate memory of each nation, the obligaton of “whites” to kneel in the name of a supposed congenital guilt, the demand imposed on African Americans or Europeans to endorse chaos, so as not to be denigrated as “Uncle Sam” or another humiliating nickname, the air is becoming rarer. Outside the doxa of victimization, all that remains is the leap to censorship.

  • Orient trif Okzident. Sephardische Autoren begegnen aschkenasischen Juden
    Elvira Grözinger

    Abstract
    In this paper, I am going to present three contemporary Sephardi authors and their encounter with the Ashkenazi Jews: Marcel Bénabou (born in 1939 in Meknès, Morocco, living and writing in France), Andre Aciman (born 1951 in Alexandria, Egypt, living and writing in the USA), and Mario Levi (born 1957 in Istanbul, Turkey, still living there). The three have writen memoirs of their childhood, youth, and about the lives of their Jewish ancestors (…). The wanderings of Ashkenazi Jews from one country to another in order to escape the historical upheavals, have made them immigrate into France, the USA, and also into the Orient where they met their Sephardi coreligionists, so far total strangers for them. The Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, mostly speaking Yiddish, had thus experienced a similar destiny to the one of their Sephardi brothers and sisters, with their Spanish-Jewish culture. When many of them found shelter in the Jewish quarters in the oriental countries so far populated mainly by Sephardi Jews, the descendants of the Jews once expelled from the Iiberian Peninsula, they discovered a new world. These two hitherto considered as di?erent and strange societies, languages and values of the Jews from Orient and Occident, thus came closer to one another within the families and made them into companions in fate.

  • Practical philosophy in the study of Jean Baudrillard’s legacy
    Maltsev Oleg

    Abstract
    In the following article, we will present the results of practical and applied re-search related to the philosophical understanding of the concepts of memory for-mation by the example of studying the memory of a famous personality – an out-standing French thinker of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the “father of postmodernism”, the author of more than 30 books, on the one hand, which caused several discussions and disputes, on the other hand, awarded Jean Baudrillard the second name of “the last prophet of Europe”.

 

  • Géosymbolisme contemporain
    Lucien Oulahbib

    Abstract
    Today, in spite of the screen stll displayed, but which is cracking more and more, that of a “World Community” supposed to be united by the same “universal”, this one appears rather like another representaton, so much it has lost the aura and its halos of what characterized it at the end of the Second World War: to make the World an increasingly “free” space in the sense that it is not “businesslike” or merely “emancipator” but capable both of preserving cultural singularites and of refining their common destiny in an increasingly diverse, interacting and interdependent world, such was the projected political pulse dissolving what is no longer appropriate… What happened?… And where are we?… Who’s “we”?

    Résumé
    Aujourd’hui, malgré le paravent toujours affiché, mais qui se fissure de plus en plus, celui d’une « Communauté mondiale » censée être unie par un même « universel » celui-ci apparaît bien plutôt comme une représentation de plus, tant il a perdu l’aura et ses halos de ce qui le caractérisait à la sortie de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale : faire du Monde un espace de plus en plus « libre » au sens non pas « affairiste » ni seulement « émancipateur » mais capable à la fois de conserver les singularités culturelles et d’affiner leur communauté de destin dans un monde de plus en plus diversifié, en interaction et en interdépendance, telle était la pulsation politique projetée dissolvant par ailleurs ce qui ne sied plus… Que s’est-il passé ?…Et où en sommes-nous ?… Qui « nous » ?…

  • covid-19 ou pollution : la peur, une culture française
    Isabelle Saillot

    Résumé
    Depuis les combats joyeux et humanistes du XVIIIème siècle, depuis l’avènement d’un ‘état-providence’ ayant validé l’essentiel des revendications de la Révolution, la méthode pour mobiliser l’opinion publique s’est métamorphosée. Il semble que depuis longtemps, en France, on ne peut plus motiver les populations qu’en leur faisant peur, voire en les terrorisant. Pour ce faire l’outil principal est devenu le mensonge. Traditionnellement agité par des activistes prêts à tout pour gagner des votes, des sympathisants ou des clients, les canulars macabres, ou rumeurs-panique, sont désormais les nouveaux procédés de l’état lui-même, comme l’illustre la propagande sur la covid-19 ou sur la pollution de l’air, les deux étant plus analogues qu’on pourrait le croire.

