Apeiron Volume 45 Issue 4 2012 [Doi 10.1515%2Fapeiron-2012-0006] Trivigno, Franco v. -- Technē, Inspiration and Comedy in Plato’s Ion

Techn, Inspiration and Comedy in Platos Ion

FRANCO V. TRIVIGNOPhilosophy DepartmentMarquette University

PO Box 1881Milwaukee, WI 532011881, USA

[email protected]

The Ion portrays Socrates in dialogue about the nature of the rhapsodictechn with Ion, a rhapsode or actor, who performs Homers poetry bothin contests and for private audiences. Three related interpretive difficultieshave confounded scholars. First, while scholars seem to agree that Socratesmeans to target or attack something, they have disagreed over what orwhom the real topic of the dialogue is: the sophists, the poets, the author-ity of poets, the criticism of poetry, the notion of poetical inspiration, andart have all been suggested,1 but it is striking that the overt topic of thedialogue, rhapsody, is hardly ever taken to be a serious target. Second,scholars, noticing the comedic and playful tone of the dialogue, in parti-cular, the comic ludicrousness of Ion,2 have had trouble finding a seriousphilosophical point in it, with earlier scholars going so far as to declarethe dialogue spurious.3 Third, to the extent that the dialogue offers anypositive views at all, two wildly different and logically incompatible viewsof rhapsody and poetry are given. Both views seem clearly inadequate. In-itially, Socrates puts forth what I will call the technical account of poeticcomposition and interpretation, which assumes that both are fully rational

apeiron, vol. 45, pp. 283313Walter de Gruyter 2012 DOI 10.1515/apeiron-2012-0006

1 Flashar 1958 claims that the Ion concerns the sophists; Tigerstedt 1969, poetry andthe notion of poetical inspiration; Murray 1996, the authority of poets; LaDrire1951, the criticism of poetry; and Dorter 1973, art. See LaDrire 1951, 269, forfurther discussion of the various possible topics of the dialogue.

2 Murray 1996, 98, claims that Ion himself is so stupid that he is not worth attacking;the real target of the dialogue must be something other than this proverbially sillyrhapsode.

3 According to Murray 1996, 96, the debate largely in Germany about the authen-ticity of the dialogue was begun by Goethe, who saw the dialogue as little more thana satirical attack on a foolish rhapsode. See also Tigerstedt 1969, 1820; Moore1974, 4214.

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and technical activities (530a533c). Then, reversing course entirely, So-crates articulates what I will call the inspired account, by which divineinspiration accounts for poetic composition and interpretation (533d536d).4 Most scholars have taken one of these to be Platos consideredview, but there is no consensus as to which one it is. In this paper, I aimto resolve these interpretive difficulties.

I formulate and critique the technical account in 1 and the inspiredaccount in 2. I claim that these two models contradict each other at al-most every level but what they share is the appeal to an originatingauthority as the source of poetic truth. The rhapsode Ion, in struggling toexplain the nature of his own expertise, endorses each account in turn;through his discussion with Socrates, both are shown to be inadequate andimportantly wrong. In short, I claim that the dialogue endorses neithermodel. In 3, I argue that, in the third section of the dialogue, throughthe problematic analyses of several passages of Homer (536e539e), thedialogue gestures at what I call the oracular account, which incorporateselements of inspiration and technique but eschews the need for an origi-nating authority. This alternative model is anti-authoritative orientedtoward encouraging the active intellectual engagement of the audience.

In 4, I argue that Plato depicts Ion as a laughable figure, particularlyin the last section of the dialogue (539e542b), in order to expose themoral danger of taking poetry as authoritative. Thus, the comic portrayalhas a serious philosophical point, and, I shall argue, Ions role as rhapsodeis a crucial aspect of it.5 By letting us see Ion as a comic figure, Plato

4 Critics have panned Plato both for endorsing the technical account and for endorsingthe inspired account, and for good reasons which I shall lay out in 12. Somecommentators, especially the Romantics, have found the inspired account congenial:see e.g., Schaper 1968, 358, 12034. On Shelleys Defense of Poetry, which admiresand draws from the inspired account: see Murray 1996, 312; Stern-Gillet 2004,192194. As several scholars have noticed, Shelley does not seem to be aware ofSocrates irony in the passage: see e.g., Haines 1997, 80. United in their opposition tothe Romantic reading are Woodruff 1982; Pappas 1989; Stern-Gillet 2004.

5 Part of what makes the rhapsode important is his role as mediator between the poetand the poets audience. Dorter 1973, 66, claims that the rhapsode provides the dou-ble perspective of poet and audience. I will not be claiming that the dialogue exclu-sively targets rhapsody; this would be hard to justify because the discipline of rhap-sody is parasitic on that of poetry. Indeed, I claim that poets, poetry and a particularattitude towards poetry are crucial targets as well. That there was a tradition of rhap-sodic interpretation seems well established by Richardson 2006. Despite the certainaffinities between rhapsodic and sophistic interpretation (see note 75 below), andthus the ways in which the criticism of the former would also apply to the latter, Isee no reason to see the sophists as standing behind Ion as Platos real targets in thedialogue, as Flashar 1958 claims. For a judicious refutation of Flashar, see Tigerstedt1969, 225.

Franco V. Trivigno284



encourages us his audience both to reject Ion as model and to use theIon itself, not as a fount of authoritative wisdom, but as an invitation tophilosophical dialogue.

1 The Technical Account

At the very beginning of the dialogue, we discover that Ion must be anexcellent rhapsode as he has just won first prize in a festival contest. So-crates and Ion try to find an explanation for Ions excellence by examiningthe skill for which he was rewarded, namely rhapsody. Socrates lays thefoundation for the technical account when he assumes that Ions rhapso-dic skill constitutes a techn.6 He begins by ironically claiming to envy[the] rhapsodes for [their] techn (530b56).7 As it emerges through theconversation, a techn is a thorough, masterful knowledge of a specificfield that can be taught to others and can be recognized, certified, andrewarded.8 Ion and Socrates understand the rhapsodic techn to compriseboth performance and critical evaluation (530c34).9 As Socrates articu-lates the rhapsodic techn, the rhapsode:

must learn the poets thought (), not just his verses that is enviable! Imean, no one would ever get to be a good rhapsode if he didnt understand what ismeant () by the poet. A rhapsode must serve as the interpreter () of

6 Techn can be translated as art, craft, skill, expertise, or profession but I willleave it, and related terms like technits, transliterated in this paper. See LSJ s.v. Onthe notion as employed by Plato, see Roochnik 1996.

7 Socrates here clearly appeals to Ions self-conception as an expert on Homer; later,when the inspired account is introduced, Socrates again appeals to Ions sense of hisown wisdom. Socrates irony here serves both to get Ion into the conversation and tobegin to expose the latters claim to wisdom as fraudulent. Ion is, as I will argue inthe last section, an imposter, or , a bombastic figure from comedy whose pre-tensions to wisdom are exposed. On the imposter, see note 81 below.

8 Roochnik 1996, 1.9 Dorter 1973, 68, seeks to translate Socrates questions about exegesis into questions

about performance, a move I find hard to justify. He claims that a separate field ofliterary criticism existed at that time. But this neither precludes rhapsodes from enga-ging into critical assessment of poetry nor justifies downplaying the critical role ofthe rhapsode which both Ion and Socrates avow. See Richardson 2006, who arguesthat there was a separate field of Homeric criticism, which included Ion and those hementions as rival interpreters, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, Stesimbrotus of Thasos andGlaucon (530c9d1). Further, there is nothing surprising about the mixture of per-formance and criticism, especially given the historical example of Aristophanes, whomay well be considered the first literary critic. On Aristophanes as critic, see Grube1965, 2231.

Techn, Inspiration and Comedy in Platos Ion 285



the thought of the poet for his audience. It is impossible to do this well ()10

without knowing what the poet means. (530b8c5)11

On this account, the rhapsode is an interpreter, a : the word isthe etymological ancestor of hermeneutics and derives from Hermes, themessenger god.12 As an interpreter, the rhapsode must transmit the poetsthought his message to the audience with as little distortion as possi-ble. Thus, the thought intended by the poet is a regulative ideal for therhapsodic techn.13 The rhapsodes performance can be appraised on thebasis of how well it represents the poets intentions.14

The rhapsodes critical interpretation involves both explaining thethought of the poet and taking an evaluative stance toward it. Accordingto Socrates, any techn will have [1] a determinate subject-matter and [2]a unified method; the expert technician will be able to employ the methodto the entire subject-matter. Ion seems to agree with this characterizationof the rhapsodic techn as a theory of poetic criticism, which enables himto assess the relative merits of all poets.

When the content of poetry comes to the fore, both Socrates and Iontreat Homer as though his poetry were explicitly didactic as a wealth oftechnical information. They proceed as though the thought of Homerwas constituted by an endorsement of the proper way to execute technai,in other words, as if Homer thinks that we should perform various activ-

10 The use of this word in the context of the technical account is important for myinterpretation in 3 below. Within the parameters of the technical account, can only mean well or correctly; it almost never means beautifully. In the inspiredaccount, the reverse is true. See LSJ s.v. . See note 44 below.

