Laughter as/at the Rhetoric of Democracy

Prepared for the 2008 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association

John Lombardini
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Politics
Princeton University

I.
The Politics of Laughter

In his Passmore Lecture at Australian National University in 2000, Quentin Skinner offered a provocative
intellectual history of laughter and its importance to philosophy, tracing a long tradition from Aristotle’s Poetics to
Nietzsche’s quip, in Beyond Good and Evil, that he would venture to rank philosophers according to the rank of their
laughter. As Skinner rightly, and interestingly observes, it is largely taken for granted, within the tradition he
delineates, that laughter is a serious topic of inquiry, not only for early modern philosophers such as Thomas
Hobbes, Rene Descartes and Benedict Spinoza, but also amongst the humanist and medical writers of the
Renaissance period. Starting from Aristotle (or perhaps, even Socrates’ discussion of laughter in Plato’s Philebus),
discussions of laughter have left their mark on the rhetorical treatises of Cicero and Quintillian (as well as the
Renaissance rhetoricians who drew on this classical tradition), medical writers from Galen to Laurent Joubert, and
moralists such as Lord Halifax and Lord Chesterfield. While Skinner’s lecture does not precisely answer the
question as to why laughter formed such an important part of these various traditions (as the title of his lecture, ‘Why
does laughter matter to philosophy?’, would suggest), he nonetheless persuasively expounds the transmission and
transformation of the classical theory of laughter, and convincingly demonstrates that laughter really was an
important concern throughout the broad historical period he explores.
Given the richness of the tradition Skinner outlines, it is fair to say, in contrast, that contemporary
philosophy does not share the fundamental occupation with laughter that we can locate within the new philosophy of
the seventeenth century. While Skinner’s analysis does not go so far as to make this claim (his treatment, for
example, does not extend to the ways these various traditions have been parsed out within the contemporary
academy), his identification of the recognizable end of this tradition with the rise of late-seventeenth century
moralist writings offers an intriguing explanation for the decline of the importance of laughter. Drawing on Norbert
Elias’ work in The Civilizing Process, Skinner links the growing concern for mutual respect and constraint to the
idea that laughter came to be seen as a form of incivility.1 Heavily influenced by the Hobbesian thesis that “the
passion of Laughter is nothyng else but a suddaine Glory arising from the suddaine Conception of some Eminency
in our selves, by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others, or with our own formerly”2, these moralist writers

1
Skinner, p. 16.
2
Hobbes, The Elements of Law, pg. 42. It is important to note, as Skinner does, that “It seems to be Hobbes’s view
that, even when our laughter is directed at our own former infirmities, the comparison is with our present
ascendancy over others.” (Skinner, fn. 49)

1
virtually proscribe laughter “as an offence not merely against good breeding but against morality itself.”3 Whereas,
for example, Renaissance rhetoricians had found, in laughter and its associated rhetorical tropes (such as asteismus)
and figures (such as synchoresis, aposiopesis, and tapinosis) weapons that could be deployed against one’s
argumentative combatants, the moralist tradition Skinner identifies rejected such forms of laughter as unbecoming of
both civilized men and women. In place of laughter, they offer the contemptuous smile as a more controlled
expression of one’s scorn.
While Skinner’s analysis of the moralist tradition provides us with little insight as to why laughter declined
as a theoretical concern within the field of philosophy, it does perhaps offer us some clues as to why laughter is such
a neglected topic within contemporary political philosophy. Despite some notable exceptions, what binds this
tradition together, under the authority of Aristotle, is the idea that laughter is essentially an expression of scorn and
contempt. Moreover, in Hobbes’ estimation, the phenomenon of laughter entails a certain feeling of superiority that
arises within ourselves in relation to the object of our laughter. Given the centrality of contempt and superiority to
the conception of laughter articulated in the tradition Skinner delineates, it is perhaps not difficult to surmise how
laughter, so conceived, would fit uneasily within the purview of certain democratic and liberal values. Most
directly, the connection between laughter and superiority would seem to undermine the basic democratic
commitment to equality. Though laughter alone might not undermine the formal equality under the law that is the
right of every citizen under a liberal constitutionalist democracy, forms of laughter that consistently seek to portray
particular individuals or groups as inferior to others might damage (or given enough time, even destroy) the mutual
respect and reciprocity that the rule of law is intended to make concrete. It is surely not difficult to imagine a
democratic polity where despite the formal, legal protections extended to all citizens, certain groups do not enjoy the
same equal standing within the social sphere of democracy.
There is another reason, however, why laughter has been a neglected topic in contemporary political
theory, one that relates directly to the dominant paradigms for conceptualizing democratic speech: John Rawls’
articulation of ‘public reason’ and Jurgen Habermas’ formulation of discourse ethics. For Rawls, the idea of public
reason, as a conception belonging to a well-ordered constitutional democratic society, follows from the fact of
reasonable pluralism – “the fact that a plurality of conflicting reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious,
philosophical, and moral, is the normal result of its [democracy’s] culture of free institutions.”4 Rooted in the belief
that citizens “cannot reach agreement or even approach mutual understanding on the basis of their irreconcilable
comprehensive doctrines,” the idea of public reason asks citizens “to consider what kinds of reasons they may
reasonably give each other when fundamental political questions are at stake.”5 In this way, the idea of public
reason is meant to ensure the legitimacy of laws relating to constitutional essentials or matters of basic justice. As
an idea, this conception of public reason should apply to government officials and candidates for public office while
as an ideal, it asks citizens “to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes,
supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think it most reasonable to enact.”6

