"God has no allergies"

by Seth Warren

Here Derrida shows Plato's conception of Health (Virtue, Truth, the fruits of the soul) as arising from inside the body, whereas disease is fundamentally an allergic phenomenon, that is, an attack on the self-sustaining, individual body from an outside agent. Thus the statement "God has no allergies" (101), since God, in his healthy omni-presence, is beyond binaries like inside and outside. Nothing is outside of God and at the same time nothing impure can touch him.

The pharmakon, on the other hand, could be more accurately described as a kind of un-hygienic sewer rat (or a dust mite): small, other, elusive, and a carrier of disease. Derrida asseses Plato's opinion on this matter: "Health and Virtue, which are often associated in speaking of the body and, analogously, of the soul, always proceed from within. The pharmakon is that which, always springing up from without, acting like the outside itself, will never have any definable virtue of its own" (102). Thus the pharmakon is not only bad but threateningly other. And whether the pharmakon is seen in a "good" or "bad" light by anyone, Plato wants to claim that the fact is he, and any reasonable man, is allergic.