The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Kenneth Dorter *
The Ion: Plato’s Characterization of Art
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 32 (1)
Autumn, 1973, 65-78.
Content
IV. Ion, Section 2 (The
Audience)
V. Ion, Section 2 (The
Artist)
HHC: titling added
THERE IS NO QUESTION that Plato regarded art as a serious and
dangerous rival to philosophy - this is a theme that remains constant, from the
very early Ion to the very late Laws - but beyond this
there is much disagreement. Did he
respect art and appreciate its merits, or was he contemptuous and
unappreciative of it? Or was he
inconsistent? One reason for this uncertainty
is that none of the three dialogues usually consulted for Plato’s theory of art
is concerned with the problem of art in its own terms. The praise of art (music) and censure of
artists in the Republic and Laws are always with a view toward
their advantages and disadvantages for education and the state; and the remarks
in the Phaedrus are incidental to an analysis of eros. For this reason, careful examination of
the Ion is invaluable as a vehicle for entering into Plato’s thought on
art: not only is it the one dialogue devoted exclusively to the question of
art, it is the only dialogue which discusses art in its own terms at all.
Yet it is one of Plato’s most neglected dialogues. Although everyone seems ready to admit that it
is “delightful,” it is not generally regarded as very substantial. [1] It is
the aim of this essay to dispute that estimate and, at the same time, examine
the nature of art. Even if all the
themes of the Ion recur in later dialogues, as many of them certainly do,
the Ion gives them a unity, completeness, and unbiased perspective that
is not found elsewhere in Plato.
Artists commonly make use of skills to achieve control over their
materials, and skills often take aesthetic considerations into account, as in
the case of carpentry. In between, there
are fields in which art and skill are so closely wed that it is impossible to
designate either as subordinate to the other. These are the fields generally called applied
arts, such as architecture, landscape gardening, design, etc. Presumably because of this common
interdependence between art and skill, there is a perennial tendency to regard
art as nothing more than a specialized form of skill or experience. With this evidently in view, the question of
art is approached in the Ion by means of an effort to distinguish it
from skill or science. [2] This is done essentially in three sections, in
addition to a prelude (530a-d) and conclusion (541e-542b). The first section (531a-533c) distinguishes
art from skill or science by arguing that unlike skill or science it does not
consist of universally applicable principles; the third (536e-541e) makes the
same distinction, elaborating the first argument, by arguing that art, unlike
skill or science, is not necessarily based on an understanding of its subject
matter; the second section (533c-536d), on the other hand, offers some positive
suggestions as to what art essentially is. Thus the perspective of the first
* Kenneth
Dorter is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph,
Ontario, Canada.
65
and third sections is primarily
negative in showing what art is not, while that of the second section is
basically positive.
Although the second section is the positive one, it is also left
undeveloped and obscure. The first and
third are argued elaborately and carefully, with plenty of examples, in a lucid
question and answer style, whereas the second consists for the most part of
long mythic, metaphoric speeches by Socrates, with much suggestiveness and
little explanation. Dramatically, the
reason for the ellipticity of this section is, at least in part, Ion’s characteristic
inability to pay attention to any poetry other than Homer’s (538b8-c4). He seems unable to concentrate on Socrates’
poetic discourse: after twice agreeing that artists (including rhapsodes)
create when possessed and out of their senses (535a, d), he abruptly announces:
You
speak well, Socrates. I would wonder, however, if you can speak so well as to
convince me that I praise Homer by being possessed and mad. And I think I wouldn’t seem so to you if you
heard me speaking about Homer. (556d)
Here, as elsewhere (530d, 587a),
he is much more eager to perform his rhapsodic art than to engage in an
intellectual inquiry. The first and
third sections are typical Socratic refutation, prosecuted with typical
Socratic energy and thoroughness. The
second section is Socrates’ response to Ion’s demand that he investigate the
positive aspect of art (533c), and (again typically) Socrates shows himself
unwilling to elaborate his own views any further than he is compelled to do by
his companion’s perseverance - which, in Ion’s case, is not very far. This section, therefore, demands considerably
more analysis and elaboration on our part than do the others, and will be saved
for last.
If the Ion
is to be a work about art, as the second section indicates, it must
be necessary not only to see Ion as representative of rhapsodes in general - he
is certainly portrayed as one of the best (530b 1) - but also to see Ion and
the art of rhapsodizing as representative of art in general. [3] But
why rhapsodizing? It is certainly not
one of the most fundamental arts, not even in Plato’s day. The reason lies, I suspect, in the ambiguity
of the rhapsode’s status. The fact that
an interpretive or performing artist, such as a rhapsode, actor, musician, or
dancer, is confronted not with “raw material” as a “primary” artist is, but
with a finished work of art, puts him in a more complex position than the
primary artist. Not only is he a creator
for his audience, he is also an audience for the primary artist.
Any theory of art which does not take account of both the source and
the destination, the artist and the audience, must be incomplete. Despite the fact that if there were no artist
there would be no art work, the meaning of the act of creation for the artist
is sometimes ignored in theories of art. But the importance of the audience should not
be overlooked either. Indeed, at times
the determination of the audience supersedes that of the creator: what the work
means to the audience may take precedence over what it meant to the artist. The Dadaists, for example, conceived of
themselves as anti-artists, but the audiences found themselves relating to Dada
as to art, so Anti-art became a species of Art. What the creator created as an opposition to
art, the audiences’ response transformed into art. And “found art” provides us with the example
of art that has an audience but no artist.
Plato’s choice of the rhapsode offers him this double perspective
without which the view of art would be incomplete. Ion is not only an artist but also Homer’s
audience, and this is of some importance in section two, as we shall see.