11 I translate as to mean here in order to provide a proper object for the rhap-sodes understanding corresponding to the poets thought. Socrates claims that therhapsode needs to do more than just memorize the verse, i.e., know the words; hemust know what is meant by them. See LSJ s.v. All translations of the Ion in thispaper are from Woodruffs Hackett edition in Cooper 1997, with slight alterations.

12 See LSJ s.v.13 One might claim that by introducing the intentions of the author, I am either read-

ing too much into the text or translating as both thought and intention.Both are perfectly acceptable translations of : see LSJ s.v. The main point ofintroducing authorial intention in this context is to emphasize what the technicalaccount emphasizes, i.e., the author as the independent creator of his poems. Thethoughts underlying the verse are there because the author wants them to be there;an interpretation is right because it coheres with how the author wants his work tobe interpreted. There is no unintended content, nor is there a more primordialsource of content.

14 The upshot of this approach is that it gives interpretation a determinate goal andsome procedural guidelines. The downside is that the authors intentions are notor-iously hard to reconstruct, a problem that has prompted some literary theorists todeny that authorial intention is at all relevant for understanding a text.




ities the way he describes and imitates them in his narrative. This under-standing of the thought of the poet may seem very peculiar to us fromthe perspective of a literate culture, but it was not so for the Greeks in the5th century, who were still emerging from an oral culture, in which impor-tant information was precisely preserved in song.15 On this account, nocritical interpretation could ever genuinely assess a passage of poetry with-out knowledge of the techn it described. Only experts in the relevant sub-jects would be so qualified. Socrates evokes the possibility that two poetsmight have differing thoughts, for example, about divination the art, ortechn, of decoding divine messages:

S: Take all the passages where Homer and Hesiod speak of divination (),both where they agree and disagree: who would explain these better (),you or one of the good diviners?

I: One of the diviners. (531b37)

Poetry, then, is or can be true in an obvious sense, that is, it can correctlydescribe the method of technical disciplines and imitate them properly,i.e., to the satisfaction of the relevant technician.16

Given the fact that rhapsody is parasitic on poetry, any account of theformer will have implications for the latter. Indeed, on the technical ac-count, poetry must itself be a techn.17 For, if the rhapsodic techn givesone a method or procedure for interpretation, there must be some discern-ible principles of poetic composition, which inform or are informed bythis method. In other words, the determinate subject matter must possessclear, discoverable principles in order to account for the methods generalapplicability. In short, poetry itself must be a unified techn. There is an

15 As Havelock 1963, 3660, has demonstrated, oral cultures depended on song for theretention of cultural knowledge, including technical knowledge, and it is not implau-sible to think that, on the cusp of moving from an oral to a literate culture, therecontinued to persist a strong cultural assumption about the role of poetry in societyas a source of wisdom, both cultural and moral. On Homer as an encyclopedia, seeHavelock 1963, 6186. Further, as Urmson 1982, 1334, has persuasively argued,the idea that poetry is supposed to be edifying has found its defenders in every era,and so Platos attack on them for failing in this regard is still relevant today.

16 The word, , does not appear in this dialogue; however, is implicated bythe notion of correctness as a standard for poetic criticism. Dorter 1973, 71, claimsthat the conception of art as imitation is clearly implicit in the Ion. Murray 1992,34, also sees the notion as implicit in the dialogue, but for reasons that I do not findpersuasive; in short, she thinks that the reason that Plato treats the ideas of inspira-tion and separate in his dialogues is that, for Plato, mimsis and inspirationare identical (46).

17 See Janaway 1995, 189, for an elegant reconstruction of the argument, which dis-tinguishes between the critical- techn and the object- techn.




art of poetry as a whole, as Socrates contends in this section (532c89).18Socrates supports this conclusion via an analogy with the other fines arts: itis because sculpture (533a6b5) and painting (532e5533a6) are technaithat critics are able make adequate judgments about their relative merits.19

Let the above suffice as a sketch of the technical account. This posi-tion is untenable for several reasons. First, as Ion protests again and again,it fails to account for his excellence as a rhapsode. Thus, Ion stands as acounterexample: he is good at rhapsody, but he does not possess theknowledge that such excellence would seem to imply. By his own admis-sion, Ion lacks familiarity with and interest in all poets (531a14;533c48); indeed, he even claims to doze off when other poets are dis-cussed (532c2). Thus he does not possess knowledge of the alleged sub-ject-matter of the rhapsodic techn (criterion [1] above). Nor does he pos-sess some consistent means or criteria for deciding amongst these poets(criterion [2] above). Rather, he simply declares without any argumentat all Homers verse to be superior (531d611). Thus, he fails to possess[2] a unified method applicable to the entire field of poetry. Ion thus failsto possess the knowledge that would qualify him to adjudicate amongstcompeting poets. As Socrates argues, the ability to explain why one speakeron a topic is good implies the ability to explain why others are bad, andvice versa (531d532a). This is not necessarily decisive, however, becausethe possibility of the rhapsodic techn ought not to hinge on a singlecounterexample. Ion may be very lucky.

The second problem has to do with the viability of the rhapsodictechn itself. It is not clear that the rhapsodic techn can be said to have adeterminate subject-matter, i.e., it would fail [1] above. If the rhapsodeneeds to be an expert in the topics covered in poetry, and poetry deals witheverything, then the good rhapsode would have to be an expert in every-thing. Put differently, the rhapsodic techn has an indeterminate subject-matter. Socrates own description of the subjects of poetry confirms this:

Doesnt Homer mainly go through tales of war, and of how people deal with eachother in society good and bad people, ordinary people and craftsmen; how thegods deal with each other and men; what happens to those in heaven and inHades; and the births of the gods and heroes? (531c4d1)

18 . On the proper way to translate this claim, see Stern-Gillet 2004, 1845.

19 Socrates adduces, in addition, the examples of flute-playing, cithara-playing and sing-ing as being structurally similar. This has led some commentators, notably Dorter1973, 66, to see the Ion as targeting the fine arts in general and Ion himself as arepresentative of art. Since the overt content of the dialogue concerns rhapsody andpoetry, I will restrict my own analysis to these topics. Though I am sympathetic tomuch of what Dorter says, it is not clear to me that such an extension of the scopeof the dialogue is warranted.




Homeric epic recreates the entire world and everything in it, including themoral realm.20 If such is the subject-matter of rhapsody, then it is notechn.

A third problem concerns the extension of this line of reasoning tothe poet. The poet, then, would also have to be a kind of universal expert,and this would seem to rule out the possibility that there is a poetictechn. Now the passage seems to be more like a reductio ad absurdum ofthe possibility of Ions rhapsodic expertise: If Ion is an expert, then hewould possess the rhapsodic techn. If there is a rhapsodic techn, then ithas [1] a determinate subject matter and [2] a unified method. If it does,then the poetic techn possesses [1] a determinate subject matter and [2] aunified method. Actual poetry does not possess [1];21 therefore, there canbe no rhapsodic techn. Because there is no rhapsodic techn, Ion cannotbe an expert by possessing it.

To this one might add two final and not inconsequential complaints.First, this conception of the rhapsodic skill takes no account of rhapsodicperformance, and this is arguably the distinctive expertise of the rhapsode.Second, the conception of the rhapsodic skill takes no account of the es-thetic qualities of poetry, like beauty, in which case poetry might just aswell be prose, and the poets, consigned to imitating technical disciplines,might just as well be technits.22 To put this point another way, the tech-nical account focuses on the content of poetry to the exclusion of its form.For all these reasons, we should reject it as an inadequate conception ofrhapsody and poetry.

2 The Inspired Account

In the next section of the dialogue (533d536d), the emphasis shifts fromcriticism and interpretation to poetic composition and performance, andthe beauty of poetry becomes central. Socrates makes divine inspiration anecessary condition of writing beautiful poetry: it is not by techn but bybeing inspired () and possessed [that poets] compose beautiful po-

20 On the indeterminate scope of Ions alleged expertise as a defeating feature of hisclaim to have a techn, see Roochnik 1987, 2856; as he further notes, 291n.25,poetry seems to be about everything, in philosophical parlance, the whole, but is notquite about everything. Indeed, given the focus on events and narrative, poetry doesnot, for example, seem to be about stable objects of knowledge.

21 The question of whether poetry has a unified method is not directly broached in thedialogue, but, as I suggest above, the notion of seems implicit in the technicalaccount.