  • I Lived in A Society That Had No Police
    Philip Carl Salzman

    Abstract
    Where there is no police, every man is a warrior, and every group is a regiment. Carrying out ethnographic feld research as a cultural anthropologist, I lived for two years in Baluchistan, a cultural region in south eastern Iran, western Pakistan, and southern Afghanistan. During this time, I lived among the Baluch, talked with them every day about what they were doing and thinking, and observed their actons and behavior.

  • Systemic Racism: The Case of Afrmatve Action
    Philip Carl Salzman

    Présentation
    Some Americans are discriminated against because of their race, but it is not who you think. The clearest defnition of “racism” is treating people di?erently according to their race. Systemic or institutional racism is racism “expressed in the practice of social and political institutions.” (…)

  • PANDEMIE 2020 : chroniques d’une catastrophe sanitaire
    Jean-Jacques Wunenburger

    Présentation
    The corona-virus epidemic that crossed the planet in 2020, from China to Brazil, has caused profound upheavals in social and economic life in every country (almost general confinement of populatons), against a backdrop of medical impotence, more or less culpable and variable depending on the country. Some moments in the French history of the epidemic, from mid-March to mid-May, as observed and commented on, can be accompanied by a dominant ethical concern.

Comptes-rendus

Estragos supremacistas de la doxa victimista

ISSN 2726-6818

Estragos supremacistas de la doxa victimista

Teresita Dussart 1

Abstract

An outbreak of racialism like never before threatens peaceful coexistence in several democratic countries in the northern hemisphere. The rise of the anti-fa discourse of hyperbolization of racial identity, or rather, of skin color as a totalizing reference  of the human person, erases decades, if not centuries of post-ethnic national integration. Faced with the manifestations of  anti-black and anti-white racism, the destruction of statues that are part  of the intimate memory of each nation, the obligation of “whites” to kneel in the name of a supposed congenital guilt, the demand imposed on African Americans or Europeans to endorse  chaos, so as not to be denigrated as “Uncle Sam” or another humiliating nickname, the air is becoming rarer. Outside the doxa of victimization, all that remains is the leap to censorship.

http://www.dogma.lu/pdf/TD-supremacismo-victimista.pdf

Practical philosophy in the study of Jean Baudrillard’s legacy

Phd Maltsev Oleg
Practical philosophy in the study of Jean Baudrillard’s legacy

ISSN 2726-6818
UDC 416.731.421
DOI https://doi.org/10.46805/dogma/olegmaltsevjbphilosophy

Abstract
In the following article, we will present the results of practical and applied research related to the philosophical understanding of the concepts of memory formation by the example of studying the memory of a famous personality – an outstanding French thinker of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the “father of postmodern- ism”, the author of more than 30 books, on the one hand, which caused several discussions and disputes, on the other hand, awarded Jean Baudrillard the second name of “the last prophet of Europe”.

Keywords: memory, memory phenomenology, memory concepts, memory models, Baudrillard’s legacy, practical philosophy of memory