The argument of the present section is essentially that art is not a
skill or science, because its techniques are not indifferently transferable
from one instance to another, as with skills and science. It begins with Ion’s admission (or is it a
boast?) that his ability is limited to the poetry of Homer: “This seems to me
to be sufficient” (531a). He concedes to
Socrates, however, that where other poets, such as Hesiod, agree with Homer, he
ought to be able to be given an equally fine explanation of what any of them
say (and here we see that the rhap-
sode’s art was not limited to
recitation). But what about where they
disagree? Ion acknowledges (thus
inviting Socrates’ attack in section three) that a good prophet is better able
than a rhapsode to comment not only on passages where Homer and Hesiod agree
about prophecy but also where they disagree. Now, since all poets speak about the same sort
of things as Homer, one would expect the rhapsode to be able to speak about all
poets, just as when the prophet can speak about a theme (prophecy) in some one
poet, he can speak of all the others who treat of that same theme (531a-d). Ion, however, cannot do this. The reason, he says, is that the other poets
are beneath comparison with Homer.
This explanation will not suffice, as Socrates patiently points out,
for a skill should enable one to make qualitative comparisons and judgments
within its sphere, and thus should enable one to recognize and comment on both
good and bad instances of it. Men
skilled in arithmetic and medicine, for instance, are readily able to judge
both good and bad statements about these fields. Therefore Ion, too, should be able to judge
not only Homer but the inferior poets as well (531d-532b).
ION: Then whatever is the reason, Socrates, that when
anyone discusses another poet, I am unable to pay attention or contribute
anything at all worth saying, and absolutely doze off; but when anyone
remembers Homer, I immediately wake up and pay attention, and am not at an
impasse as to what to say?
SOCRATES: It is not difficult to guess at the reason, my
friend. Rather it is clear to everyone
that you are unable to speak about Homer by skill or science. For if you were able by skill, you would also
be able to speak about all the other poets. (552b-c)
Socrates emphasizes this point by a comparison between rhapsodizing and
various forms of art criticism:
SOCRATES: Then have you ever yet seen anyone who, with
regard to Polygnotus, the son of Aglaophon, is formidable at showing what he
paints well and what he doesn’t, but is unable to do so with regard to the
other painters? And whenever anyone
exhibits the works of the other painters, he dozes off, and is at an impasse,
and doesn’t have anything to contribute; but when he needs to show his
knowledge about Polygnotus or any other one painter you wish, he wakes
up and pays attention, and isn’t at an impasse as to what to say?
ION: Not at all, by Zeus. (582e-533a)
This point is extended to
include also the criticism of sculpture, of various forms of music, and even of
rhapsodizing. Interpretive art is thus
seen to be essentially different from the related skills or sciences of
criticism, including literary criticism. [4]
The critic has at his disposal certain principles or canons which can
be applied at will to various instances of his special kind of art. If these principles are not applied with quite
the mechanical ease with which a worker applies the principles of his craft to
his material, the difference seems to be only one of degree of subtlety or
complexity. Artists, however, do not
seem able to do this, finding their fertility dependent on a certain kind of
soil, and not generally transferable to other soils. As Socrates later points out by way of
example, each rhapsode is dependent on a certain poet, who is, in turn,
dependent on a certain Muse (536a-b).
Does this argument, distinguishing art from skill and science, seem
justified in the case of interpretive arts, and even in that of art generally? To answer this we must test the argument
against our own experience. But this
task is complicated by the fact that of the two components of
rhapsodizing, performance and exegesis, it is the exegetic aspect that is under
consideration; whereas there no longer seems to be any performing art which has
exegesis as a formal component. Performers,
it is true, develop definite interpretations of their favorite artists as a
result of their intimate contact with the artists’ thought - rather than
through the application of canons of criticism - and in this respect resemble
the rhapsode (cf. 530b-c). Moreover, they
are often willing and even eager to expound these interpretations, as actors and
directors will discuss playwrights, musicians and conductors will discuss
composers, and so on. However, this is
now regarded as an adjunct to their profession rather than an inseparable
function of it, and is consequently so rarely displayed in public that one
cannot make any generali-
67
zations about it. For this reason, we shall have to translate
Socrates’ questions about exegesis into questions about performance. This can be done, I think, without violence to
the argument, since the same factors that make a performer better able to
explain one artist than another would also, presumably, make him better able to
perform that artist; certainly Socrates and Ion treat these two functions of
rhapsodizing as inseparable in this way.
Therefore, testing this argument with regard to the interpretive arts,
and art generally, amounts to asking in the first instance whether actors, for
example, find themselves more adept at interpreting and performing certain
kinds of roles or styles of drama than others; whether musicians similarly find
themselves significantly more responsive to certain styles of music or certain
composers; whether this is true of dancers; etc. In the second instance we must ask whether composers,
for example, are naturally more comfortable with any one style than another,
and similarly with painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, writers of fiction,
etc.
Like most generalizations about artists, answering these questions is
bound to be a tricky affair. On the
whole, however, I should think that Ion’s case is essentially representative,
though not all artists are quite as narrow as he. The Greek conception of the diversity of Muses
reflects that culture’s general concurrence that artists were wedded to
particular styles of modes, and that the source of one such mode is distinct
from that of the others. This is not to
say that an artist cannot change styles, but rather that he himself must change
in order to do so; he cannot don various styles at will with the indifference
of a craftsman choosing the appropriate technique for a particular project.
In our own day, as well, although belief in the Muses does not figure
among the cardinal tenets of our faith, we tend to speak of differences in
temperament among artists, by which we distinguish both the work and commitment
of one artist from another; and it seems likely that the conception of the
Muses as several and discrete, rather than as a single deity, is an expression
of this factor. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,
Wagner, and Stravinsky, all are composers of the first rank, but their music
expresses considerable temperamental differences, so that none of them, at
their maturity, would likely be very successful at expressing himself in the
style of one of the others - even abstracting as far as possible from the
historical differences of style. These
temperamental differences are evident among performers and listeners, as well,
many of whom will be unsympathetic to one or more of these composers, while not
necessarily denying their genius. In the
other arts, it goes without saying, these factors figure as strongly as in
music.
