598.Pharmakon

Reader86

Ah, you’re referring to Plato’s famous idea — that writing is both poison and remedy. This comes from his dialogue Phaedrus, and it’s a deep, paradoxical critique of writing.

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What Plato Said (through Socrates):

In Phaedrus, Plato tells the myth of Theuth, the Egyptian god who invented writing. The King Thamus responds: “You have invented a remedy for memory.” But he adds: “This discovery will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls but they will rely on writing instead of their memory.”

The Greek Word “Pharmakon” literally means both “remedy” and “poison, used deliberately to show the double-edged nature of writing.

So writing is a pharmakon — a remedy preserves knowledge, and pharmakon means a poison too, it weakens memory and understanding.

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What It Means:
        •        Writing is helpful (stores knowledge across time)
        •        But also harmful (can cause passivity, illusion of wisdom)

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Modern Relevance:

Plato’s tension still applies today:
        •        Think of the internet — vast written memory.
        •        But also leads to information overload, misuse, or shallow understanding.

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Would you like a quote from Phaedrus, or how philosophers like Derrida expanded on this idea?