With today’s installment of Plato’s Ion, we reach what may be the single most critically important passage in the entire dialogue, at the mid-way point in it.
You remember that Socrates had just finished quite an oratorical performance, the first of two long speeches – centered around an extended “epic” simile, no less. We’ll pick him up here again as he concludes that first speech, to the effect that the poets are not “in their right minds” and not “possessed of their senses,” when they are singing their evocative and inspired words, but are instead ecstatically possessed by the Muse, and under the guidance of the inscrutable gods. (Read Rick’s summation.)
This Socratic “explanation” of how poetry is engendered – although it is without benefit of ratio-nal or elegantly proportioned (logikos) thought – finds a great reception from Ion, who is moved and persuaded by Socrates’ rhetorical excellence. (In fact he is quite “en-thused,” from en-theos.) The rhapsode doesn’t seem to realize (yet) that if this notion of mind-less inspiration were to be extended to himself, as the interpreter of the mind-less poets, then he would be definitively deprived of an ike. Ion could no longer claim that he wins his rich prizes by exercising a formal art, a legitimate cognitive activity, with its own subject-matter, methodology, orthotike, and elegant consistency as “a whole art.” (After all, Socrates is not scrutinizing Ion as a public entertainer, nor even as an actor in our modern sense, but with respect to the rhapsode as a public educator of a citizenry.)
If poetics originates with “inspiration,” however honorific this might seem, the literary ike would fail to meet the standards Socrates has been developing in this dialogue for determining the genuine ways of knowing available to the human mind, through the new philosophical project Plato has in mind, based upon a critical and dialectical mode of thought aimed at elegant formalizations of various kinds of things. Rhapsodike (or epiipoietike) could never be included within a liberal arts curriculum, that unique enterprise undertaken for the first time in the West in Plato’s Academy, during the decades following Plato’s writing of the Ion.
So let’s see more of what follows the first speech, and consider why it is so significant, vis-à-vis the new mode of education for citizens, through the arts and sciences:
Socrates … in this way God would seem to demonstrate to us and not to allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, nor the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson which God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst poet he sang the best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
Ion Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul, and I am persuaded that in these works the good poets, under divine inspiration, interpret to us the voice of the gods.
Socrates And you rhapsodes are the interpreters of the poets?
Ion There again you are right.
Socrates Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?
Socrates I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of you: When you produce the greatest effect on the audience in the recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and shaking out his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles springing upon Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam – are you in your right mind? Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the persons or places of which you are speaking, whether they are in Ithaca or in Troy or whatever may be the scene of the poem?
Ion That proof strikes home to me, Socrates. For I must frankly confess that at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of horrors, my hair stands on end and my heart throbs.
Socrates Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man who at a sacrifice or festival, when he is dressed in an embroidered robe, and has golden crowns upon his head, of which no one has robbed him, appears weeping or panic-stricken in the presence of more than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is no one despoiling or wronging him – is he in his right mind or is he not?
Ion No indeed, Socrates, I must say that, strictly speaking, he is not in his right mind.
Socrates And are you aware that you produce similar effects on most of the spectators?
Ion Only too well; for I look down upon them from the stage, and behold the various emotions of pity, wonder, sternness, stamped upon their countenances when I am speaking; and I am obliged to give my very best attention to them; for if I make them cry I myself will laugh, and if I make them laugh I myself will cry, when the time for payment arrives….
“I am obliged to give my very best attention…” – to what? To the emotions on the faces of my audience. In these exchanges, Socrates introduces the issue of the “effects” on human persons of the rhapsode’s actions. He also evokes from Ion an indication of the telos or formal “end” or “goal” Ion always bears in mind to in-form his actions. Therefore, these exchanges constitute, I believe, the pivotal moment in the dialogue, and its moral center.
It seems to me that here, for a instant, the mask of the acclaimed prize-winner slips, and we are given a brief glimpse of what lies behind the splendid costumes and the “noble” and “beautiful” appearance of Ion. Such a glimpse as this, however, is what the crafty “angler” Socrates has been fishing for, ever since he observed, back in his opening speech, that “adorning the body” and “appearing as fine as possible” are “fitting” requirements of the rhapsode’s art.