22 Thus, a widely made complaint in the literature is that Plato holds the poets to anunfair and inappropriate standard: see e.g., Guthrie 1975, 205.




etry (533e58).23 The articulation of the inspired view seems itself in-spired, since it employs rich poetic images and metaphors throughout.The technical account of poetry, by contrast, lacks a spiritual resonanceentirely.24 It is this section for which the Ion has been historically famousor infamous: Shelley found the true basis for a defense of poetry in it;25Goethe saw an attack on poetry with Aristophanic malice.26

When Socrates describes the composition of verses, he goes to greatlength to emphasize the poets lack of agency. Using the metaphor of fren-zied religious festival celebration, Socrates compares the poets to Coryban-tic dancers and Bacchic revelers. But the primary analogue to the inspiredpoet is the diviner, or inspired seer.27 This passive understanding of thepoet presents a stark contrast with the technical account whose frameworkassumes that the thought of the poet is the goal of interpretation. On theinspired view, the poets have no thoughts to interpret, at least not whenthey are composing. While composing, the poets are quite literally out oftheir minds.28

It is rather the Muse who plays a seminal role in poetic production.Using the metaphor of a magnet and iron rings, Socrates describes howthe Muse begins a chain of inspiration:29

Its a divine power ( ) that moves you, as a magnetic stone movesiron rings. This stone not only pulls those rings, if they are iron, it also putspower in the rings, so that they in turn can do just what the stone does pull

23 Tigerstedt 1969, 26, claims that Plato was the first Greek writer to describe poeticinspiration as possession; on his view, inspiration was a common motif, but notpossession.

24 Arist. Po. clearly conceives of poetic production as a technical expertise and his ac-counts of epic poetry and especially tragedy at once delineate the theoretical bases ofpoetry and provide practical advice for the aspiring poet. It is interesting to note thatAristotles Poetics de-emphasizes the mythic, religious and musical bases of poetry ingeneral and of tragedy more particularly. On this, see Halliwell 1998, 82108.

25 Murray 1996, 312.26 See Tigerstedt 1969, 189, 26, for an account of Goethes judgment and influence.27 According to Murray 1992, 33, the association between diviners and poets is ancient

and widespread and a commonplace in early Greek poetry.28 This conception of poets as out of their minds when they compose has Aristophanic

precursors in Ach. 395ff.; Th. 40ff. Murray 1992, 34, claims that, in reality the figureof the mad poet is a Platonic myth and constitutes a radical break with the past.This is only true if Plato is taken to be expounding doctrine here, as opposed tomocking the poets. If taken in the latter sense, he is firmly in line with the traditionsof Old Comedy. On the possible influence of Democritus on Plato, see Tigerstedt1969, 726.

29 Murray 1996, 113 notes that the magnet metaphor for inspiration has no knownprecursors. This use of the word seems to be the origin of our magnet and its cog-nates.




other rings In this same way, the Muse makes some people inspired herself, andthen through those who are inspired a chain of other enthusiasts is suspended.(533d3e5)

With the Muse functioning as the magnetic force, the first ring in thechain is the poet. Socrates makes clear that the god speaks through thepoet: the god himself is the one speaking ( ) these things andthrough these poets, speaks () to us (534d35). While thesounds come through the poets, the poets, like diviners, are merely thepassive vehicle for the gods intended meaning:

[T]hese beautiful poems are not human nor are they from humans but they aredivine and from the gods; these poets are nothing other than interpreters ()of the gods (534e25).

One should notice that, on this account, interpretation has the sense ofpassive transmission a stark contrast to its more active meaning in thetechnical account.30 The poet, as interpreter, deserves no credit for hisown poetry and he is barely afforded even a potentially disruptive role; atmost, one could say that the poet is blessed.31

This account relegates the rhapsode to the role of ,an interpreter of interpreters (535a9). As the middle ring in the chain ofinspiration, his mediating function makes him twice removed from thesource. An upshot of this account is that it can make sense of Ions exclu-sive interest in Homers poetry (536bc). The other poets simply do notinspire Ion.32 Since Homer does inspire him, Ion is drawn to Homer, andothers in the audience are drawn to Homer through him. Ions excellenceas a rhapsode has to do with his being inspired and, thus, inspiring others:he is, in short, a link in the chain of inspiration.

When Socrates focuses on the poetic quality of the verses and theirbeauty,33 he recognizes esthetic considerations, e.g., lyrical features of the

30 See Murray 1996, 121. See also Partee 1971.31 Indeed, on Socrates account, to prove this, the Muse provided the example of Tynni-

chus, who apparently wrote an exceptionally beautiful and popular paean but abso-lutely nothing else of note (534e). He was, one might say, the worlds first one-hitwonder.

32 While in the technical account, interpretation was presented as a technical methodin principle applicable to every poet, in the inspired account, interpretation is radi-cally individuated. The poet interprets one god; the rhapsode interprets one poet.What was earlier presented as an absurdity, namely, the idea that one could interpretone poet exclusively, now seems perfectly natural.

33 Woodruff 1982, 1402, claims that Plato denies that there is an esthetic sense to. On his reckoning, Plato takes esthetic beauty to be radically distinct from thefine or beautiful itself ( ). He claims that Socrates views mere beauty as adeception. As I will argue, there are two senses of beauty at stake in the dialogue:one which is superficial and potentially deceptive, the other which is deeper and con-




verses, ignored in the technical account of poetry. Beauty becomes the cri-terion for the goodness of poetry. In articulating this view, Socrates em-ploys highly poetic language as a kind of performative demonstration. Hismetaphors are richly drawn and articulated in a religious and almost ec-static tone:34

[Poets] are not in their right minds when they compose these beautiful lyrics, butas soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy. Poets tell us that they gather songs at honey-flowing springs, from glades andgardens of the Muses, and that they bear songs to us as bees carry honey, flying likebees. And what they say is true. For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy (534a1b4)

In the inspired account, we find a preponderance of words relating to. The concern with beauty marks a shift away from the technicalaccounts concern with correctness. Poems have immense value, coming asgifts from the gods, but it is not clear that they can be true in any sense.One can experience the divinely inspired vision of the poet through hispoems and thus experience a poems beauty. As the standard by whichpoetry is judged, beauty, conceived of as harmony and rhythm on thisaccount, is the outward manifestation of that vision.35

Turning to Ions actual performances absent from the technical ac-count we see that emotion is central to the inspired account. Ion vividlydescribes the way he works himself up into an emotional frenzy when heperforms a particularly jarring and passionate scene (535cd). Accordingto Socrates, Ions inspired soul believes [] that it is present at theevents that are described and enacted (535c13). When Ion illustrateshis effect on the audience, he focuses on the emotional state that he in-duces in them, indeed, the way that Ions own experience is reproduced inthe spectator (535d89). When Ion performs an emotionally jarringscene, the audience members are crying, terrified and amazed (535e16).Thus, they too believe that they are present at these wondrous events.They are passive recipients of the inspiration which moves Ion.

nected to truth. In other words, contra Woodruff, I will be claiming that Plato thinksthat there is an esthetic sense to , which is not in itself worth very much andmay be deceptive. It can, however, be useful in leading us toward the deeper sense, asin Symp. 210ae; Phdr. 249e50d.

34 Socrates imagery is indeed evocative with roots in traditional Greek religion. How-ever, Socrates analogies are also reminiscent of comic accounts of poets. The compar-ison of poets to bees is traditional and generally favorable; however, the image ofpoets flying has mocking precursors in Ar. Pax 827ff.; Av. 1373ff. On the roots ofthe inspired account, see Murray 1992, 302.

35 For the moral implications of harmony and rhythm, see Rep. 401d402a; Tim.47ce.




Though Socrates exposition is shot through with irony and exaggera-tion, I have reconstructed the view as though it were seriously meant. Incritiquing the view, I will be giving voice to what the irony indicates. In-deed, one finds that there are several reasons for dissatisfaction. First, aswith the technical account, this account fails to account for Ions ownactivity. When Ion finally realizes that the account subtly mocks him, heprotests: Youre a good speaker, Socrates, but I would be amazed if youcould speak well enough to convince me that I am possessed or crazedwhen I praise Homer (536d47). Socrates account overstates the degreeto which the rhapsode gives up his agency. For example, Socrates claims:

Are we to say that this man is in his right mind at times like these: when hes at festivalsor celebrations, all dressed up in fancy clothes and golden crowns, and he weeps,though hes lost none of his finery; or when hes standing amongst millions of friendlypeople and is terrified, though no one is undressing or harming him? (535d15)36

In short, Socrates account makes the rhapsodes out to be delusional luna-tics, and while Ion is surely unintelligent, he is certainly not insane.37

Second, we might extend this line of criticism to the author and theaudience, the two other main links in the chain of inspiration. Since whatis transferred from poet to rhapsode to audience is a kind of experience ofbeing carried away, an implication of the view seems to be that poets andaudiences are, when inspired, just as crazy as the rhapsodes. In describingthe poets composition, Socrates says he is not able to make poetryuntil he becomes inspired [], and goes out of his mind [] andhis intellect is no longer in him [ ] (534b46).Through this accumulation of near-synonymous expressions, Socrates ef-fectively executes a move from inspiration to insanity.38 In addition, whilewe might agree that there is some sense in which the audience gives up itsagency when it is transported into the world of the poet through therhapsode,39 as with the rhapsode, Socrates presentation makes the audi-ence seem like it is completely insane, and this seems unwarranted.

36 Cp. Ar. Ach. 4105; Th. 14950, for comic portrayals of the way that poets confusethemselves with their characters in real life. Such a confusion is, on my reading, acore feature of the comic portrayal of Ion (see below in 4).

