This dialogue’s basic proposition falls apart once you realize that Ion misconstrues disliking something (in this instance, Hesiod whom he considers far inferior to Homer which is definitely true but point aside.) with having nothing at all to say about it. This entire dialogue is just weak and I can see why it would turn people off of Plato. I reread it and just wanted to bitch about it because it is very lacking.
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>>23920255I read all of this first one but haven’t gotten to the other two yet.I agree with the main theme that Ion the dialogue seems more concerned with Plato seething at poetry and interpreters. At the very end, Socrates says “either poetry is an art and you the interpreter are a con artist or poetry is divinely inspired and you the interpreter as well as the writer of the poem have no real ability of your own yet are honest.” The dialogue seems a complex way for Socrates to dunk on poets and artists. Even his apparent appraisal of Homer early in the dialogue can be read ironically. Everything the guy says is hidden behind sarcasm and untruthfulness.
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>>23920258>speak well of HomerThat is my main point of contention with the dialogue. Ion acts as if being able to speak highly of Homer means he can’t speak at all about poets whom he dislikes such as Hesiod. In this dialogue, Socrates talks of how art critics speak highly or negatively of paintings based on their knowledge of the skill of painting. I don’t see why Ion would be at a loss entirely to speak of Hesiod in any manner if he dislikes Hesiod. He could speak about what he disagrees with in the poems of Hesiod.
>>23920274Did he employ some stupid analogy like "rocks are more dense than wood and they drown in water, but wood doesn't, and likewise your opinion if it is negative should drown" or something stupid like that.
>>23920266Yeah, this final write up hits the nail right on the head. Ion the dialogue is about how artists and poets are clueless in the same way that Euthyphro is about how religious people are clueless. That is what I took from them. It is a roundabout way to dunk on Homeric rhapsodes and not to actually praise them for divine talent which he seemingly does.
>>23920263I don't think he's seething about the poets (and I think you could turn things around in, say, the Republic, and argue better that the critiques of poetry are ironic), but that the Ion is meant to inquire into what the relationship between techne and poetry might be. The real conflict that Ion himself presents is the not uncommon opinion of the time that the poets do what they do by divine inspiration, but somehow everyone more or less still asserts that this poet is better than that one, which undermines their opinion, re: inspiration, somewhat.
>>23920276Socrates compares poets to physicians. Physicians can speak about all topics related to medicine and yet poets can seemingly according to him only rate poets they personally enjoy. It is a false analogyWell, and in discussions about the wholesomeness of food, when many persons are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, will he who recognizes the better speaker be a different person from him who recognizes the worse, or the same? Ion. Clearly the same. Soc. And who is he, and what is his name? Ion. The physician. Soc. And speaking generally, in all discussions in which the subject is the same and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the good know the bad speaker also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he know the good when the same topic is being discussed. Ion. True. Soc. Is not the same person skilful in both? Ion. Yes. Soc. And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus, speak of the same things, although not in the same way; but the one speaks well and the other not so well? Ion. Yes; and I am right in saying so. Soc. And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the inferior speakers to be inferior? Ion. That is true. Soc. Then, my dear friend, can I be mistaken in saying that Ion is equally skilled in Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges that the same person will be a good judge of all those who speak of the same things; and that almost all poets do speak of the same things? Ion. Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have absolutely no ideas of the least value, when any one speaks of any other poet; but when Homer is mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention and have plenty to say? Soc. The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that you speak of Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak of him by rules of art, you would have been able to speak of all other poets; for poetry is a whole.
>>23920282>The real conflict that Ion himself presents is the not uncommon opinion of the time that the poets do what they do by divine inspiration, but somehow everyone more or less still asserts that this poet is better than that one, which undermines their opinion, re: inspiration, somewhat.Yes, so a way of dunking on poets. That is what it is getting at. Saying they aren’t divine by ironically saying they are divine. Saying that Homer has no actual knowledge within his poems by taking apart all the stuff about charioteering and the like (if Homer knows Jack shit about chariots and ships why would you trust him with knowledge of the divine?) I can’t tell whether I disagree with this dialogue based on the holes in Socrates and Ion’s line of questioning or if it is far cleverer than when taken at face value.
>>23920185Nobody healthy cares about the ugly pest and the horde of brainlets who didn't realize they could simply turn the tables on his own ugly-driven value judgments and preconceptions.
>>23920282To add, Socrates at a few points leaves open the possibility that the poets do what they do by techne, and what would follow would be an explanation of why some poets seem better than others according to whether they know the art of poetry well, and almost every time Socrates raises that possibility, Ion sidetracks it, but in a way that seems to shed light on the opinions about revelation.It might rather just be that the Ion particularly seems more of its time,since we tend to be more open to saying someone could compose something through knowledge of the art, and when we see someone compose something by shooting from the hip, we don't tend to say it was through a god.
>>23920286I don't think so, that seems more like dunking on what non-poets think poets do. When almost every poet of the period opens their poem with an appeal to the Muses, it might be that this is just a formula for effect, the way that the rhetors composed their court speeches in a kind of standard way with regular formulas.
>>23920292My big problem that I kept coming back to was that Ion says he “wakes up” when Homer is being discussed but he falls asleep when the other poets such as Hesiod are mentioned because they suck. Why could he not explain the ways that Hesiod and Homer differ and what he dislikes about Hesiod so intensely? Keep in mind that Socrates himself asks this question in the dialogue and Ion doesn’t give a proper answer. There are many citations to Homer from Socrates in the text but none of them are used by Ion to posit actual literary analysis of what he likes about Homer or seems lacking in Hesiod.
>>23920295> it might be that this is just a formula for effectOr it is because the pagans believed their own poets to have been divinely inspired even in contradictory poems such as Hesiod and Homer as you yourself said earlier in this thread. I doubt any appeal to the gods was for dramatic effect.
>>23920297Well, having read both Homer and Hesiod, I suspect that what appeals to Ion is the heroic and grand character of Homer's poems, whereas Hesiod's (which I like quite a bit) tend to be at a distance from man, and when they focus on man, it's something like the Works and Days which says "be a good farmer, don't hope for too much." He might not be cognizant of that difference precisely, but reading Homer makes him feel like a general or a hero, and reading Hesiod doesn't make him feel like he's anything.
>>23920284typical Socrates
>>23920306Ion seemingly believed that the military knowledge imparted in Homer is enough to warrant him a job as a general but then he backs down from this by saying that he can’t ask for the job because he is foreign born even though he has incredible knowledge of war stuff from Homer.
>>23920299It's a common trope of the lyric poets (like Simonides and Pindar) too, and there's enough known about them to recall that they tended to write for patrons, hence an appeal to Muses may be a stock formula or for effect. I don't think that contradicts anything I said elsewhere.
>>23920284>Well, and in discussions about the wholesomeness of food, when many persons are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, will he who recognizes the better speaker be a different person from him who recognizes the worse, or the same?I don't get it.What is he saying here?
>>23920185Filtered brainlet
>>23920312Pindar might have believed he was divinely inspired. Divinity was serious business. Either way, I feel clueless for taking the dialogue at face value when I had first read it. “If poetry is really divine then you must lack any skill or merit because it is all the gods’ doing.”>Then, again, you are obliged to be continually in the company of many good poets; and especially of Homer, who is the best and most divine of them; and to understand him, and not merely learn his words by rote, is a thing greatly to be envied. And no man can be a rhapsode who does not understand the meaning of the poet. For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means? All this is greatly to be envied. This bit of dialogue is so horribly facetious it makes me embarrassed for not picking it up immediately. >>23920318Physicians can speak about all medicine and food and when a man says correct stuff about medicine he can decipher what is correct and incorrect.Ion otoh claims he can not speak about what is correct or incorrect about poets he doesn’t care for such as Hesiod because his proposed knowledge is centered around Homer.Physician =knowledge of all medicine and foodIon= knowledge of one poet Homer. No knowledge of Hesiod
>>23920284>you speak of Homer without any art or knowledgeHe doesn't know why he likes Homer and dislikes other poets, his thinking isn't formal like someone trained to formally analyse. He has no knowledge only conditioning like an animal. The greatest contribution Greeks gave to human development was formal thinking.
>>23920332Yeah, his entire belief in divinity is because he was exposed to Homer randomly. That is pretty much every religious person nowadays. They just believe the first religion they were exposed to as children from the place where they live.
>>23920318Just that someone who practices an art will recognize both a better and worse speaker about the art they practice. Someone who practices medicine or mathematics will be able to judge whether someone else speaking about those subjects knows those things or not.
>>23920337Yes, and that is why Ion should be able to discuss what he hates about other poets who disagree with Homer if he actually had knowledge of skill. He seemingly dislikes Hesiod without being able to articulate anything about his hate.