Up until now, Ion has probably appeared to you the “innocent babe” one of you (“theory kid”) described him as being – a little lamb whom Socrates has “wrapped around his finger,” with his shifty and even unscrupulously invalid argumentative techniques. After all, Ion of Ephesus merely blundered mildly into this inquisition, and in the end he will be allowed to blunder out of it and continue blithely on his way – off to the great Athenian competitions in rhapsody, where he will win again, perhaps, and be amply rewarded for all his pains. In any case, he will depart from Socrates just as undisturbed in his sublime self-approval and in his touchingly childish eagerness to display what he can do as he ever was.
Plato’s Socrates will treat Ion quite gently, in fact, compared to his treatment of other would-be educators (some of the Sophists), who are tested and exposed in later dialogues. (But not every paid teacher of rhetoric will be pilloried, and Plato will honor many old teachers and mentors in the dialogues, including the distinguished mathematician Theodorus in Theaetetus, and of course, Socrates himself.)
So let’s see how Socrates angles for Ion’s unwitting confession, and why this confession seems so culpable to Plato, in light of the new vision of the arts and sciences that was instigated by the historical figure of Socrates himself.
Socrates begins by asking Ion to “tell me frankly” about the effects of his performances upon Ion’s own mental condition, when he is on stage, absorbed in reciting and enacting a striking passage for his hearers, and “producing the greatest effect” on them:
…when you produce the greatest effect on the audience in the recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and shaking out his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles springing upon Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam – are you in your right mind?
“Are you in your right mind?” appears to be the main thematic point of this inquiry, but appearances can be deceptive. Let’s not miss the new threads appearing in the close weave of Socrates’ unique artistic practice, dialect-ike, whose own telos is always to prod those of us who willing to engage in it with him into re-educating ourselves, most of all in re-educating ourselves about who we are. (Not for nothing was the historical Socrates associated with the Delphic injunction: “Know thyself.”)
The new threads entering the dialectic are those of “the effect” of the ike on the citizenry, and the question of one’s ultimate telos in pursuing the ike. What effect does Ion’s mimetic activity have upon his own state of mind, and what are the “greatest effects” he produces in his audience?
Whenever a structure of language is invented and evaluated in terms of its effects on its addressees, we are dealing with the Greek art of rhetoric, “whose end (telos) is in the hearer.” So we are looking here at the question of rhetorically effective language itself, and Plato and Aristotle will despise the Sophists because they employ their rhetorical expertise not with regard to the truth, but only to persuasion, being quite willing to “make the worse appear the better cause” (as in John Milton’s pithy phrase). Ion responds, quite “frankly” enough, that “at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of horrors, my hair stands on end and my heart throbs.”
Now Aristotle, in the brilliant thought-work of his Poetics, will return to the issue of evoking “pity and fear,” of which Ion speaks here. Contra the Platonic Socrates’ arguments, here and in the Republic, that the mimetic poets irresponsible stir up and pander to the mob’s emotions, and thus encourage the “less worthy” part of the soul (the pathe or “passions” as opposed to ethe, or the settled and enduring ethical principles and habits of the higher faculty of the mind), Aristotle will point out that an excellent tragedy exercises and educates the emotions, by effecting “a cartharsis of pity and fear.” Thus poietike can exert an important civic function, Aristotle maintains, in relation to the passions. (However, this is not Aristotle’s telos for poietike, as it is generally taken to be, but simply an important Aristotelian response to Plato’s suggestion of the civic irresponsibility of mimesis.)
If we turn to the three “striking passages” Socrates mentions, we will achieve a better understanding of what raises these philosophical concerns. First, Socrates alludes to the scene in the Odyssey when the hero reveals himself and begins to take his very bloody revenge upon the suitors (and the young women of the household who consorted with them). The massacre of all these young men touches off an inevitable blood-feud, one that threatens to bring the kingdom to ruin – except that Zeus and Athena decide to intervene at the last minute, imposing a deus ex machina resolution by forbidding the battle between Odysseus’s close kin and the kinsmen of the slain suitors.
Then Socrates mentions the shameful passage in the Iliad when poor Hector has given way to fear and has been pursued by Achilles around the city wall, until the goddess Athena tricks him into taking his stand. She then deserts him and leaves him to face the potent wrath of Achilles alone. Achilles proceeds to desecrate the body of the fallen Hector, in front of his family and the entire citizenry of Troy watching from the battlements, after their greatest and noblest defender has fallen.