37 See also Pappas 1989, 3813, who rightly sees that the inspired account amounts toan imputation of insanity.

38 The term probably had an original medical sense of insanity, since its earliestuse can be found in the Hippocratic corpus. See LSJ s.v. It clearly indicates an im-paired level of cognitive engagement, though, in the Lg., Plato uses in connec-tion with Bacchic revelry (790e). The last term, , thoughredundant, drives home the point. This line is an instance of what Stern-Gillet 2004,178, describes as Socrates cunning mix[ture of] flattering and unflattering language.

39 Cp.Mx. 235ac, where Socrates describes the effect of funeral oratory on him. He feelsso good about himself that he feels nearly transported to the Islands of the Blessed.




Third, Ion presents a counterexample when he claims to notice theeffect of his performance from the rostrum. One would think that, beingdivinely inspired, Ion would be unable to remember or comment on theeffect of performance, but Ion always has his eyes on the proverbial prize:

I look down at the audience from the rostrum, and they are crying and lookingterrified, and as the stories are told, they are filled with amazement. I must keepmy wits and pay close attention to them: if I start them crying, I will laugh as Itake their money, but if they laugh, I shall cry at having lost money. (535e16)

For this to be possible, the inspired account must be wrong. How couldsomeone who is possessed and out of his mind pay enough attention tothe audience to make calculations concerning his potential earnings?40What Ion describes is a plausible enough scenario for a performer andwould seem to present a more general problem with the account, and notjust an idiosyncratic one about Ion. Socrates overstates the irrational andnon-cognitive aspect of rhapsodic performance, i.e., he makes the poetsand rhapsodes out to be far more passive than they are or even couldpossibly be.41

Fourth, at the end of the account, Socrates extends the magnetic chainof inspiration to include the audience and draws out to absurdity the im-plications of the magnet metaphor. He includes iron rings hanging off tothe side and the chain of inspiration becomes unwieldy. Not only arepoets, rhapsodes and audiences inspired, but so is anyone who has any-thing to do with poetic production and performance, including the choralperformers, chorus trainers and assistant chorus trainers. What is lost en-tirely by the magnet metaphor is the content of the poetry in the end,there are no thoughts at all and the only thing produced by the Muse ismore inspiration. Socrates is surely right to deny that Ion has knowledgeand even that there is no rhapsodic techn. However, one might say thatthe core problem with the inspired account is that it pushes the inspira-tion line so far that there is no discursive content in the poems at all, norfor that matter in the minds of poets, rhapsodes or audiences. Pushing themagnet metaphor further, we would have to vacate the minds of the chor-al performers, chorus trainers and assistant chorus trainers as well. Again,this seems to go well beyond what is warranted. Indeed, Platos strategyhere is similar to the reductio used to disarm the technical account; by

40 This point has been noticed by other commentators: see e.g., Tigerstedt 1969, 21.41 Woodruff 1982 rightly finds in the Ion a radical separation of the poet from his

poetry. Building on this, he concludes that the inspired individuals could not possiblycompose poetry and that the inspiration story is simply false: Platos story about godsand passive poets is absurd, and he cannot be sincere when he tells it (146). I agreewith this assessment of the inspired account, but as I will show in the next section, itcontains certain elements of truth.




amplifying the core components of the view to absurdity, Socrates mocksand undermines them.42 For the reasons stated, we should reject the in-spired account.

3. An Oracular Account

Both the technical account and the inspired account seem at least initiallyto be endorsed by the dialogue, but neither supplies a satisfactory accountof rhapsody or poetry. As with the technical account, the inspired accountfails to find a source for Ions excellence in rhapsody and his alleged exper-tise. The two models provides two completely different origins as authori-ties (poet or gods) to which Ion might appeal in order to verify his exper-tise. As I have shown, neither account is adequate. One provides such anexaggerated focus on knowledge and content that it leaves out considera-tions of inspiration and beauty; the other provides such an exaggeratedfocus on inspiration and beauty that it leaves out considerations of knowl-edge and content. Part of Platos purpose is to show that no account ofpoetry would afford rhapsody with an appropriate authority to groundIons rhapsodic alleged wisdom. On both accounts, Ion is the passive reci-pient of the authoritys wisdom and his self-conception is dictated by hisrelationship to that authority.

I suggest that the dialogue points to, though never fully articulates, aview what I call the oracular account which draws from both thetechnical and inspired accounts but eschews the need for an originatingauthority. Thus, there is some truth in both accounts, though each is, onits own, false.43 I defend and elaborate on this suggestion in three ways inthis section. First, Socrates, in discussing three passages from Homer(536d538d), uses the term ambiguously: he initially employs - to mean correctly, i.e., in a way that conforms to the technical ac-count, but then he uses it to mean beautifully, i.e., in a way that resiststhe technical account and conforms to the inspired account. Through thisambiguity, the dialogue points to a more fundamental unity and providesthe impetus for a combination of the two views. Second, in discussion ofthe passages suitable for a diviner to judge (538d539d), Socrates choosespassages which highlight two different aspects of divination: inspired vi-

42 See Woodruff 1983, 137, 147. On Platos use of amplification as a parodic strategy,see Trivigno 2009; Trivigno 2012.

43 Socrates seems to endorse the technical account at 532d8, when reflecting on thepreceding discussion, he says, I speak nothing but the truth and the inspired accountat 534b3, when he says of the poetic descriptions of poetry: what they say is true.Since they are logically incompatible, Socrates cannot mean to endorse all aspects ofeach account.




sion of future events and technical interpretation of signs. Thus, the figureof the diviner, who can be either passively inspired or a technits, providesa second impetus for a view of rhapsody and poetry that incorporates bothinspiration and technique. Finally, I fill out some of the details of thisaccount using the model of the oracle, a kind of divination which expli-citly incorporates both inspired vision and technical interpretation.

3.1 The Ambiguity of

When Ion retreats back to the technical view, Socrates puts him to thetest by citing three passages from Homer and asking who would best judgeHomers account. The first Homeric passage Socrates and Ion discuss de-scribes what Nestor said to Antilochus about driving a chariot (537a2).What is at issue is: who will know whether Homer speaks correctly( ) in these lines (537c1). Nestor counsels Antilochus aboutmanaging a turn in a chariot race; he gives direct, specific guidance on theappropriate way to lean, use the reins and handle the horses.44 The passageis thus quite congenial to analysis by a technical expert. When Socratesposes his question a second time, he substitutes for ; he asks:who will know better whether Homer speaks , you or a charioteer?(538b23). The questions are taken to be identical by Ion, and indeed, inmost cases, and are interchangeable.45

In the second Homeric passage, Socrates recites a section of the Iliadin which Homer narrates how Hecamede, Nestors woman, gave tothe wounded Machaon a barley potion to drink (538b).46 It is unclearwhether this passage depicts a medical treatment rather than, say, a fewpeople sitting around having a drink together. Socrates asks:

44 The charioteer is the best qualified candidate for assessing these lines because thecharioteers techn includes this information. Socrates argues that each techn has itsown object of knowledge and that it is only in virtue of the techn that the expert isable to judge what is done well and what not. This argument precludes the possibilitythat several technai might account for the knowledge of a single matter. This is, atbest, a disputable claim.

45 LSJ s.v. lists the three main senses of as the esthetic, utilitarian and moral inthat order. The adverb form, , emphasizes the utilitarian sense; it is generallybest translated as well or correctly and understood as the performance of someactivity in accordance with its appropriate uses, methods and/or goals. It also has anadverbial sense that correspond to the esthetic and moral sense of . In artisticendeavors, note that the utilitarian and esthetic senses will overlap. On the ambiguityof in the Ion, see also Dorter 1973, 756. On the wide variety of things thatcan be described as , see HipMa; Symp. 210a-e.

46 This passage is a badly misquoted mixing of three lines: Il. 11.63940 and 630: seeMurray 1996, 1278.




Whether Homer speaks (correctly) or not, would this be diagnosed (beautifully? correctly?) by the doctors profession (), or the rhapsodes()? (538c45)

In asking whether a doctor would diagnose whether Homer speaks, Socrates somewhat surprisingly juxtaposes with the doctorsexpertise and with Homers poetry; one might expect that the doc-tor would diagnose and Homer would compose , not theother way around. In this subtle way, the dialogue unsettles the first exam-ples semantic identity of and and reveals an ambiguity in thesense of .

The third passage Socrates invokes has Homer narrating a simile ofIris traveling to fetch Thetis (Il. 24.802):

Leaden she plunged to the floor of the sea like a weightThat is fixed to a land cows horn. Given to the huntIt goes among ravenous fish, carrying death. (538d13)

Socrates asks if the rhapsode or the fisherman would know whether inthese lines, Homer speaks or not. Here, the notion of falls tothe side, but the ambiguity of is most evident. Homers similes areone of his distinctive stylistic achievements; they are not simple compari-sons. According to Lesky, Homeric similes create many correspondences,include a brilliant wealth of detail, and give depth and coloring to theaction they describe.47 A fisherman would almost certainly not be ex-pected to give a proper assessment of these lines. The technical accountseeks to make all poetry univocal and thus genial to interpretation; the useof metaphorical speech problematizes the univocal understanding of in the technical sense (as correctly) and invites us to acknowledge theexistence of its esthetic sense (as beautifully). Even if the fisherman tellsus that Homer has correctly described weighted fishing hooks by acknowl-edging the fact that hooks are often connected to a cows horn, he willhave assessed the passage in a superficial way and have missed its estheticqualities entirely.

