Platonic and sophistic understanding of oral, literal and televisual sign as educational means

What follows is an attempt to isolate thespecificity of the new way of communication and education i.e., thetelevised image by comparing and contrasting it to the more traditional medial means,oral and literal sign. There will be several Ariadnian threads running through this labyrinth. One will be the phenomenon of self-deception: the central fear of Plato. Self-deception is to be interpreted in the widest possible sense: self-deception in relation to ourselves, to others, and our surrounding environment. Related to this will be the idea of a remedy ‘against’ that self-deception; does each medium have a remedial moment (what Plato reserved for philosophical speech)? Traditionally, we speak about three kinds of remedy: philosophical (radical reflection), scientific (the ‘objective’ point of view), and aesthetic (disinterested contemplation): what contributions do the newer mediums make? Sophistic self-deception or its remedial? What too will be a theme of this paper is how as we move from older, more familiar sorts of representations towardstelevised image, rational and educational categories falter and the specific attitude towards new images becomes more difficult to isolate.