This work by Plato his shortest, only 4k words, and his only dialouge solely about the arts It's about the nature of poetry and where the creative impulse comes from, as well as the merit of the critic. I thought this would be a fun one to start out with due to its subject matter and its length.
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Ion:
This was a really hard piece of literature to understand. It wasn’t the hardest thing to read, or even understand the base arguments, but it was hard to wrap my head around what exact assertions Plato is making through Socrates in this dialogue. So, I will attempt to lay out some assertions that I believe were made through this work, then discuss my thoughts on them.
Firstly, the idea that the world is divided into “arts”, or subjects in which one may be an expert in. Some examples are the art of medicine or the art of charioteering. The expert can apply their knowledge in the art and, since they know the rules of the of their art, they can judge others’ applications of that art. An expert painter can both paint expertly and are the perfect judge of other painters.
Second, he applies this first assertion to both critics and to poets. Poets write about many things in which they aren’t an expert, and the rhapsody, an interpreter of the poet’s works, isn’t a good judge of poems, because he isn’t an expert in the many arts in which the poet writes about.
Third, since poets and rhapsodies don’t have any expertise in any of the fields of knowledge in which they write, they must be relying on something outside themselves, which he asserts to be divine intervention. All poets know how to do is arouse emotion, and if their expertise in this matter comes from divine intervention, then really, they have no expertise at all.
Fourth, this is an irrational thing. Instead of seeking knowledge rationally, poets and rhapsodies encourage people to rely on their emotions. He seems to conclude that there aren’t any objective measures in which to judge literature, and that a critic of literature speaks with “no art or knowledge”, it is merely a passive channeling of the gods.
I am going to operate under the assumption that these things are the assertions that were presented by this work. These assumptions come from my interpretation of the writing as well as what I could find online from others analyzing it. I will point out that some scholars believe that this dialogue is partly in jest, as these arguments aren’t entirely sound. I will now give my thoughts on these assertions.
On the first assertion, I believe that this is a fair outlook to have on the world. A related phrase would be the adage that the man in the arena, the person doing the action, is far superior to the critic, who is just watching the man in the arena and talking of every misstep the man in the arena makes. To be a critic is worthless, and the only people fit to judge if someone has any skill in an art are the practitioners of that art themselves. I wouldn’t quite go that far; you can tell good from bad even when you have no skill. But there is some truth to the fact that the best judges are often skilled in their own right.
The second assertion, I believe, misses the point of poetry. The fact that neither the poet or the critic has knowledge of medicine, or charioteering, or even war, don’t matter. The point of being a poet isn’t in distilling information, it’s purely about how the art makes you feel. And, something Plato would appreciate more, how it makes you think on things or change your perspective. Poets are experts in this area, the art of poetry. One question I have, why is a painter different? What value does a painter bring outside of emotions?
One person’s analysis of Ion puts this rather beautifully, “Plato wants to judge poems as catalogues of endorsed facts, and loses poetry in the process.”
The big thing with the third assertion is the idea that divine intervention is where creativity comes from. There’s some nuance to this in how you define God but as a whole I believe it’s a ridiculous claim. And there isn’t much to say about it really.
As for the fourth I believe I’ve already tackled that in my second assertion paragraph. Poetry has an innate value outside of rationality that isn’t being acknowledged here.
Apparently, Plato speaks more on artists in some of his later works like The Republic, so I’m interested to see what else he has to say. As for this piece, I found it very interesting and hard to wrap my head around. I still don’t know that I fully understand it, but I hope that in time I will understand it more.
