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¶ … Socrates' conclusion that the poets and rhapsodes lack knowledge fair? What sort of knowledge does Socrates seem to have in mind? Could there be other kinds? Is Socrates confusing the knowledge necessary to make a work of art with knowledge of what's represented in the artwork?
Plato's "Republic" presents a Socratic dialogue in which the main speaker argues that poets and rhapsodes lack knowledge. To a certain degree, this might be owed to the artificial ideas that one can find in many poems or rhapsodies, as some are seemingly meant to entertain the masses instead of being meant to put across complex topics. Individuals in Ancient Greece actually believed that philosophy and poetry are two very different domains. It is likely that Plato wanted to emphasize Socrates' belief that poetry is essentially something that people can create with the least amount...
Simply reciting or writing a poem without having solid ideas in mind would be pointless and would thus have nothing to do with the concept of knowledge.
Socrates was apparently infuriated with the idea that a rhapsode would be capable to have a complex understanding of the concepts that he or she discusses. From his perspective, rhapsodes simply take information from one place to another, as other people are responsible for creating the respective information. One would find it perfectly normal to agree with…
Bibliography:
Plato. (1983). Ion and Hippias Major: Two Comic Dialogues. Hackett Publishing.
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