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I The Thing Itself by Giorgio AgambenFor Jacques Derridaand in memory of Giorgio Pasquali

"The Thing Itself" was ublished in D i!segno #a giusti$ia net discorso%&ilan Jaca' ()*+ ,' ed- Gianfranco Dalmasso' - (!(.-

The e/ression "the thing itself'" to ragma auto' aears at the beginning of the so!calledhilosohical digression of Plam0s 1e2enth #etter' a te/t whose imortance for the history of3estern hilosohy has yet to be fully established- After 4ichard 5entley had come tosusect the entire Platonic corus of letters of being fraudulent' and 6hristoh &einers %in(7*8, and subsequently 9arsten and Friedrich Ast declared them to be inauthentic' Plato0sletters!which until then had always been considered a central arr of the hilosoher0s wor:!were slowly e/elled from hilosohical historiograhy' recisely when it was most fer2entand acti2e- 3hen hilological oinion began to change in our century' and more and morecritics asserted the authenticity of Plaw0s letters %the letter that interests us is by now generallyconsidered to be genuine,' hilosohers and scholars had ;< brea: the hundred!year!old

quaranrine of the Platonic eisodes if they wanted %= study them at all- 3hat had been lost inthe meantime was the li2ing connection between te/t and hilosohical tradition' with theresult that the hilosohical e/cursus contained in the 1e2enth #etter aeared as anarduous' solitary fragment resisting any attemt at comrehension- >aturally' it was alsotransformed by its long isolation into something rich and strange' which could be consideredwith a freshness robably unattainable in regard to any other Platonic te/t- The scenario ofthe letter is well :nown the se2enty!fi2e!year!old Plato tells Dion0s friends of his encounterswith Dionysius and the dramatic failure of ?he latter0s 1icilian olitical ro@ects- In ?he assagethat interests us here' Plato recounts the story of his third stay in 1icily-

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should understand anything about this sub@ect- %istle EII' 8+( l 7!c + - .)!8(,

It is at this oint that Plaw uses the e/ression to ragma auto' the thing itself!a formulationthat remained so determining as an e/ression of the cause of thin:ing and the tas: ofhilosohy that it aearedagain almost twO thousand years later, like a watchword passed on fromKant w Hegel, and then to Husser! and Heidegger: "There does not exist,

nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing with this thingor i t does nOt at all admit of veral expression like other disciplines

The Thing #tself $%&mathemata' , ur, after one has dwelt for a long time close to rhe thingitself &peri to pragma auto' and in communion with it, it is suddenlyrought () irth in rhe soul, as light that is kindled y a leaping spark*

and &hen it nourishes itself &auto heauto ide trefoil" (+- . /d $* p 0+-1This passage has een cited countless rimes as proof of esoteric intcrprcmtionsof 2lato and as irrefumle documentation for rhe existence of2law3s unwrirren doctrines 4ccording to these readings, rhe dialoguestransmitted y our culture for centuries as a venerale legacy would not

address what 2law was seriously concerned with, which would have eenreserved for a purely oral tradition! This is nOt rhe place to take a positionon this prolem, which is surely an important one 5e shall insteadseek ro consider the nature of the "thing itself" of which 2laro speaks and

which 6ionysius wrongly thought he understood 5hat is the thing ofthinking74n answer to this 8uestion ean follow only from an anemive readingof the next passage, which 2lato defines as a "stOry and wandering"

(mythos kai pianos1 (+ d +* p 0-1 and also as a "certain true argumenr,which although # have fre8uently stated it in the past, also seems toe in need of repetition at the present time" (+$ a +/9* p 0++1 4nythought that want ro grasp its "thing" m;t thus always reckon with interpreting&his "exrravagam story" ust mentioned* and, second, it has a definition, composed

of names and vers* for "that which is everyvrherc e8uidistam from the cxtremitiesto the center" will e the definition of that o>ect which has for itsnamc "round" and "sphcrical" and "circlc" 4nd in the third place there is thato>ect which is portrayed and oliterated, which is shaped with a lathe andf3llls imo decay ?;( none of thesc affections is suffered y the circle itself &au tosho kyklos, which here is the example of the thing itself' , to which all theseothers are related, for it is different from them The fourth is knowledge andintelligence and true opinion regarding these o>ects* and all this must econceived as a single thing, which exists neither in voices &en p@mnis' nor in

