The History of Philosophy as a Philosophy, or Derrida Reading Plato
The article aims to answer the question of whether the history of philosophy is a philosophy or a history. Two methodological guidelines in modern historical and philosophical studies are considered: presentism as a position of seeing a variation of modern philosophical discourse in the ideas of the past and antiquarianism as a desire to reconstruct historical contexts. The juxtaposition of presentism and antiquarianism is presented as a consequence of Hegel's understanding of philosophy as the identity of the history of philosophy and the logic of the development of universal reason and is correlated with the substantial and non-substantial understanding of history. It is proposed to reformat the methodological dilemma of presentism and antiquarianism in a "third way": in the "philosophical textology" or "logic of culture". The third way tries to eliminate the dilemma of presentism and antiquarianism and to combine philosophical metaposition and historical distance in relation to the thinkers of the past. The centre of this position is the text itself, which connects the substantial and existential planes of the philosophy of history. An example of such a way is Plato's Pharmacy by Derrida. "Dissemination" and "pharmacy" as historical and philosophical strategies used by the French philosopher for the analysis of Plato's texts are proposed for analysis. The peculiarity of dissemination and pharmacy as methods revealing the dynamics between the discourse of desire and the discourse of knowledge is revealed. Dissemination is aimed at dispersing the meanings of the "explicit" text. Pharmacy is aimed at revealing the desire of thought to be a metaphysical thought. The focus is on writing as a source of genealogies and knowledge. Writing ("pharmakon") is understood as a parricidal gesture towards logos. The conflict between the discourse of desire and the discourse of knowledge can be interpreted as a sacrificial substitution of living speech by writing. This substitution is based on Platonic dynamics of the form and the model. The basis of Socratic dialectics as an art of self-control is the prohibition on imitation, on the multiplication of models. The connection of "pharmakon" as a philosophical strategy with sacrificial practices of the Greek polis is emphasized. Ultimately, the relationship between living speech and writing is interpreted as the fate of a human being doomed to repetition. Philosophical mastery is presented as a correct, deliberate access to the replacement of the father. As a result, Derrida shows Plato hidden from Plato himself: Plato in the format of post-metaphysical thinking. Derrida's historical and philosophical reading of Plato's text demonstrates the ability of modern philosophers to return to the origins of thought, to preserve the specificity of historical figures and at the same time to be successors of Socratic philosophical mania.