>>23920328>Pindar might have believed he was divinely inspired. Divinity was serious business.I'm not sure that we know that. I don't doubt that some poets think they might be a conduit for something greater than themselves (I think of Keats), but then there’s poets who think what they're doing is by a certain skillfulness (such as, say, Donne). Whether he's wrong or not, Protagoras (in the dialogue Protagoras) has the opinion about the poets that they composed by art and hid their real wisdom, Socrates implies such in the Republic with a brief reference to whether Homer had underlying meanings, and the Theaetetus takes for granted that Homer says one thing, but really means something else, suggesting some artfulness and intention.I will say that if there's any "dunking on" in the dialogue, it's less of the poets, ad more of the rhapsodes, who seem parasitic to poetry.
>>23920319T. Angry because his skill as a rhapsode-general has been called into questionKeep seething.
>>23920344Homer is very definitely a target in this dialogue even if less so than Ion. Socrates outwardly says that Homer has no knowledge of horsemanship or war (despite Ion professing to be a general) and hints strongly at a lack of knowledge of divinity. With this dialogue perhaps it marks a turning point from paganist philosophy embodied within Homer and also the muses of the arts.
>>23920291The fun thing is I am unsure if you are referring to Socrates or to Homer as that is applicable to both of them.
>>23920350I'm not sure that such an argument makes a target out of Homer per se, since it's readily as true of both Socrates and philosophy, and in ways that Plato would be perfectly conscious of (Socrates isn't a physician, but he can still characterize this or that thing pertaining to the physician's work, including in this very dialogue).
>>23920333>They just believe the first religion they were exposed to as children from the place where they live.Same reason modern retards claim to be atheists.
>>23920375Rereading it I find it this time to put Homer in a negative light. At least Homer as divine arbitrator of divinity I find the dialogue to call into question. Homer as an actual poet as in the aesthetic quality of the poem I am not talking about.
>>23920382That's interesting, I came away with more appreciation for Homer as someone who composes intentionally. Do you think that if he were really divinely inspired, that he would be more praiseworthy?
>>23920395If Homer were truly divine inspired then everything in his poems would 100% be factual working of how divinity works so yes, I would say that would be far better if we had a 100% factual roadmap of metaphysics which is in my opinion what Socrates is saying we don’t have in this dialogue.
>>23920379You sound perturbed
>>23920407Well, he isn’t wrong that atheists also act that way just repeating stuff that they grew up hearing. Any metaphysical ideology that claims to have all the answers - the adherents act exactly the same. Ironically, this includes the Platonists themselves from way back. Aporia era Socrates- no one has the answers Idealist era Socrates- lemme tell you about forms
>>23920404If Homer weren't divinely inspired, than surely we would lose out on knowledge of the divine via his poetry. But, on the supposition that he was, what would be the explanation for the rest of the poets, in those places where they differ from Homer?Do you think it's unlikely that there's anything to know in Homer if you were to suppose, along with Socrates and Protagoras, that there's an underlying meaning to passages?
>>23920411>lemme tell you about formsHe does that while acknowledging he knows nothing. They formalize what apparently seems to be. The idea of God is the same until you become dogmatic about your ideas being the same thing as reality. The best map we have is still just a rough map made from our limited perspective using analogies from our daily existence.
>>23920439Kek, you might catch some flak for that, anon. If I may, the transition from the atobiographical section of the Phaedo into the discussion of how Socrates came to hypothesize the forms might back you up on that.
>>23920438I have to reread Protagoras as well as the rest of the corpus. Socrates changed his mind so frequently and he is so glib and ironic it hurts. To me, the cosmology of Timaeus is closest likely to what the historic Plato believed. Even if the gods were real it is irrelevant because they were made by the demiurge along with the rest of creation.
>>23920446>To me, the cosmology of Timaeus is closest likely to what the historic Plato believed. Even if the gods were real it is irrelevant because they were made by the demiurge along with the rest of creation.Perhaps, though consider the Cratylus' hypothesis of words (such as the names of the gods and words for divinity) being passed down by legislators. The Timaeus account seems bracketed by both Timaeus' assertion that he's telling a "likely story" and the fact that his account is meant what the cosmos would have to be like in order for a version of the city in the Republic to be possible (Socrates is asking Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates to make speeches that would put Socrates' city in motion, i.e., at war), so something about that account is already dependent on supposing the Kallipolis to be plausible.
>>23920263It's a theory of inspiration and genius as far as it concerns art. In Platonism all being comes from the suffusion of good and beautiful perfect forms from outside of Earth: divine paradigms fill the world and work to perfect the world. The artist likewise is an instrument of the muses in this heavenly project of perfection of the imperfect sub-lunar realm.
>>23920462To cut out all the BS, the seventh letter is the closest we have to what Plato truly thought and he does hint at the forms as being his idea of what divinity entails. His actual opinion of Homer is likely not as scandalous as the Republic would have it nor as enthusiastic as Ion seemingly has it with the quote earlier in the thread. It was likely somewhere in the middle that Homeric divinities are real and yet they are as mortal as the world in which they inhabit ie they aren’t part of the forms.Guessing what Plato thought is like guesswork though so idk.
>>23920470That was my initial reading of Ion when I read it as being literal yet the idea of Ion as a Euthyphro type figure sounds more realistic.Socrates says flat out that either Ion is divinely inspired and has no real talent of his own or he is knowledgeable in the art of poetry but he is being obtuse and lying. You can really read it either way as to what he meant by that. He is either calling Ion a lying bastard or he is depriving him of any talent or intellect of his own. That is just factually what is happening in the dialogue. What you read of it is your own analysis.
>>23920333Why wouldn't the gods be historically revealed? You're not a brain in a vat that was switched on last Tuesday. You exist in a world with a history and are a product of that history: both divine history and mundane history.
>>23920484Nta, but wouldn't the issue be why the gods would be revealed through different poets, who are themselves perceived to be different in quality, and who sometimes differ in content?
>>23920312The invocation of the muse is the effective cause of the creative act. It's not a convention, it's how the work gets written: the muse is called to sing, the work is the muse singing. Creativity is theophany.
>>23920490Yes, exactly. Ion can neither defend his love of Homer nor his hatred for Hesiod in any coherent fashion. He just claims he knows Homer well and leaves it at that so Socrates ironically says he must be divinely inspired with no knowledge to call his own.
>>23920185There is absolutely nothing good about Homer's works
>>23920295No. In Platonism the entire world is an act of theophany: every cause a divine act bringing about a manifestation of the good, beautiful, and perfect divine into the imperfect sub-lunar realm. Art is another divine act moved by divine causes. To produce art you invoke the gods of art to be the effective cause of the art work and make the divine appear on Earth.
>>23920503Aesthetically and thematically they are extremely enjoyable. The dialogue hinges on the matter of his religious and warlike content somewhat. The question to Ion isn’t how fun the stories are but what exactly he has learned from them in matters of divination and of statesmanship.
>>23920506It’s not even about Platonists in particular. When Greeks called on the muses it meant they thought they were religiously inspired. It wasn’t just rhetorical effect.
>>23920490No because the different gods have different content and nautures and are at remove from the One above them in a chain of being. Divine perfection and energy flows down and returns back up to the One through the different heavenly gods who are amongst the fixed stars and planets into the sub-lunar realm on Earth (which is also full of different gods and daemons).
>>23920516Yes, that is the standard reading of Timaeus but anon is asking why the poets portray different natures of the same gods themselves and you seem to misunderstand that. Why would two divinely inspired men have different opinions of the same god?
>>23920515Yes it's how all pre-rarional people perceive gods: gods are strong emotions and effects that come into our minds that we seem to have little to no control over. The feeling of love that sweeps over you is literally Aphrodite possessing you. The rage you feel against your enemy is literally Ares possessing you. See Cassirer.Plato and Socrates however live in a rational age and are providing a rational theory for how this archaic and pre-rational understanding could be true.
>>23920495And you know this how? Is this an assertion of fact or a characterization of what was believed? When Ovid, Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius wrote in light of Alexandrian grammarians who set down close studies of metre and diction, and who themselves occasionally offer explicit advice about poetry (Horace especially), do you suppose they forgot their schooling and were only poetized upon the invocation of the Muses? Do you suppose this works as a rule, that one invokes the Muses and comes out with a good work of poetry, or is there some other condition that must hold?
>>23920518That's why we too need to understand the divine in order to correctly interpret what is divine (good and beautiful) within them works of poets. The question as to why one writer could be wrong and another correct if everhthing has a divine cause goes back to the general problem of evil in Platonism: in a cosmos caused by the One alone, how does evil arise? Proclus gave the best answer within Platonism.
>>23920529Okay, for this discussion we are in the 400s bc when Socrates was alive and we are mainly dealing with Homer and yes when Homer said he was muse inspired he was being literal about it or at the least the other Greeks took him to be literal.
>>23920531>That's why we too need to understand the divine in order to correctly interpret what is divine (good and beautiful) within them works of poets.The guy who compared it to Euthyphro was so spot on. The intention of this dialogue is to get Ion to say that he has no literary skill or personal insight into poetry or divinity in the exact same way that Euthyphro is about getting the man of the same name to leave behind divine command theory. Those are the intentions of the dialogues even if they end in aporia without a definitive conclusion.