http://www.dogma.lu/pdf/MO-PraticalPhilosophyInsideJeanBaudrillardlegacy.pdf

Orient trif Okzident. Sephardische Autoren begegnen aschkenasischen Juden

Elvira Grözinger

Abstract
In this paper, I am going to present three contemporary Sephardi authors and their encounter with the Ashkenazi Jews: Marcel Bénabou (born in 1939 in Meknès, Morocco, living and writing in France), Andre Aciman (born 1951 in Alexandria, Egypt, living and writing in the USA), and Mario Levi (born 1957 in Istanbul, Turkey, still living there). The three have writen memoirs of their childhood, youth, and about the lives of their Jewish ancestors (…). The wanderings of Ashkenazi Jews from one country to another in order to escape the historical upheavals, have made them immigrate into France, the USA, and also into the Orient where they met their Sephardi coreligionists, so far total strangers for them. The Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, mostly speaking Yiddish, had thus experienced a similar destiny to the one of their Sephardi brothers and sisters, with their Spanish-Jewish culture. When many of them found shelter in the Jewish quarters in the oriental countries so far populated mainly by Sephardi Jews, the descendants of the Jews once expelled from the Iiberian Peninsula, they discovered a new world. These two hitherto considered as di?erent and strange societies, languages and values of the Jews from Orient and Occident, thus came closer to one another within the families and made them into companions in fate.

http://www.dogma.lu/pdf/EG-Unbenannte-Anlage.pdf

Géosymbolisme contemporain

Lucien Oulahbib

Abstract
Today, in spite of the screen stll displayed, but which is cracking more and more, that of a « World Community » supposed to be united by the same « universal », this one appears rather like another representaton, so much it has lost the aura and its halos of what characterized it at the end of the Second World War: to make the World an increasingly « free » space in the sense that it is not « businesslike » or merely « emancipator » but capable both of preserving cultural singularites and of refining their common destiny in an increasingly diverse, interacting and interdependent world, such was the projected political pulse dissolving what is no longer appropriate… What happened?… And where are we?… Who’s « we »?

Résumé
Aujourd’hui, malgré le paravent toujours affiché, mais qui se fissure de plus en plus, celui d’une « Communauté mondiale » censée être unie par un même « universel » celui-ci apparaît bien plutôt comme une représentation de plus, tant il a perdu l’aura et ses halos de ce qui le caractérisait à la sortie de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale : faire du Monde un espace de plus en plus « libre » au sens non pas « affairiste » ni seulement « émancipateur » mais capable à la fois de conserver les singularités culturelles et d’affiner leur communauté de destin dans un monde de plus en plus diversifié, en interaction et en interdépendance, telle était la pulsation politique projetée dissolvant par ailleurs ce qui ne sied plus… Que s’est-il passé ?…Et où en sommes-nous ?… Qui « nous » ?…

http://www.dogma.lu/pdf/LO-geosymbolisme.pdf

Nommer le monde : pour une suite guenonienne

Printemps-été 2020
NOMMER LE MONDE : POUR UNE SUITE GUENONIENNE

ISSN2726-6818
David Cumin
ISSN2726-6818

Abstract

Any division and any denomination of the world is based on a «world vision» or a «geo-vision». This is obvious for East and West, since there is no East or West Pole, butalso for North and South, even if there is a North Pole and a South Pole. Instead ofcardinal points, do the elements provide objective criteria?…

Une fonction de la géographie -l’étude de la Terre2- est de découper et de nommer desespaces. Pour cette toponymie, il est habituel de prendre les points cardinaux commecritères sûrs du découpage du monde: nord/sud, est/ouest. La course du soleil fournitun repère universel: pour tous les êtres humains, le soleil se lève à l’est et se couche àl’ouest, cependant que l’étoile Polaire dans l’hémisphère septentrional et la Croix duSud dans l’hémisphère méridional constituent d’autres repères objectifs. Ainsi, pour toutun chacun, il y a un Levant, un Couchant, un Septentrion, un Méridien.

Mais tout découpage et toute dénomination du monde procèdent d’une «vision dumonde» ou d’une «géo-vision»3. Cela est évident pour l’Est et l’Ouest, puisqu’il n’y apas de pôle Est ni de pôle Ouest, mais aussi pour le Nord et le Sud, même s’il y a un pôleNord et un pôle Sud. A la place des points cardinaux, les éléments fournissent-ils descritères objectifs? Une distinction fondamentale, naturelle, est celle de la terre et de lamer. Mais le découpage des régions du monde est «amphibie», mêlant espacesterrestres et maritimes, qui ont pour point commun d’être nommés, à la différence del’espace aérien, surplombant, qui reprend les dénominations terrestres et maritimes surplombées (par exemple, le ciel «européen» ou «méditerranéen» au-dessus del’«Europe» et de la «Méditerranée»)4. Ni les points cardinaux ni les éléments ne sontdonc pertinents.

