The Torn Body

The uncarved, living animal analogy is developed in this chapter in terms of the dissolution, decay, and destruction to which bodies (animal, human, and textual) are subject, a direction of interpretation that focuses upon the gaps and fissures of the Phaedrus. This chapter presents the most explicit and extensive examination of how forgetting—in Rapp's terms, “ordinary forms of oblivion”—constitute the contours and powers of the dialogue. She considers forgetting in three aspects: forgetting as philosophical play, as philosophic source, and as a structural feature of the text. Through this examination she argues for the non-teleological character of Plato's view in the dialogue, suggesting further that a straight reading of the text as endorsing a metaphysical ideal of divine aspiration (in which the philosophic soul becomes “like god”) falls short. Rather, Plato re-casts the ideal within the this-worldly terms (and forms) of discourse through which the soul can be forged.