>>23920529Knowledge of artistic rules is another form of divine cause, in that case the recollection of divine legislation governing form whose effective causes are gods and the One. The rules of art are only effective because they are manifestations of a divine paradigmatic energy suffusing the cosmos.It's a general law of Platonism that applies to all being and causes: works of art and rocks you kick in the street.Knowledge is also theophany. As all.being is.
>>23920506>>23920516I'm talking about the dialogue in OP, and issues it raises. With respect, summarizing Neoplatonist doctrines at me isn't a substitute for talking about the evident issues raised by the Ion.>>23920518Exactly, thank you, anon.>>23920515I don't think we can necessarily take that for granted. The fact that poetry was composed to fit specific meters implies there had to be some measure of skilled artfulness in fitting content to the lines; the invocations are, after all, *part* of the poem, themselves metered and fitting lines. And when Simonides and Pindar sometimes invoke Muses, we can't forget that they were being paid for their poetry by wealthy rulers and tyrants, and that those poems were made to praise those rulers and tyrants paying for them.
>>23920185In the early socratic dialogues Platon is not trying to make arguments that are "the truth". He is trying to disprove the other's point of view through dialogue to reveal why common ways of thinkings of his time were stupid. He is not arguing against poetry but against poets that think they only can speak about one poet and that they think they are better at war than generals and commanders. In lots of these dialogues Socrates reveals at the end that what he said was not true, leaving the job of thinking where the dialogue failed to the reader. If you disagree with the dialogue then that means the dialogue made you think, thus it achieved its purpose.
>>23920538I'm responding to a characterization presenting poetry *in general*, and those Roman authors also invoke Muses; I didn't see any qualification that there was a cut-off date of any sort. Either the claim is true or not.As for:>when Homer said he was muse inspired he was being literal about it or at the least the other Greeks took him to be literalI think we can only say the latter confidently, and, as I pointed out above (>>23920344), the Protagoras, Theaetetus, and Republic imply or assert that Homer composed by some artfulness and intention, having underlying meanings to passages. This is held out as a possibility *in Plato's dialogues* themselves that Homer may not have understood his poem the way listeners would.
>>23920560My issue isn’t Socrates at all. It is Ion. Had Ion taken the time to explain why he disliked Hesiod or what he disagreed with then the dialogue would not continue. He says he is “awake” for Homer but “asleep” for Hesiod which is a non-answer pretty much. Disliking something is not the same as having nothing to say on the matter.
>>23920546Listen, I'm not interested in Proclus being regurgitated at me. I like talking about the dialogues. If you have passages to cite that you suppose make your point, then by all means share those, but I don't care to discuss Proclus' interpretation of Plato when I could discuss Plato.
>>23920551That's the source of your mistake with Ion. All Plato's dialogues are building blocks to a general system that establishs the necessity of very radical conditions of the nature of the cosmos: the One, a cosmos full of paradiamatic & effective gods, the chain of being, eternity of the soul, actual pre-knowledge of all things in the mind that can be recalled, and so on.They are not separate little logic puzzles able to be solved on their own. They are pieces of a grand whole Plato is building that only make sense within that unified theory of every thing.
>>23920566You're literally repeating Ion's mistake. Knowledge of one author or work (Plato/Ion) isn't a discrete task from knowledge of the whole cosmos. The dialogues only make sense within a theory of the whole, the dialogue is a pedagogical technique Plato uses to establish that whole grand theory of how the cosmos works. It's not a discrete little puzzle able to be solved on its own. You're quoting Homer (Plato) and doing Homer (Plato) studies without a knowledge of the divine.
>>23920581Again, for the last time, I'm not interested in discussing Neoplatonism, I'm interested in discussing the Ion and other dialogues as they may relate to it. What you're missing is that even the Neoplatonists had to read through a bunch of dialogues for several years before they could talk about doctrines at a level of generality. Your take just grants that Proclus or Iamblichus or whoever are simply right, and there's no room for the interpretive act for the dialogues at all. You also miss that the Neoplatonists weren't a monolith; Iamblichus and Proclus differed with Plotinus and Porphyry over theurgy; Olympiodorus and Damascius differed with Iamblichus and Proclus over specific important interpretations of dialogues like Phaedo. You can't just summarize The Elements of Theology or the Platonic Theology and suppose that that's good enough. Those positions need to be argued for, and primarily from the dialogues.
>>23920594No, you're reading the Ion in light of conclusions you have from other authors, your own "Homer" (Proclus). By your own understanding, the Ion is supposed to set something up, but you don't see any room for questions or inquiring or seeking, only a prelude for doctrine. Even Socrates says at the end of the Phaedo that his final argument needs to be inspected, but, presumably, you don't think so, and you seem to treat the dialogues in general that way.
>>23920581Incredibly misguided view to have. Just misguided entirely.
>I don't understand what this classroom prop is supposed to mean>"Well then you should consult the lecture notes of the students to understand what the prop was being used to teach">But I don't want to read someone else's notesAll we have from Plato are the classroom props and a few letters. If you want to understand what the props were being used to teach, you'll have to read the students of his school and the outside commentators on his school.
>>23920625Hackett was so fucking right when he compared Neoplatonists to the Jews with their book of Moses. Look how dogmatic and condescending they act about an APORIA dialogue.
>>23920629The commentators are hundreds of years later, differ on all manner of details, and are shot through with Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines and nomenclature. Aristotle spent 20 years at the Academy and differed with both Speusippus and Xenocrates over whether the Timaeus myth should be understood literally (and Speusippus and Xenocrates both asserted "it's not to be understood literally").
>>23920611Dumb. The puzzle pieces don't make sense until plugged into the whole. You'll keep being frustrated and floundering as to what the dialogue is establishing. The dialogues are not self-contained treatises. They're classroom props used in lectures. The lecture notes with the actual content of the lecture come later and from other authors.
>>23920636Uhhh… Speussipus was appointed by Plato himself as head of the academy after he died. Right? Would that not make his interpretation correct.
>>23920638You are acting as if the dialogues were all written simultaneously with one clear goal in mind which is ludicrous.
>>23920638Your "whole" out of puzzle pieces is a later fabrication that you're resistant to testing. Iamblichus thought he was *breaking* with Plotinus and Porphyry by setting up a systematic reading Aristotle and Plato, that he was *breaking* with them when he posited that each dialogue has a discrete skopos. And again, the later Neoplatonists didn't agree on all points of doctrine with their forebears. These things have to be argued from the source, the dialogues. You need to argue out the evidences for these positions, not assert them and point to far later Plato Popes.
>>23920636Why are you using other authors (Aristotle, Speusippes, Xenocrates) to establish the meaning of self-contained dialogues? Do you need them because the dialogues only make sense in a general systematic context, one that the dialogues were being used as classroom props in a school to establish, and are not self-contained little discrete logical puzzles? Why are you using some external.authors to inform the meanings and not others, special pleading and question begging?
>>23920636>literallyWorst concept ever conceived. Literal vs non literal is meaningless. The overarching idea in Timaeus is everything comes from a perfect whole and is degraded by the physical world over time. The description of a perfect society degrading over time is an attempt to use that framework to make sense of a previously established myth based on a place that physically existed which Plato had little information about.
>>23920660The basic concept of a demiurge creating this finite existence only for it to waste away and degrade is literal but the intricacies of that like fire being a triangle in another world are entirely irrelevant. That is just meandering navel gazing and nitpicking.
>>23920640There's different accounts of whether Speusippus was voted as head or named by Plato to replace him. In any case, my point is that there was already disagreement in the first generation over how to understand the dialogues. Speusippus being made head of the Academy wouldn't necessarily be evidence of his understanding being right.
>>23920662>is literalIt's a way to conceptualize observations. There is no literal/non-literal dichotomy.
>>23920672If he were hand picked by Plato himself it sure would but as I said in the other post the actual intricacies of Timaeus are just nitpicking when Plato almost certainly believed in the basic overarching concept of the demiurge.
>>23920654I'm not, but showing that disagreement over how to read Plato wasn't settled. Aristotle studied with him for 20 years and differs with other significant figures in the Academy. Speusippus and Xenocrates even rejected points of Plato's doctrine (detailed by Numenius, a source for the Neoplatonists). But explanation seems to be wasted on you, since you rather evade the point than address it.
>>23920662This is the point Speusippus and Xenocrates took to be figurative or metaphorical. Whether they're right or wrong, they took there to not be any literal creation at all.
>>23920691Wait, so how did this world come to be separated from the world of forms then? What does the earth not having a creation even imply? They believed no creation at all?
>>23920677If he were handpicked by Plato, all it would mean is either that Plato willed his estate to a living relative or that Speusippus seemed the best present out of those still at the Academy. "The best present" doesn't necessitate being chosen for perfect understanding, and, as at >>23920683, Numenius (and Aristotle in the Metaphysics) treat him as differing with Plato.
>>23920693They believed in the eternity of the world. How they reconciled that with this or that is otherwise unknown.