3
Skinner, p. 17.
4
Rawls, p. 131.
5
Ibid, p. 132.
6
Ibid, p. 135.

2
 As a theory of political justification and legitimacy, Rawls’ concept of public reason is not concerned with
laughter as a form of democratic discourse, nor would it seek to restrict such laughter (except within the strictly
delineated sphere in which public reason is meant to operate). As Rawls explains, the idea of public reason is not
meant to interfere with “the need for full and open discussion in the background culture” where we might locate
such expressions of laughter.7 In other words, it is not meant to constrain the diversity of thought, speech, and
association within the larger operations of civil society. Rather, the idea of public reason focuses on when a citizen
“deliberates within a framework of what he or she sincerely regards as the most reasonable political conception of
justice, a conception that expresses political values that others, as free and equal citizens might also reasonably be
expected reasonably to endorse.”8
Thus, while we might cast Rawls’ theory of public reason as simply indifferent to laughter as a form of
public discourse, the case is decidedly different with Habermas’ articulation of dialogic ethics.9 Habermas
advocates a deliberative form of democracy, one that focuses on consensus, and attempts to generate such consensus
by limiting deliberation to what he terms ‘communicative action.’ In contrast to ‘strategic action’, which seeks to
instrumentalize its listeners, communicative action aims for consensus. In order to support these conceptual
distinctions, Habermas draws heavily on J.L. Austin’s philosophy of language, defining communicative action as
“those linguistically mediated interactions in which all participants pursue illocutionary aims and only illocutionary
aims, with their mediating acts of communication” and strategic action as “those interactions in which at least one of
the participants wants with his speech acts to produce perlocutionary effects on his opposite number.”10 Yet,
Habermas also moves beyond Austin in redefining perlocutionary speech as necessarily deceptive11, and in doing so,
justifies his transformation of “agreement itself into a wholly illocutionary event.”12
While Habermas’ discourse ethics might seem to take us far afield from the topic of laughter, the guidelines
that Habermas puts forth for good deliberation would severely limit – if not altogether eliminate – any role laughter
might play in public discourse. This is most clearly evident from the restrictions Habermas’ theory places upon
rhetorical discourse, based upon his definition of strategic action (and redefinition of perlocutionary speech acts).
As Danielle Allen notes, the rule to avoid perlocutionary speech “means avoiding rhetoric, which has a bad name
precisely because it engages not only with reason but also with the emotions.”13 While Habermas himself does not
focus on laughter as a form of discourse, it is relatively clear that laughter would also fall under the category of
perlocutionary speech, and hence, laughter would be something to be avoided in attempting to arrive at consensus
through deliberation. Perhaps the clearest evidence that this would be the case is the list of examples that Habermas
provides as examples of perlocutionary speech acts: “to give fright to, to cause to be upset, to plunge into doubt, to

7
Ibid, p. 134.
8
Ibid, p. 140.
9
In providing this overview of Habermas’ discourse ethics, I am deeply indebted to Danielle Allen’s lucid and
insightful account in Talking to Strangers, ch. 5. Special thanks are also due to Ian Ward.
10
Habermas (1987), p. 295.
11
Ibid, pp. 293-294.
12
Allen (2004a), p. 58.
13
Ibid, p. 55.

3
annoy, mislead, offend, infuriate, humiliate, and so forth.”14 Given the potential for laughter to be employed
precisely in these ways – and especially as a means of humiliation – it is not difficult to imagine why laughter would
not have a place in the type of democratic discourse Habermas envisions.15
Finally, Richard Rorty, with his idea of the ‘liberal ironist’16, perhaps comes closest to defending a space
for laughter within democratic discourse. For Rorty, the liberal ironist is liberal in the sense that she regards cruelty
as the worst thing that we human beings do17, and an ironist in the sense that she is aware of the ‘finality’ of her
‘final vocabulary’; in other words, she knows that she possesses no noncircular argumentative recourse when doubts
are cast on her final vocabulary.18 Ironists, moreover, are “never quite able to take themselves seriously because
[they are] always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the
contingency and frailty of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves.”19 The liberal ironist does not concern
herself with the question ‘why should I care about cruelty’, but rather, is interested in exploring the various
vocabularies that help her to notice cruelty and suffering when it occurs.20 The opposite of this type of irony, as
Rorty indicates, is common sense, “the watchword of those who unselfconsciously describe everything important in
terms of the final vocabulary to which they and those around them are habituated.”21
Ultimately, however, Rorty views the scope of liberal irony as rather limited. Even in what he describes as
the ideal liberal society, only intellectuals would be ironists, while nonintellectuals would be commensensically
nominalist and historicist.22 From the fact that he cannot imagine a culture whose public rhetoric is ironist – since
this would require “a culture which socialized its youth in such a way as to make them continually dubious about
their own process of socialization”23 – Rorty concludes that irony seems to be a private matter. Such a culture
would leave irony, which is essentially a reactive force, with nothing to react to. Outside of this ideal liberal society,
Rorty also recognizes that there is something potentially very cruel about the activity of redescription in which the
ironist engages. Drawing on Judith Shklar’s discussion of humiliation in Ordinary Vices, he explains that “the best
way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seem most important to them
look futile, obsolete, and powerless.”24 While Rorty insists that the type of humiliation associated with the act of
redescription is common to both ironism and metaphysics, and that what the ironist is really blamed for “is not an

