Ion

In “Ion,” Plato distinguishes reason and creativity. He believes that the two are mutually exclusive. A human being’s capacity to reason is responsible for their abilities to speak, calculate, plan, etc. It can even account for a person’s ability to write a poem or create art when those tasks are accomplished according to a method. But reason does not account for a person’s ability to create something so beautiful that it is beyond the capacity thought to plan or predict. In other words, inspiration can cause humans to accomplish superhuman things—things that would not have been possible through logic and reason. Socrates notes, “As long as a human being has his intellect in his possession he will always lack the power to make poetry or sing prophecy” (942).

When divine madness inspires someone “to make poetry or sing prophecy,” it is the gods communicating directly with humans. Socrates notes:

That’s why the god takes their intellect away from them when he uses them as his servants, as he does prophets and godly diviners, so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value, for their intellect is not in them: the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives

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