En este artículo exploro un enfoque epistemológico de la filosofía de la música de Ficino que asume que la música es un prerrequisito para la actividad filosófica plena (entendida como la restitución del alma individual a la unidad divina). Esta actividad está ligada a la música a través del fenómeno de la inspiración divina. Vincularé los elementos epistemológicos de la filosofía de la música de Ficino con una teoría de la inspiración que se remonta al Ion de Platón. Ficino asume (...) que la misma inspiración pertenece al poeta y al músico y que, lejos de ser un fenómeno cognitivo no controlado, es un factor de gran importancia en el pensamiento filosófico. Así, el trabajo se dividirá en las siguientes secciones: (a) la teoría de la inspiración divina presentada en el Ion de Platón; (b) los elementos que Ficino introdujo en esta teoría y que le permitieron desarrollar su propia teoría musical; (c) La epistemología de la inspiración de Ficino y el papel de la música en el movimiento filosófico hacia el principio divino. (shrink)

No Íon, a autoridade e a sabedoria de poetas e rapsodos são confrontadas por meios indiretos. O caráter oblíquo dessa estratégia impede o acesso direto ao conteúdo do diálogo e provoca inúmeros equívocos de leitura. Um fato contextual estimula mais ainda leituras equivocadas. A poesia tratada no Íon difere muito da forma como nós, modernos, a entendemos. Na Antiguidade grega, de base aural, a poesia era o modo privilegiado de conservação da tradição herdada, e permaneceu exercendo essa função capital até (...) mesmo quando a escrita passou a desempenhar papel relevante na forma de composição e transmissão cultural. Neste contexto, o rapsodo representa uma autoridade que cobre praticamente todos os campos do saber. Autoridade enciclopédica, contra a qual Platão travou uma guerra não sem ambiguidades. O presente artigo busca revelar a motivação profunda que anima o Íon: a contraposição entre dois modos de comunicação, o da poesia e o da filosofia. Defende, ainda, que Platão, ao atacar a performance poética, busca, além de rejeitá-la, substituí-la pelo élenkhos socrático como modo de comunicação ideal para instrução e guia da vida humana. (shrink)

In Plato’s Ion, inspiration functions in contradistinction to technē. Yet, paradoxically, in both cases, there is an appeal to divination. I interrogate this in order to show how these two disparate accounts can be accommodated. Specifically, I argue that Socrates’ appeal to Theoclymenus at Ion 539a-b demonstrates that Plato recognizes the existence of intuitive seers who defy his own distinction between possession and technical divination. Such seers provide an epistemic model for Ion; that he does not notice this confirms he (...) is not an exemplary rhapsode. (shrink)

This paper takes Plato's metaphor of poetic transmission as magnetic charge in the Ion as a central trope for thinking through the various relationships between philosophy and literature; between poetry, interpretation, and truth; and between erotic affects and the material, corporeal, queer dimensions of reception. The affective dimensions of the Platonic text in the Ion, Republic, Symposium, and Phaedrus are examined at length, and the explicit accounts of ascent to philosophical truth are shown to be complicated by the persistence of (...) tropes of corporeal and affective downgoing, with particular attention afforded to the figures of Eros, Hermes, and shame. The paper argues for an unbroken connection between these scenes of classical philosophy and the emergence of homosexuality in relation to the study of the classics in Victorian England. (shrink)

From a detailed overview of Socrates’ exchange with Ion, light is shed on why Socrates’ method of elenchusrequires explicit accounts of concepts at issue. Moreover, Ion’s character is shown to provide an object lesson in the tempting vice of intellectual sycophancy.

The Platonic reevaluation of traditional poetry in positive terms that we read in the Phaedrus, in as much as it is conceived therein as a valuable educational resource for posterity, does not strictly imply anything new in the Platonic corpus, but rather a systemization and complementation of a set of ideas about the origin and function of poetry that Plato had already shared in some of his early, transitional and late dialogues. From this broad set of ideas, I am interested (...) in this study in concentrating especially on a series of passages taken from the Symposium, in order to compile two lines of analysis in this paradigmatic late dialogue which, I understand, constitute a clear precedent for the positive conception that Plato finally assumes about traditional poetry in the Phaedrus. (shrink)