What these successive analyses open up for, I suggest, is the possiblecoexistence of beauty and correctness. This is not, in itself, implausible:surely a line of poetry can be both correct (to the extent that it properlyimitates some aspect of the world) and beautiful (to the extent that such aline is harmonious and rhythmic). If this is right, then and techn and inspiration are compatible, and this points us toward thepossibility of an account of poetry, which conceives of it as both technicaland inspired. Indeed, there may be both a deeper sense of beauty and adeeper sense of correctness implied here whereby they do not merely

47 Lesky 1963, 64.




overlap in an incidental way (a technically correct imitation that happensto be beautiful) but come together in a more fundamental way. They docome together, I suggest, in the notion of divine truth.48 While technicalcorrectness concerns imitating the practical activities of a craftsman, divinetruth concerns the underlying structure of reality, which is the object ofthe philosophers inquiries.49 While superficial beauty concerns the formalfeatures of verse, i.e., their pleasure-giving harmony and rhythm,50 the dee-per sort of beauty understood as divine truth concerns the harmonyand rhythm of the cosmos, i.e., its order, which makes it knowable andripe for inquiry.51 If this deeper, philosophical sense of beauty is gesturedat in these passages, an important question remains: whether and to whatextent the poet can represent this beauty in his poetry and thus transmittruth to his audience. I return to this question later in section 3.3.

48 Dorter 1973, 756, also sees the dialogue as pointing to divine truth as a deepersense of beauty, but, appealing primarily to Phdr., he develops this idea in a radicallydifferent way. In his view, beauty is a sensuous reflection of the primal order under-lying the whole of reality and, via this connection, all harmony and rhythm can besaid to contain some truth irrespective of content. For Dorter, this means that thepoetry can be an imitation of the divine; this strikes me as an overly optimistic view from Platos perspective about what the poets can accomplish. On Dorters view,the divine truth of a poem its affinity with the primal order can be directlyexperienced by the audience through the poems rhythm and harmony. This seems tocontradict the depictions of poetic experience, as we see them in the Ion itself.

49 This need not be understood in a robustly metaphysical sense as implying commit-ment to the theory of forms. Socrates famous what is it? question expressly seeksthe principle which serves to unify an object or property, i.e., the one underlying themany.

50 Dorter 1973, 76, denies that Plato thinks of beauty as giving pleasure, but his argu-ment does not work. While he locates the beauty of verses in their form, i.e., theirharmony and rhythm, he denies that beauty gives pleasure on the grounds that theIliad, the most frequent example of beautiful art, has gruesome and thus unpleasantcontent. Dorter cannot have it both ways: after locating the beauty in the Iliads me-trical form, he cannot draw conclusions about its beauty by consideration of its repre-sentational content. Though Plato does not admittedly focus on the pleasure-givingqualities of poetry in the Ion, the connection between beauty and pleasure is made inHipMa. 297eff., with music mentioned prominently at 298a. Interestingly, this sug-gestion comes only after two more promising definitions suggesting a deeper sense ofbeauty (the appropriate (293eff.) and the useful (295bff.)) have failed to generate aproper account.

51 This suggestion obviously has Pythagorean resonances and is further developed byPlato in later dialogues, but the connection itself is embodied in the very word forthe universe, : the word primarily means order but also means ornament. SeeLSJ s.v.




3.2 Two Kinds of Divination

Given the use of divination both as a paradigmatic techn in the technicalaccount (Socrates very first example at 531b) and as a primary analogy forpoetic inspiration in the inspired account (534d), it is surely interestingthat Socrates comes back to it yet again in quoting two long passages fromHomer (539ad). Its role, I suggest, is to provide a model for the compat-ibility of techn and inspiration. Continuing his refutation of Ions view ofhimself as a technical expert, Socrates asks for (and supplies) passages inHomer which are supposed to be appropriate for a diviner to judge. Twofeatures of the passages are important: first, the passages are in fact point-edly inappropriate passages for a diviner to judge; second, each passagewould require the judgment of a different kind of diviner.52

In the first passage (Odyssey XX.3517),53 Theoclymenus perceivesthat Athena has made Penelopes suitors mad, and he has an inspired vi-sion of their impending deaths. It does not take a diviner to know thatTheoclymenus has truly seen their coming deaths. Anyone familiar withthe Odyssey knows that he is right about that. In fact, Socrates alluded tothe very scene in which Odysseus slays the suitors earlier in the dialogue(535b). But in order somehow to judge the passage for technical accuracy,another diviner would need the impossible: access to the inspired vision.While the future to which the vision refers is available to any reader ofthe Odyssey, the inspired vision itself is located in the mind of the seer. Inthe second passage (Iliad XII.2007), Homer describes an eagles encoun-ter with a snake. Here we have a different problem. We are told the bird-sign, but not its interpretation.54 How could a diviner know if the meredescription of a birds struggle with a snake is well, correctly or beautifullydone? There is nothing for a diviner to judge without knowing the inter-pretation.55

The different ways that these passages are unsuitable for analysis by anexpert highlights the significant differences between the types of divinationimplicated.56 The first case fails because of the inaccessibility of a divinely

52 On the different kinds of diviners, see Cic. Div. 1.12; Halliday 1913.53 Plato omits line 354.54 On the interpretation of bird-signs, see Halliday 1913, 24671.55 In Il. XII.210ff., the sign is taken by Polydamas to mean that the Trojans should not

proceed beyond the walls to burn the ships of the Achaeans. It is unclear whether thesign is interpreted properly.

56 Two other differences between these passages are of note. In the first passage, Homerspeaks as a character, Theoclymenus, while, in the second, he speaks as the narrator.Also, in the first, he employs metaphors and rich imagery, while, in the second, hegives a bare description of the events. I pass over these differences as their possibleimplications are not directly related to my task here.




inspired vision, and the latter, because the omen does not become compre-hensible as a divine sign prior to its interpretation as such. If the inspiredaccount is right about the fully passive and irrational nature of inspiration,then the inspired vision itself would require a rational interpretation in or-der for the content or meaning of the vision to be rationally understood.Otherwise, it could not play a role in practical reasoning. The figure ofthe diviner is on the border, as it were, between techn and inspiration.This passage not only provides a second impetus for a view that combinestechn and inspiration, but it suggests using the analogy of divination tohelp formulate it.

3.3 The Oracular Model

Given the two impetuses for a combination of the technical and inspiredviews and the prevalence of divination in the dialogue, I use the exampleof oracular divination, which incorporates both inspired vision and ra-tional interpretation, in order to fill out some details of this account.57 Anoracle, e.g., the oracle at Delphi, contains a divine seer and a technical seer,the prophts. The divine seer has a more direct relationship with the god;ecstatic and possessed, she is the passive vehicle of the gods message. Butsuch proclamations must be rationally interpreted. Consider Platos owndescription of this process from the Timaeus:

While he is in his right mind, no one engages in divination, however divinely in-spired and true it may be, but only when his power of understanding is bound insleep or by sickness, or when some sort of possession works a change in him. Onthe other hand, it takes a man who has his wits about him to recall and ponderthe pronouncements produced by this state of divination or possession, whether insleep or while awake. It takes such a man to thoroughly analyze any and all visionsto determine how and for whom they signify some future, past or present good orevil. This is the reason why it is customary practice to appoint prophets() to render judgment on an inspired divination. (71e372b1)58

57 Though the Ion makes no particular mention of oracular divination, the importanceof divination in the dialogue as a whole and the resolution of the tension betweeninspiration and technique which oracular divination provides makes the move irresis-tible. The connection between poets and seers is affirmed by Socrates in Ap. 22ac, adialogue in which the basic model of divination is the Oracle at Delphi (20eff), andSocrates makes repeated reference to his interpretation of the oracles message. Cp.Meno 99cd.

58 The translation is Zeyls in Cooper 1997. On the use of this passage to help under-stand the nature of poetical inspiration, see Tigerstedt 1969, 712, where the parallelbetween poem and oracle is suggested, but not developed. While I am certainly sensi-tive to worries about using a late dialogue like the Tim. to interpret an early onelike the Ion, the account of divination offered here does not seem connected in any




At Delphi, the interprets the fragmentary message uttered by thedivine seer into dactylic hexameter as an ambiguous response,59 which inturn has to be further interpreted by whoever asked the oracle for help.60This means that inside the oracle itself, two motions are contained, onedivine and the other technical. Once the oracular response is given to thepetitioner, yet another interpretation must be conducted in order to makesense of the oracles ambiguous reply. Crucially, the petitioner begins thewhole process by actively seeking out the answer to an important question;since the petitioner must see something true in the text of the oraclesresponse to her question and interpret that response, the petitioner andthe oracle engage in a kind of dialogue.

