Odyssey's Poetry

Q1i. Knowing the poet’s thought is knowing where the poet’s thoughts come from, what inspires him/her, what motivated the poet to put his ideas together he/she did, and why the poet chose to present those ideas in the way he/she did. These things can be different for each poet, that’s why Ion makes such a distinction between Homer and every other poet (531a4). Socrates believes that God instills poets with these thoughts and ideas and possesses the poet (534c3). God is the source of the poet’s motivation and inspiration (534d3).
Q1ii. The dialogue is mostly concerned with knowing the poet’s thought. Ion makes it clear that he has memorized Homer’s lines when he recites what Nestor says at Patroclus’ funeral (537a8). Socrates trusts that Ion has adequately memorized Ion’s poems and does not …show more content…
While I do not agree with this conclusion, I do find it convincing. The multiple conclusions do flow logically and clearly make up one overall conclusion. I can see where Socrates finds the premises and how he uses them to get his point across. The one premise that I would refute says “Poetry does not have the same discipline throughout (532d2)”, because I believe that poetry is the discipline of combining the art of language with human reality. All poets and every poem does this same thing so it does have the same discipline throughout therefore it is a subject. However, Socrates strengthens his argument with his examples on the charioteer, the fisherman, and the diviner (537c3, 538d6, 539d3). He points out that these are completely separate disciplines within poetry and a poet or even a rhapsode cannot say with honesty that they can speak on these topics more truthfully and masterfully than the expert on the given subject (540a8). I do agree with his argument that a subject is only a subject if it can be mastered. And through Socrates’ clever logic, he uses those examples to argue that poet and a rhapsode cannot master poetry because there is not one set