Ce sont les visions géopolitiques qui importent, plus ou moins liées aux religions ou auxEmpires anciens, «précolombiens» (avant la connaissance du globe et de sa rotondité),qui se considéraient comme le centre du monde. Disparus et morcelés, ils ont fini parêtre remplacés par la forme d’unité politique (séculière) portée par l’Europe de l’Ouest:l’Etat moderne, «post-colombien» (depuis la connaissance du globe et de sa rotondité),dont l’ethnocentrisme est «politique», pas «topologique». Hiérarchiques, les Empiresétaient bornés par des marches spatiales, entourés de vassaux ou de tributaires,menacés par des «barbares»; égalitaires, les Etats sont délimités par des frontièreslinéaires, jouxtés par d’autres Etats, menacés par des «ennemis».

http://www.dogma.lu/pdf/DC-Nommer.pdf

A Dialogue on Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of Plato’s Phaedrus (Plato’s Pharmacy)

Dedicated to Jacques Derrida
Guy Shaked
Elisha Ben Avuyah (“Aher” – the “other”): Shalom… Shalom Rabbi Ben Zoma. It is such a pleasure to be meeting you here in the market place, making the holiday’s shopping, I presume.
Ben Zoma: Indeed dear Aher. I’ve come all the way here to Cesaria to shop for the finest of the seven species (“minim”). Look at those beautiful pomegranates – I see I’ve come to the right place indeed. (To the seller) I think I’ll take one of these lovely ones for two Shekels.
I’ve heard you are these days up to your neck engaged in foreign [1] books of philosophy.
Aher: Indeed and most so in the work of the great Socrates and no “other” (“aher”). Of special interest to me lately is his work called the Phaedrus [2]. In it there is a passage in which the god Theuth offers King Thamus the gift of writing – as a medicine to wisdom and memory. The king however, rejects it as poison – that will bring false wisdom and no real memory [3].
The two possible readings of the same written word : “pharmakon” (medicine or poison) in fact the confusion between the two is the subject of the text [4].
I think the dialogue in this passage exists simultaneously on three levels. On the first level, the speaker Thamus shows Theuth that if he where to receive his gift, the opposite of understanding might arise as a written rendition of his own word might lead to a false understanding of his intentions.
On the second level The author of the “oral” text speaks against the knowledge that the sophists represent – that of written philosophy. Plato who wrote down Socrates words is also working against Socrates’s ideas, since the master did not believe in writing down his philosophy.
On the third level, the reader (of the original text in Greek), is forced to use his reason (i.e. his “oral” logic), in order to read and make sense of the text. As he has to apply reason to interpret the word as medicine or poison in the proper logical place [5].
Ben Zoma: Perhaps you should consider that in telling a story of the ancient Egypt regarding written and oral language Plato is referring to the lost oral knowledge of the Hieroglyphics language. For even if it was considered to be religious symbols rather than a spoken language they represent then lost oral religious knowledge of what the signs mean.
For as you know well the Egyptians had terms which symbolized both something and its opposite. Like the God Atum, which means bot everything and nothing. Just as a comment, I should perhaps note, that they (the Egyptians) differed with Parmenides claiming that also nothing is God, since God contains everything. Despite the fact that by saying nothing doesn’t exist and shouldn’t be discussed, Parmenides in fact raises to the mind the same term – “nothing” – that he wishes to reject.
And so to the Egyptians nothing exists both in the material (or more exactly i-material) sense, and in the sense that God is not only those things that are in time (i. e. that happen), but also all the numerous possibilities that can occur in a moment in time but do not occur (thus being nothing).
Regarding the poison-medicine meaning of a term you are also most familiar with the serpent of brass cult which came from Egypt. As the logic is that medicine changes a given balance in the body and thus excessive amount of it would kill and so act as poison [6]. It is on based on this idea that the Egyptians medicine-men believed the opposite: that a little amount of poison (like a snake’s poison) would act as medicine). And so the cult of the serpent of brass mentioned in our bible [Numbers, 31:9] emerged at the time of Moses under Egyptian influence.
Aher: Yes, its like they used our Talmudic process of wisdom we call “Gzera Shava”
Ben Zoma: And so in their pictograms the picture of a snake (later used for the sound “v”) could have meant poison or also medicine.
However these two possible meanings result in that when we approach any Egyptian written text for which no longer an oral witness exists we can not know when the word medicine is written if perhaps they meant poison.
Aher: I do not follow, can you please try to explain this point to me.
