Lack of Technē and the Instability of Poetry in Plato’s Ion

In Plato’s Ion, Socrates’ cross-examination of the rhapsode Ion reveals that poetry—considered as an activity encompassing rhapsodic performers and poetry-makers—is not a technical field. Furthermore, the cross-examination shows that the identity of rhapsodes and poets, much like rhetoricians and sophists, is unstable and in perpetual transformation. Insofar as their identity cannot be attached to any technē, their capacity for performing a specific function and for being allocated a stable site in the social sphere is jeopardized. Socrates may reveal the instability of poets and rhapsodes, but this forcefully leads to an inability to decide regarding their social position.