Some temperaments, of course, are more versatile than others, but all
are characteristically delimited, so that no matter how great and versatile an
artist may be, his work will always be vastly supplemented (not merely
overlapped) by that of others. But a
craftsman, whose work consists of the application of a learned skill, may make
use of its objective rules independently of any temperamental bias. That is why few, if any of us, are content to
confine our enjoyment of an art form to the work of a single artist. It would require the virtual coincidence of
our temperament with the artist’s, as in the case of Ion and Homer. But this does not hold true of skills, for a
skilled craftsman can accommodate his skill to all styles and temperaments.
This argument does not, of course, deny that there may be an
interdependence between art and skill - art making use of skills and skill taking
aesthetic factors into account - but only that the one can be reduced to the
other. This distinction is more evident,
the greater the degree in which the art or science is mastered by the practitioner.
A very poor artist may have little or no
inspiration, and rely almost exclusively on the mechanical application of
learned techniques, in which case there is no reason why he cannot be quite
versatile in the number of styles he can imitate - as, for example, a
successful art forger may. Conversely,
someone who has only a slight grasp of some skill may be able to apply it
only in a few isolated
instances, not having sufficient comprehension of the general principles
underlying it to be capable of much versatility. Thus, as the degrees of art and skill diminish,
the practitioners converge in terms of their versatility. But the greater the degree in which the art or
skill is present - i.e., the “better” the artist or skilled person is - the
more evident is the distinction: the artist becomes more individual and
distinctive (all other things being equal - as mentioned above, the individuality
of some artists is broader than that of others), and the skilled person more
versatile and consistent. It is perhaps
for this reason that Socrates makes a point of comparing not just the artist
with the skilled person, but the good artist with the good skilled
person. [5]
Though this argument may serve to show that art, being significantly
less versatile than skill, cannot be reduced to it, it does not tell us more
definitely what art itself is. This is
what, in effect, Ion now asks Socrates:
I
have nothing to say in opposition to you on that, Socrates, but of this I am
conscious, that with regard to Homer I, among men, speak the finest, and am at
no impasse, and everyone tells me that I speak well, but not with regard to the
others. Therefore see why this is.
(533c)
Socrates’ answer constitutes the
second section of this dialogue, but, leaving that for later, let us look at
section three.
At the end of
section one, Ion does not object to Socrates’ claim that Ion’s rhapsodic
ability is not due to skill, provided Socrates can satisfactorily explain this
ability (533c). Socrates offers an
explanation in section two, suggesting that artistic excellence is due to
divine inspiration and madness, which Ion finally rejects, offering to prove by
means of a performance that he is not mad (536d). Socrates declines this offer, since it would
obviously prove nothing, their dispute being not as to the existence of Ion’s
ability but as to its source. Socrates
had initially shown that art is not a skill or science (which may imply that it
is therefore non-rational, i.e., “mad”) by showing that the artist cannot apply
his principles wherever he chooses, as the technician or scientist can. He now takes that analysis one step further,
showing why it is that the artist cannot do this: he cannot claim true
understanding of his subject, and therefore his art cannot be based on
principles of knowledge. In this section
we encounter arguments that are familiar to us from other dialogues: the
challenging of the artist’s claim to wisdom or superior knowledge, and,
suggested throughout, the famous view of the artist as imitator, culminating in
Socrates’ likening of Ion to “Proteus taking every shape” (541e7).
Socrates begins his attack by suggesting that Ion cannot speak well on
all subjects in Homer, if he is not adept at all the skills Homer speaks of
(536e—537a). If Ion’s rhapsodizing is a
skill or science, and therefore based on principles that can be learned, i.e.,
knowledge, it must involve knowledge of the subjects about which he speaks. Socrates, to be sure, does not insist that
there must be subjects in Homer that Ion does not understand; his point is not
that the artist cannot understand his subject, but that he does not necessarily
understand it - any such understanding would not be by virtue of his art
(540d-e). He challenges Ion to find one
in which there is no specialized expert whose skill or science makes him better
qualified than the rhapsode to explain and judge Homer’s treatment of it. Not surprisingly, it turns out there is no
such subject: there is always some specialized skill or science which
understands any particular subject better than the art of rhapsodizing possibly
could. Thus they consider chariot
driving, medicine, and fishing (537a-539d), without Ion’s being able to claim
an understanding of any of them which rivals that of their skilled practitioners.
Since Socrates, as he demonstrates, has no trouble in showing which passages
in Homer would be suitable for the prophet to pass judgment on, why cannot Ion
show which are suitable for the rhapsode (538d-539e)? Obviously the challenge is unfair, since, on
this analogy, the only answer Ion could make is: the (non-existent) pas-
69
sages in which Homer speaks of
rhapsodizing. But it is important to see
that Socrates is not merely diddling Ion: he is, rather, pursuing the
consequences of Ion’s claim that art (rhapsodizing) is cognitive, like skill or
science. The attempt to treat art in the
same way as the “other” skills reduces to absurdity.
Ion realizes that something has gone wrong, and tries to retrieve his
position. He now says that all passages
are suitable for the rhapsode to judge. No
doubt in some sense he is right, but he is unable to make the necessary
distinction. Not seeing quite where the
difficulty lies, he tries to cling stubbornly to this position that has already
been shown to be untenable. Socrates
then asks him, “Don’t you remember that you said the rhapsode’s skill is
different from the charioteer’s?” (540a) - a question which serves not only to
renew the refutation but also to remind Ion, by the phrase “the rhapsode’s
skill” [HHC – Greek not reproduced], that the root of the problem
is Ion’s insistence that rhapsodizing is a skill on the model of, for example,
chariot driving. If Ion were willing to
admit that art is a different order of enterprise from skills such as this,
there would be no need to make them mutually exclusive in this way. Ion fails to notice that and is easily flushed
from his position once again by Socrates, and is once again in full retreat. He is forced to surrender steersmanship and,
for a second time, medicine from his jurisdiction, and - evidently feeling
increasingly humble - is willing to settle for claiming to know what a slave
would say. But even this is taken from
him, for as soon as the slave does anything, such as herd cattle or spin wool,
the rhapsode is once again ousted by some expert (540a-d).
