Ghost Ribs of Discourse beyond the Phaedrus

In the conclusion Rapp situates Plato in relationship to Aristotle, Euripides, and Zhuangzi (the 4th century BCE Daoist figure) in order to extend the scope and significance of the book's study of the Phaedrus to a broader, comparative consideration of understandings of human fragility and the forms of discourse best suited to expressing the character of human life. Focusing her attention upon Aristotle's domestication of forgetting within his account of virtue and Euripides’ and Zhuangzi's radicalizations of forgetting in their respective evocations of paradigmatic human states, Rapp argues that Plato can be regarded as holding a position somewhere between these two alternatives. Using Kay Ryan's poem “Post-Construction” to frame her argument, Rapp presents Plato and Zhuangzi as offering religio-philosophic directions (and, in particular, the concomitant forms of discourse needed) for moving past post-modern, social-construction-fixated, and agency-dominated approaches to human personhood.