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Abstract
It appears that a long, monotonous and patriarchal tradition in the history of philosophy has insisted on the absence of the family. Prompted by Derrida’s Glas, this article suggests that any ethics or moral philosophy must contend with the question of the philosopher’s family. The problem of the quasi-private/quasi-public family is already found within Plato’s Republic. While Socrates calls for what amounts to the end of family in the name of the ideal republic, Plato includes his own family in many of his works, notably his father, his brothers and his half-brother. Socrates also speaks of his half-brother, and the status of the half-brother as the narrator of the Parmenides becomes part of the difference between the oneness of being and the dialectic of the same and the other. As Derrida suggests, the family is the enduring problem of what is at once mine and other.
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Notes
1 Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education; Kant; Rousseau, Emile or On Education.
2 A new English translation of Glas has appeared in 2021 under the title Clang.
3 I will be using Jowett and Barnes for the English translation of the Politics, and Rackham for the Greek.
4 However, because the whole must precede the part, Aristotle also argues that the state must precede the individual and the family (Politics 1253a.19–20), a problem that Rousseau will grapple with in the Second Discourse.
5 See also Politics 1252b.20.
6 See Two Treatises of Government 310, 321.
7 As I am using a number of different English translations for Plato’s Republic (Grube and Reeve, Emlyn-Jones and Preddy, and Waterfield), as well as citing the original Greek (Emlyn-Jones and Preddy), after each reference I will add the name of the edition I am using for direct quotations. I will also do this on a number of occasions for other works by Plato and Aristotle.
8 As I am using both the Jowett and Rackham English translations for the Politics here, I will cite the translator after each direct quotation.
9 See also Republic 414e, 423e.
10 Politics 1310b.10, 33; 1311b.6, 10, 14, 22; 1312b.10, 24, 39; 1313a.1, 31; 1313b.33–37; 1314b.26–28. See also Lane Fox 89.
11 Nails 2–3, 31, 53–54, 154–55, 243.
12 On Glaucon, see also Xenophon 152–56.
13 On Plato’s dates, see Nails 243–50.
14 Charmides appears in the dialogues Charmides. Antiphon is found in Parmenides, as are Glauon and Adeimantus, and probably two different figures called Critias play a role in the Charmides, Protagoras and Euthyphro, as well as in Timaeus and Critias. If I had space, I would speak about Critias the Tyrant, who oversaw murder and mass executions in 404–403 BCE and indirectly precipitated the death of Socrates. See Nails 106–10.
15 See also Plato, Protagoras 346b.
16 In the Phaedo, a short time before he drinks hemlock, Socrates bids farewell to his “two little sons and one big one” (116b, Gallop).
17 On the “dramatic” date of the Parmenides and other dialogues, see Nails 307–30.
18 See also Plato, Symposium 219b.
19 For Derrida’s earlier references to Rousseau’s treatment of the concept of family, see Of Grammatology 275–76, 286–89. See also Derrida, Of Hospitality.
20 See Plato, Sophist 241d.
21 See also Timaeus 37a–c, 43d–e, 44a–b.
22 At the same time, Plato evokes a “good” writing that serves truth and the dialectic. See “Plato’s Pharmacy” 154–55.
23 See also Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason 64–70.
24 Peeters 19–24.
25 See Derrida, The Politics of Friendship.
27 See also Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics” 127–28.