Finally, Socrates cites “the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, and Priam,” in their passionate and unrestrained lamentations of grief and despair.
In Plato’s mature masterpiece the Republic, Socrates returns to the question of the epic poets at much greater length than in Ion, and in Book 2 he contends that children ought not to be exposed – especially at a tender age when they are most “impressionable” — to the childhood stories commonly told then, the ones about “falsehoods.” What falsehoods? Adeomantes inquires. “I mean telling lies about the gods and heroes,” Socrates replies. For Socrates, the gods do not engage in deception and trickery, nor do heroic men give way to passion, or if they do, those are not the actions to be held up for public consideration. Socrates mentions the scene of Hector’s death and desecration at the hands of Achilles (a scene which also involves the treachery of the patron goddess of Athens).
Then Socrates makes a further statement: It is not just that the poets tell falsehoods about gods and heroes. This is reprehensible enough, of course, and ought not to form any part of early education in the ideal polis. But no, there is a further sin here, because the poet not only does so, but “he does it for no good cause.” For no good purpose or telos. So there are in fact two grave sins against truth adduced here. First, gods do not act this way, Socrates insists, and if our heroes ever do, we certainly do not wish our children to hear these acts held up in storied legend. The young should be told stories about divine justice and about how the “godlike” heroes act in self-possession and always for the good.
But secondly, the poets willingly tell such unworthy tales “to no good purpose.” Socrates means that literary mimesis of this kind does not serve any function beneficial to the polis. It is later, in Book 10, that Socrates develops the parallel arguments that when the mimetic poets stir up in us unworthy emotions, our own enacting of these emotions through our own mimesis (acting and recitation), will strengthen “the lower part” of the soul and encourage that to war against “the higher principle.” Here it becomes explicit that, in all these ways, such poetic mimesis is harmful to the polis – it has no good civic function. This is what Socrates means when he says the poet tells tales, and to no good purpose.
As I noted earlier, Aristotle counters confidently in his Poetics that, on the contrary, tragic drama, for example, exercises and trains the emotions, effecting a “catharsis” of potentially dangerous emotions (“pity” and “fear”), and enabling them to be re-integrated into the harmonious and balanced whole psyche. This is a notable point of contrast between Plato and Aristotle, but never forget that in Rep. 10, so very fascinatingly, as Socrates is banishing the mimetic poets from the heavenly Polis in the Sky, he begs at te same time that someone will reply to his charges and successfully defend the poets, that they might be readmitted to the city. Throughout the Poetics, Aristotle is responding to just such an invitation.
What about the “sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam”? They are also mentioned in Rep. 10 as examples of unrestrained and “womanly” emotional excesses unworthy of good citizens. Always, Socrates urged stoicism in misfortune, and at Socrates’ deathbed in Plato’s Crito, he sends the weeping women away and admonishes his male friends not to give way to grief: why should we resist this great good fortune – to the philosophical mind – the transition of a settled mind from this life to the next. (By the way, Socrates’ wife goes away lamenting, “Oh, Socrates, never again will you sit and converse with your friends.” This strikes me as a remarkably perceptive, affectionate, and generous expression of sadness, but Socrates is having none of it.)
And Socrates sees an addition problem here. If a man is to enact the sorrows of Andromache and Hecuba, he will need to assume mimetically the part of a woman, and this is specifically mentioned in Rep 10 as destructive to the stoical and “manly” habits of mind desirable in the citizens of the polis. Socrates would not want to see a citizen enact the role of a child or a slave, either. Here we are confronting the Platonic mind/body dualism that runs through Western history from Plato to Descartes and thence to the present day.Governed by the basic structure of the Platonistic mind/body opposition are the oppositions mind/passions, thought/emotions, male/female, adult/child, free man/slave.
[theoretical aside from jlb: But there is no sign of the mind/nature dualism introduced by Descartes in Plato and Aristotle, nor in Western Christian thought prior to the rise of science. The immanent/transcendent presence of formal elegance throughout all of nature, including human nature, was the third player and mediator. It provided for the inherent concentenaity between human knowing and the surrounding world, because human thought was a part of that same world. Formal elegance could run through the human mind because it ran through the entire cosmos and revealed itself in all ikes, as it did in geometry and arithmetic, music and astronomy, the numerical arts.]