Ben Zoma: For example, if we read a medicine-man gave the king a medicine – and if the king died we might perhaps wonder if the medicine-man did not give him poison. If the opposite occurs and the king lives after his illness it still could be that it is after the medicine-man gave him poison which he overcame [7]. Such similar readings can be applied to your Socrates.
Nothing is better in my eyes dear friend after such heavy material than a light prayer. Do join me in a little prayer, for even you that do not believe in all benevolent God is still a Jew under his eyes…
Perhaps you know this prayer:
God please save our souls, God please save our souls, For so great is your name… (“Ana hoshia na, Ana hoshia na, Ki ko gadol shimkha…”)
Ben Avuyah: But Ben Zoma, this is a totally Greek melody you are singing?! It’s the famous “Orestes” choir I often hum under my moustache (For it is said Aher often humed Greek tunes [Talmud, Hagiga 15]).
Ben Zoma: What do you say about that?! I thought all the time this was an oral Jewish melody and you reveal to me it reminds you of a foreign melody perhaps even one written down. Perhaps this is also what happens with your Socrates.
Aher: Continuing your suggested line of thought, other folk Greek tradition (and perhaps also in other languages) of oral sources also have probably this confusion between the word medicine or poison. There is the story of the woman who mistakes poison to medicine and poisons her son [8] or the murderer of the doctor takes poison instead of medicine as he tries to show his professional excellence [9].
It is to this superficial kind of knowledge that the king in the passage points to. Since he speaks of reading as a cause of superficial understanding without oral understanding. This claim is further supported by the fact that the king indeed prefers the oral culture, and it is it that holds the solution to these passages.
There is another similar exchange of terms in stories where there is confusion again on the same word – between magician and scapegoat (both written ‘pharmakos’). This when translated to Latin was adapted so that the magician was transformed into a priest and the scapegoat into an donkey [10].
In the folktale, the priest sings and sees an old woman weeping. He believes it is because she is touched, by his singing. She says he remind her of her donkey (goat) which she lost [11]. This tale emanates from a play on words – as magician (holy man in ancient culture – replaced in the Latin tale by a Christian holy man – a Priest – “Sacerdotem”), reminded the old woman of a scapegoat (both words for magician and scapegoat are similar in Greek), or, as she puts it: her goat that escaped. In the Latin tale goat was exchanged for donkey (Asinum) however the donkey was in Latin a term for scapegoat as was preserved in the proverb “qui asinum non petest, stratum caedit” [12].
Ben Zoma: Again I am inclined to see the connection to the ancient Egyptian mythology. For our bible says (while the word used is “tanin” from the context later it is clear it is a “nahash”-snake, Exodus, 7:10-15) the magicians (“hartumim”) of Egypts (and similarly Moses) could turn sticks to snakes (have control over the power of death) and back into sticks (have control to reverse the power of death). This perhaps can say why in ancient times the magicians were also the medicine-men.
Also, Please note that there is another aspect to the myth mentioned by Socrates. For in the myth, Thamus words seems at first to be correct, as Thamus said the Egyptians acceptance of the Hieroglyphs written language led to their losing (forgetting) their oral ancient language as well as the meaning of their written signs.
However, this myth which rings true in the Greek language where the written word “pahrmakon” has two distinct oral pronunciations and meanings, is lost, once it is comprehended that the dialogue between Thamus and Theuth took place in the lost ancient Egyptian language. For, it is impossible to know for sure (we can only assume so, but not be certain) if the Egyptian word for poison was written the same as the words for medicine.
So it appears that Plato is showing here that myths (Here a Greek myth) are actually superimposition of later ideas on an lost and therefore uncheckable past (Here the ancient Egyptian past). This conclusion is consistent with what has been said elsewhere about Plato’s figure of Socrates – i.e. that he invents false new myths (stories of new gods) as it pleases him [13].
The fact that the oral myth told in this writing is false negates Thamus’s claim that oral language has an advantage over written language in that it encourages true wisdom and memory. For, as exemplified by the false myth here, oral myths that are transmitted from generation to generation could still be false because they are the invention of “flesh and bones” humans who can make intentional and unintentional mistakes when creating them. Also, those who orally transmit them could transmit these mistakes as truth, for they might remain unnoticed.
Aher: Wise words indeed seem to come out of your blessed mouth Ben Zoma. For me I’m not sure if it was poison or medicine that turned me to this culture in the first place [14]

