WORKSHOP : Ion II
By Don Finkel
Divide up into groups of four. Choose people to work with whom are not in your study groups and with whom you did not work during last week's workshop. One person should be appointed a scribe, to make sure the group's answers to the questions below get written down. The scribe may be asked to report results later to the whole class. Another person should be appointed a "clock--watcher." This person's job is to keep an eye on the time and insure that the group moves along according to the times indicated on the worksheet. In addition, everyone should keep his or her own notes as you work.
Part I (20 minutes)
In the opening of the Menexenus (234c ff.), Socrates describes the effects on listeners of the fine speeches made by accomplished orators at public funerals. He uses langauge which seems metaphorical, but I think we would do well to consider that he may be speaking literally, that he may mean exactly what he says--that no metaphors are involved. Let us test this hypothesis by trying to give some sense to his statements assuming they involve no metaphors.
1. (5 minutes) At 235a, he says, "The speakers praise [the dead man] for what he has done and for what he has not done--that is the beauty of them--and they steal away our souls with their embellished words." (emphasis added)
What could this mean as a literal description? Try to paraphrase the underlined clause in words that make them plausible, without losing the stated meaning.
2. (5 minutes) Socrates continues, "...I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than I was before." (emphasis added)
If we take the word "enchanted" to be non-metaphorical, then Socrates would seem to be describing a sort of spell-casting or hypnotism. Can words really have this effect? What conditions are necessary for words to have such an effect (if they possibly can)?
3. (5 minutes) Socrates continues, "This consciousness of dignity [induced by the speech] lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my senses and know where I am--in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of the Blessed. Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such manner does the sound of their words keep ringing in my ears." (emphasis added)
These lines strengthen the notion that the speaker's words create a hypnotic spell that is virtually physiological and that takes time to wear off. In this spell, one has left one's senses. Taking these three quotes all together, how would you summarize Socrates' critique of the art of the rhetorician?
4. (5 minutes) Most of us do not attend funeral orations often, and certainly not ones that are vast public events. To what events today, might we reasonably apply Socrates' claim?
Alter the word "words" to "images" in the underlined phrase in the first of the 3 quotes above and see if you can locate some more modern contexts in which this description might apply.
Who are the people in today's society who practice an art that most resembles what you have described and that is most deserving of the same critique?
Part II (10 minutes) Read the following.
The rhetorician who can give spell-binding speeches is directly linked in Greek tradition to the rhapsode who made his living by giving oral performances to audiences of epic poetry, above all of Homeric epic (The Iliad and the Odyssey). Ion is a rhapsode by profession. The Homeric poems were oral creations, and although by the fifth century (B.C.) they had been written down, performances of them were still oral, depending on prodigious memorization, the mastery of oral/rhythmic formulae, and the accompaniment of the recitation by music (a lyre or harp) to emphasize the rhythms which defined the structures for the oral formulae.
In an influential and profoundly interesting book, Preface to Plato, Eric Havelock argues that you can't begin to understand what Socrates and Plato are up to without appreciating the fact that Greek culture was still in the transition from being an oral to becoming a lettered culture during Socrates' lifetime. Havelock argues that prior to the invention of the alphabet and hence of writing, and prior to the widespread mastery of and reliance on writing (something that would have taken much time after its invention), the culture's wisdom would have been primarily transmitted through the ritualized performance of epic poetry by rhapsodes. In this context, he refers to the "Homeric encyclopedia," suggesting that the crucial knowledge of the culture had to be stored in just such an encyclopedia. And indeed, it is obvious from Plato's writing, that Homer was considered the great fount of wisdom for this culture, that people quoted Homer easily and readily (and out of context)--the way 19th Century Americans quoted the Bible, and that "education," such as it was, took place through the listening to, memorizing of, and moralizing about, Homeric verses. Moreover, Havelock argues that the rhythmic, incantatory nature of the rhapsode's performance induced trance-like states in the attending audience.
From this sketch we can induce a simple model of education, one that would arise naturally and almost inevitably out of an oral culture that transmitted cultural information and values in the manner described by Havelock. I call it a "chain-link model" of education. This model assumes there is a direct route to the truth. The model assumes that A was present, that A tells B, B tells C, and C tells you. Through such a chain of links, you have access to "what really happened" or the truth. Now there are obvious places for degradation, error, forgetting, omissions; there may be weak links, loose connections between some links, but nonetheless, the model is a chain, which however long or faulty, is still conceived as a linear linkage of externally related pieces. We might also think of this as a journalistic model, one relying on the accurate reporting of reliable sources. In this model, what matters is getting the words just right. If you can imagine yourself in a world without writing, you can see how important getting the words right might be. In this context, precise repetition, careful listening, skilled remembering, and the reliable chaining of "tellers" back to the source become crucially important.