14
Habermas, p. 292.
15
In presenting what Habermas’ theory of communicative action would imply for laughter, my goal has simply to
articulate the reasons Habermas has for limiting the role of laughter in democratic deliberation. For a critique of
Habermas’ dialogic ethics, and, in particular, his conception of the ideal speech situation, from the standpoint of
laughter, see Basu (1999). Basu outlines what he calls the ‘ironic speech situation’ which, in contrast to Habermas’
ideal speech situation, is a forum where “rationality and risibility share the stage. Discussants are thereby enabled to
pursue consensus and its underlying ‘generalizability of interests’ even as they resist its unlikely and imperfect
attainment. In the meantime, their compromising talk can at least attain a justifiable compromise” p. 399.
16
There are important differences between irony and laughter, and these will be discussed later in the introduction
under the topic of Socratic irony.
17
Rorty (1989), pg. xv.
18
Ibid, p. 73.
19
Ibid, pp. 73-74.
20
Ibid, p. 93.
21
Ibid, p. 74.
22
Ibid, p. 87.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., p. 89.

4
inclination to humiliate but an inability to empower”25, he nonetheless that irony – at least in the form of ironist
philosophy – has, and cannot, do much for equality or freedom.26 Rather, this type of irony is more suited to the
private goal and pursuit of perfection; in the social sphere, it is not only “ill-suited to public purposes” but further,
“of no use to liberals qua liberals.”27
My concern then, in this introduction, is two-fold: first, to articulate an alternative vision of laughter, one
that moves beyond the narrow conception of laughter as an expression of scorn and contempt and towards an
appreciation of laughter’s democratic potential; second, to argue that our concerns over the way citizens talk to one
another should be expanded to include laughter as a unique, and potentially democratic, form of discourse. To be
clear, my goal is neither to criticize Skinner, Rawls, Habermas, and Rorty, nor to argue that their respective focuses
are misplaced. Rather, I simply want to suggest, on the one hand, that while Skinner’s historical narrative argues for
the place of laughter in philosophical analysis, it does not exhaust the richness of this tradition. Moreover, if we are
interested in the political implications of laughter, yet concerned over laughter’s anti-democratic elements, it
behooves us to look beyond the tradition Skinner delineates. On the other hand, Rawls’ justificatory liberalism and
Habermas’ discourse ethics both treat crucial aspects of democratic theory and practice; yet, they likewise do not
exhaust all the various ways in which democratic citizens talk to one another. An understanding of what a given
community communally laughs about and at is a particularly useful category of social analysis in identifying the
fundamental structure of that society’s ideology – for identifying, in other words, the basic categories that structured
the political grammar operating within the public sphere. Laughter is also particularly useful in revealing the
fissures and interstices within that same ideology – for revealing the moments in which ideological constructions
break down when confronted with certain brute facts about the world. For both these reasons, I argue that close
attention to laughter and comedy can help us to better understand how democracy functions as a social practice.
The idea that laughter is an expression of contempt and scorn can be countered in two ways: first, by
looking to alternative instantiations of laughter within the historical timeframe Skinner examines and second, by
investigating the various theories of laughter that have gained prominence since the terminus of that tradition. If we
look, for example, to the types of laughter exemplified in the works of Aristophanes it quickly becomes apparent
that the Aristotelian conception of laughter as derision is inadequate for a full understanding of the purposes laughter
serves for this author. The comedies of Aristophanes, no doubt, possess much laughter that might be labeled as
derisive; we need only recall the scathing treatment of the politician Cleon in Knights to illustrate this point. We
might even go so far as to identify entire Aristophanic plays, such as the Clouds, as predominantly employing such
derisive, or satirical, laughter.28 Yet, in a play such as Wasps, satire is subsumed under a larger comic framework,