Finally, let’s return to Odysseus, spilling his arrows at his feet. Socrates opposed the taking of revenge, perhaps the most shockingly counter-cultural thing about him in his day, although he was personally courageous and distinguished himself as a soldier in more than one campaign. He also defied an execution order issued by the council — made in the heat of the moment and later withdrawn – to carry out their political vendetta against a number of citizens. He simply went home instead.
So the three “striking passages” mentioned in Ion give us a very good idea of the kinds of objectionable “effects” that Ion’s “art” produced in his hearers. The rhapsodes moved their audiences to excesses of “womanly” pity and fear, and wrought these passions to the uttermost.. (Athens had given way to mob emotion and regretted it, when they had wiped out a colony, settled by Athenians, when it had decided to be self-determining, like Athens herself. Thucydides had attributed this shameful political decision to the absence of cooler heads effectively able to reason calmly and win the day.)
Clearly, Ion also enacted stirring examples of blood revenge, and scenes that involved divine treachery and misdeeds enacted by the greatest Achaean heroes. We ourselves have become much more supportive of a broad emotional and situational range, both in art and in entertainment, yet I think we can feel a certain sympathy for Socrates and Plato too, living as we do in the age of Fox News, the excesses of the blogosphere, and other semi-respectable forms of popular hysteria.
Plato and Aristotle were the first to dream of an education based on thoughtful and pluralistic investigations of many things, with a political telos of citizen formation in view. The new philosophical approach would oppose itself to uncritical acceptance of inherited assumptions (Bronze Age Greek tribal codes of blood revenge, for example, or popular acceptance of amoral “divinity”). It would be based on a commitment to disciplinary communities and the dialectical play of mind, carried on in pursuit of ideals of Form-al truth that would functioned as a critique of contemporary thought and practice. When Socrates first asked, “What is Justice?” and refused to accept the answer that it is whatever those in power say it is, he was opening the possibility of what would become ethics and politics, as the first liberal arts.
So thoughtful critique and re-examination of received opinion was half of what it was all about. The other half, though, was the thrilling new excitement of that communal pursuit of formal elegance that opened up within any ike – the transfiguring sense of deep contact with reality – that could come to individuals through participation in a discipline for the sake of its truth. Nothing else could empower a citizen to rise to the occasion, to rise above interests and pressures, with courage and integrity. Only this existentially transfiguring experience of the true, the beautiful, and the good, in those moments when the ike makes a genuine breakthrough, could accomplish this liberation, this personalist salvation.
So the arts and sciences would serve the good of the polis through the pursuit of truth in the disciplines,through the formation of citizens equipped for and experienced in thoughtful conversation from many disciplinary perspectives, and through the “existential” liberation of at least some citizens from simple greed and self-aggrandizement, for a principled service of higher things.
Simple greed and self-aggrandizement, I am afraid, are revealed in the center of the dialogue Ion as being the telos that energizes the activities of our “innocent babe,” the rhapsode Ion of Ephesus. But the word in-nocent means “not harmful.” I think we can see that for Plato what Ion represents is anything but harmless. We see Ion’s hawk-like vigilence, at every moment that he is on stage, is to read the reactions of the audience, so as to win their applause. Not only is Ion quite willing to stir up deep and even base emotions, but he does so “to no good purpose.” He is not thinking about the good of the polis or the best formation of its citizens: “I am obliged to give my very best attention” to their faces, “for if I make them cry, I myself will laugh, but if I make them laugh, I myself will cry, when the time for payment arrives….”
From the perspective of the new philosophical project, Ion has notably failed to manifest the desire to seek any ideal or higher formal truth. His mind is uncritical and self-serving. He wants to succeed, but he does not desire to examine why he is succeeding or what it is that he is succeeding for. He believes that money and fame are sufficient ends in themselves, and he accepts the judgment of his peers as vindication of his own worth. No voice of the God is whispering within him, as Socrates’ daimon does, asking him whether he indeed knows anything at all, or what he would most deeply desire to know, if he could choose freely. Ion does not even know that he is not free to choose, that he has not taken even the first baby steps down the long road to becoming a free person.