"Socrates is a man of writing. He says of himself, “I do not read,” but in reality he does not read because when he went to read, he did not find what he was looking for in books. But he is certainly someone who searches for the concept of what justice is. In a world of orality, justice does not exist. There are meaningful phrases, meaningful behaviors, rituals, stories, and myths. in order to have justice, I must have written it down with the alphabet, then I can isolate it and say ‘what is it?’. So we realize that philosophy is the product of a very precise human practice, and I insist on the question of writing. Even Socrates' famous phrase in court, “a life without inquiry is not worth living,” belongs to a certain type of man."
January 1, 1970