The rhapsodic tradition had been going on for two or three centuries in Greece. More recently there arose the Greek tragedians, notably, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Thousands of people went to hear the performances of their plays, which were performed in competitions as part of religious festivals. Here, of course, written text is involved, but for the listeners, wisdom again came through careful listening, in highly charged emotive states, to well crafted language. Aristotle used the Greek word "catharsis" (a dramatic physical purging of emotion) to describe the effect of effective tragedy on its audience.
Finally, during Socrates' lifetime, there arose a class of professional teachers called Sophists. These men travelled around and offered to teach aristocratic young men, for a fee, the art of persuasive and effective speaking. In this culture, as it had evolved, persuasive speaking was the key to success in public life, the key to power as a statesman or politician. With the Sophists, we are a far cry from Homeric rhapsodes reciting the Iliad to a rapt audience, but there is still continuity between the two. We are still working on the assumption that getting the words just right is the highest virtue.
In most of our readings, we shall be encountering Socrates in conversation with Sophists, with respected Athenian citizens from different professions, or with young men, seeking wisdom, virtue, and success in life. The Ion is of particular interest because it consists of a conversation between Socrates and a rhapsode and thus gives us Socrates' view of the art that lies at the very root of the oral tradition we are tracing here--the tradition from which philosophy itself emerges, and the tradition which philosophy had to fiercely oppose at the very first moment it attempted to address the question of how to life a human life (i.e., with the appearance on the scene of Socrates).
With this much as introduction, let us move to the dialogue itself.
Part III (2 hours)
1. (5 minutes) At the outset Socrates asserts, and Ion agrees, that Ion must be able to do more than "merely learn his lines." What is the issue about the rhapsode's art that is at stake in this dialogue (that Socrates places at stake)?
Why would this issue be central to Socrates?
2. (5 minutes) Deftly arranging things so he can avoid having to listen to Ion recite (531a), Socrates elicits from Ion the decisive claim that he is an expert in Homer, but in Homer only, and not in any of the other poets. Socrates proceeds to argue that this cannot be the case, and in so doing brings the concept of "judgment" into the conversation. What is Socrates' argument?
Do you find it convincing? (Can we not have a Shakespeare scholar who knows nothing of Dostoevsky, Dickens, or Melville, and falls asleep whenever a colleague in the department starts to ramble on about their novels?)
Why is "judgment" important to this discussion?
3. (5 minutes) Unlike the Laches and the Euthyphro, this is not an elenchic dialogue; its action does not center around the refutation by Socrates of definitions or formulations asserted by those he is conversing with. In this dialogue, surprise of surprises, Socrates is arguing a clear thesis. What is his thesis? Locate it in the text.
4. (15 minutes) At 533d, Socrates employs what I call a "decisive metaphor." First he says that Ion's gift of speaking is not an art (techne), but rather a divine power. To explicate this distinction, he employs the metaphor of a magnet. Read the passage (from 533d to 535a).
What do you notice about the tone of this passage? Why is Socrates speaking in such an uncharacteristic manner? (Notice Ion's first comment at 535a after the long speech is over)?
Socrates uses the magnet metaphor to try to persuade Ion of his thesis. What is it specifically about magnetism that explicates the distinction between "techne" and divine power?
What evidence supports Socrates' claims that the magnetism analogy is apt?
There are three links in the magnetic chain Socrates is imagining. What are the first and second links?
Why does Socrates call rhapsodes "interpreters of interpreters"? What is the original thing being interpreted?
What is the third link in the chain? Why?
Remember only the first link is the magnet, the other links are iron rings. Let us imagine the magnet is an electromagnet. Suppose we turn off the current to the electromagnet, what happens to the rings? Does this thought-experiment illuminate the metaphor?
5. (25 minutes) In the course of this part of the dialogue, the following four terms pop up: "soothsayers," "bondage," "possession," and "Corybantes." Let us briefly examine each one.
534d--the poets are lumped with "soothsayers and godly seers." This reminds us of the discussion of the soothsayer's inferiority to the general in battle in the Laches. Given the discussion in the Laches (check it out at La. 195e), what does this reference to soothsayers tell us about poets and rhapsodes?
How is this reference connected to the "judgment" issue?
534e--each poet is in bondage to a particular divinity (just as Ion is bondage to one particular poet, Homer). How does the idea of bondage or slavery illuminate the distinction between techne and divine power?
536b--"we call it being 'possessed.'" This phrase arises in the discussion of poetic inspiration. We must remember that the word "inspiration" literally means "breathing in." The Greek concept of inspiration by the Muse was that the poet "breathed in" the spirit of the Muse, or was in some similar way literally possessed by the divine Muse. The words which appeared in the poet's mind, or were uttered from his lips, were thus directly from the god and the poet was simply a vessel or medium of communication. Thus, when the Greeks spoke of "being possessed" they meant it literally, not metaphorically. (The Iliad is filled with examples of one god or another meddling in the Trojan War by temporarily taking possession of the body of a soldier, performing some miraculous or superhuman feat, and then departing the body.) An important assumption in this tradition is that inspired words of the poet must be true--precisely because these words come from the gods and not man. "The gift, then, of the Muses, or one of their gifts, is the power of true speech." (E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 81)
How does the concept of possession apply to the rhapsode and how does it help Socrates distinguish between art and a power divine?
536c--In this passage Socrates makes an analogy between the rhapsode and the Corybantes. The Corybantes were a religious cult known for their rituals involving frenzied dancing. According to Dodds (pp. 77-79), these rituals were supposed to cure madness. "We may note first the essential similarity of the Corybantic to the old Dionysiac cure: both claimed to operate a catharsis by means of an infectious 'orgiastic' dance accompanied by the same kind of 'orgiastic' music--tunes in the Phrygian mode played on the flute and the kettledrum." (Dodds, p. 78)
Read the passage at 536c-d and discuss the bearing of the Corybantes on Socrates argument, and the pertinence of his analogy.
LUNCH BREAK - 1 HOUR: Return in one hour and continue working through worksheet in your small group.
6. (45 minutes) At 536d, we note that Ion has not been persuaded by Socrates' extended analogy based on magnetism. Socrates then undertakes a new tack to persuade Ion of his thesis--a more direct argument. This argument goes from 536e to about 541c and breaks off at the absurd point where Ion starts claiming he is a better general than all the actual Athenian generals.
Read through the argument. The argument never gets to its natural conclusion because of Ion's absurd claims about his own military abilities. What is the implied conclusion of the logical argument Socrates has been making here?
Write it out the argument in its conceptual form, stating the premises and conclusion in your own words.
A sound argument has two features. (1) The first feature of a sound argument is that the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. This feature is called "validity." A valid argument may not produce a true conclusion. Why not?
(2) The second feature of a sound argument is that the premises are true. Arguments with true premises do not necessarily produce a true conclusion. Why not?
Is Socrates' argument (the one you have just written out) a sound argument?
I doubt very much if we would want to agree with Socrates conclusion that a Shakespeare scholar let us say has no knowledge that is not already possessed (in stronger form) by experts in all the particular subject matters that are treated in Shakespeare's plays (e.g., war, madness, love, government, etc., etc.) What concept or concepts are needed--that Socrates and Ion appear to lack--that could show up the (possibly) faulty reasoning in Socrates' argument?
7. (10 minutes) At 540b, Ion reacts to Socrates argument-from-techne (an argument he uses repeatedly in the dialogues) in a way that many of Socrates' other interlocutors react also: he point to the areas of politics and family life as two areas where the concept of expertise (techne) does not apply. The suggestion implicit here is that there is a general knowledge distinct from the specialized knowledges of the technes, and that these pertain to private and public life in general. Here as elsewhere, Socrates attempts to refute the claim that these two areas deserve to be considered special cases.
What is his argument?
Do you buy it?
8. (5 minutes) At the dialogue's end, Socrates forces a choice on Ion: is he a human artist or "a man divine" ("by lot divine you are possessed by Homer") and Ion chooses the latter, saying, "It is far lovelier ("kalon"--finer, more noble, more beautiful) to be deemed divine" (542b). But Socrates has just finished convincing us, if not Ion, just the opposite: that it is nobler and finer to be a human artist. Why (according to Socrates) is it more "kalon" to be a human artist than a divinely inspired poet?
Do you agree?
Part IV (30 minutes)
1. (5 minutes) The critique that applies to the rhapsode inspired by Homer, should apply equally to Homer himself, inspired by the Muse. In other words, Socrates is turning on its head, the assumption that words inspired by the gods must be valuable--even if they are true! He is thus attacking the prime cultural authority for knowledge--Homer and the ancient poets, not by saying that their words are untrue, but for another reason. What is that reason?
Summarize Socrates' attack on Homeric authority in one written paragraph.
2. (5 minutes) If Socrates would do away with Homeric authority (for knowledge), what kind of authority would he replace it with? Write a short paragraph answering this question.
3. 5 minutes) What is the connection (or connections) between the shift in authority Socrates is trying to effect and the movement from an oral to a lettered culture? List as many connections as you can.
4. (10 minutes) Today, many critics level against TV a critique exactly parallel to Socrates' critique against the oral/Homeric mode of cultural transmission. They would say of TV exactly what Socrates said of the rhapsodes and the brilliant speech-making of the Sophists (or what Plato elsewhere says of the tragedians): even if the programming is excellent and the content is true, the very medium of TV is bad for the mind and destroys our capacity to know. Trace out the parallels between the Socratic critique and the modern attack on TV.
Do you find the critique of TV convincing?
Do you find Socrates' critique of oral/Homeric authority convincing?
5. (5 minutes) If we were to follow Socrates and abandon the "chain-link" model of education, what kind of a model do you think he would recommend putting in its place? Sketch out in a paragraph its central components, and if you can, make up an image or metaphor for it (analogous to the "chain-link" image).
Part V (30 minutes)
Class discussion of results.