Pharmakon is one of those syllepses in whose undecidability Derrida takes no less delight than Mallarmé takes in the resonances of hymen¹ and than Hegel takes in the oxymoronic semantics of speculative words like Aufhebung.² But it is not simply the words that interest them or the word play to which they give rise [Diss 249 (220)]. What interests them primarily is rather that from which such words arise, that of which they are symptomatic. Derrida's response to this question is different from Hegel's. This difference, it might be said, grossly oversimplifying, is due to the fact that between Hegel and Derrida comes Mallarmé; and Nietzsche. In the present chapter an attempt will be made to substantiate this statement while bringing out why it is a gross oversimplification. This will call for an amplification of the brief references made to the middle voice in the preceding chapter and a resumption (in Chapter 7) of the task begun there of showing what relevance, if any, Derrida's work has to the preoccupations of such post-Fregean philosophers as Wittgenstein, Quine and Goodman, Proprietary Ltd.