25
Ibid., p. 91.
26
Ibid., p. 94.
27
Ibid., p. 95. It should be stressed that I do not wish to suggest that Rorty would ideally seek to confine all forms
of laughter to the private sphere. In fact, given his strong belief that literature can help us to imagine the various
ways in which we act cruelly, there might be a larger place for laughter in Rorty’s conception of literature than he
allows for irony.
28
I would argue that we equate such uses of derisive laughter within the Aristophanic corpus, following the work of
M.S. Silk, with the satiric sub-class of comedy. As Silk writes in his assessment of the Clouds “Satire is essentially
moral – and negative. Its essence is a sense of ‘contradiction between actuality and the ideal’: the feeling that the
world is like this, whereas it could and should be something else; the more that something else is specified and

5
one that can be described as positive and celebratory, rather than wholly negative and derisive. The laughter in
Wasps is all-encompassing and multidirectional, directed against both conservative and radical elements within the
city of Athens, and even against the comic poet’s own abilities to educate the audience of citizens. Moreover, there
is a sense in which the laughter in Wasps is not merely an attack on the existing world with all its faults and fissures,
but a positive celebration of human possibility.29 Its moments of discontinuity defamiliarize the world around us,
creating a comic vision of the world as pure contingency and possibility.30
On a theoretical level, the incongruity theory of laughter, first articulated by Francis Hutcheson and later
elaborated by Immanuel Kant, offers an alternative account to the idea that laughter also arises due to some
recognition of superiority. According to this theory, laughter arises from a perceived incongruity in what we know
or expect to happen. According to Helmuth Plessner, such laughter is made possible by the eccentric position of
human beings as creatures who not only live and experience, but that also experience their experiences.31 As such,
laughter arises from the possibility for a human being to have “a reflective attitude towards its experiences and
towards itself.”32 Likewise, for Mary Douglas, jokes are types of anti-rites, verbal utterances that play upon the
expectations we derive from the symbolic, ritual orders of society. As such, they make us more aware of these
symbolic orders as symbolic orders, both alerting us to their existence as objects of thought while at the same time
marking their potential malleability.33
The incongruity theory of laughter, of course, does not disprove the possibility of derisive laughter, nor, for
example, of the types of racial humor that provide what is perhaps its most pernicious formulation.34 Yet, it does
open the possibility that laughter can move us toward knowledge and self-knowledge; in the words of Kenneth
Burke, “comedy should enable us to be observers of ourselves while acting. Its ultimate end would not be
passiveness but maximum consciousness.”35 In playing on our expectations, such laughter can point us toward the
inconsistencies and absurdities of our thoughts and actions, potentially stirring debate and reflection. In this sense,
laughter is a form of speech that can be particularly useful within democratic societies – beyond the projects of
liberal justification and private self-fashioning - in promoting a type of thoughtfulness about the means and ends of
democratic politics. Moreover, it can perhaps even provide a type of political education, one that moves democratic
citizens to reflect on the processes by which they make political decisions.

delineated, the more the negative satire will be counterbalanced by a compensatory positive; but the satiric element
is, in itself, negative. The world as it is has avoidable deficiencies, and these are held up to ridicule. Satire invites,
and perhaps promotes, dissatisfaction. In this sense, all Aristophanes’ plays include some satire, but only in Clouds
is satire dominant, because only here is dissatisfaction as such – symptomatized by the final, violent coup de théâtre
– victorious.” Silk (2000), pp. 368-369.
29
Ibid, p. 369. My analysis of the general framework of Aristophanic comedy in this section of the introduction is
heavily influenced by Silk’s magisterial Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy. Later, in discussing the
connections between Aristophanic laughter and politics more specifically, I will attempt to distinguish my position
from his.
30
Ibid., p. 403.
31
Plessner (1950).
32
Critchley (2004), p. 28.
33
Douglas (1975).
34
Indeed, one of the jokes Kant offers in the third critique as an example of the incongruity theory of laughter does
seem to rely on certain racist expectations, despite his claim to the contrary.
35
Quoted by Ellison, p. 651.

6
 In the remainder of this paper, I intend to explore the role that public laughter can play in the practice of
democracy through an analysis the public role of laughter in Athenian democracy, its articulation in the comedies of
Aristophanes, and its critique in the political philosophy of Plato. In the next section, I offer a brief historical
overview of the role of speech in democratic Athens, an assessment of the place of dramatic performances within the
general institutional and ideological framework of Athenian political practice, and a survey of the various ways that
scholars have interpreted the political nature of Aristophanic comedy. In the third section, I offer my own
interpretation of Aristophanes’ relation to politics, one that focuses on his fashioning of comedy as a rival to, and
indeed, even a particular form of, political rhetoric, one that exposes incongruities as a means toward educating the
Athenian dêmos. In order to illustrate this political dimension of Aristophanic comedy, I offer a brief sketch of how
Aristophanes’ Birds explores the tension between two Athenian conceptions of democratic freedom: freedom as
ruling and being ruled in turn and freedom as living as one wants. In the final section, I turn to an analysis of the
place of laughter within Platonic political philosophy. I argue that Plato’s critique of comic poetry and laughter in
the Republic should properly be viewed as a critique of forms of laughter and comedy that rely on the opinions of
the many for their articulations. Close attention to Plato’s use of laughter in the dialogues, especially in his
appropriation of themes and tropes from Attic Old Comedy, combined with the definition of laughter put forth by
Socrates in the Philebus, reveal a profound engagement with certain forms of laughter as useful tools for
philosophical investigation.