It is worth pausing here to look at the Apology and Socrates ownresponse to the Oracle at Delphis proclamation to Chaerephon that thereis no one wiser than Socrates (21a68). Socrates considered it to presenta riddle (21b4), was initially at a loss to the gods meaning (21b7), andthen set about an investigation in order to attempt to refute the oracle(21c1). Socrates thus sought to interpret the oracles meaning and onlyafter he could not manage to refute the oracles apparent content did heaccept its proclamation as legitimate. Socrates initially assumed that theoracle means that he is wise in the sense of possessing divine wisdom, andon that basis approached the supposed experts; but he later came to realizethat there is a human sort of wisdom worth very little that is beingattributed to him (20de; 23aa). Thus, the proper interpretation onlyemerged after much testing and inquiry. Socrates claims that the god doesnot lie (21b6); however, the authority of the proclamation does notmerely stand on its own.61 Socrates, in short, subjects the oracular pro-nouncement to rational testing, without which he would have had no realunderstanding of the oracles pronouncement and no guidance as to how

way to any of the metaphysical and epistemological views that are characteristic ofthe later dialogues and absent in earlier ones. Indeed, it seems implausible that, overthe course of Platos life, the nature of divination had changed so radically that whathe describes as customary later in his life is irrelevant to what he says earlier.

59 The primary sense of is to be an interpreter of the gods (LSJ s.v.). I didnot translate as interpreter only to avoid seeming as though I were conflat-ing it with . In Zeyls translation, in this passage, is rendered asinterpreter.

60 See OCD s.v Delphic oracle. This account is controversial with respect to the natureof the priestesses uttering and thus the nature of the priests translation.

61 On the debate over Socrates attitude toward the oracles proclamation, see Brick-house and Smith 1990, 967. They are surely right to see that Socrates does notmerely dismiss the oracle, but I am not in agreement with their larger picture of therole of the oracle in Socrates mission.




to respond to the oracle from a practical standpoint, i.e., how to live andwhat to do.

How does this account of oracular divination help us to understandwhat the Ion suggests about poetry, inspiration and techn? I have arguedthat the dialogue, by showing the inadequacy of both the inspired andtechnical accounts of poetry, points us in the direction of a combination.This is not accomplished by the dialogue, but rather suggested by it. Thus,in attempting to fill in the details of the oracular account, I am inevitablygoing beyond what the dialogue explicitly offers.62 I take as my model thethree steps contained in the oracular paradigm, and this model providesme with a way of understanding the origin of poetry, its value and theproper way to approach it.

On the view of the origin of good poetry that I am suggesting, stepsone and two are both internal to the poet: the poet plays the role of boththe divine seer and the technical interpreter.63 The Muse inspires the poet,who must interpret the vision and, using poetic techniques, gives it expres-sion in rhythmic and harmonious verse. Thus, the poet and the Muse areboth, in their own ways, responsible for the poem. The poet may be re-sponsible for any superficial beauty and correctness the poem might have,but only the Muse can be said to be responsible for a poems deepbeauty.64 This explains how the poets can say many beautiful things with-out any understanding of what they say (Ap. 22c23).65 Socrates nowheredenies that the poets say many beautiful things; he even goes so far as toclaim that they say many true things (Meno 99c35). What he deniesconsistently is that knowledge can be attributed to them on that basis.

62 As I will show, the fact that the dialogue points to a view without actually articulat-ing it is just what one would expect given the picture of poetry that emerges in theoracular account. Plato, as author, provides us, his readers, with provocations to phi-losophical reflection and with avenues of inquiry, but not with clear and decisive finalanswers.

63 Woodruff 1982, 150n.17, considering a view that would assimilate poetry to pro-phecy, complains that the analogy between poetry and prophecy breaks down. Pro-phets speak in tongues only a specialist can decipher; but any Greek can make a goof interpreting Homer. By focusing on the oracles message to the petitioner, as gen-erated in two steps by distinct types of seers, my use of the analogy restores the sensein which prophetic utterances are accessible to non-experts. Surely anyone can at-tempt to interpret the oracle at Delphi.

64 Woodruff 1982, 145, claims that all the beauty of a poem comes from the inspiringgods. In my view, all of the deep beauty, i.e., truth, comes from the inspiring gods,while the superficial beauty what Woodruff calls aesthetic beauty may comefrom the poet.

65 Cp. Men. 99b-d. Even if Stern-Gillet 2004, 195, is right that, in the inspired account,inspiration serves as a kind of stand-in for dearth of explanation, there is still some-thing to be explained, namely the fact that the poets sometimes get it right.




Indeed, if we take Socrates to mean deep beauty here, then we have anexplanation for why Plato pays attention to, quotes and analyzes poetry sofrequently in his dialogues.66 On this view, the poets audience must inter-pret the poetic articulation of the inspired vision to see where its truthlies, i.e., one must subject the poem to rational scrutiny.67 It is onlythrough this active process of testing and investigating that the truth ofthe poets vision can be accessed by another.

Just as the oracular model requires that the oracles petitioner takean active role in interpreting the oracles meaning, so too does this modelof poetry require that the audience take an active part in approaching awork of poetry, determining its meaning and using it in order to seek thetruth. Unlike with the oracle, however, one does not have a guarantee thatthere will be some truth in the poem. On the inspired account, only goodpoets are inspired (533e), and only when they are writing good poems(534de).68 It is simply not possible to know ahead of time whether apoet has been inspired by the Muse, or whether he is merely an inferiorpoetic technits.69 The poem itself must be tested, and if a deeper truthemerges from ones reflections on the poem, only then can we conclude,

66 For the extensiveness of Platos quotation of and reference to poetry, see Tarrant1951; Halliwell 2000. As Halliwell 2000, 94, puts it, [i]n the case of Plato, an en-gagement with the culturally powerful texts and voices of poetry is so evident, sopersistent, and so intense as to constitute a major thread running through the entirefabric of his writing and thinking.

67 LaDrire 1951, 31, argues that part of the point of the dialogue is to establish thatthere is no science of as literary criticism, and further, that no such thing is possible. Iam in full agreement with this. I am not claiming that Plato thinks that one needs aliterary critical techn to understand a poem; rather, he is suggesting that one needs aphilosopher to see whether a poem contains any truth. For Plato, all other considera-tions are ultimately unimportant. See Trivigno forthcoming.

68 Given the example of Tynnichus, it seems clear that being inspired in one case doesnot imply that one is inspired in all cases. It may very well be that only certain linesof a poem are inspired. This restriction insulates my account from the kind of criti-cism that Woodruff 1982, 146, levels, namely, that poets, being mouthpieces of thegods, should all say the same thing.

69 Woodruff 1982, 145, considers the possibility that poets have some skills at prosodyor diction but then claims that Plato denies the poets a techn, even of pure style.He adduces Phdr. 263a in support, but strangely ignores Phdr. 245a: If anyonecomes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiringexpert knowledge of the subject without the Muses madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out oftheir minds. Indeed, the contrast being drawn is explicitly between a poet composingmerely with techn and one composing also with the inspiration of the Muses. Onthis issue, see also Janaway 1995, 167, 1689.




retrospectively as it were, that the poet was inspired when he wrote it.70Indeed, one must be careful not to confuse merely superficial beauty withthe deeper kind, though this is in practice difficult to do. The value ofpoetry consists in its deep beauty and correctness, i.e., in its divinely in-spired truth.71 There is, by contrast, little value in technical correctness orsuperficial beauty, and its similarity to deep beauty makes its positivelydangerous (more on this below in 4). A poem may very well properlyimitate the charioteer using verses that are harmonious and rhythmic, butthis does not imply that the poem contains any deeper beauty that may beuncovered by reflection. It should be emphasized that neither in the caseof a poem that has superficial beauty and correctness nor in the case ofone with deep beauty are we warranted in attributing any content-knowl-edge to the poet. By extension, then, neither the rhapsode nor the audi-ence can be said to have knowledge on the basis of their familiarity with apoet.

The oracular model, I suggest, shifts the focus away from uncoveringthe nature of poetic composition and origin of poetic authority and refo-cuses attention on the audience of poetry. The process of investigation thatthe poem provokes becomes central, and the poet as authority figure re-cedes. Indeed, to ask about the authority of the poet is to ask the wrongquestion because it assumes that poets can be counted on to be reliableguides to truth. They cannot, and poetry cannot transmit truth to a pas-sively receptive audience.72 Poetry can, however, help us to see matters in acertain way by sparking an insight, but the truth of the vision is onlyaccessible to an individual who interprets and critically engages the insightfor herself, in short, who approaches the poem as a philosopher. A workof poetry, like an oracle, does not wear truth on its sleeves.73 The oracularmodel, as I suggested at the outset, is anti-authoritative, and the role ofpoetry is subordinate to the pursuit of truth. By encouraging the activeengagement of the audience and downplaying the authority of the poet,

70 This view is consistent generally with Platos use of inspiration, as Woodruff 1982,139, notices, as a common factor in Platos explanations of human success.

