Appearance and Its Doubles: Nietzsche, Plato, and Derrida on Second-Order Representation

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 Introduction

What does it mean for something to be a copy of a copy, an illusion of an illusion, or a sign of a sign? Western thought has long grappled with the implications of representation once it is severed from its supposed origin. This philosophical anxiety becomes especially acute when representation folds back on itself, producing a second-order image or sign. Plato famously condemned such removals from truth as degenerative. Friedrich Nietzsche, by contrast, affirmed second-order illusion as redemptive and necessary. Jacques Derrida, in his deconstructive analysis, questioned the very structure that presupposes an origin and treats secondary signs as derivative. This article examines three concepts—Plato’s copy of the copy, Nietzsche’s appearance of appearance, and Derrida’s signifier of the signifier—to explore how each thinker engages with mediation, artifice, and the possibility (or impossibility) of truth.

Plato: Copy of the Copy and the Fall from Truth

In Plato’s metaphysical schema, reality is structured hierarchically. At the top stand the eternal Forms: ideal, immaterial templates of all things. Physical objects in the sensible world are mere imitations of these Forms. Artistic representations—such as paintings or poetry—are thus doubly removed from truth. They depict not the Forms themselves, but their already-degraded physical instances. This leads Plato to view art as a kind of deception.

In Republic Book X, Socrates argues that art merely imitates the appearances of things and encourages irrational appetites rather than rational insight:

“Then we must put aside the arts which are based on imitation; for they have no serious value” (Plato, 1992, p. 283, 600e).

In this view, second-order representations seduce us away from reality. The more removed from the Forms, the less ontological weight a thing has. Art, for Plato, is not just frivolous; it is epistemically and morally dangerous.

Nietzsche: Appearance of Appearance and the Joyful Veil

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy offers a radical inversion of Plato’s distrust of illusion. Instead of treating artifice as a degradation, Nietzsche sees it as a necessity for enduring existence. At the heart of being lies not an eternal Form, but a chaotic and suffering Primordial Unity. Empirical reality itself is already a masking illusion. Art adds a second layer, a conscious illusion over an unconscious one. This is the “appearance of appearance,” which Nietzsche associates with the naïve artist.

In an evocative metaphor, Nietzsche compares the artist to a dreamer who, even while knowing he dreams, chooses to dream on:

“We must regard the dream as an appearance of appearance...a still higher gratification of the primordial desire for appearance” (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, p. 39).

Rather than being a fall from truth, second-order appearance redeems life by transforming suffering into beauty. The naïve artist, exemplified by Homer or Raphael, does not deceive; he saves existence through illusion. Nietzsche thus converts Plato’s hierarchy into a dynamic of sublimation: art does not descend from reality but elevates it into something affirmable.

Derrida: Signifier of the Signifier and the Deconstruction of Origin

Derrida’s critique of representation further destabilizes the metaphysical opposition between original and copy. In Of Grammatology, he targets the tradition of logocentrism—the belief in a self-present origin of meaning, typically associated with speech. Writing has historically been treated as derivative, as a signifier of the signifier, twice removed from the original spoken word and its intended meaning.

But Derrida rejects the notion that there ever was a pure origin. Every sign is already a trace, marked by absence and difference. There is no final signified that escapes the chain of signifiers. All meaning arises through différance, a temporal and spatial deferral that undermines any stable ground. As Derrida notes, no signified ever fully escapes the play of signifiers (Derrida, 1976, p. 50).

Thus, writing does not represent a fall from presence but exposes the myth of presence itself. The “signifier of the signifier” is not a weakness but a revelation: it discloses that meaning is always constructed, never given.

Comparative Synthesis: Three Fates of Secondarity

The tension between first and second-order representation reveals the differing metaphysical commitments of Plato, Nietzsche, and Derrida. As the table below demonstrates, each thinker ascribes a different ontological status to second-order representation:

Where Plato sees danger, Nietzsche finds aesthetic salvation. Where both presume some kind of origin—ideal Form or primordial chaos—Derrida demonstrates that such origins are always already mediated. What Plato treats as decay, and Nietzsche as transformation, Derrida reads as the condition of meaning itself.

Conclusion

The concept of “second-order representation”—whether expressed as the copy of the copy, the appearance of appearance, or the signifier of the signifier—unmasks the fault lines in Western metaphysics. Plato seeks to police the boundary between truth and illusion. Nietzsche affirms the necessity of illusion for any affirmation of life. Derrida dismantles the boundary itself, showing that representation is never secondary, because there is no unmediated presence to begin with. In this light, what once seemed like a fall from truth might instead be the only space where thought, art, and meaning can take shape.

References

Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1967)

Nietzsche, F. (1999). The Birth of Tragedy (D. Smith, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1872)

Plato. (1992). Republic (G. M. A. Grube & C. D. C. Reeve, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. (Original work ca. 380 BCE)