II.
Laughter and Athenian Democracy

Contemporary democracies have not been the only democracies deeply concerned about the ways in which
democratic citizens talk to one another. Athenian democracy, even more so than contemporary democracies,
depended for its functioning on the outcome of oratorical contests in the public forums such as the Assembly and
law-courts. In the Assembly, which met roughly forty times annually, and was composed of an audience of
approximately 6,000 adult male citizens, the sovereign dêmos met to pass laws (nomoi) and decrees (psephismata),
in addition to serving as a jury for the most important political trials. While the restored democracy of 403/2 that
emerged in response to the oligarchic coups of 411 and 404 removed the law-making capacity from the Assembly
and placed it in the hands of a board of lawmakers (nomothetai), the Assembly still maintained broad powers in the
area of foreign policy and domestic administrative matters.36 In both the 5th and 4th centuries, the agenda for
meetings of the Assembly was set by the Council of Five Hundred in the form of a preliminary decree
(probouleuma).37 While some of the preliminary decrees were simple and uncontroversial, and would simply be
ratified by the Assembly, the Council often framed its preliminary decrees in a more open-ended fashion, allowing

36
Hansen (1991), p. 151. The idea that the democracy that emerged after the restoration of 403/2 has long been
accepted wisdom. However, a number of scholars have recently, and persuasively, challenged this view. Hansen
himself challenges the view that the Assembly was “robbed of the major part of its powers and became only a
secondary organ of government” p. 152. See also Ober (1989).
37
Hansen (1991), p. 138.

7
for a great deal of debate about the proposed subject for discussion.38 On such occasions, the herald would open the
debate with the phrases ‘Who wishes to speak?’ (tis agoreuein bouletai;)39, thus recognizing the equal right to speak
(isêgoria) held by every adult male citizen. After the debate had concluded, the assembled citizens would vote by a
show of hands.40
Public speeches were equally central to the functioning of the people’s court (dikasterion), the other central
organ of the dêmos’ sovereignty. After Ephialtes’ curtailment of the powers of the Council of Areopagus in 462,
leaving it with the sole power of functioning as a homicide court in cases where the victim was an Athenian citizen,
the dikasterion held widespread powers, ranging from the settlement of private legal disputes to the public review of
Athenian magistrates after their tenure in office had ended, a procedure of democratic accountability known as the
euthunê.41 In the absence of a public prosecutor, the court-system relied on the willingness of individual citizens in
bringing forth public accusations. It was then the task of the willing citizen to bring his case to court in person,
relying either on a speech prepared by himself, or one which he paid a professional speech-writer (logographos) to
prepare for the occasion. The plaintiff’s speech would then be countered by a speech by the defendant. Perhaps the
most important aspect of this process was the fact that jurors were given no opportunity for discussion before they
were required to cast their votes.42 Such a prohibition necessarily enhanced the influence these speeches had upon
the final vote of the jurors, given that they were the sole instruments for attempting to sway juror opinion.43 Thus,
the practice and refinement of oratorical techniques became a prime concern for those involved in litigation.
While the centrality of speech to the functioning of Athenian democracy raised a number of crucial issues,
such as the problem of deceptive speech and the undue influence elite politicians might assert over the process of
democratic decision-making, it is necessary to recognize that oratorical displays were not the only form of speech
important within the Athenian public sphere.44 In addition to the Assembly and law-courts, Athenians also gathered
in large numbers for the major dramatic festivals, such as the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where the plays of the tragic
and comic poets were performed. These dramatic festivals, along with the acts of poetic speech they organized,
were constituents of the public sphere of equal importance to the Assembly and law-courts. Moreover, as is now
widely agreed, participation in these festivals was not simply a cultural or religious act; rather, such participation

38
Ibid, p. 139.
39
Demosthenes, 18.170.
40
Hansen (1991), p. 147.
41
Prior to the reforms of Ephialtes, the Council of Areopagus, which was made up entirely of former archons, “had
oversight of the laws, the magistrates, the politically active citizens, and the general conduct of all Athenians, and it
could pronounce judgment, not excluding the death sentence, in political trials,” Hansen (1991), p. 37. In
transferring these powers to the people’s courts, where decisions were made by juries of adult male citizens over the
age of 30, the reforms of Ephialtes represented a major push in the democratization of the Athenian polis. In fact,
some scholars, such as Kurt Raaflaub, even argue that Athens did not truly become a dêmokratia until these reforms
were carried out. For a sense of the debate concerning when to date the origin of Athenian democracy, see
Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace (eds.) (2007).
42
Hansen (1991), p. 202. The same, it should be noted, was true of the Assembly as well.
43
Todd (2005), p. 98.
44
On the problems of deceptive speech within Athenian democracy, see Hesk (2000). For the latter problem, see
Ober (1989), as well as Morstein-Marx (2004) and Connolly (2007), both of whom employ a similar framework for
addressing the question of rhetoric and political power in the late Roman Republic.

