In this presentation on Plato's Ion, Roger explores how the dialogue between Socrates and the master rhapsode Ion reveals a profound distinction between two modes of intelligence: the integrative, image-based world of feeling and the differentiating, idea-based world of thought. Far from being an attack on poets and art, the Ion is shown to be Plato's foundational inquiry into the individual self—dramatizing how Ion, despite his brilliance at reciting Homer, cannot answer Socrates' deceptively simple question of who he is beneath the many masks of his craft. We trace the dialogue's key moves, from the "chain of the loadstone" and divine inspiration through the muse, to the seeds of what will become the archetypal and hermetic traditions, situating Ion within the larger historical drama of Athenian democracy's rise and fall and Plato's lifelong project of teaching humanity to think for itself.

This series is a basic introduction to a major root of the entire Western Philosophic Tradition. This is a rare opportunity to survey an essential heritage. We will follow the translations in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press. These Dialogues also appear in the Penguin Classics Editions: Phaedrus & Letters VII and VIII, Philebus, Early Socratic Dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

More information about these presentations can be found at
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel