Plato’s Ion seems to be a commentary on what the poet or rhapsode knows in relation to poetic work, the answer being “nothing.” Having demonstrated that the rhapsode, Ion, cannot give a satisfactory account of what he knows in the Homeric poetry he recites, Socrates suggests that poets and rhapsodes, lacking both art and knowledge, produce or recite poetry only though “divine dispensation.” For this reading, the matter is purely theoretical and epistemological, the sole points at issue being the knowledge and skill of poets and rhapsodes. This paper, however, reads the Ion as primarily ethical rather than epistemological. Accordingly, the dialogue is not about what poets and rhapsodes know in the process of making, reciting, or commenting about poetry, but rather about the ethical implications of transgressing one’s own epistemic limits. The characters of Socrates and Ion assume great importance in this interpretation. These two figures are juxtaposed in the dialogue, Ion being a laughable, comic, ethically inferior character who cannot recognize his own epistemic limits, Socrates being an elevated, serious, ethically superior character who exhibits disciplined epistemic restraint. This contrast turns on Delphic self-knowledge, which is profoundly ethical. Ion, lacking self-knowledge and hence unaware of his own epistemic limits, repeatedly makes excessive and absurd claims, such as that rhapsodes make the best generals. The point of the dialogue is to contrast this laughable state with the serious state of Socrates, who always respects his epistemic limits and hence avoids being laughable.
This being the case, the “argument” of the Ion is not demonstrative but performative. I treat Socrates’ apparent thesis as an ironical tool for engaging Ion rather than as a serious, final position. Rather than arguing that poetry is a matter of divine inspiration and that poets and rhapsodes lack art and knowledge, the dialogue dramatizes the encounter of two very different sorts of ethical being. It displays the laughable and the serious, the low and the elevated, the ethically inferior and the ethically superior in conversation, trusting that the reader will concur with Socrates that the latter is preferable to the former. While the epistemological readings of the Ion remain coherent and respectable, this alternative, ethical reading may offer better avenues for engaging the dramatic spirit of this dialogue. I show that this interpretation coheres well with important passages from three other dialogues: (1) the preference for tragedy over comedy in the Laws , (2) the contrast between the laughable person and the serious person in the Philebus , and (3) the importance of self-knowledge and wisdom in the Apology .
Gerald Else follows the conventional reading of the Ion insofar as he views Socrates as denying any knowledge or art on the part of poets, suggesting as an alternative that poets are divinely inspired. However, Else notes that this “defense” of divine inspiration is highly ironical. He sees Plato as a “preacher of reason” whose goal is to unmask poets and their expositors as “wholly irrational, subrational creatures, not knowing anything of what they do.”1 The hypothesis of divine dispensation is simply an under-handed, sarcastic way of mocking the poets and their thorough ignorance. At the close of the dialogue, Ion naively says it is better to be divine than artistic (542a), unaware that Socrates is employing divine appellations solely to belittle him. On Else’s reading, this only underlines Plato’s ironical disdain for poets and rhapsodes, who are too ignorant to recognize their own naïveté. However, Else criticizes this irony for being “premature.” Referring to 533c-535a, in which Socrates offers an extended defense of divine dispensation as the source of Ion’s recital of Homer, Else says, “It is not Sokrates’ way to launch into a ten-minute discourse when the conversation has barely begun, or to explain to people why they do what they do before he has even asked them why they do it.” He proceeds to note that the hypothesis of divine dispensation is merely “negatively inferred” from Ion’s failure to account for his ability to recite and discuss Homer. According to Else, “This is not Sokrates speaking, it is the young Plato, pricking up his ears and charging into battle before he has even heard the trumpet.”2
My reading of the Ion concurs with Else that Socrates’ defense of divine dispensation is deeply ironical, but I see the irony operating in a different way and for a different purpose. Whereas Else treats it as an over-wrought, juvenile attack by Plato upon poets and their “subrational” ways, my reading treats this irony as a gentler, pedagogical tool that highlights the difference between Socrates and Ion as ethical beings. On this view, Socrates is not concerned with the correctness of any theory of how poetry is produced so much as he is concerned with the well-being of the soul. Divine dispensation is a provisional, ironical hypothesis that progresses the dialogue and better exhibits the contrast between the serious and the laughable. When Ion enthusiastically agrees with Socrates that he recites Homer through inspiration, despite his having previously agreed with equal enthusiasm that he recites Homer according to an art, his laughable nature is made apparent. According to my reading, Plato has Socrates ironically endorse divine dispensation in order to draw Ion’s absurdity and lack of self-knowledge to the fore, but Plato’s goal in doing this is to educate the reader rather than to disparage the rhapsode. The reader is confronted by a dramatic presentation of the laughable figure, one who lacks self-knowledge and foolishly makes absurd claims with naïve enthusiasm. One could see this as an attack on poets and rhapsodes for being epistemologically inadequate. But my reading sees it as a warning against the ethical problems that ensue from disdaining the Delphic imperative, know thyself. The problem with Ion is not simply that he fails to explain how he recites and discusses Homer. The problem is rather that he fails to know himself and consequently maintains an unhealthy soul rife with inconsistency, laughableness, and ignorance.
The laughable is directly broached in the Philebus . Socrates says the “ridiculous” is “a kind of vice which gives its name to a condition; and it is that part of vice in general which involves the opposite of the condition mentioned in the inscription at Delphi,” know thyself (48c).3 One is ridiculous because one is ignorant of oneself. Socrates maintains that there are three types of such ignorance. The first two are ignorance of one’s wealth and ignorance of one’s physical qualities: some tend to think themselves richer and some more beautiful than they really are. More prevalent and dangerous is the third type, ignorance of the qualities of one’s soul, according to which one views oneself as having more virtue than one really does. This is especially true of the virtue of wisdom (48e–49a). This condition, which is no doubt an evil one, can occur in both weak and powerful individuals. Only the former is properly ridiculous or laughable, because when laughed at he is powerless to exact revenge, but the latter is “powerful, terrible, and hateful, for ignorance in the powerful is hateful and infamous …” (49c). The powerful person who lacks Delphic self-knowledge is like a tyrant whose excesses and absurdities are dangerous and destructive. The weak person who lacks Delphic self-knowledge is relatively harmless, and one may laugh at him without having to fear reprisal. Such a person is laughable and ridiculous.
I argue below that one important element of self-knowledge is awareness of one’s own epistemic limits, the boundaries beyond which one makes only unjustified claims. Such claims are absurd. Whether this absurdity is laughable or dangerous depends on the person whose absurdity is in question. As Socrates says, a self-ignorant tyrant is “hateful and infamous,” not because he is mistaken about this or that matter, but because his ignorance issues in gross injustice. There is little to laugh at here. The self-ignorant weakling, however, is laughable, because his ignorance is not harmful in the same way as the tyrant’s. Neither tyrant nor weakling knows himself—each is ignorant of his epistemic limits, and each proceeds to make absurd claims. But only the latter is properly ridiculous. Hence, Socrates’ definition of the laughable individual: a weak person who lacks Delphic self-knowledge.
The laughable is implicitly contrasted with the elevated or serious in the seventh book of the Laws , where the Athenian Stranger distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable forms of “choristry,” or performing arts, within the ideal city (816d).4 He concludes that laughable versions of these should have no place within a good city. The Stranger proceeds to note that even the work of tragic poets might be antithetical to the serious work of philosophy and politics. He imagines a troupe of tr...