8
was “a vigorous civic practice closely identified with the exercise of democratic citizenship.”45 As such, these
dramatic festivals were part of the institutional landscape of Athenian democracy, as well as forums for democratic
thought and reflection.
Of course, there was no direct relationship between the poetic speech of the dramatic festivals and the
outcomes of the processes of democratic decision-making, as there was between the speeches given in the Assembly
and the law-courts and the final outcomes of those procedures. Yet, this does not diminish the importance of the
theater as a realm of political thought, one that was perhaps just as necessary for the functioning of Athenian
democracy as the more overtly political forums such as the Assembly and law-courts. In the words of Christian
Meier, writing on Greek tragedy, “it seems possible that we have here a rather special example of a social body
carrying out quite publicly the maintenance and development of its mental infrastructure.”46 In other words, the
Greek theater, while not a forum for making political decisions, was a forum for engaging in political thinking, a
particular form of communal self-reflection, the need for which was made particularly pressing by the political,
social, and cultural transformations wrought within the Athenian polis by the advent of democracy. From this
perspective, the Greek theater was nothing less than a reflective form of communal education, one that “honed
intellectual skills and enacted a celebration of citizens’ capacities for reflection, but…did so in intimate partnership
with an enactment of the connectedness of precisely this work to practical concerns.”47
Much has been written, both by classicists and political theorists, about how Greek tragedy functioned as
such a form of civic education. Yet, the political seriousness of the genre of Attic Old Comedy has often been
questioned, despite the overt political content of most of its representative works. Malcolm Heath has offered what
is perhaps the most thoroughgoing critique of the view that Aristophanes’ ‘political comedy’ conveys any serious
political intent. Heath has asserted that even the moments where Aristophanes seemingly addresses his audience in
a ‘serious’ fashion are undermined by the particular comic contexts in which these utterances are spoken. Though
Heath’s analysis is not entirely convincing, it deserves close consideration insofar as it forces a clearer
understanding of the precise ways in which Aristophanes should be considered a serious political writer.48
While the general overview of Heath’s view appears genuinely plausible, the evidence that he bases his
conclusions on rely on rather weak arguments. A few illustrations of these arguments will clearly illustrate my
point. First, Heath argues that since Plato’s Symposium portrays a banquet where Aristophanes and Socrates were
both in attendance, this demonstrates that Aristophanes’ satirical abuse of Socrates in the Clouds could not have
been made with hostile intent. Second, since although Knights – which centered around a highly abusive attack on
Cleon - won first prize at the Lenaea of 424, the fact that Cleon was elected general shortly after the play was
performed demonstrates that the audience’s enjoyment of Aristophanes’ comic abuse in no way altered their view of

45
Monoson (2000), p. 88.
46
Meier (1993), p. 4.
47
Monoson (2000), p. 109.
48
The analysis that follows draws on a similar analysis by M.S. Silk in that Silk also uses Heath and Henderson as
representative of the different views of Aristophanic seriousness. I have chosen to argue against these same scholars
since my criticisms of their views differ significantly from those made by Silk in ways that will ultimately be
important in formulating my own thoughts on Aristophanic seriousness. While Silk critiques Heath and Henderson
for conflating three different meanings of ‘serious,’ my ultimate criticism draws attention to a commonly myopic
vision of politics, a criticism that I eventually extend to Silk as well.