Finally Socrates lures Ion into making his last stand. He asks the devotee of the author of the Iliad
whether he would know what sort of things a general ought to say to his
troops. The desperate Ion sees this as
his last best hope and rushes to this position, holding it at all costs, even
when he finds himself faced with assuring Socrates that he, Ion the rhapsode,
is far and away the best general in Greece (54lb). But Ion sees his position is untenable and
when Socrates accuses him of not revealing what the subjects are at which he is
so adept (541e), he does not protest.
Socrates then delivers an ultimatum. If Ion really does possess skill or science,
then he must have been capable of answering Socrates’ request if he wished; and
his not doing so, after promising he would, must be construed as dishonesty and
injustice. Like Proteus, he sought to
escape by taking every shape, escaping finally in the guise of a general. Therefore, either he does not possess skill or
science, and is instead divinely inspired, or else he is unjust. Socrates tells him to choose whether he would
rather be considered unjust or divine. Ion accepts Socrates’ terms and chooses
divinity (541e-542b).
As in the Republic with the example of the poet, Socrates here
shows by the example of the rhapsode that any pretension the artist may have to
wisdom or superior knowledge is unjustified. Otherwise, as Socrates’ remarks suggest, why
are artists so often inarticulate about what it is that they are doing and
unable in many cases to give a better account of themselves and their art than
Ion did?
Ion might have countered Socrates’ argument by claiming that the wisdom
of the artist is genuine but non-conceptual, and does not therefore lend itself
to conceptual linguistic explication. Or
he might have claimed, as Socrates does in the Republic (428b-d), that
wisdom does not mean specialized expertise but a synoptic view; he might argue
then, that although his knowledge is deficient to the expert’s in any particular
field, what counts is rather breadth than depth, and that he may therefore
claim superior wisdom of a sort. To the
first claim Socrates might reply that a non-conceptual wisdom is not akin to
skill or science, is therefore not “rational” in their sense, and could
accordingly be described as a wisdom that is non-rational or “mad.” It is only art’s claim to wisdom on the model
of science that Socrates opposes. As for
the second claim, it might prove hard to defend if Socrates asked how a
synopsis composed of deficient elements could be of much
value. But in this case what right does philosophy
have to claim to be cognitive? Can it
not be said of philosophy, too, that each of its fields is better understood by
a specialist who devotes all his time to it - art by artists, politics by
politicians, human nature by rhetoricians, and so on? Furthermore, could one not use the same
argument to show that any skill or science which has subdivisions must be
non-cognitive, since there would be a specialist for each of the subdivisions
that constitute the whole? Thus it might
be argued that a general practitioner of medicine cannot really be said to have
medical knowledge, because in any given medical field there will be an expert
more knowledgeable than he.
The cases, however, are not parallel. The general practitioner does have genuine
medical knowledge in that he has studied the principles of medicine, but
chooses to concentrate on the totality and interrelation of general principles
rather than the details of one isolated branch. In so doing he performs a cognitive function
different from that of any of the specialists, which is why he continues to
thrive. Similarly, the philosopher
requires knowledge of the various fields with which he deals, and studies them
in order to bring these various pursuits together so as to understand their general
principles and their relations to one another, and he thus performs a cognitive
function distinct from any of the others. The case of the artist is different, however:
SOCRATES: And are you also a general, Ion - the best of the Greeks?
ION: You may be sure of it, Socrates, and I have
learned that too from Homer. (641b)
Ion’s notions about generalship
were not derived from a study of warfare but from a study of Homer, who was not
a general - nor even, perhaps, a
soldier. He cannot, therefore, be said
to possess the science of generalship but only derivative opinions about it,
and this is evidently true of his acquaintance with the other sciences as well.
This is not to deny that the artist can
acquaint himself with such skills or sciences if he chooses - indeed, this is
explicit (540d-e) - but rather to make the point that such knowledge is not an
essential component of art per se, as it is in the other cases. The most that is necessary for art is
verisimilitude, not factual truth; and even verisimilitude can be dispensed
with in certain art forms, such as in farces or non-naturalistic art. Factual knowledge may be desirable for art but
not essential - it may make art more accurate and philosophically more
enlightening but not more artistic, as Ion is a case in point.
One would get a one-sided and misleading view of Plato’s attitude
toward art if one read Socrates’ attack on artists in Republic X without
bearing in mind the esteem he shows for art (music, including poetry) in Book
II (376e if.), an esteem which he never abandons. [6]
In the same way, it would be misleading
to remember the first and third sections of the Ion, in which Socrates
criticizes the artistic pretension to knowledge, without bearing in mind the
middle section, in which he balances the two negative sections with a positive
characterization of art. The claim to
divinity that Socrates offers Ion may be somewhat ironic in the context of the
conclusion, but in the second section Socrates has shown in what sense it is
justified and serious.
IV. Ion, Section 2 (The Audience)
We have seen
that the third section casts artists in the role of imitators of a reality they
do not understand. Though not explicit,
the conception of art as imitation is clearly implicit and seems to have been
already in evidence by Plato’s time. [7] This does not mean that “imitation” exhausts
the significance of art, however, and that Plato sees art as nothing more than
the mirror to which he maliciously compares it in Republic X. Imitation or mirroring are very ordinary
affairs, but there is something extraordinary and uncanny about art. It is this uncanny aspect that section two
focuses on at some length.
