Ion
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~6,320 words · 30 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Ion. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/ion
- MLAPlato. Ion. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/ion.
- ChicagoPlato. Ion. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/ion.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A rhapsode who recites Homer cannot explain why he does it well. Socrates concludes that the poet works neither by craft nor by knowledge, but by divine possession.
Context and history
The shortest dialogue on inspiration, and the first text to separate making poetry from understanding it. The image of the magnet passing its force to the next ring — god, poet, rhapsode, audience — runs through the whole history of aesthetics.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
SOCRATES: 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. SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same? ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer. SOCRATES: What, in a worse way? ION: Yes, in a far worse. SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way? ION: He is incomparably better. SOCRATES: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good speaker? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: And he who judges of the good will be the same as he who judges of the bad speakers? ION: The same. SOCRATES: And he will be the arithmetician? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: 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? ION: Clearly the same. SOCRATES: And who is he, and what is his name? ION: The physician. SOCRATES: 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. SOCRATES: Is not the same person skilful in both? ION: Yes.…