9
Cleon outside the theatre. Third, given the political context surrounding the performance of Lysistrata in 411,
Aristophanes could not have intended the peace portrayed within the play to have been a “seriously intended
programme in real politics.”49
Needless to say, these arguments do not hold much weight. First, the Symposium is a dialogue created by
Plato. Even if we could ascertain with certainty that the banquet he depicts actually occurred, and further, that Plato
provides us with an accurate list of those who attended, it would still require us to believe that Plato sought to
simply record the events that occurred – thus denying him any authorial creativity - if we are to take the dialogue as
historical evidence for a lack of hostility between Socrates and Aristophanes. This, I believe, is an extremely
implausible view of not only the Symposium, but of the Platonic dialogues in general. Furthermore, there is
‘evidence’ within the dialogue of enmity between Aristophanes and Socrates, ‘evidence’ that is certainly placed
there by Plato himself. First, Aristophanes’ speech, and its conception of Eros, is the only one directly refuted by
Socrates/Diotima.50 Second, after the speech of Socrates/Diotima, Aristophanes attempts to strike up an argument
with Socrates, presumably in order to defend himself from this attack. However, Aristophanes is silenced by the
entrance of Alcibiades and the boisterous crowd that follows him into the house of Agathon, and thus the reader is
denied a dialogue between the comic poet and philosopher.51
Heath’s second argument – that the enjoyment of comic abuse of a certain individual within the theatre by
the dêmos was apparently compatible with their approval of that same individual within the context of Athenian
politics – requires an unnecessarily stringent definition of ‘serious political intent’ as ‘seriously politically influential
or effective.’ Clearly, whether an individual is speaking seriously must be ascertained separately from any
consideration of whether or not what the individual says influences the hearer. Otherwise, we could presumably
argue that Kant was not serious when he devised his categorical imperative if the majority of those individuals who
have read it do not lead perfectly moral lives afterward. Furthermore, Aristophanes himself criticizes the dêmos in
the parabasis of the Clouds for electing Cleon general even after his comic abuse of the politician, and urges them to
correct their mistake by convicting Cleon of bribery and theft.52 Also, the fact that Cleon himself felt the need to
bring charges of slander53 against the comic poet after Aristophanes’ abuse of him in his first play, Babylonians,
demonstrates that at least Cleon viewed this abuse as politically serious, even if it did not ultimately damage his
standing among the dêmos.
Heath’s third argument relies on an equally dubious equation of ‘serious political intent’ with a serious
public policy proposal. Though I am more than willing to grant Heath’s assertion that peace would have been an
impossible wish given the status of the war at the time of the performance of Lysistrata, this does not require us to
abandon the claim that Aristophanes was a serious political writer. Rather, it merely forces us to expand our
conception of the political beyond the idea of public policy, and forces us to look for serious political content
elsewhere.

49
Heath (1987), p. 42.
50
Symposium, 205d-e.
51
Ibid, 211b-c.
52
Clouds, 581-594.
53
The exact charge was that Aristophanes slandered the city in front of foreigners. It is uncertain, however, whether
the charges were brought against the producer of the play or against Aristophanes himself.

10
 While Heath sees comic opportunism in Aristophanes’ depiction of Athenian politics, Jeffrey Henderson
finds a serious and consistent political position that favors the conservative, aristocratic elite over more radically
democratic politicians such as Cleon. This political conservatism extends also into the social and cultural realms
where Aristophanes consistently sides with the old forms of education against the innovative teachings of figures
like Socrates and Euripides. For Henderson, the endings of Clouds and Frogs - the former showing Socrates’
‘Thinkery’ being burned down by the comic ‘hero’ Strepsiades and the latter depicting Aeschylus emerging
victorious from a poetic competition with Euripides – clearly illustrate Aristophanes’ conservative preferences.
Aristophanic comedy, in Henderson’s view, is seriously political, then, in the sense that it sought to educate the
demos by systematically satirizing certain groups and individuals while consistently withholding its ridicule from
other groups and individuals. Through comic ridicule Aristophanes sought to provide the dêmos with an annual
review of Athenian politics that would guide their political and social actions in the future.54
Henderson’s view certainly represents a rather straightforward account of Aristophanic comedy and its
‘serious’ relation to political practice. Yet, it relies upon a somewhat simplistic formulation of Aristophanic
comedy, one that places far too much importance on oppositions and the outcomes of agonal contests. It is a view
that fails to adequately account for Aristophanes’ vitriolic criticisms of both sides of these oppositions, criticisms
that the outcomes of these contests do very little to resolve. Even in Frogs, which perhaps presents the strongest
case for Henderson’s interpretation, Dionysus, who judges the competition between Aeschylus and Euripides, is at
first unable to determine the winner. When Dionysus ultimately does render his verdict, the decision seems
somewhat arbitrary. Dionysus himself gives no explanation as to why he chooses the way he does, and while the
Chorus reinforces this decision by equating Euripides with Socrates’ idle chatter, it is difficult to see how this
approval corresponds with the conclusion of the actual contest. Similarly, one could point to Clouds, where the
Chorus clearly states that the outcome of the agon between the Better and Worse Arguments will be determined by a
roll of dice.55 In short, there are moments internal to the comedy itself that not only raise suspicions concerning the
validity of such dichotomies, but further shed doubt on any claim that Aristophanes’ serious political ‘point’ is that
we should simply favor socially conservative politicians and intellectuals.
For M.S. Silk, both Heath and Henderson err in assuming a false opposition between seriousness and
humor, one that stems from a common misunderstanding of seriousness. In order to shed light on this problem, Silk
distinguishes between three meanings of the word ‘serious’: ‘sober,’ ‘honest,’ and ‘substantial.’ While Aristophanes
is rarely serious in the sense of being sober, and it is almost impossible to determine whether he is serious in terms
of being honest or sincere, Silk claims that Aristophanes is most certainly serious in the sense of being substantial,
meaning that there is some profundity lurking behind Aristophanic comedy if we are only clever enough to find it.
Yet, Silk is quick to advance the claim that “Aristophanic comedy, whether or not politically ‘serious’ (in the Heath-
Henderson sense), is not as deeply concerned with politics as it is widely taken to be, and that its ultimate claim to
seriousness lies elsewhere.”56 Rather than locating Aristophanes’ claim to seriousness in politics, Silk argues that