+A

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corporeal figures &en somaton skhemasin', m in souls &en psychllisl Hence it isclear that it differs oth from d#e nature of the circle itself and from the threepreviously mentioned Of &hose fouf, intelligence is closest in kinship andsimilarity ro the fifth* the mhers are further removed The same is e8ually (fueof rhe straight figure and rhe sphere, color, and the good and rhe fair and the

>ust, and of all odies, whether made or naturally produced (such as fire andwater and all slich sustances1, all living creatures, and ethos in the soul and

all creations &poiemata' and passions &pathemara' or if someone does notgrasp &he first four for each thing, he will never e ale to participate perfectlyin knowledge of d#e fifth @oreover, rhe first four things express the 8ualityi poion til of each eing no less chan its real essence, on account of the weak nessof language &dia to ton logon asthenes' This is why no man of intelligencewill ever venture to entrust his thoughts to language, especially if the languageis unalterale, like language wrinen with eers (+$ a B/++ a +* pp 0++/+01

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weak in language One could say, with an apparent paradox, that thething itself, while in some way transcending language, is nevertheless possileonly in language and y virtue of language: precisely the thing oflanguage 5hen 2lato says that what he is concerned with is in no way

sayale like other mllthematll, it is therefore necessary to place the accenron the lat three words: it is not sayale in the same way as other disciplines,

ut it is nOt for (hat reason simply unsayale 4s 2lato does nOttire of repeating (+- e -/01, rhe reasons why it is inadvisale to entrustthe thing itself to writing are ethical and not merely logical 2latonic mysticism/if such a mysticism exists/is, like all authentic mysticism, profoundly

implicated in the logoiEow that we have made these preliminary oservations, let us closelyexamine the list contained in the digression The identification of the firstfour memers does not pose any great difficulties: name, defining discourse,image (which indicates the sensile o>ect1, and, finally, the

knowledge achieved through them Eame (onoma1 is, in modern terms,which are those of tOic logic, the "signifier"* logos is the "signified" or virtual

reference* "image" is denotation or actual referenceThese terms arc familiar to us, though it should not e forgotten thatit is only with 2lato and the ophists that we see (he eginning of (hevery reFection on language that will later lead ro rhe precise logico/grammatical constructions of the toa and rhe Hellenistic schools 4s in ook

#O of the ect of knowledge, and we would thus have foundproof for the imcrprerarion of 2latonism (which appeared as early as4ristorle1 that sees rhe #dea as a kind of useless duplicate of the thing@oreover, rhe list then appears as circular, since what is listed as fifth iswhat is in &(mh the first to e named, as the very presupposition fromwhich the whole excursus follows2erhaps here we can e aided y philological attention to details inwhich, as it has een said, the good God likes to hide himself 4t thispoim the Greek text to e found in modern editions (in ?urnet3s version,which was in some respects exemplary for all following editions, ur also

in ouilh.3s more recem text1 reads: pempton d3lluto tithmlli dei ho degnoston te kai alethes estin, "and as a fifth one must posit the thing itself,which is knowale and truly is" ?ur the twO principal codices on which

oth scholars ase their editions, that is, the 2arisinus grllec; of -BA9 and

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the tuicanus graecus #, comain a slightly different text, which instead ofde* ho ("one must which"1 has dina ("y which"1 #f we restore thetext of the codices y writing di3ho, the translation ecomes, "lone must'posit the fifth, y which &each eing' is knowale and truly is"$

#n the margin of this text, a t",reifrh/century hand had noted dei ho asan emendation, and modern editors ased their text on this variam ?ut

the codex that @arsilio icino had efore him for his ect presupposed y language and the epistemological

process* rather, it is auto di3ho gnoston esnn, that y which &heo>ect is known, its own knowaility and truth =ven if it is inexact, the

marginal variant followed y modern editOrs is not erroneous The scriewho introduced it (and we have reason to think it was not an inexpertscrie1 was most likely concerned with the risk &hat knowaility itselfthe