SOCRATES: When you are speaking epics well - are you
then in your senses, or are you beside yourself? And doesn’t your soul, being inspired, think
that it is present at the actions of which you speak,
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whether at Ithaca, or Troy, or wherever else the epics
hold?
Ion assents, adding:
When
I am telling anything pitiful, my eyes are filled with tears; but when it is
frightening or formidable, my hair stands up from fear, and my heart leaps.
(535b-c)
If art is a kind of imitation,
it is one which does not merely mirror but transports us into another world. So much that, judged by the ordinary standards
of the physically present world, our behavior during an aesthetic experience
appears incomprehensible and “mad.” Socrates conjures up the picture of Ion
reciting sad and frightening passages from Homer: dressed in gorgeous clothing,
a golden crown perched upon his head, standing amid twenty thousand admirers
who not only are not trying to take away his crown or colorful clothes but will
shortly be giving him their money, Ion - who is not shy - weeps and trembles with fear.
Such a man, Ion must admit, is not in
his senses (535d).
Thus, too, absorbed in an art gallery, would our behavior be judged
sane by someone who understood only that we are staring at colors on a wall? It would miss the point also to interpret
concert going as an interest in seeing people puffing and blowing and waving
their arms about, and hearing the sort of sounds they make - although from a
purely physical point of view that is certainly what it is. Nor would it seem sane if, becoming melancholy
from reading of Dora’s death in David Copperfield, we explained that we
were saddened at the death of someone who never existed. Similarly, those who weep or tremble at movies
are not generally convinced or comforted by assurances that they are watching
only actors’ pretense, nothing “real.” It is something real, but real in an
extraordinary sense, so that there is something ludicrous about the “ordinary”
fact that prosperous, happy people, sitting comfortably in a theater, enjoying
oral gratification with popcorn, candy, or tobacco, weep tragically over the non-existent
troubles of non-existent characters.
The uncanniness of art does not stop here. When Socrates asks Ion whether he is aware
that he transmits his own reactions to the audience, he replies that he is:
For
I am constantly looking down from my stage upon people weeping, or with
formidable looks, or amazed with what is spoken. For I need to pay close attention to them, so
that if I make them weep I shall laugh on receiving their money, but if I make
them laugh I myself shall weep at losing their money. (555e)
This is surely paradoxical. How can Ion be, as he said only ten lines
earlier, transported into another world - the mythical world of Ithaca and Troy
- and yet be so intensely and calculatingly aware of this one? It does not mean that Ion is a fraud or
hypocrite, insincere in his earlier claim to ecstatic transport, for it is a
fact that performing artists must be as closely in touch with their audience as
with their source material: their function is to mediate between the artist and
the audience, and this cannot be consummately done without their being intensely
aware of and sensitive to the audience. Moreover, it is at the very time of performing
that the performer is at his best and most sensitive to the artist he is interpreting;
the presence of the audience often inspires him to new heights by intensifying
for him the aesthetic experience in which he is actively participating. This being the case, the performer’s
involvement in the physical world of the theater and in his professional duties
does not detract from his involvement in the art work, as one might at first
expect, but on the contrary increases it.
Why should this be? Is this
paradox meant to indicate something about the nature of art? It was suggested earlier that Ion functions in
this dialogue in the dual roles of artist and audience, and that, as artist, he
is meant to be representative of artists in general. Can we say as well that as audience he is
representative of audiences in general? To
answer this we must determine whether the “self awareness” which is inseparable
from the performer’s professional encounter with the art work is also
inseparable from that of the audience; and, if so, whether this is only a
necessary evil or, on the contrary, that it somehow enhances the aesthetic
experience.
In the first place there is the obvious fact
that moments exist during any
aesthetic experience, during which something like total absorption and self
forgetfulness seem to occur, and these moments are the ones we most value. But this is true of the performer as well, and
the constant reference he makes to his audience occurs in flickering
conjunction with this absorption. As for
the question of self awareness on the part of the audience in general, we may
first observe that it does in fact occur, leaving undecided for the moment
whether it is only an unfortunate imperfection in the aesthetic experience or,
as with the performer, an essential feature of it. At an art gallery we are for the most part not
unaware of other people, the pressure of the floor against our feet, our
movements, the design of the building, hunger or fatigue, and - not least
important - our memories, attitudes, hopes, and plans that the work may call to
mind or illuminate. At a concert or film
we shift in our seat, deliberately postpone coughing until a propitious moment,
wage surreptitious battles with our neighbors for the arm rest, are aware of
the acoustics and architecture, the performers and audience, and, again, of our
own memories, attitudes, hopes, and plans. And during other kinds of aesthetic experience
analogous situations obtain: we find a constant flickering of our mind between
the world of art work and the here and now world of our personal affairs.
The question arises again: Why should this be? Art works, as corporeal, require sensory awareness,
thus admitting the possibility of sensory distraction which brings us back to
ourself. But a more fundamental factor
seems to be that the art world itself intrinsically seeks ourselves out,
makes us self conscious, and thus only derivatively calls our attention
to the physical world surrounding us. [8] Although the kinds of physical distraction
mentioned earlier would thus appear irrelevant and undesirable, they can now be
understood as, in part, consequences of a self awareness that is demanded by
and essential to the aesthetic experience. The world of the art work is constantly
applied, made relevant, and assimilated to ourselves, and somehow illuminates,
or even transfigures our memories, attitudes, hopes, and plans. This is why the aesthetic experience is not
merely escapist but edifying, and not only a rapture from without but also
intensely personal and our own. It also
explains the paradoxical fact of the Ion, that not only does the self
awareness required by the performer’s profession fail to prevent him from
becoming absorbed in the art work, as we might expect it to do, it even seems
to enhance this participation, since the performer is very likely the most
intense and appreciative audience of the art work. If it is a function of the art work to apply
itself intimately to ourselves, the heightened appreciation of the work by the
performer is more readily comprehensible, since his personal affairs, his
world, are more immediately commensurate with the world of the art work,
because more inseparable from it, than are those of most of us.