>>23920706That is incredibly fucking stupid then. The world is separated from the higher world of forms (basic tenant of Platonism) being a lower mirror of it and yet the world is eternal and was never created to begin with>>>
>>23920284penultimate and antepenult paragraph here is I think intended as a comedic exchange. In the practical arts, one is expected to be able to criticize and to praise, since we all acknowledge the existence of good and bad food or horsemanship. Socrates sets up Ion to compare this to his own art but in the world of art criticism then as today there are certain opinions you're "supposed" to have, even though you are ostensibly speaking to an audience ignorant of that which you know. Simply put Ion wouldn't have much of a career speaking negatively about those poets he dislikes, he knows this and asks a rhetorically facile question, then having nothing nice to say says nothing at all.
Have you read "The Clouds"? All of "Neo-"Platonism is there being satirised prior to Plato writing any dialogue: the intermediary gods in the sky (clouds) commanding all things and ordering the cosmos. Aristotle (an external text to the dialogues) wrote that Plato's doctrine was unwritten. The dialogues are pedagogical devices to be used to invoke intuitive knowledge within a classroom, not treatises, and the purpose of writing them is explained in Phaedrus (in the dialogue post the second speech). It's special pleading to lean on 19th to mid-20th century authorities on Plato as valid external sources, then deny as external sources the Platonic school that followed his system, roughly consistent through all Roman and Middle Platonic period sources. Arguments from omission are not good, and to make a special pleading omission case to exclude all sources from a period were so much is already lost in preference to an anachronistic post-englightenmemt logicians project to "redeem" a logicians Plato from the actual theological Plato is begging the question and self-deceiving.
>>23920717Your argument must be incorrect because both Socrates and Ion had conceded Homer was the best poet ever earlier in the work and had conceded that Hesiod was mediocre. Soc. But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings? Ion. Very true, Socrates. Soc. And do not the other poets sing of the same? Ion. Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer. Soc. What, in a worse way? Ion. Yes, in a far worse. Soc. And Homer in a better way? Ion. He is incomparably better.
>>23920711They differed over how to understand the forms. If Aristotle is to be trusted (and he might be polemical on the point), Speusippus and Xenocrates were increasingly more "purely" Pythagoreanizing than Plato.
>>23920691External sources are invalid. Only the self-contaned meaning of the dialogues are valid. Plato was a toy designer who left us a box of different logic toys to play with, nothing more.
>>23920729But it wouldn’t make sense for an eternal, material world to be a mirror copy because then the individuals living herein could never return to the ideal world of forms? Is that not the idea of the earth being finite to begin with?
>>23920729What I mean to put it bluntly is that if we were an eternal world we would already be the perfect world of forms and that is clearly not the case….
>>23920524lmao this nigga read the bicameral mind book lmao
>>23920725I've read the Clouds, and it's not satirising the forms, but accusing Socrates of being a materialist who doesn't believe in the explains phenomena by appeal to mechanical efficient causation. His worship of the Clouds is meant to be a worship of mere natural causes that he doesn't realize are divinities in a fuller sense.Appealing to Aristotle is going to run you into trouble for exactly the reasons I stated above, that he differs with other members of the Academy over the interpretation of Timaeus (and Speusippus and Xenocrates are said to have written responses to his criticism by lobbing back the criticism that he didn't even understand Plato's unwritten teachings, let alone their own principles; see Chroust's books on this). This effectively means we have to go in freshly and evaluate the dialogues for ourselves. We would also have to make sense for ourselves whether and why Plato entrust his most important beliefs to three people who all apparently rejected them and differed with each other over whether they understood them properly.>It's special pleading to lean on 19th to mid-20th century authorities on Plato as valid external sources, then deny as external sources the Platonic school that followed his system, roughly consistent through all Roman and Middle Platonic period sources.And which of those 19th-mid 20th century sources did I appeal to above? I just mentioned Chroust in this post because it's hard to come by editions collecting both Speusippus' and Xenocrates' fragments and testimonia. As for "roughly consistent," I'd emphasize "roughly" more than "consistent" (Plutarch is not Plotinus, let alone Proclus), and I'd point out that the differences are crucial if someone's asserting that the knowledge Plato culminates in is x, and it turns out the ancients bicker over the crucial details.Further, I think I've shown good evidence that the differences among the first generation of students leaves plenty of room for doubt about later commentators who differ with each other.
>>23920727saying something is worse is not what I mean by criticizing, I meant engaging in the sort of long form discourse on a worse poet, like a one star movie review might
>>23920733Bring up external sources is valid when you're asserting that those external sources are evidence for your position. They're not. Aristotle must either have been stupid, or Plato didn't teach from the dialogues the way you suppose, and let his students work things out for themselves.
>>23920771Plato was a charlatan and con artist. There. I said what we are all thinking. He made the study of metaphysics a choose your own adventure book.
>>23920776>real wisdom is when someone just asserts shit so you don't have to think about it for yourself
>>23920785Platonism/ Neoplatonism is charlatanism is more like it as is the idea that Plato held a concrete view on anything substantial or that he wrote every single work with a clear theological and metaphysical end goal in mind like anons are literally saying itt.
>>23920711Causal relationships don't have to be temporal.If the physical cup is an instance of a form defined outside anything physical that does not mean the physical world necessarily had a beginning.
>>23921025It would be a bit strange for an eternal perfect world to exist alongside a weaker, eternal mirror world at once. How would a lower world even come in to existence if it weren’t made in the form’s image?
>>23920789>the idea that Plato held a concrete view on anything substantialYou must not have read Laws.
>>23921263Yes, I have read the laws dialogue wherein the Athenian stranger expounds ideas in a similar manner to Socrates.>The Athenian stranger is Plato himselfNo! A thousand times no. You should infer and assume that which isn’t present within the text.
>>23921263I think anon might be overstating things a bit, but saying "what about the Laws?" doesn't settle what "Plato['s] ... concrete view" might be. The Laws, after all self-consciously presents the regime the Stranger is helping Kleinias set up as second-best to what sounds like the Kallipolis of the Republic (739a-e). This would be to, if we identify the Stranger with Plato, make certain concessions that result in something that isn't the ideal.
>>23921295>>23921314Regardless of who the Stranger represents, Plato had concrete metaphysical/moral views:>the soul exists>the Good exists>Knowledge of good and bad is a requirement for a man to be good>helping Kleinias set up as second-best to what sounds like the Kallipolis of the RepublicCould it be that he realized the Kallipolis could only exist as an ideal and reformed his state to be more practical in Laws?
>>23921436>Could it be that he realized the Kallipolis could only exist as an ideal and reformed his state to be more practical in Laws?To speak to the Republic first, I don't think it'd be a matter of "realized," since the ideality is emphasized throughout the Republic at different intervals. To address the Laws, all I'm saying to >>23921263 is that to appeal to the Laws for what Plato believes simply would be also to disregard reasons one might have for reading that work with some caution, one such reason being that it apparently aims lower than the Republic, so as a standard for belief it looks rather like safe concessions, and that it might also be constrained by its presentation of a conversation between an old Athenian and two old Dorics; if it were meant to be achievable and practical, it might only look achievable and practical when considering the Cretans and Spartans, but may not to the Athenians or Sicilians. With respect to beliefs, I think (perhaps contra >>23920789 somewhat, but I think he's just pushing back against a certain dogmatism upthread) that Plato must have believed some things strongly, the most evident being that the life of philosophy is the best way of life.
>>23921507I could concede the part about practicality, because in Laws he is also imagining the ideal state, but I don't necessarily think he's aiming lower.I see your point about appealing to Laws, but shouldn't it be clear that Plato makes several declarations by the time he wrote it? And calling him a charlatan is an egregious stretch when he spent half his time btfoing and exposing charlatans.
>>23921540I am the anon who called him a charlatan and I was being rude for dramatic effect and in order to spurn discussion. I think it is annoying that he never outright says what he thinks in any dialogue and leaves this merely to the spurious epistles yet I appreciate his dialogues from dramatic perspective and as a form of literary analysis of other poets like Homer and Hesiod. Ion is a decent dialogue because it is clear that many people are like Ion, they profess they hate a piece of art and yet when pressed can’t articulate why exactly but just that it makes them “sleep” while the good art makes them “awake.”
>>23921507> I think (perhaps contra >>23920789 (You) # somewhat, but I think he's just pushing back against a certain dogmatism upthread) that Plato must have believed some things strongly, the most evident being that the life of philosophy is the best way of life.Yeah, I was just being rude to be funny and scandalous. Plato believed many things in his dialogues but Socrates isn’t merely a mouthpiece to expound ideas. Socrates says that Ion is divinely inspired in this and yet that may obviously not be the case when you take to account he can’t defend his own positions so it would stand to reason his opinions on Homer would be equally stupid. Socrates hints at that while saying the opposite.
>>23921540>I could concede the part about practicality, because in Laws he is also imagining the ideal state, but I don't necessarily think he's aiming lower.It would require quite a bit to show, but by "aiming lower," I mean that philosophy and the philosopher are not the high point as they are in the Republic, where the the best circumstance for the Kallipolis is to rear philosophers to rule over it. The word "philosophy" itself only appears twice in the Laws, and as close as its regime gets seems to be the Nocturnal Council.>I see your point about appealing to Laws, but shouldn't it be clear that Plato makes several declarations by the time he wrote it?If you're talking about Plato's views, there might be some things one can assert with clarity, like some belief that there is something we call "soul", but the dialogues have such different accounts of it and its powers (e.g., the two tripartite accounts in Phaedrus and Republic differ in important ways), that it's harder to say more precisely what he may have believed about it. Consider that he might believe that "the Beautiful *is*," but that the Symposium's account of it as a transcendent being approached through abstracting is in tension with the Phaedrus' account that the Beautiful is the same as we encounter it "down here" as "up there" as a hyperuranian (250b-e). Are these changes of mind? Did he shift presentations for some purpose? It's not so clear.>And calling him a charlatan is an egregious stretch when he spent half his time btfoing and exposing charlatans.I agree, but I took it that >>23920789 might've been a different anon than >>23920776. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But I agree with you.
>>23921256The blueprint for the world and the flawed implementation of that blueprint always existed. Even if the physical world has a temporal beginning time itself is part of the blueprint so this world with a beginning and end still always existed and always will.
>>23921576I could see that as something people would claim but I think a demiurge of some kind is more rational because it at least gives a reason for earth being imperfect as well as giving it a weaker air of temporality through which the forms are truly eternal in comparison.
>>23921580The demiurge type thing is part of the imperfection. It's in the fallen world like humans even if it has more power over it.
>>23921583It created the world for some unspecified reason likely for its own amusement.
>>23921574>Symposium and PhaedrusI'd think that Plato's dialogues evolve over time as his own views change more than he just takes random positions for the sake of argument (which he may do sometimes).Symposium being an early dialogue and Phaedrus coming after he worked with the Pythagoreans. You can see the Egyptian mystic influence on Plato's middle dialogues (Phaedrus, Timaeus, Critias) and he starts to mention Thoth a bit, but, correct me if I'm wrong, he toned down, if not abandoned, the Egyptian mysticism toward the end of his life.
>>23921574No, I was the same anon in both posts. One need look to any dialogue to see stilted straw men positing the opposing viewpoints entirely in bad faith. Written without any real backbone or standing to push their point forward. Bad analogies and straw men charactersIf literary analysis is comparable to medicine and a physician can decipher which medicine is good or bad then it stands to reason that the rhapsode would have knowledge of appreciating the value of all poets regardless of whether or not he likes them. Ion is simply not written to be a forward interlocutor in this regard. “I hate Hesiod”“Why?”“He makes me fall asleep.”Riveting literary critique from Mr Platon
>>23921594The Egypt crap is also lame. In a spurious epistle, Plato actually gives Socrates reason for disliking writing as being that he doesn’t want his knowledge to fall into the wrong hands who may corrupt it. This idea is far different from what he gives inPhaedrus and has a more political leaning to it.
>>23921587That's a different definition for the "world" than we've been using. The lower gods are part of the world and subject to the higher laws.
>>23921599Yeah I already knew that. The demiurge isn’t a lower god. Lower gods are like the Greek pantheon and such.
>>23921600The demiurge and the material from which the demiurge fashions the world are both created by something higher and subject to it.
>>23921595>it stands to reason that the rhapsode would have knowledge of appreciating the value of all poetsbut doesn't the argument end up saying that rhapsodists are more like possessed dancer than skilled doctors? If a rhapsodist is unskilled then he doesn't have knowledge.
>>23921603So the creator created the worlds creator for what purpose? If you mean that the demiurge partakes of the world of forms that is true but he exists within it.
>>23921604He says that to mock Ion and to make him choose between saying he is a liar who knows nothing or that he has talent which is entirely not his own. It wasn’t an actual hypothesis.
>>23921605The point isn't to find a purpose but to formally describe the world within the framework of perfect forms instantiated imperfectly and reconcile older ideas.>the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas>Plato argues that the cosmos needed a Demiurge because the cosmos needed a cause that makes Becoming resemble Being.It's an imperfect middle-man between eternal perfection and the lower world it built out of the building blocks it was given.
>>23921607>It wasn’t an actual hypothesis.Yeah, maybe.I guess I looked at Ion as a representative for all rhapsodists and the dialogue being a precursor of the critique of poetry in Republic.Homer had to interpret the gods, the rhapsodist has to interpret Homer, the audience has to interpret the rhapsodist. So, then, how can we be sure that the rhapsodist is effectively conveying the god's will to the audience? It seems Plato was asking for further justification of his knowledge so called, and if Ion didn't have it, what rhapsodist would?Afterall, I guess it is hard to pinpoint Plato's intentions. Was Ion a pedagogical introduction to dialectic or was it a shot at rhapsody, or as you're saying, I think, was it a somewhat mediocre/inadiquite critique of Ion himself?
>>23921626Hint: Socrates never directly calls Ion divinely inspired. He gives him an ultimatum of two choices with the one being that he (Ion) is dishonest and knows not what he is talking about. hint hint hint>And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or inspired?
>>23921637I get that by saying he is divinely inspired he is tacitly admitting that he does not possess skill (art). And I get that him "admitting" he is divinely inspired doesn't have to mean that Socrates actually thinks he is inspired. I assumed Socrates has tongue in cheek during the last line of the dialogue.But what are you saying? That Ion conceded prematurely and fell for a false dilemma?Ion kept moving the goal post until he conceded that he did not possess skill/art. So wasn't the dilemma really: >Ok, Ion, you might possess skill, but thus far you have not shown it, and are refusing to.or>You do not possess skill, but might be divinely inspired, although you will never prove that.Where's the miscommunication?
>>23921594I think a difficulty would be settling on when he wrote what, and how one would determine that without already prejudicing an interpretation of these and those dialogues. The Laws seems clear as the final thing he put his hand to, but only on account of Philip of Opus' association in having helped edit it and his authorship of its continuation, the Epinomis, after Plato's death. But deciding whether Symposium was written before or after Phaedrus seems difficult. Another difficulty is that Phaedrus has a brief aside about what something well written might be like (263e-264e), where the negative example used of a poem inscribed on a bronze maiden seems to suggest that one ought to write (and so, also, read) as though there was causal necessity between all the logoi, and it would be strange to bring that up and not try his hand at it. It would obviously be a legitimate and important question whether that holds for all or only some of the dialogues, but it seems like a not bad fit for what he calls "small indications" of his philosophy in the Seventh Letter.
>>23921595See, I don't see them as strawmen, not even Ion or Euthyphro, who clearly aren't philosophers. Callicles and Thrasymachus are easily hated, but they're presented as among the most formidable opponents of Socrates, stating quite frankly what turns out to be to some degree true, that Socrates and philosophers of his stripe won't be able to defend themselves against anyone in the city who decides to wrong them. And I think Plato takes seriously that Socrates' success against them in arguments won't necessarily persuade them of anything (and that very comment is made several times in the Gorgias, almost like a mantra, in the dialogue about the art of persauding through speech). To use Ion as an example, he's surely vain, but how well could any of us account for why art has such a powerful effect on us, or why it's these artists over and against those, or by what means they accomplish their works? The point of the dialogue isn't to clown on Ion, but to inspect opinions concerning these sorts of things, to ask whether someone composes something by technical knowledge of a craft, or by something somehow irrational or suprarational, and if by the former, what the limits of plausibility might be, and, if the latter, what might be the consequences in crediting anyone understanding other such artists. That's the stuff that's important. Ion's not a philosopher, but he's not wholly dumb either, he's voicing opinions we still tend to have about these things (that we don't tend to credit the gods for an artist's work doesn't change that we still tend to say that art is made mysteriously, as though the artist sometimes was letting some force work through them).
>>23921597Not convinced that letter is spurious, and there's, if anything, a great match between it in that passage and the Phaedrus. Don't forget that the second half of the Phaedrus discusses rhetoric with respect to politics as well.
>>23921687Socrates says it as blatantly as can be. “Either you have art… and have been dealing me falsely and are dishonest.”Or“You don’t have any art at all and can’t be considered dishonest.”It is a way to get him to reevaluate his knowledge of art and of Homer.
>>23920379More like christcucks , and all other religious nutjobs out there.
>>23920333>They just believe the first religion they were exposed to as childrenQuite the deranged reach/cope. Also unmeaningful and lacking force.
>>23922060>>23922085You are both acting offended over something which wasn’t even about Christianity. We were talking about why Ion the rhapsode loved Homer so much compared to other poets and the reason is that he himself couldn’t articulate why he liked Homer other than being exposed to him more. We weren’t even talking Christcucks vs Atheshits before you brought it up.
>>23921769The thing with the magnets I see it as like him saying that actors and art critics are far far removed from the truth. The muses originate art and then the poet and then the critic and actor so he is saying that this is how far flung from anything important and germane the lower levels are. Keep in mind that Ion believes his Homeric knowledge entitles him to be a general. He is the equivalent of someone applying for a job as general of the US army because he has watched the George c Scott Patton movie fifty times.