 


[1] By the term “foreign” (“zarim”) here Ben Zoma is referring to Greek literature.
[2] Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy”, in Dissemination, Barbara Johnson tr., London: Athlone Press 1981
[3] Plato, Phaedrus, in “Plato in twelve volumes”, Harold N. Fowler (tr.), Vol. 1, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp.561-565
[4] In Medieval Hebrew poetry (for example in the Poetry of Judah Al-Harizi of Spain and Immanuel Romano of Italy) there exists the opposite phenomena of the use of words (and words combinations), usually as rhymes, which sound orally the same however have different meaning in their written form (this is called “tsimud”).
[5] Jonathan Walker, “The Deconstruction of Musicology: Poison or Cure?”, Music Theory Online, Vol. 2.4 (1996), paragraphs 2-4
[6] Ibidem. paragraph 4. Quotes the words of Paracelus.
[7] Giovanni Battista (Cintio) Giraldi, Gli Ecatommiti di Giovan Battista Giraldi, Firenze, 1834, IX, No.3
[8] This is still practiced in medicine today as in radiation treatment to cure cancer. In the past this was done in bloodletting the ill to health which was practiced in ancient Egypt and Greece, as well as, eighteenth century Europe.
[9] Francesco Sansovino, Cento Novelle Scelte da piu’ Nobili Scrittori della Lingua Volgare, Venice, 1556, X, No. 10.
The tradition of the confusion between the signifier “pharmakon” received less adaptations in literature than that of the “signified”. That might be because perhaps the signified could transcend language barriers and overcome the decline of Hellenistic culture in the west.
The most famous example perhaps of such an adaptation is Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, where poison is confused with sleeping medicine (potion). This confusion is possible due to the medical knowledge of that time where pulse readings to show life were not the usual practice but perhaps calling out the person’s name loudly was.
[10] Bracciolini Poggio (Fiorentino), Facetiarum, Vol. 1, London: Mileti, 1798, pp.242-243.
This exchange might also point to the figure of Moses, as he as a kind of magician, performing magical feats to convince Paraoh to release the people of Israel. At the end Paraoh decides to send Israel out of Egypt as a kind of scapegoat to prevent further evil magic from God unto Egypt (however he changes his mind later).
[11] Derrida’s interpretation of the passage reveals that he knows the oral tales – since he points also to the “missing” exchange of magician and scapegoat in this text
[12] Alexander Souter (ed.), “asinus”, in Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 182
[13] As indeed it admits in the Apology (Plato, Vol. 1: Euthyphro, apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Harold North Fowler (tr.), Harvard: Cambridge Uni. Press, 1999, pp. 85-105)
[14] Aher is referring [Talmud Yerushalmi, Hagiga, 2, 7:2] to the beginning of his disbelief in a benevolent God when he saw a man not keeping God’s orders and is well while another man keeps God’s orders yet shortly afterwards a snake bites him.