Thus, when Plato calls attention to the paradoxical nature of Ion’s
activity, it is revelatory of something about the aesthetic experience in
general not of something fraudulent about Ion. The performer, to be sure, is a special case,
in that his function as audience is entwined with an additional creative function
not shared by the audience in general; but the fact that the self awareness
required by his profession is not incompatible with - and even enhances - his
absorption in the art work, is indicative and representative of something that
holds true between the art work and audience generally.
Art, then, is not merely imitation, for it infuses our world in such a
way as to transform and ennoble it. But
how? What is there about the world of
the art work that can transmute our “ordinary” world? For one thing, the world of the art work is already
a transformation, rather than duplication, of ordinary experience. In this section where Socrates is putting
forth his own view of the value of art, rather than attacking art on the basis
of Ion’s view, he offers a simile of the artist much more revealing than the
likening of him to Proteus the imitator:
For the poets tell us indeed that plucking their
lyrics from springs flowing with honey, out of certain gardens and glades of
the Muses, they
73
bring
them to us like the bees, and fly like them. And what they say is true. (534a-b)
The comparison of the poet to
the bee, together with that of the repository of his verse to honey, cannot but
be suggestive. Between Proteus and his
models, or the mirror and what it reflects, obtains only the most arbitrary and
external of relations; but the relation between the bee and honey is intrinsic
and necessary. A bee bringing us honey
(unlikely though that event may be) is not bringing us a sample or copy of nature,
but rather a transformation of nature which the bee itself has wrought. The same role is ascribed to the artist when
he is compared to a bee, gathering his art from rivers of honey: his works are
taken not ready-made from ordinary experience, but only from the fruits of his
own catalysis.
Only this can explain the extraordinary quality of art - extraordinary
not only in its effect on us but also, as we saw in the first section, in the
act of creativity that brings it about. Were
the artist’s realm no more than that of ordinary experience, there is no reason
why skill or science would not be appropriate and adequate. Its extraordinariness explains why, for
example, we read the Iliad differently than we read a history text.
V. Ion, Section 2 (The Artist)
To consider
the art work as a transformation of ordinary experience may explain why it can
transform our ordinary world, but itself is in need of explanation. What sort of transformation does the artist
effect in the creation of the art work? What principle can he employ if not one of
skill or science, but somehow non-cognitive and “extraordinary?” In the metaphor of the bees, the streams of
honey are found in the realm of the Muses, and it is the Muses that are the
subject of Socrates’ discourse here. They
are the gods of whom Socrates says: “… those beautiful poems aren’t human nor
from men, but divine and from gods; and poets are nothing other than interpreters
of the gods, possessed by whichever one possesses them” (534e). Art is not a human skill or science but a
divine allotment (536c), [9] furnished by
the Muse who possesses us or, if we are interpretive rather than primary
artists, by the Muse possessing the artist by whom we are inspired and through
whom the allotment is thereby transmitted to us (and ultimately to the audience),
as the power of a magnet is transmitted through a series of iron rings (533d-e,
535e-536b).
Left in these terms, as Ion is content to allow Socrates to do, the source
of the artistic power of transformation would remain hidden in theological
mystery. Socrates gives two hints,
however, which direct our thoughts to a philosophical alternative, both of
which are present in the following passage: “... the lyric poets compose these
beautiful (kala) lyrics when they are not in their senses; but when they
enter into harmony and rhythm they become Bacchic and possessed” (543a). One is the concept of entering into harmony
and rhythm (embôsin eis ten harmonian kai eis ton hrythmon), which is
here seen as the catalyst by which artistic creation occurs; the other is the
concept of beauty, which is never explicitly brought into the discussion, but
which has been constantly kept before our mind as a persistent leitmotif since
the beginning of the dialogue, [10] and
especially in the present speech where it occurs eight times.
The concepts of beauty, rhythm, and harmony all had cosmic significance
for Plato; [11] they pertain to the inmost
essence of being. Although there is
perhaps no dialogue as early as the Ion in which these suggestions are
developed, there was ample precedence in the teachings of the Pythagoreans and
others. It would require a detailed
examination to attempt to elaborate the implications of harmony, rhythm, and
beauty - which are not, after all, explicit themes of the Ion - but some general observations
on the Platonic conception of beauty would be helpful. Rhythm and harmony, in turn, might
provisionally be regarded as functions of beauty. [12]
For instance, if we can regard beauty as
a certain unity of diverse elements, perhaps harmony can be understood as the
relation of these
parts to the whole, and rhythm
as their relation to one another.
Just as there is an ambiguity in the Ion’s attitude toward art -
criticizing it in the first and third sections from the criterion of skilled
and scientific knowledge, and praising it in the second section from that of
divine revelation - not surprisingly there is a parallel ambiguity in the
meaning of kalon (beautiful).
In the first and third sections it seems to mean, without exception,
something like “accurate” or “knowledgeable.” The following exchange is typical: [13]
SOCRATES: Would you, or one of the good prophets, be
able to give a finer (kallion) explanation about whatever these two
poets say about prophecy that is the same, and whatever is different?
ION: One of the prophets. (481b)
Here kallion obviously
means “more knowledgeable.” Unquestionably,
Ion could give a more attractively eloquent or prettier explanation (and would
be the last to deny it); the prophet, however, has a much greater fund of
knowledge by which to explain and interpret what Homer says about prophecy, and
this is what would make his account finer (kallion). It is this sense of kalon also
which is consistently indicated throughout section three.