#dea/would e, in turn, presupposed and sustantialiJed as anotherthing, as a duplicate of the thing efore or eyond the thing The thing

The Thing #tselfC+itself/hence the t.fm auto as the technical designarion of the #dea/isnot another thing ut the thing itself, nOt, however, as supposed y thename and the logos, as an oscure real presupposition (a hypokeimenon1,ut rather in the very medium of its knowailiry, in the pure light of itsself/manifestation and announcement to consciousness

The "weakness" of logos therefore consists precisely in the fact (hat it isnot capalc of ringing this very knowailiry and sameness ro expression*it must transform me knowailiry of eings that is at issue in it inm aprcsupposirion(as a hypo/thesis in the etymological sense of rhe word, as

that which is pl4ced eneath1This is the sense of the distinction etween on and 2OiOll, etween ?eingand its 8ualification, which 2latO insists on several times in the epistle(+$ e +* ++ B/c -1 ectifying, in the sense that in taking place itnecessarily decomposes the thing itself, which is announced in it and in

it alone, into a eing aout which one speaks and a poioll, a 8uality and adetermination that one says of it ectifying language

2resupposition is the form of linguistic signification: speaking kat3

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hypokeimenou, speaking aout a su>ectThe warning that 2latO entrusts to the #dea is therefore that sayailityitself remains unsaid in what is said and in that aout which something issaid, that knowaility itselfis lost in what is known and in that aout whichsomething is knownThe specific prolem that is at issue in the letter, and that is necessarily

the prolem of every human discourse that wants to make a su>ectOut of what is nOt a su>ect, is therefore: how is it possile to speak withoutsup/posing, without hypo/thesiJing and su>ectifying that aout

which one speaks7 How is it thus possile legein kat3auto, to speak not ymeans of a presupposition ut asolutely7 4nd since the field of names

is, for the Greeks, that which is essentially said kat3 auto, can languagegive reasons (logon didonai1 for what it names, can it say what the namehas named7=ven the earliest commentators understood that something like a con+

ecting the authorship of the dialogues circulating under hisname, stating that they are the work of "a ocrates ecome fair andyoung"' Here the paradox of 2laro3s written works momentarily flashesup efore us: in a letter that the moderns have often taken ro e apocryphal, he declares his dialogues to e inauthentic, aariuting them toan impossile amhor, ocrates, who is dead and has een uried for

many years The character aout which the text speaks now takes theplace of the author in the dialogues in which he appears The earliest andsharpest critics, such as 6emetrius and 6ionysius, oserve that 2latO3style, which is limpid in the earlier dialogues, ecomes darker, swollen

(Jofos1 and para tactic ( eperriptai alleIois ta kola aph3 etero heteron, "the

phrases are hurled one upon the other," 6emetrius writes1 when he confronts the su>ects dearest to him?y a curious coincidence, the weakness of language that is called into8uestion y the father of 5estern metaphysics seems to prophesy from adismnce of &wo thousand years the difficulty implicit in the metaphysicalcharacter of our language, which so urdens the writing of the late Hei

degger ?ut in 2lato the weakness of the logos does nor found a mysticalstams of the #dea* on the contrary, it renders possile the coming ()

speech of speech, for the sake of helping speech (#ogoi oethein1, which in

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the 2haedrus ($9B c D1 is descried as the authentic task of philosophicalpresentation Here the risk is that the nonthematiJaility dlat is at issuein the thing itself will e in turn thematiJed and presupposed once again

in the form of a legein ti kata tinos, a speaking aout that aout which itis not possile to speak The thing itself is not a simple hypostasis of rhename, something ineffale that must remain unsaid and hence sheltered,

