Ion

What does Plato’s argument in “Ion” mean for intention, agency, or responsibility? If an artist produces work under the influence of divine inspiration, does the artist have the right to claim that they are the creator of the work?

What does it mean to master a craft? Is a “genius” someone who has achieved the perfect balance of skill and inspiration? How does the concept of the genius (imagine someone like Mozart, da Vinci, or Goethe) support or oppose Plato’s claims about individual skill and divine inspiration? Use specific examples to explain your reasoning.

In ancient times, people who suffered from epilepsy were thought to have the ability to receive prophecies from the gods. Considering this, does Socrates’s description of being “not in one’s right mind” extend to other mental states such as intoxication, psychosis, or schizophrenia? How might this interpretation affect our understanding of the relationship between art and truth as Plato characterizes it?

Compare Plato’s views of art as they are expressed in “Ion” with another philosopher’s views of art, such as Martin Heidegger’s in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Friedrich Nietzsche’s in The Birth of Tragedy, or Immanuel Kant’s in The Critique of Judgment. How does this comparison allow you to understand or interpret the relationship between art and truth?

Consider the following quote:

SOCRATES: And you know that this spectator is the last of the rings, don’t you—the ones that I said take their power from each other by virtue of the Heraclean stone [the magnet]? The middle ring is you, the rhapsode or actor, and the first one is the poet himself. The god pulls people’s souls through all these wherever he wants, looping the power down from one to another. And just as if it hung from that stone, there’s an enormous chain of choral dancers and dance teachers and assistant teachers hanging off to the sides of the rings that are suspended from the Muse (943).

What kind of responsibility, if any, does an artist or actor have to their society? What is the danger of an actor who is bad at their craft, or of a good actor with bad intentions? How might “the spectators” or society in general be affected by artists or actors who misrepresent or misuse the “messages” they receive from the gods?

Socrates proves that Ion does not have mastery of his craft, and he is unable to pin down what kind of knowledge rhapsodes are supposed to have. So, what does Ion really know? Has he gained knowledge or skills from memorizing and reciting Homer? Or is Socrates right to accuse him of having no knowledge because his profession deals more with imitation and appearances than with substance and reality?

How might modern psychology explain the phenomenon of inspiration? How does a modern understanding of inspiration support or oppose some of the main claims Plato makes in “Ion”? In what other ways might “the Muses” be a metaphor for ways the mind can function?

In an argument by analogy, the logic of one situation is supposed to apply to another. When Socrates says that inspiration is like a magnet, he wants us to apply the logic of how magnets work to understand how inspiration works. Arguments by analogy are often flawed because they do not consider the details of a situation that may contradict the conclusion they are supposed to prove. Does the view that inspiration functions like a magnet make assumptions about how inspiration works that are not warranted? Explain your reasoning.