The ambiguity in the meaning of kalon is introduced in the
statement with which Ion prompts section two: “I have nothing to say in opposition
to you on that, Socrates, but of this I am conscious, that with regard to Homer
I, among men, speak the finest (kallist) ...” (533c). Ion is thus willing to concede that his
knowledge (skill or science) does not seem to amount to much according to
Socrates’ analysis, yet he remains convinced that he is the finest (kallist)
speaker about Homer. Socrates can
supply the explanation Ion demands only if he can show that there is some sense
of kalon that is not equivalent to “knowledgeable” in the previous
sense. Accordingly, he shows that there
is a beauty (kalon) that stems not from factual knowledge (skill or science)
but from divine inspiration:
For
all the epic poets who are good speak all these beautiful (kala) poems
not by skill, but by being inspired and possessed. And similarly the lyric poets who are good,
just as the Corybantes dance when they are not in their senses, so too the
lyric poets compose these beautiful (kala) lyrics when they are not in
their senses... Therefore, since it isn’t by skill that they compose poetry and
say many beautiful (kala) things about their subjects - as you do about
Homer - but by a divine allotment, each is able to compose beautiful (kalos)
poetry only about that to which the Muse has impelled him... For they don’t
say these things by skill, but by a divine power; since, if they knew how to
speak beautifully (kalos) about one by skill, they would be able to do
so about all the others. (555e-534c)
There is a sense of kalon, then, which has its source in divine
inspiration rather than human skill and science. Socrates’ description of the artist as
relaying the Muse’s power, as iron rings relay the power of the magnet,
suggests that art is “imitation” in a twofold way. To the extent that art presents itself as
skill or science, it is a mere imitation of nature; but seen in terms of what
is distinctive about art, it is an imitation of the divine. The artist may indeed translate (imitate)
nature into words or colors or tones, but he is also a translator (hermênês:
534e4) of the gods. It is this
twofold sense in which artists are imitators that gives rise to the ambiguous
attitude, found in the Platonic dialogues, toward art. So far as art claims to understand the various
subjects it deals with, such understanding is always subordinate to that of the
skilled or scientific expert in the field - the imitator must always take
second place to the originator. But seen
as a translator of the divine into human media, the role of artist is exalted. Beauty understood as factual truth belongs to
the expert, but understood as divine truth belongs to the artist, and this is
the source of art’s rivalry with philosophy.
If the imitation of nature furnishes art with its representational
character, the imitation of the divine furnishes it with “harmony and rhythm,”
and it is in this second characteristic that the distinctiveness of art lies. When we say that some work of art “works,” we
are not referring to its factual accuracy but to the crystallization of its facets
into a cogent harmonic and rhythmic
75
unity. This sense of beauty is the essential one in
art, for it is certainly possible to regard an art work as beautiful even if it
is representationally “inaccurate.” [14] It is possible, for
example, to sing false statements to a beautiful melody or, put more radically,
to create a beautiful poem out of false sentiments. In such a case we might distinguish between,
for example, harmonic beauty and representational falseness; but though it were
representationally false, one might still say that its harmony, as beautiful,
must convey some sort of truth - i.e., that there is something “true” about
beauty. That beauty and truth are thus
somehow convertible has, indeed, been widely and often maintained, and it is
very likely due to this convergence of meanings that the Greek word for beauty,
kalon, developed the derivative sense of “factual truth” which we have
seen it display in the first and third sections of the
Ion.
Beauty in art, then, is not equivalent to prettiness or pleasantness. We might call a great tragedy or grotesque
painting beautiful, while not claiming that either is in any normal sense
pleasant. This is certainly the position
of Plato, who is clearly no hedonist in aesthetics. Thus, in the Ion, the most frequent
example of beautiful art is the Iliad, which is hardly a pretty or
pleasant work, depicting as it does the most awful war of its time, full of
cruelty, treachery, and scenes of blood, gore, and oozing brains.
This primary sense of beauty, which we have just interpreted as “divine
truth,” is developed in the Ion no further than its mythological
characterization as “the utterances of the gods.” The meaning of “divine truth” is, however,
explored in certain other dialogues in a way that is illuminating to the
present discussion, and which therefore merit our attention. It is always somewhat risky, in the case of
Plato, to interpret one dialogue in the light of another, or to examine
passages out of context, but in this case, at least, the passages are fully
commensurate with the implications of the Ion, and may function as
indications of the way those implications may be elaborated rather than as
doctrines imposed upon the Ion from elsewhere.
In the Phaedrus
Socrates explores the theme of truth - not, however, in the sense of
factual correctness that is the province of the dianoetic and sober skills and
sciences, but the “divine” truth that is apprehended only in a non-discursive,
non-sober, and, therefore, “mad” intuition (244a-b ff). This is depicted as the Plain of Truth (to
alitheias pedion: 248b6), where
truth has the noetic sense of the visibility of things as they are in
themselves - a sense which must be presupposed by the discursive notion of
correctness, since a correct proposition presupposes a certain access to its
subject. What is here visible in itself
is essential being (ousia ontôs ousa: 247c7), of whose primary forms,
such as beauty, temperance, justice, and wisdom, beauty is the only one that
can be experienced directly through our senses. Accordingly, beauty is the one immediate
perception that can prompt our mind to ascend to (recollect) an awareness
however faint of truth and essence (249e-250d). Thus the function of the Muses,
who provide man with the power of producing beauty, may be seen to be connected
with philosophy (259b-d). [15]
The basis for this connection is Plato’s conviction that beauty is a
sensuous reflection of the primal order underlying the whole of reality. If we understand beauty in this way, one
effect of beautiful art would be, by means of its harmony and rhythm, to
illuminate its subject in the light of the underlying unity of experience, so
as to bring it into a subtle relation with this unity, and thus reveal in it a
significance and meaningfulness that would otherwise be lacking. This would explain the sense of
“meaningfulness without any definite meaning” which the art work tends to convey.
In the Ion, the ordering
principle thus underlying reality is represented by the gods, among whom it is
the function of the Muses to infuse the artist with the harmony and rhythm of
this divine truth and, through him, infuse all who participate in
the work, as a magnet infuses an
iron ring with its own nature, and through that ring infuses still other rings.