71 Cp. Moravscik 1982, 30, who claims that according to Plato the objects and pro-ducts of inspiration have at best instrumental value insofar as they contribute to theseeking of understanding on higher, more theoretical levels.

72 Plato is thus attempting to instill in his audience a more critical attitude towardspoetry, while at the same time preserving the idea that, through poetry, one can cometo the truth. The path to the truth involves distrusting the authority of the poets andsubjecting the poetic claims to rigorous philosophical analysis. See Trivigno forth-coming.

73 One might say that the truth of the poem is not in the poem, but rather discoverablethrough the poem. The poem cannot, contra Dorter 1973, 75, directly imitate thedivine; rather, it can provoke a true insight into the divine.




this oracular model guards against the danger that poetry might supplyone with a false sense of wisdom, as in the case of Ion. More positively,poetry can be the impetus to philosophical reflection;74 it can provoke aninsight, but that insight should not be the endpoint of interpretive andcritical reflection but rather a beginning. In this way, poetry can put oneon the quest for wisdom.75

One may have noticed that the rhapsode has vanished from this mod-el. Indeed, on the positive view that I am defending, the rhapsode losesany importance he might have been thought to possess. Only on one ofthe false authoritative models does the rhapsode really have anything tooffer. Indeed, on the oracular model, the rhapsode, one might say, is re-placed by the philosopher. However, as I will show in the last section, thefigure of Ion as a rhapsode is crucially important to the critical implica-tions of the dialogue and the threat that taking poetry as authoritativeposes towards ones self-knowledge and identity. This threat is clearest ofall in the portrayal of Ion in the dialogues final section (539e542b).

4 The Philosophical Purpose of the Comic Figure of Ion

Many scholars have noticed that the Ion, amongst Platos dialogues, seemsparticularly comedic.76 Woodruff calls the Ion a comic dialogue; Oates,high comedy; Wilamowitz, an Aristophanean farce.77 The dialogue was

74 To usurp the magnetic ring motif for the oracular account, we might say that a poet,in turning his audience to philosophy, might inspire them to turn still others. SeeSocrates account of his own protreptic task as a philosopher in Ap. 30b-31c; 33d-34a; 39c-e. Cp. the account of the statesmans art in Euthyd. (291cff.), which, whileaporetic, at least suggests that one of the tasks of the art is to teach the art to otherswho will in turn teach others (292de)

75 Cp. Symp. 209c6-e4, where Diotima claims that the progeny of Homer and Hesiodare finer or more beautiful than human children because, as Janaway 1995, 74, putsit, they give rise to wisdom and excellence. Of course, given the attendant dangersand the presence of a better, more direct route to wisdom, namely philosophical dia-lectic, reading poetry will not be a primary method for education. For the methodo-logical debate between Socrates and Protagoras about the value of poetic interpreta-tion, see Prot. 338e348c. In my view, what distinguishes rhapsodic interpretationfrom sophistic interpretation is that the former takes the poet to be an actual author-ity, while the latter only pretends to take the poet as an actual authority, using thepoets words for his own rhetorical purposes, whatever they happen to be. For ananalysis of sophistic interpretation, see Trivigno forthcoming.

76 There is quite a lot of comedy to be found in Platos dialogues: see e.g., Greene 1920;Brock 1990.

77 Woodruff 1983 in the title of the Hackett edition; Oates 1972, 35; Wilamowitz, asquoted in Tigerstedt 1969, 18




declared spurious in the 19th century by scholars who could not see howa work could be both comic and seriously philosophical.78 Despite thewide acknowledgement of the comic character of the dialogue, no scholarthat I know of has tried to incorporate the comedic elements into a coher-ent interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. I wish to focus my analysison Platos portrayal of Ion as a comic imposter, or , especially as heappears at the very end of the dialogue (539e542b). One common com-plaint about the dialogue is that, put bluntly, Ion is just so dumb.79 Thisfact has forced scholars to speculate as to the real target of the dialogue, asIons stupidity is thought to be unhelpful and even distracting from thephilosophical content of the dialogue. I hope to make some sense of thiswith my analysis to show how something philosophically significant isbrought out through the character of Ion.80 In short, the portrayal of Ionas an imposter shows how treating poets as authorities makes one ridicu-lous and self-ignorant.

The comic imposter, a standard figure from Old Comedy, is an impu-dent and absurd pretender who attempts to lay claim to that what hedoes not deserve.81 In the Philebus, Socrates defines the ridiculous or thelaughable as a dispositional lack of self-knowledge, most commonly in-stantiated as a pretension to wisdom (48e). Socrates glosses this conditionas standing in direct opposition to the Delphic inscription to Know thy-self (48c69). In Ions case, appealing to Homers authority, the rhapsode

78 Woodruff 1983, 1, 5. For the fallacy involved in the thought that comedy cannothave serious meaning or intention, see Silk 2000, 31020.

79 Scholars are fond of claiming that the rhapsodes had a reputation for stupidity inPlatos time, but such claims are not, in my view, very persuasive. The evidence ad-duced for them comes either from the Ion itself and its portrayal of Ion, or from textsthat have clearly been influenced by the Ion, like Xen. Symp. Indeed, in Symp. 3.6,the character Antisthenes suggestion (along with Niceratus agreement) that nogroup of people is more stupid than the rhapsodes seems to have played a undulyprominent role in the historical reception of the rhapsodes. The power of Platoscomic portrayal of Ion, coupled with the absence of any contravening evidence, seemsto have been the decisive factor.

80 Tigersted 1969, 189, rightly sees Ion as a figure from comedy, but does not pursuethis point in his interpretation. Ranta, 1967, 2226, also sees Ion as playing the roleof the imposter, but his analysis remains at the level of the dramatic and does inte-grate this function into the larger philosophical content of the dialogue.

81 Cornford 1961, 122. On the imposter generally, see Conford 1961, 11533. Cp.Arist. EN. 1108a2022; 1127a13b32; EE 1124a2425; Theophr. Char. 23. Onefinds a definition in pseudo-Pl. Def. 416a1011: . (Being an imposter is the state of pretending to a goodor some goods which are undeserved). Cornford 1961, 120, further claims that theimposter is exposed by an ironist, who masks his cleverness under a show of clownishdullness. Though it is tempting to pursue the association of Socrates as ironist, I willlet it pass here. On Socrates as ironist, see Ranta 1967, 2202; Vlastos 1991.




falsely believes himself to be wise. Socrates exposes this lack of self-knowl-edge, first by ironically submitting to Ions authority through ironic praise(530b5c6), and then by undermining that authority through the failedattempts to explain it. Both the technical and inspired accounts subtlymocked Ion the first by insisting that he possessed far more knowledgethan possible, the second by making him out to be insane. Throughoutthe dialogue, Socrates attempts to subvert Ions false self-conception, gen-erated by his purported access to the authority of Homeric wisdom; in myview, he does not do this simply to expose and mock Ion but rather toopen up for him the possibility of self-knowledge and thus philosophy.Plato, by letting us see what Ion in the end does not see that his claimto wisdom makes him absurd cautions us against taking his dialogues asauthoritative sources of wisdom and rather asks us to take them as aninvitation to philosophy.82

In the last section of the dialogue, the arguments take on a pointedlyad hominem character, with Socrates trying to get Ion finally to think forhimself. When Socrates tries to force Ion to take ownership of his viewsby pointing out that he holds logically incompatible claims, Ion simplyshifts his position. When asked what Homeric passages are appropriate fora rhapsode to judge, Ion initially says every single one of them (536e);and even after Ion has conceded that some passages are the provenanceof technical experts, he still claims to be an expert concerning all of the[passages] in Homer (539e6). An exasperated Socrates exclaims: No, Ion!You do not say, All of them! (539e7), pointing out the contradiction.Socrates then mockingly supposes that Ion has forgotten what he has justagreed to but, recalling a similar barb in Hippias Major, rescinds it imme-diately: It wouldnt be fitting for a rhapsode to be forgetful! (539e79).83When Socrates reminds Ion that, on Ions own view (540a6), there arepassages that fall outside of the rhapsodes expertise, Ion attempts to mar-ginalize these passages by casting them as exceptions; as Socrates pointsout, these exceptions extend throughout the entirety of the Homeric cor-pus, which, as we saw, deals with everything (540b).

Socrates fails to get Ion to take a stand, and the latter grasps at yetanother position, claiming to know whats fitting to say for a man or awoman, or for a slave or a free man, or for a follower or a leader (540b3).We begin to see here that the problem is not merely that Ion cannot stakeout a philosophical position, but that his professional obsession has lefthim with an identity problem. He is, in a way, the sum of the characters

82 This is not to vacate the dialogues of positive philosophical content, but rather toinsist that the content is partial and that it is up to us, Platos audience, to follow thephilosophical paths that the dialogue leaves unexplored.