as a name, in the language of men uch a conception, which is implicThe Thing #tself +0idy refuted at the end of theTheatetus, still necessarily hypothesiJes andsup/poses the thing itself The thing itself is nOt a 8uid that might esought as an extreme hypmhesis eyond all hypmheses, as a final and asolutesu>ect eyond all su>ecrs, horrily or eautifully unreachale inits ohscuri ry 5e can, in truth, conceive of such a non linguistic thing onlyin language, through rhe idea of a language without relation to things l ris a chimera i n rhe pinoJian sense of the (erm, that is, a purely veral eingThe thing itself is not a thing* it is rhe very sayailiry, the very opennessat issue in language, which, in language, we always presuppose and

forger, perhaps ecause it is at ottom its own olivion and aandonment#n the words of the 2haedo (9D d B1, it is what we arc always disclosingin speaking, what we are always saying and communicating, andthat of which we nevertheless are always losing sight The presuppositiona# tru.ture of language is the very stru.ture of tradition* we presuppose,pass on, and therey/according to the doule sense of the word

traditio/etray the thing itself in language, so that language may speakaout something (kata tinos1The effacement of the thing itself is the solefoundation on which it is possile for something like a tradition to econstituted

The task of philosophical presentation is to come with speech to helpspeech,so that, in speech, speech itself does not remain presupposed ut insteadcomesto speech 4t this point, the presuppositional power of language touchesits limit and its end* language says presuppositions as presuppositionsand, in &his way, reaches &he unpresupposaCe and unpresupposed principle

(arkhe anypothetos1 that, as such, constitutes authentic human communityand communication 4s 2lato writes i n a decisive passage of a dialoguethat presems more than mere affinities with the "extravagammyth" of the eventh

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that which is said neither aout a su>ect (kat3 hypokeimenou y meansof a presupposition1 nor in a su>ect 5hat does this definicion mean7irst sustance is not said on rhe asis of a presupposition* it docs nothave presuppositions, ecause it is itself the asolute presupposition onwhich all discourse and knowledge are founded #t alone/as name/can

e said kat3 auto, y itself* it alone/not eing in a su>ect//dearly shows

itself ?ur in itself, as individuum, it is ineffale ( individuum ineffaile,according to the formulation of medieval 4ristOtelianism1 and cannot enterinro the linguistic significarion that it founds, except y aandoning

its status as deixis and ecoming universal predication The "what," ti,that was at issue in the name is susumed into discourse as a kflta tinos,"that aout which" something is said They/oth the what and theaout whicare therefore the same thing, which can e grasped as to tien einai, the ?eing/the/what/that/was # n this logico/temporal process,the 2latonic thing itselIis removed and conserved or, rather, conservedonly in eing removed: e/liminared

This is why the gmmma appears in 6e interpretatione 4n attentiveexaminationshows that in the hermeneutic circle of 6e interpretatione, theletter, as the interpreter of the voice, does not itself need any other interpreter

#t is the final interpreter, eyond which no hermeneia is possile:the limit of all interpretation This is why ancient grammarians, in analyJing

6e interpretatione, said that the letter, which is the sign of thevoice, is also stoikheion tes phones, that is, its element #nsofar as it is theelement of that of which it is a sign, it has the privileged starus of eing anindex sui, self/demonstration* like prote owia, of which it constitutes thelinguistic cipher, it shows itself, ut only insofar as it was in the voice, that

is, insofar as it always already elongs to the pastThe gramma is thus the form of presupposition itself and nothing elsek such, it occupies a central place in all mysticism, and as such, it alsohas a decisive relevance in our time, which is much more 4ristotelian and

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uda at a decisive point in his annotations (4nmerkungen1 to his translationof op hodes, namely, in his attempt to explain the sense and natureof 6arstellung, tragic presentation The citation, however, contains anamendment, which Holderlinian philology, despite its diligence, has noteen ale to explain Holderlin writes: tes physeos grammateus en ton kalamonaporekhon eunoun (instead of eis noun1: "he was the scrie of nature

who dipped his enevolent pen" Here there is no more dipping of thepen i n thought* the pen/that simple material instrument of humanwriting/is alone, armed solely with its enevolence in the face of its taskTo restore the thing itself to its place in language and, at the same time, torestore the difficulty of writing, the place of writing in the poetic task ofcomposition: this is the task of the coming philosophy