Through artistic beauty we all become
filled with the divine spirit (533e4 if.), uplifted with an intimation of unity
and a mysterious sense of significance.
Plato’s ambivalence toward art stems from his recognition that the
importance of art, as interpretation of the divine, cannot be overestimated,
together with his conviction that the representational content of art, as
imitation of nature, is all too often based on ignorance and error. The danger of art consists in the fact that
these two elements are inseparably joined in a single experience, so that
except perhaps in certain mixed forms, such as words sung to music, it is
virtually impossible to distinguish between them in practice: the representational
element in an art work exists only in the harmony and rhythm of its representation,
and the harmony and rhythm of an art work exist only as the harmony and rhythm
of a particular representation. [16] The particular rhythm and sound of the words
in a poem are inseparable from their meaning; the particular assemblage of
colors and shapes of a painting are inseparable from the subject; the
particular rhythm, harmony, and tempo of a piece of music are inseparable from
its mood; and so on. Because of this
inseparability, the beauty of harmony and rhythm tends to make one receptive to
the sentiments expressed, which is one reason, for example, music was
introduced into religious ceremony. Nevertheless,
the beauty of harmony and rhythm has no necessary connection with the truth or
falsity of the sentiments, as rhetoricians, propagandists, and advertisers have
often demonstrated.
Thus in the Republic (601a-b), Socrates observes:
Then
in this way, I think, we shall say that the poetic man colors each of the
skills with names and phrases, although he does not understand them and only
imitates them. So that he seems - to
others like himself, who observe only from words - when he speaks in meter,
rhythm, and harmony, he seems to speak very well, whether about shoemaking,
generalship, or anything else; such a great fascination do these things by
nature possess. Indeed, when the
statements of the poets are stripped of the colors of music, and are spoken by
themselves, I think you know how they appear.
1. A. E. Taylor, Plato (Cleveland:
Meridian, 1956), decides that “Little need be said about this slight dialogue”
(p. 38), and most seem to agree with him, to judge by the scant attention it
receives in books on Plato, histories of philosophy and of aesthetics, and
journals.
Since this was
written, an interesting study by Allan Bloom has appeared: “An Interpretation of
Plato’s Ion”, Interpretation, I (1970): 43-62.
2. Technê
and episteme appear to be used interchangeably
in the Ion; see esp. 537d5-el, 538b3-6.
3. See G. M. A.
Grube, Plato’s Thought (Boston: Beacon, 1958), pp. 179-80, and note.
4.
Socrates does not elaborate
the example of literary criticism, he introduces it as an instance parallel to
the other types of art criticism, by noting the existence of “a whole that is
the skill of poetry,” and he thereby distinguishes it from the non-skill (art)
of rhapsodizing (532c8-10 and context). It
is therefore surprising that the rhapsode of the Ion is often taken to
be equivalent to a literary critic, and Socrates’ critique of the rhapsode as a
critique of literary criticism (e.g., Craig La Driêre, “The Problem of Plato’s Ion,”
JAAC, X (1951): 29; Roslyn Brogue Henning, “A Performing Musician Looks at
the Ion,” Classical Journal LIX (1964), 242; Jerrald Ranta, “The Drama
of Plato’s Ion,” JAAC XXVI (1967): 219). There was, in fact, a separate tradition of
literary criticism in ancient Greece, entirely distinct from art forms such as
rhapsodizing (see George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, vol. 1,
(Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1900), 9-17; J. W. H. Atkins, Literary Criticism in
Antiquity, vol. I, (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1934), Chap. 2; Rosemary
Harriott, Poetry and Criticism Before Plato (London: Methuen, 1969);
also G. M. A. Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics (London: Methuen,
1965), pp. 8-9. It is Socrates and
Plato, not Ion, who are the literary critics.
5. The artist
is qualified as “good” at 530b9, c2, 533e6, 8, 535a5, b2, 536e2, 540e8, 54la3,
6, 7, b2; the skilled person at 53lb6, 532a3, b3, e8, 533b2, 8, 54la4, 5, bl,
4.
6. E.g., Cratylus
406a; Phaedrus 248d, 259d; Tiinaeus 47c-e; Laws 673a.
7. “This
conception of art as imitation does not seem to have originated with Plato (See
Finsler, pp. 11)”: Grube, p. 202, n. The
reference to Finsler is to Platon und die aristotelische Poetik (Leipzig:
Spirgalls, 1900).
8. Since art is
thus tied to the sensuous, and to the individual and personal, it can never
remain in the realm of the purely intelligible and universal, as philosophy
can; and for Plato this was surely a sign of its inferiority.
77
9. Theia moira;
also at
534cl, 535a4, 536d3. Cf. Meno 100b2-3.
10. During the
first substantive exchange of the dialogue (530b5-d3), variants of kalon occur
four times; at the end of the dialogue they occur three times in the last seven
lines; and they occur frequently throughout the body of the dialogue as well.
11. With regard
to “beauty,” see the next section of this essay; with regard to “harmony and
rhythm,” see, for example, Timaeus 47c-e, Republic 401d-402a.
12. Cf. Republic
401d—e.
13. Cf. 531a7. These two are the only occurrences of kalon
in section one although there are four in the prelude (530a-d), where its
meaning varies between “knowledgeable” and “beautiful.” In the third section it occurs at 538a7, b2,
540b7, c2, all in the sense of “knowledgeable.” There are also four occurrences
in the conclusion (541e-542b), where the meaning again varies.
14. As Socrates
regards Agathon’s speech in the Symposium (198b3 and d3-6).
15. Cf. Cratylus
406a; also Phaedo 61a, Republic 401d-402a, Laws 689d, Timaeus
47c-e.
16. This
obviously bears a resemblance to the analysis of art in terms of form and
content. Plato, however, did not use
these terms, and we should be careful to avoid attributing to him aspects of
that later theory which he himself does not introduce.
78