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The Thing Itself 
Giorgio Agamben; Juliana Schiesari
SubStance
, Vol. 16, No. 2, Issue 53: Contemporary Italian Thought. (1987), pp. 18-28.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0049-2426%281987%2916%3A2%3C18%3ATTI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7
SubStance
is currently published by University of Wisconsin Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/uwisc.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgSat Sep 22 13:44:49 2007
 
The Thing Itself
GlOXGIO
AGAMBEN
To Jacques Derrida and to the memory of GiorgioPasquali
The expression "the thing itself"
(76
~p6yp.a
aha)
appears at thebeginning of the so-called philosophic digression in Plato's seventh let-ter-a text whose importance for the history of Western philosophy is stillfar from being completely established. After Bentley had cast a suspicionof falsification upon all ancient epistolaries, first Meiners in
1783
and thenKarsten and Ast declared Plato's letters inauthentic. These letters, whichhad formerly been considered an integral part of his work, were little bylittle deleted from philosophical historiography at the very moment whenphilosophical historiography was most fervid and active. When, in ourcentury, this tendency began to reverse itself, and more numerous andbetter qualified critics asserted the authenticity of the letters (at least theauthenticity of the one we are interested in here), the philosophers andscholars who had begun to concern themselves with them had to take intoaccount the isolation in which the letters had been for more than acentury. What had been lost was the living connection between the textand the successive philosophic tradition: the seventh letter, for example,with its dense philosophic
excursus,
now presented itself as an isolatedpeak whose arduous ascent was complicated by nearly insurmountableobstacles. It was also true, naturally, that long-term isolation had trans-formed the letter-as the sea in Ariel's song has transformed Alonso'sbody-into something rich and strange.
It
was thus possible to confrontthe letter with a freshness that the other great Platonic texts wouldperhaps not have permitted.The scenario of the letter is well known: Plato, by now an old man-heis seventy-five years old-recalls for the benefit of Dion's friends hisencounters with Dionysius and the adventurous failure of his politicalefforts in Sicily. At the point that interests us, Plato is telling Dion's friendsabout his third trip to Sicily. Having been enticed to Syracuse by theinsistent pressures of the tyrant, Plato decided immediately upon hisarrival to test the sincerity of Dionysius' stated desire to become a philos-
Substance
No
53,
1987
18
 
19
he Thing Itself
opher. "There is a way for determining the truth in such cases which, farfrom being vulgar," he writes, "is truly appropriate to despots, especiallythose stuffed with second-hand opinions, which
I
perceived, as soon as
I
arrived, was much the case with Dionysius." (340b 3-7).' With men such asthese, he continues, one ought immediately to show what the entire thingmight be, no matter how taxing. Thus, if he who listens is truly a philos-opher and is equal to the thing, he will think that he has heard speak of amarvelous path, which ought to be traveled without delay, and he willthink it impossible to live any differently. As for those, however, who arenot really philosophers but have only a superficial veneer of philosophy,like the coat of tan people get in the sun, as soon as they see how muchcommitment the thing requires, they think that the task is too difficult, ifnot impossible, and so persuade themselves that they know enoughalready and have no need of further study. "Thus," writes Plato,
I
told Dionysius what
I
told him, but
I
certainly did not set forth to him all mydoctrines, nor did Dionysius ask me to, for he pretended to know many of themost important points already and to be adequately grounded in them bymeans of second-hand interpretations he had gotten from others.
I
hear, too,that he has since written on subjects in which
I
instructed him at that time, asif he had not heard them from me and as if they were his own doctrine. Ofthis I know nothing. I do know, however, that some others have written onthese same subjects, but who they are, they do not know themselves. Onestatement, at any rate, I can make in regard to all who have written or whomay write with a claim to knowledge of the subjects to which I devote mythoughts (ITE~~
v
kYh
UITOV~&~W),o matter how they pretend to haveacquired it, whether from my instruction or from others or by their owndiscovery. Such writers have, in my opinion, understood nothing about thething" (341a 7x4).
It is at this point that the expression, "the thing itself"
(TO
.rrp&ypaaho) appears: a formulation that remained so determinate as the indica-tion of the task of philosophy itself, that one finds it again more than twothousand years later, like a watchword passed from mouth to mouth, inKant, in Hegel, in Husserl, in Heidegger. "On this subject,
I
certainlyhave written no work, nor shall
I
ever do so in the future. It is not, in fact,in any way sayable, as in other disciplines (pa8.ilka~a),ut, after muchclose attendance to the thing itself (mpl
TO
.rrp&yka
&6)
and muchcompanionship with it, suddenly, like sparks shot out from a fire, it is born
in
the soul and by now nourishes itself (&o kawo (341c
~E~~EL)
4-d2).This passage has been quoted innumerable times, both to sustainesoteric interpretations of Plato's thought and also as an irrefutabledocument for the existence of unwritten Platonic doctrines: the
Dialogues,
which our culture has passed on for centuries as a venerable inheritance,would, in this sense, have little to do with what Plato cared about; hisconcern would have been reserved for a uniquely oral tradition. Ourinterest here is not so much to take issue with this matter, certainly an
of 00

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