TFBT: Plato's Ion

This month at the Kosmos Society we will be reading and discussing Plato’s dialogue Ion.

I will say that I am no fan of Socrates.  He went around with his great genius abusing his listeners and bragging that he was the smartest man in the world.  If I had been on the jury… 

Early on Socrates says, “Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument?”  Really? Wasn’t the anger of Achilles the major theme of the Iliad and return the theme of Odyssey.  Hmm, where’s that lot I   wanted to cast?

“The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration…”   That threw me off.  I forgot he had a daemon who told him things. Hmm.  “…the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.”  He explains that Ion’s spectators are the last in this chain of inspiration.  “the greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and are possessed by Homer.” 

It occurs to me that the English word rhapsody means “an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling.”

“Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired… this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of song”  I like this line of logic and apparently does Ion, who says  “I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul”  

Why does Socrates keep avoiding listening to Ion recite Homer?   

That great line about “twenty thousand friendly faces”!  Nestor’s advice on chariot racing!  Didn’t expect that!  And now Hecamede’ drink! 

And then at the end, here it comes; every Socratic question is made in ill-faith, a trap for his listener, he is not dueling but rather toying with an unarmed man, reaching the “logical” conclusion that rather “you are only a deceiver” and forcing Ion to allow Socrates to attribute his “praises of Homer,  inspiration, and not art.”  A notion Ion did not seem adverse to in the first place. 

Where’s that lot I was looking for?

See the discussion here;  https://kosmossociety.chs.harvard.edu/?p=40729