>>23922155Nice opinion. I don't think Socrates would agree with you on magnets. From a conceptual level, the magnetizing chain is kicked off by the muse, the good, the ideal realm, etc. In this sense, the inspiration of the good is perfect and the causal-like chain of iron is basically irrelevant to the inspiration. The poet, reciter, and critic are of different shapes and sizes, but could be inspired all the same - if they are of the right material. From this perspective, I suppose the next step would be finding the art of performance and critique. There are ample examples of acting as an art, perhaps debate or something is the artistic form of critique.
>>23922060You're illiterate and braindead. The dumbest posts imaginable in reply to posts you're incapable of reading.
>>23922155The passage is a bit confusing because there's a couple of different things going on:1) Socrates is initially open to the possibilities that the poets compose what they make by art (technical knowledge), and that rhapsodes interpret the poets by art.2) Eventually, it becomes clear to Socrates that Ion doesn't know anything about Homer by art or knowledge.3) Socrates, as a result, hypothesizes an account meant to explain why Ion is specifically attracted to Homer and not other poets; this is eventually generalized to explain how it may be with poets in general, but that generalization, as a generalization, doesn't per se explain why Homer may seem more powerful than other poets; it raises the question whether the Muses or Gods may possess different poets to different degrees, and, if so, it remains a question what the grounds for that would be (differences in soul?).4) If you take a step back to look at the passage and Ion's initial response, the action of what's taking place is that Socrates, in a speech about divine possession, apparently possesses Ion's soul. That is, Socrates is to Ion what the poet is to the rhapsode in the account he's giving. But then that would raise a question about whether Socrates gives this speeh by possession or by art or knowledge. This would also raise a question about whether there's a poetic element to philosophy, and so whether the "quarrel between philosophy and poetry" in the Republic is rhetorically or poetically overstated.5) Oddly, Socrates prefaces his account of the lodestone by mentioning offhandedly that Euripides called it a Magnesian stone, while the many call it Heraclean. I.e., a poet, who by this account must be possessed in some way, just calls it a stone from an area of Greece, while the many give it a divine name. This would seem to possibly raise the question dropped at several points of whether the poets work by knowledge (and lack thereof, depending), as an alternative to the account Socrates is about to give, and also raises the question whether the many are too ready say of strange phenomena that they're of the Gods.6) Ion, initially enamored with the account, begins to take issue with it on the grounds that, even contra his earlier assertions, that he's "mad" or not using his mind when he recites. He explains that while he's often affected strongly, he still pays attention to the audience because "when they cry, I laugh all the way to the bank, and when they laugh, I cry over the money I'll lose." This statement seems to invert the poet's influence on him, so that it's the paying audience that exerts magnetic influence. This would then seem to raise a question about the rhetorical character of poetry and rhapsody.
>>239224817) Eventually Socrates makes a second long speech, apparently completing his account, where the generalization of 3) is pushed to leveling all the poets so that they're equally possessed. A consequence of this would be that one couldn't take the poets at their word when they differ with each on topics like the divine (consider, with this, Hesiod's opening to the Theogeny, where the Muses "tell lies like the truth, and know when to sing the truth, when [they] wish"; in Plato, see Phaedrus 275c and Charmides 161c; *who* says something is less important than whether what's said is true).8) This second speech (starting at 535e) garners less enthusiasm from Ion, as described in point 6), and so we have, at the level of action, two speeches with contrary effects on Ion. And to re-emphasize my last line of 6), it may be because it doesn't flatter Ion the way the first speech did. So it's not just a question of differences in persuasive ability between poets, but also to what extent poetry can flatter an audience or play to their hopes and desires (do you want to be a bold hero, like in Homer, or a humble farmer, like in Hesiod?).
>>23920693>Wait, so how did this world come to be separated from the world of forms then?>>23920711>The world is separated from the higher world of forms (basic tenant of Platonism)The "two separate worlds" interpretation is over-simplified naive interpretation of dialogs.It's like when even if you don't study a particular idea at all, you get the most easily digestable pop-sci layman version of it through osmosis in the society's info-sphere.But if you start studying it you immediately realize that it's not like that simplistic naive version at all.
>>23923011What's the not-naive view?
>>23923216it's something else, not the "literally two separate worlds" interpretation
>>23923223What is it?
>>23922578>A consequence of this would be that one couldn't take the poets at their word when they differ with each on topics like the divineI think this is the crux of the dialogue, amiright?
>>23923275can't you read?I said "something else".
>>23923320lolSo we say "something else" here, and "something else" there, but imagine the most ideal "something else", the perfect "something else".
>>23923284A significant part. I think the other part is trying to inoffensively offer room to judge the poems as works directed by intention, and so make room for judging them by experience and inquiring why this poet teaches this about a subject while that one teaches that. It may look forward to something like the medicinal lies of the Republic.
>>23923348It's just not what you said and that's why I am right and you are wrong. Any need for further extrapolation indicates your slight IQ. I shan't belabor the point nor pontificate further less I sully myself.
>>23923480Can you guess what a perfect "something else" looks like?
>>23923482> Can you guess what a perfect "something else" looks like?It looks like... something else?
>>23923508So something else would be other than something?
>>23923508bingo!ha-ha>>23923509what?I was just joking.But if I try to answer your question seriously, something else is still something.
>>23923519>something else is still something.How can it be something if it clearly says that it's something else?
>>239224812 is the absolute most important issue of this dialogue and any explanation like “divine madness” I feel should be taken with a grain of salt. Ion knows nothing and so Socrates comes up with obtuse ways to explain his lack of knowledge.
>>23923529Are we developing a theory of the "perfect something else" now?Regular "something else" may belong to the same category as something, but we're talking about the perfect "something else", so it doesn't belong to the category of "something", because its perfection as something else moves it out of that category.What now?
>>23923539I think it's a turning point, but it's not crucial by itself. That Ion is wrong or foolish or what have you doesn't mean that poets aren't either inspired or working by art, and same with other rhapsodes, and it wouldn't change that his shortcomings shed light on prevalent opinions about poetry and the divine. *Those* are crucial, Ion being wrong is the means by which we get to think about those.
>>23923586>But, indeed, Ion, if you are correct in saying that by art and knowledge you are able to praise Homer, you do not deal fairly with me, and after all your professions of knowing many, glorious things about Homer, and promises that you would exhibit them, you are only a deceiver, and so far from exhibiting the art of which you are a master, will not, even after my repeated entreaties, explain to me the nature of it. You have literally as many forms as Proteus; and now you go all manner of ways, twisting and turning, and, like Proteus, become all manner of people at once, and at last slip away from me in the disguise of a general, in order that you may escape exhibiting your Homeric lore. And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or inspired? >>DISHONEST OR INSPIREDThat at the end is what I am thinking of. I don’t really believe that Plato himself would go as to say that poets are inspired. He never said it so. He said “dishonest or inspired.” Choosing inspired was merely a way to save Ion the embarrassment of being dishonest.
>>23923543I think we can prove that Everything is Nothing.If Something Else is not Something, than it's also not Anything, but if it's not Anything, then it's Nothing.But Anything is so perfect that it doesn't care if its Something or Something Else, so from Anything's perspective, if Something Else is Nothing, then Something is Nothing too.So Anything is Nothing too.Everything is Nothing too, because it's either Something or Something Else, and it's Anything anyway.But if Everything is Nothing, then Nothing is Everything.Here is how we proved Nothing.
>>23923607This guy gets it.
>>23923590To be clear, I agree that Socrates is being ironic when he suggests Ion might be inspired, but I don't think he's being ironic at all in holding out that the poets *might* be inspired. That's not so simple to refute or dismiss by itself, and it is (or, perhaps, rather, was) a prevalent enough opinion to need to hypothesize about. The consequence I laid out in 7) at >>23922578 isn't spelled out so explicitly by Socrates, but is left for us to work out (and perhaps there's a competing logos that could better defend it in Plato or elsewhere). In any case, Socrates, if he doesn't suppose the poets to inspired (and I lean toward that), doesn't rub Ion's nose in it (nor does he do so to Euthyphro). Love for the truth might mean having to recognize the difficulty in refuting revelation as a competing claim, and if divine inspiration is false, it needs to be refuted more thoroughly than by dismissing it on account of Socrates' irony towards Ion, if that makes sense.
>>23923607Everything vs nothing is completely inane nitpicking when both partake of the same quality. Read the first page of Polybus Nature of Man.
>>23923624>To be clear, I agree that Socrates is being ironic when he suggests Ion might be inspired, but I don't think he's being ironic at all in holding out that the poets *might* be inspired. One follows directly from the other. Ion isn’t an historical person known to have existed at any time. He is a stand in for the actors and critics who devote themselves to the poets.
>>23923632He's an historical person, Aristophanes mentions him in The Peace. Diotima might be the only possibly fictitious personage in the dialogues (and the suspicion scholars have of Callicles is hard to keep up when mention is made of him being a lover of Plato's own stepbrother, Demos).But, more to the point, irony toward Ion does not make the magnet analogy less of an hypothesis we need to consider seriously. A position isn't refuted just by someone's tone in announcing it (and see those passages in Phaedrus and Charmides I mentioned above, plus Ion 537b-c).