83 Cp. HipMa. 285e; HipMi. 369a.




he plays, but only in the most superficial way. He does not seem to under-stand the distinction between knowing what someone would say and pos-sessing the knowledge that makes what is said appropriate. Thus, in thisfinal attempt to formulate his expertise, Ion comes across as most absurd.Though admitting that he would not know what navigator, doctor, cow-herd and woolworker should say, when asked whether he would knowwhat a general should say, Ion jumps on it: Yes! The rhapsode will knowthat sort of thing (540d23). He claims that the generals techn and therhapsodes are identical, but naturally enough refuses the implicationthat all good generals are good rhapsodes. Since he is the best rhapsode inGreece, Ion agrees that he must also be the best general in Greece:

S: Are you also a general, Ion? Are you the best in Greece?I: Know it well, Socrates this too I learned from Homers poetry! (541b35)

Socrates seizes upon this with a wickedly ironic rebuke: Why in the nameof all that is holy, if you are both the best general and the best rhapsode,do you bother to go around Greece rhapsodizing when you could be lead-ing an army? (541b68). Ions response, that his hometown of Ephesus isruled by Athens and that the Athenians and Spartans think they are ade-quate to the task, implies that he would be willing to fight for either ofthe two main powers locked in a war for nearly 30 years.84

Socrates provides some examples of foreign generals fighting forAthens and proceeds to compare Ion to Proteus:85

Really, you are just like Proteus; you twist up and down and take many differentshapes, until finally youve escaped me altogether by turning yourself into a general,so as to avoid proving how wonderfully wise you are about Homer.(541e6542a1)

In the Odyssey, Proteus takes all sorts of different forms in order to scareoff anyone trying to ask him a question (4.385ff.). Socrates charge againstIon is obviously apt; Ion has endorsed and dropped positions without theslightest hesitation. He has explicitly endorsed inconsistent claims, and histhoughtlessness extends to that most important question of who he is. Byclaiming to be a general, Ion has simply continued a trend that he startedat the beginning of the dialogue. Ion has no self-knowledge; worse, he

84 Apollodorus of Cyzicus, Phanosthenes of Andros and Heraclides of Clazomenae.Nails 2002, 316, uses this passage to set the dramatic date of the dialogue at 413,after the Sicilian disaster but before the Ionian revolt of 412, after which Ephesuswas no longer under Athenian control: according to Nails, the reason that Athensbegan using foreign generals had to do with the acute shortage of leadership, materi-als and manpower after the Sicilian disaster.

85 For the use of Proteus as a metaphor for constantly shifting ones ground, cp. Eu-thyph. 15d; Euthd. 288b.




hardly has a stable self-conception.86 This is because of his shallow andunreflective relationship to himself. Ion cannot engage in a proper dialo-gue because he will not offer his own views; instead, he consistently relieson the authority of Homer. The one thing he emphatically claims toknow about himself is his superior and exclusive expertise with respect toHomer (533c).

Ions particular self-ignorance embodies two distinct tendencies: asrhapsode, Ion plays a dual role of both interpreter and performer. As per-former, Ions self-conception is determined by his rhapsodic performances;he thus mistakes himself for the characters he imitates.87 Through his abil-ity to plausibly reproduce various characters for his audience, Ion con-vinces himself that he is adequate to the tasks for which they are genuinelyqualified. Not only does this harm his self-knowledge but it proves proble-matic for the stability of his very identity. As interpreter, Ion lets his con-ception of the world be dictated to him by Homer, thus losing himself inthe world of the poet.88 Just as he persuasively reproduces his charactersfor his own audience as performer, so too does Homers poetry persua-sively recreate the world to which Ion lays claim as interpreter. His passiv-ity with respect to the authority of Homer makes him an imposter, alaughable figure who is simply incapable of thinking for himself.

Though neither the technical nor inspired accounts were satisfactory,Ion cannot escape the dilemma: he endorses the technical account untilreduced to aporia (533c) and the inspired account until he understandsthat it makes him into a kind of lunatic (536d); but then he simply re-

86 Woolf 1997, 189, finds in the Ion a theory of the self whereby only knowledgequalifies one for selfhood. A core piece of evidence for this theory is to be found inthe comparison to Proteus. It seems much more plausible and true to Platos text tosee Ions lack of a stable identity in his deferential relationship to Homers poetryrather than in his lack of a techn, as Woolf 1997, 1956, would have it. Further,Woolfs view has a clearly unacceptable implication, namely, that carpenters and allmanner of technits possess selfhood, while Socrates himself, famously lacking inknowledge, is, to use Woolfs own elegant phrase, a nobody.

87 An anonymous reviewer has suggested that the expertise peculiar to the rhapsode issurely his facility in performance. As I argue above, the technical account makes nomention of performance, while Ions clearheaded state during his performances is oneargument against the inspired account. In the end, however, it is the rhapsodes knackfor imitative performance that puts his very identity in question; given the criteriafor what constitutes a techn, such a thing could never qualify as genuine expertise.

88 See Pappas 1989, 3856, who calls this aspect of Ions ignorance perverse andcharges the rhapsode with choosing ignorance over knowledge. While I agree thatIon turns his back on a search for truth based on the authority of Homer, it is lessclear to me that this is particularly perverse. Given the prominent role of Homer ineducation, the tendency in Ion to look to Homer for guidance, while certainly exag-gerated in Ion, is surely not exclusive to him.




verts to the technical model, which he abandons for the inspired modelagain at the very end of the dialogue (542b). At the end, Socrates presentsIon with the choice: either he is divine or unjust. If Ion has a techn, heshould be able to give an explanation of it; since he does not, Ion is eitherunjust (because he refuses) or he is unable (in which case he has no technbut is divine). Ion replies, Its much lovelier [] to be thought di-vine (542b12). This final response shows that Ion ultimately does notcare whether either account is true he only cares about the extent towhich each justifies his special claim to authority. Here we see the ambi-guity of in play again, and it is clear that Ions own ideas aboutbeauty only amount to the most superficial kind of estheticism. Not onlyis Ion not oriented toward the deeper beauty of truth, but because hispassive submission to the authority of Homer has left him unable to thinkfor himself, he cannot see any other alternatives, much less begin to for-mulate them.

As the dialogues in general amply attest, there are many paths to self-ignorance and many purported authorities promising wisdom. Platos useof comic technique in drawing Ions character reveals Ion as a pretenderto wisdom with no self-knowledge. Ion becomes a ridiculous figure atwhom we are meant to laugh. But the laughter is hopefully not withoutphilosophical fruit. When we laugh, we negatively assess Ion for his lackof self-knowledge. More importantly, the laughter can remind us to takethe opportunity to reflect on ourselves in order to ensure that we do notfall prey to the same seduction. Indeed, we are invited to see some of ourown attitudes towards Homer and poetry reflected in the character ofIon.89 In showing us the figure of Ion as a comic imposter, and tying hislack of self-knowledge explicitly to an inauthentic relationship to Homers

89 There is a danger here, as Nehamas 1998, 48, points out. If Plato puts an insurmoun-table gap between his readers and the interlocutors, then this might actually harmthem. Nehamas thinks it does: he claims that Plato uses irony as a means for lullingthe dialogues readers into the very self-complacency it makes them denounce. It isdeep, dark, and disdainful. In my view, Plato evades this danger through what Miller1999, 2569, calls mimetic irony, i.e., the partial identification of the audience withthe interlocutor. While we are surely not meant to identify with Ion fully, we surelyare meant to recognize certain tendencies in ourselves that are caricatured in Ion, e.g.,the admiration of great poets. Blondell 2002, 8893, attempts to refute Millers no-tion on the grounds that it would be morally dangerous for the readers to identifywith the interlocutors at all. She rather claims that readers are meant to disapproveof all but Socrates. Blondells criticism, in my view, assumes an over-strong sense ofidentification. The reader might partially identify with the interlocutor withoutmuch risk. I doubt that there is any danger in understanding, from a first personalperspective, Ions love of Homer Socrates himself admits to loving Homer in theRep. (595b-c). Without some such partial identification at work, it is hard to see howPlatos pedagogical aims could get a foothold in his audience.




poetry, Plato shows us precisely how not to read to his own dialogues. Ionpasses on Socrates invitation to philosophy. We should not make thesame mistake with Platos.

5 Conclusion

I hope to have resolved the three interpretive difficulties I mentioned atthe outset. First, both poetry and rhapsody are targets of the dialogue, butthe core target is the conception of the poets as authorities. Second, thecomic presentation of Ion has a philosophical purpose, namely, portrayingthe deleterious effects on ones character, if one takes the poets as autho-rities. Third, the dialogue endorses neither the technical nor the inspiredaccounts, because they both make poetry out to be authoritative, butrather gestures toward an oracular model which is anti-authoritative. Goodpoetry is oriented toward provoking a critical, philosophical reaction in itsaudience, and it would seek to avoid being cited as an authoritative storeof wisd

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Apeiron Volume 45 Issue 4 2012 [Doi 10.1515%2Fapeiron-2012-0006] Trivigno, Franco v. -- Technē, Inspiration and Comedy in Plato’s Ion