Table of ContentsThe IonThe MenoThe PhaedoGeneral ComparisonThe IonIn Plato's dialogue Ion, he seems to address a rather insignificant question: do poets know what they are talking about?Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayWhat is poetry? Conscious creation of the poet or divine inspiration? Starting from this question, Socrates, in the Platonic dialogue of Ion, develops the theory of divine inspiration. Essentially, Ion believes that poetry involves special knowledge and Socrates does not believe this. Instead, he believes that the poet is possessed, not merely inspired, by the Muse and transmits this power to the audience. A rhapsode is further from the source in the chain - he likens this nicely to a magnet and iron fillings - but nevertheless practices his art in a non-rational way requiring no special knowledge. Many artists would describe the moment of creation as a sort of trance-like state, although very few would agree that art requires no technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is practical and often concerns mechanical, computer, mathematical or scientific tasks. Some examples include knowledge of programming languages, mechanical equipment or tools. Ion's dialogue obviously carries a particularly dramatic or dramatized style, which is gradually exacerbated not only by Socrates' Platonic attempt to reason logically the thoughts of his interlocutor, but above all due to the efforts of Ion to respond to this " challenge ". This point is important because, if poets have no particular technical knowledge, they are probably not moral experts either. Indeed, many of his contemporaries considered poets as moral guides and there are still those who would like to believe that art makes us better people. Despite the very obvious problem that a god could act through an artist to convey moral truth, Socrates argues that viewing artists as moral experts is a dangerous illusion. They stir our emotions and entertain us, but ultimately they can hardly be our moral guides, since they don't even know what they are doing. This is a central idea in Plato: Virtue is Knowledge. We would be good if only we had the moral knowledge to do so.The MenoThe dialogue opens with Meno asking Socrates how one acquires virtue. Socrates responds that this question cannot be resolved without first reaching agreement on a prior question, namely what is the nature of virtue. As usual, Socrates claims not to know what virtue is and, furthermore, he says that he has never met anyone else who does. Meno naively remarks that Gorgias knew, to which Socrates responds that he "forgot" what Gorgias said. Meno then agrees to act on Gorgias's behalf and inform Socrates of what Gorgias considered virtue. This, of course, establishes a view that Socrates can examine and refute through his usual question-and-answer method. The Meno, because here for the first time the interlocutor named “Socrates” devotes considerable attention to a question outside the domain of morality. philosophy; although it begins with a typically Socratic question: What is virtue? If virtue is to be taught; or if it is acquired. – Socrates cannot find an adequate answer, he soon finds himself confronted with an unprecedented question about the legitimacy of his method of inquiry, a question that calls into question our ability to emerge from a state of ignorance and toacquire knowledge. “Socrates” responds to this challenge by proposing a radical theory of knowledge according to which the human soul is born with the capacity to remember what it has learned during a previous existence; and he defends this theory by conducting an experiment in which it is shown that a slave can make significant progress toward understanding geometry, if asked. This dialogue is an attempt to answer the question: can virtue be taught? No one would ask or answer such a question in modern times. But in the time of Socrates, it was only through effort that the mind could raise itself to a general notion of virtue distinct from the particular virtues of courage, liberality, etc. And when a vague conception of this ideal was reached, it was only by further effort that it was worthwhile to resolve the question of how best to teach virtue. final days before the execution of Plato's teacher, Socrates (469-399 BCE). Socrates was sentenced to death by the state of Athens. It follows his dialogues Euthyphro, Apology and Crito. It contains the first extensive discussion of the theory of forms. More than most of Plato's other writings, the Phaedo is in constant dialogue with pre-Socratic theories of the world and the soul, particularly those of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Heraclitus. The dialogue begins with a conversation between two characters, Echecrates and Phaedo, occurring some time after the death of Socrates in the Greek city of Phlius. The Phaedo gives us three different arguments for the immortality of the soul: The argument from opposites explains that the soul must be immortal and the opposite of our mortal body. It is also known as the cyclical argument because it explains the cycle of life, death and birth. The cycle involves the dead being created from the living and through death, the living are then created from the dead through their birth. The soul withdraws completely intact from the physical body when we die. The soul then enters another body at birth. The soul, which always gives life, is eternal and immutable. The second argument, from memory theory, can be interpreted as follows: humans have prior knowledge that was known to them before they were even taught that it was there, so this knowledge must have been acquired during of their previous life. This theory suggests that we have non-empirical or non-factual knowledge that comes to us through the immortality of the soul. The affinity argument and the final argument, given in response to Cebes's objection. This argument is understood to be that all humans have a soul and therefore the ability to see from different angles than our bodies, and therefore all human souls have an afterlife, even when the body appears to perish/die . Plato uses all of these arguments to argue for the immoral aspect of the soul. The final argument, also known as the form of life argument, argues that ideas (form) are the cause of everything in the world and represent the greatest number. faithful version of reality. The soul can never die. The study of ideas is the only true way to acquire knowledge. What Socrates calls knowledge of existence is what I call the purpose of life. And this goal is for man to discover who, what and why he exists? And once this is known, we no longer have any resistance to death. Indeed, we welcome death as a liberation from the illusion of life. But all this is quite esoteric and can only be known by those who have accumulated the virtues of life that each soul slowly accumulates during each soul experience. I conclude that Plato's arguments.