>>23923648Euthyphro is also absolutely a fictional person. Being named “Euthy phroneo” is a tip off. Anyways, the point of the dialogue is men of Ion’s profession as rhapsode. That is who it is aimed at and not at Ion himsef as a personage.
>>23923627What do you mean?Everything and nothing are complete opposites of each other, and everyone knows that because it's obvious and intuitive.What does "both partake of the same quality" even mean?
>>23923652NTA, but uh, his name meaning that doesn't have to entail that he's fictional. That's like saying Chris Moneymaker is fictional since he won the world series of poker in 2003.
>>23923652I don't think that follows. Meno's named means "to remain," and this is punned on in that dialogue and characterizes his own lack of movement in the argument. Cephalus ("Head"), Polemarchus ("War Leader"), and Thrasymachus ("Brash Fighter") are all characterized in ways that play on their names. That's not uncommon for Plato. The same Euthyphro is mentioned several times in Cratylus.
>>23923619lolI think it's a perfect illustration of how silly Plato sounds sometimes.
>>23923661The wayback machine is temporarily offline but what Polybus said is that if everything is of one quality (nothing or something) then it is entirely pointless to speculate because everything partakes of the same quality regardless. Being nothing doesn’t really make much difference than being something unless a second quality were present within them to make them different. The wayback machine is down or I would post On the Nature of Man chapter one.
>>23923665Even if he is real or not the actual character of their persons is common (Euthyphro as the archetype of the religious zealot who can’t really defend his positions and Ion as the literary critic who can’t defend why he likes the poets he does and hates others) and these character archetypes are what the dialogues are aimed at and not the men themselves even if they actually acted that way.
>>23923705Granted, but the types are important as a means of access to opinions. Consider Phaedo 99d-e:>“Now, it seemed to me after these things” said he, “since I had given up on examining the beings, that I must beware lest I might undergo the very thing which those ones undergo who behold and examine the sun during an eclipse. For, I suppose, some destroy their eyes, if they do not look at the likeness of it in water or in some such thing. I was thinking through that sort of thing, and I feared that the soul would be altogether blinded in looking at the things with the eyes and attempting to grasp them with each of the senses. Indeed, it seemed to me necessary to flee into the speeches for refuge, and to examine those for the truth of the beings."
>>23923685I still don't get it.> if everything is of one quality (nothing or something)What does this phrase mean?
>>23923733Look up On the Nture of Man by Polybus
>>23920767I actually came back to this comment and I think you might be on to something. Ion’s hesitation to disparage Hesiod might have a deeper meaning considering the context of the era (conflicting cults and ways to worship the gods?) and Socrates might have been trying to probe it out of him. I don’t believe Socrates actually thought rhapsodes were divinely inspired at all because he gave the two prong choice - you are lying or you are inspired. He was hinting at the former very strongly.
>>23923961>I don’t believe Socrates actually thought rhapsodes were divinely inspired at all because he gave the two prong choice - you are lying or you are inspired. He was hinting at the former very strongly.If I suppose that Socrates doesn't think the rhapsodes work by inspiration via the magnetic analogy, I don't think your observation would by itself settle it. Because, wouldn’t we, at that point, be dismissing one opinion to replace it with another, and only accepting it because we presume Socrates doesn't accept it? The grounds for it would have to be found elsewhere in the dialogue. (And while I'm being a pretentious and pedantic stick-in-the-mud, the two prongs are "held by us to be an unjust man or a divine one"; Jowett translates the Greek more by fancy than according to what it says, Socrates' accusation of Ion deceiving him earlier in that passage has to do with promising to make a display and not actually doing it. That difference might make Socrates' final speeches a bit more flip if he's accusing him of outright injustice for not expressing his hypothesized knowledge. It might need to be asked why Socrates doesn't posit that what Ion has is a mere "knack" as he does to Gorgias.)
>>23924125Because read the comment chain I replied to. Ion has personal reasons for not going against Hesiod and the followers of that poet. That would explain his hesitancy in the dialogue to really explain why he likes Homer more.
>>23924125>That difference might make Socrates' final speeches a bit more flip if he's accusing him of outright injustice for not expressing his hypothesized knowledge. Yes, he has personal knowledge of Hesiod and followers of that cult which he retains because it is politically viable too. That is what first anon was implying, I think.
>>23924131>>23924138I don't think I see that anywhere in the dialogue. Ion seems quite open about dismissing the poets who aren't Homer; the passage that way above is rendered by Jowett as "[Homer] is incomparably better," is much more emphatic, "Better indeed, *by Zeus*," and the last time Hesiod's mentioned, the back-and-forth goes:>Socrates: Don’t you affirm that both Homer and the other poets, among whom are Hesiod and Archilochus, speak about the same things but not similarly, the former speaking well and the others worse? >Ιon: And I speak truly.That seems cut and dry. It might be that the thread conversation is overweighing Hesiod, because he's the next most familiar poet to us, even though a number of other poets are named throughout, all of whom Ion thinks are by some degrees lesser than Homer. As it is, Ion's gotten money and esteem only reciting Homer, so he's presumably not worried the way the one anon way above was supposing.
>>23924194Divinity is a major issue of the dialogue but otoh I think some anons are under weighing the topic of literary criticism. Ion can’t articulate why he likes Homer so he needs the explanation that he isn’t in the right mind when he talks of Homer alleviating him from having any insight of his own. All in all, this is an aporia dialogue so it isn’t as if there is any logical bearing to its conclusions.
>>23924199Can you clarify what you mean by literary criticism? My own understanding would be something of the sort that discusses aesthetic appeal or formal qualities like diction or use of metre, but it appears to me that Socrates introduces the topic of what the rhapsode says as concerning being able to judge what the words mean, whether anything in the poems are true (consider, when they actually quote and discuss Homer, 537a-c, 538b-539d, they only discuss whether various artisans would be good judges), and what the "thought" of the poet is ("...and to learn [Homer's] thought thoroughly, not just his words, is enviable. Because one could never be a good rhapsode if he did not understand the things said by the poet. The rhapsode must be the interpreter of the thought of the poet to the listeners, but to do this beautifully is impossible for the one who does not recognize what the poet means." [530b-c]). The Beautiful certainly has a place here, but it strikes me that it has a surprisingly smaller place here than in other dialogues. As for why Ion prefers Homer, it looks like there are hints here and there that suggest what he's either unconscious of or would be too ashamed to admit: he makes a lot of money reciting Hellas' most praised poet, he's honored and praised himself, and, in thinking that he could be a general, it might be that Homer's poetry raises hopes in him he doesn't get from other poets.>All in all, this is an aporia dialogue so it isn’t as if there is any logical bearing to its conclusions.I don't buy that there's "aporetic" and "non-aporetic" dialogues. I'm happy to call Ion an "aporetic dialogue" as shorthand, but there's plenty of aporias in the "doctrinal" dialogues, and plenty of suggestions for how to account for the problems in the "aporetic" dialogues.
>>23924293>. As for why Ion prefers Homer, it looks like there are hints here and there that suggest what he's either unconscious of or would be too ashamed to admit: he makes a lot of money reciting Hellas' most praised poet, he's honored and praised himself, and, in thinking that he could be a general, it might be that Homer's poetry raises hopes in him he doesn't get from other poets.Of all the stuff you said, this I agree with the most. The dialogue really takes apart any knowledge to be gotten out of Homer (in my view though nearly everyone else itt said opposite). Outwardly, Socrates rejects the claims “oh Homer knows about being a charioteer or pilot” but more importantly to me it is the knowledge of leadership of being a warrior and knowledge of divinity which Homer lacks.Virtually everyone else itt was in disagreement but I see this as being the central point of the dialogue
>>23924501I wouldn't put it so strongly, but I do agree that testing the poets where they can be tested, up against the artisans who could speak to passages pertaining to their arts, is an aim of the work (I only wouldn't put it so strongly insofar as those brief passages where they do quote Homer only establish that an artisan is a better authority on this or that passage than the rhapsode). That might make the Ion an especially impressive and provocative little piece, since it's little read, and when it's read at all, it's read only as establishing Ion to be a fool, which is a good exercise in prudence.
It's not really about rhapsodes, OP. Ya gotta read between the lines.
>>23921295>You shouldn't infer and assume that which isn’t present within the text.You definitely should do this when reading Plato.
>>23920693>Wait, so how did this world come to be separated from the world of forms then? What does the earth not having a creation even imply? They believed no creation at all?They were never 'together', it would be in principle impossible for them to be. It would be like seeing a car and saying 'wait a minute, when, exactly, did the car and the abstract plan of the car become separated?' The plan is the cause of the car. In the case of a car, ofc, there's a plan in the mind of the car-maker that temporally precedes the actual car, but the intelligible world is necessarily outside of time. Plato and Aristotle DO believe in 'creation' in the sense that everything is caused by God, but they don't believe it could happen in time, and they don't think it's a matter of efficient causation.AFAIK Plato himself does not argue for the eternity of the world anywhere and in the Timaeus, at least in mythological form, he makes it seem like it has a beginning. The main argument for the eternity of the world (in Physics 8) isn't metaphysical/theological but naturalistic - "one change is always necessarily preceded by something else, ergo there has always been change. It's impossible for change to just up and start changing without a prior change and if things stopped changing they could never start again." The Catholic response is basically 'it's not really logically impossible for an eternal being to produce a universe with a beginning and end if that was his will, and Genesis says the world has a beginning, so that's that.'
>>23920263>poetry is divinely inspired and you the interpreter as well as the writer of the poem have no real ability of your own yet are honestBeen a while since I read the breadth of the dialogues, but this doesn’t seem to be “untrue.” Poetry is the art of matching language, a social construct, with emotion and world-feeling, an either divine or non physical construct. I’d say the translation there takes some art and is similar to the work of a priest, but it is not created out of thin air. I’m not sure the classical soul could comprehend this well, though.
>>23925038I don't think the dialogues can easily be reduced to one or two subjects. Consider that, based on how Socrates discusses the rhapsode's art (see the quote at >>23924293), which might suggest that the philosopher is the real rhapsode (see, for example, Socrates' long speech in the Protagoras interpreting several pieces of lyric poetry). To raise questions about the rhapsode's art also amounts to raising questions about who might properly be in a position to judge the poets with respect to what's true and false, and what's good and bad for the souls of men (since, by the Republic, even falsehoods aren't enough to dismiss something if that thing otherwise promotes virtue or health or stability, etc.).>>23925059I'm sympathetic, but that depends, right? There can be inferences that end up being leaps with nothing else to support them. A leap might be good start if one's without resource over something, but moderation is surely required so one doesn't become too enamored by a false insight.
Whenever Plato talks about 'images', or 'crafts', or 'interpretation', or the relationship between being and not-being, he's talking about the relation between the sensible and intelligible worlds. That's true throughout the so-called 'early' dialogues and is a huge reason not to think that they were necessarily early at all. Dialogues like Ion are relatively simple on the surface but there is a lot more going on.The 'knowledge' of Ion isn't discursive. He doesn't really know much at all about chariot warfare or medicine, but he does know these things by divine inspiration. So part of Ion is this tension between discursive and non-discursive means of knowing which is something Plato talks about a lot - the paradox is that Ion 'knows' things in a way that is ignorant.Even though Plato criticizes poets all the time, he sees himself as a mimetic artist as is clear in the Republic, so any discussion of poetry also touches on Plato's own mode of writing and philosophizing. All this talk about 'madness' - well think about what Plato says about madness/possession in the Phaedrus.
>>23925102>I'm sympathetic, but that depends, right? There can be inferences that end up being leaps with nothing else to support them. A leap might be good start if one's without resource over something, but moderation is surely required so one doesn't become too enamored by a false insight.You're right and that's what makes talking about Plato so much fun. You have to actively philosophize in order to interpret him and it's hard to give knock-down arguments on what he really thought about controversial points.
>>23925167I can certainly get behind that, 100%.
>>23925130>The 'knowledge' of Ion isn't discursive. He doesn't really know much at all about chariot warfare or medicine, but he does know these things by divine inspiration. So part of Ion is this tension between discursive and non-discursive means of knowing which is something Plato talks about a lot - the paradox is that Ion 'knows' things in a way that is ignorant.But Socrates doesn’t concede any of those points at all. He said Homer doesn’t know about charioteering or piloting and then asks what knowledge is to be derived from Homer wherein the rhapsode concludes it must be divinely inspired as part of Soc’s two fold question.
>>23925881>But Socrates doesn’t concede any of those points at all. He said Homer doesn’t know about charioteering or piloting and then asks what knowledge is to be derived from Homer wherein the rhapsode concludes it must be divinely inspired as part of Soc’s two fold question.Nta, but that's not what Scrates draws out. When he asks about charioteering and medicine, he's asking whether the charioteer and doctor would be in a position to evaluate whether passages in Homer on those subjects would be right or not, and this in order to ask whether the rhapsodes must also know those arts. Now, there might be an implication that Homer, insofar as he's a poet and not a charioteer or doctor, couldn't speak well on those arts, but you might have to untangle whether the poet is a kind of special case, and work out whether the denial of knowledge by art is the same as a denial of knowledge simply. I imagine we'd have to have some response ready for if Homer characterizes something correctly, and we end up with the odd conclusion that he must know that thing by art, or what have you.
>>23925966>I imagine we'd have to have some response ready for if Homer characterizes something correctly, and we end up with the odd conclusion that he must know that thing by art, or what have you.Yeah but that was my point that it isn’t concluded that Homer characterizes it correctly.
>>23925983That's true, but it's also not concluded that he doesn't; the possibility that his descriptions of the arts, whether all or only some, are right is still left open.
>>23925997Socrates: “Homer is shit and he don’t know nothing and the only way you could understand his drivel were if a divinity literally gave you knowledge of what to make of it.”This thread: “Socrates’ relation to Homer was multifaceted.”
>>23926041Oh, my mistake, I thought showing the reasons and grounds for a position were f philosophy, but your rebuke persuades me that philosophy doesn't need those things when you can just appeal to flights of fancy. Silly me.
>>23926072My post is crudely formed yet it is a basic idea of what Socrates says in the dialogue. It isn’t even worded dogmatically. It is flat out what he says.
>>23926167No it isn't.
>>23926231“Why do you like Homer and what do you learn from him?”“I do not know.”“Then clearly, you aren’t actually the one who knows about Homer and it is the god who is responsible for all Homeric knowledge and recitation.”
I don't understand the point of the dialogue, nor why it would go after the intended target the way it does. Who expects Homer to be an expert on warfare? He's merely retelling the events of the war through the sources that he heard. There is a valid critique of what Homer could have known and the limits to knowledge in poetry, the deception present in "pretending" (i.e. acting), etc., but this is not it chief. Or I could be totally wrong but idk, that's what I've picked up from this thread with my middling IQ.
>>23926267That's not anything like the same as "Homer doesn’t know anything."
>>23926887The issues are the following:Homer and the other early poets are in important respects the sources for a lot of beliefs in the divine, i.e., what a Greek not taken in by the philosophers or sophists would expect a god to be, whether there's an afterlife, whether justice is enacted by the gods, whether they act with providence toward us, etc. Now, even though as they weren't treated with the same authority as (because the Iliad and Odyssey and etc. don't present themselves as revelations of binding laws), it was readily recognized that they might differ on their depictions of the gods. But this didn't mean the Greeks were simply open to questioning these depictions, and it took awful events for that to be deemed sometimes appropriate by some (consider Thucydides' discussion of piety in the wake of the plague). But otherwise, a lot of people could get vicious over more overt questioning (consider now Thucydides' discussions of both why Alcibiades was going to be recalled from the Sicilian expedition, and the effect of Nicias' piety on that expedition). To ask whether Homer or the other poets are knowledgeable by testing them against humbler forms of knowledge we all see around us is a *safe* test that doesn't corrupt anyone without a mind for philosophical inquiry, because it otherwise leaves everyone else's piety intact.
>>23926962The problem is that Homer is the messenger, not the expert. To the point Homer is able to accurately represent what took place is not a factor of expertise of the arts employed in the event itself but rather in his ability to communicate said representation, his sources, and his character (good faith).
>>23927015>The problem is that Homer is the messenger, not the expert. I think we have to distinguish that people believe Homer's the messenger while Homer isn't around to ask this of, and so this is more an inquiry into the popular prejudices regarding the relationship between the poets and the gods.>To the point Homer is able to accurately represent what took place is not a factor of expertise of the arts employed in the event itself but rather in his ability to communicate said representation, his sources, and his character (good faith).It might be time to note that "by art" isn't the only possibility that Socrates holds out. He somewhat regularly says "by art *or* by knowledge." That he limits himself to discussing solely the arts might give the impression that's the only alternative to divine inspiration, but the possible presence of knowledge in some other way is still held out, and he may not have looked into that possibility here on account of more stubborn difficulties in doing so (consider the difficulty and length of the Theaetetus). That the arts are emphasized may also be related to how much more accessible a critique of divine inspiration may be to a thinking man by those means (though, consider again Hesiod "quoting" the Muses, >>23922578), but that wouldn't thereby simply show Homer to be ignorant. Consider Republic 378d-e:>But Hera's bindings by her son, and Hephaestus' being cast out by his father when he was about to help out his mother who was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods Homer made, must not be accepted in the city, *whether they are made with a hidden sense or without a hidden sense. A young thing can't judge what is hidden sense and what is not; but what he takes into his opinions at that age has a tendency to become hard to eradicate and unchangeable*.That is, Homer may have made his poems with some purpose, and that possibility has to be addressed first before we can settle on the position that he really has no knowledge of anything.
>>23927095Hmmm, I guess Ion just isn't for me then.
>>23926887Athens was at war with Sparta when this dialogue is set and had just suffered the defeat at Sicily. Ion’s claim to know of warfare from Homer and to be a general is much more understandable given this context as many rhapsodes and just opportunity seekers in general were professing to be generals.
I inferered that is is not about them