54
See Henderson (1990).
55
Clouds, 955.
56
Silk (2000), p. 319.

11
the discontinuities within Aristophanic comedy are meant to defamiliarize the audience and create a comic vision of
life as contingency itself.57 Its underlying vision is of an ‘unformed world’ where virtually anything is possible.
Given this specific vision of life, Silk goes on to assert that “Once again we can see why Aristophanes is
not likely to end up as a ‘serious’ political writer: he lacks, not only a consistent solidarity, but (more particularly
and more obviously) any consistent or comprehensive sense of an Other, against which the solidarity can be
defined.”58 For Silk, the spirit of Aristophanic comedy projects a sense of solidarity that is “co-extensive with the
community of Athens”59 and perhaps even reaches toward pan-Hellenic unity. Despite the ubiquitous presence of
the agon, division and contest are “essentially provisional state[s] of affairs”60 that are eventually dismissed by the
comic celebrations at the ends of the plays. In this sense, Aristophanic comedy approximates Bakhtin’s carnival,
“which opens up the prospect of a solidarity ‘universal in scope’, beyond all hierarchies, divisiveness, and
negativity.”61
Silk contrasts this vision of Aristophanic comedy with Brechtian epic theatre, which he views as
quintessentially political. Brechtian theatre - according to Brecht himself - sought to divide its audience in order to
strengthen the solidarity of one group against another group. Furthermore, this goal of division, Silk argues,
corresponds with the core of the political enterprise, which is division itself. If Aristotle was correct when he
asserted that “the city is made up not only of a number of human beings, but also of human beings differing in kind:
a city does not arise from persons who are similar”62 then, for Silk, Aristophanic comedy cannot be seriously
political because it refuses to recognize division and conflict as essential aspects of human life. Politics, in this
sense, would simply be a ‘provisional state of affairs’ that pulls individuals away from some sort of original human
equality and solidarity. The seriousness of Aristophanic comedy, then, lies not in its depiction of Athenian politics,
but in its comic vision of the world.
Silk’s interpretation of Aristophanes is certainly a very powerful one, one that forcefully reveals the comic
author’s literary and artistic genius. Yet it is an interpretation that is perhaps a bit too quick to dismiss the idea of
Aristophanes as a ‘serious’ political writer, at the expense of failing to recognize the potentially profound
implications Aristophanes’ comic vision has for understanding not only Athenian political practice but also politics
more generally. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate the political seriousness of Aristophanic comedy along two
dimensions: first, Aristophanes constructs his genre of comic poetry as an antidote to forms of political rhetoric that
are flattering, divisive, and deceptive; second, Aristophanic comedy sought to explore, and exploit, many of the
incongruities within the democratic ideology of Athens. It is to an exploration of these two political dimensions of
Aristophanic comedy that we now turn in the third section of this paper.

57
Ibid, 403.
58
Ibid, 406.
59
Ibid, 407.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid, 408.
62
Aristotle, Politics (Lord translation), 1261a22-4.

12
 III.
Aristophanic Laughter

It is within this general framework of Athenian democracy, and the role of the theater within such a
democracy, that we can begin to understand the social and political force behind Aristophanic laughter. In writing
and producing comedies for public consumption at the dramatic festivals, Aristophanes was not only engaged in the
activity of literary production, but in a competition with other comic playwrights, tragic playwrights, as well as
political orators. In staking out a claim for the political seriousness of comedy, Aristophanes sought to demonstrate
that the comic poet, in addition to the tragic poet and the political orator, could also provide the city of Athens with
helpful advice and criticism. In the words of Dikaiopolis, the comic protagonist of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, “Do
not be aggrieved with me, gentleman spectators, if, though a beggar, I am ready to address the Athenians about the
city while making a comedy. For even comedy knows about what’s right, and what I will say will be shocking, but
right.”63 While, we might add, Aristophanes might also say much that was silly, ludicrous, and even downright
fantastical, he nevertheless argues for the place of comic poetry in the education of the democratic city.
While Aristophanes acknowledges his competition with rival comic poets64, it is perhaps his rivalry with
tragedy that most clearly indicates his attempt to transform the genre of comedy into a serious contender in the
sphere of civic education. A closer look at the above quote from the Acharnians, as well as the context from which
it is taken, can provide us with some insight into the complex relationship between Aristophanic comedy and Greeek
tragedy. First, rather than using the more common Greek word for comedy – kômôidia – Dikaiopolis uses the word
trugôidia, a synonym for kômôidia, but at the same time, one that denotes a certain comic mocking of tragic style.
Indeed, the larger scene from which this quote is taken is just such an example of tragic parody. Having negotiated
a private peace treaty with the city of Sparta, Dikaipolis is confronted by a group of virulently patriotic citizens from
the deme Acharnae who violently attack him for his purported betrayal of the city. In order to hold the Acharnians
at bay, Dikaipolis holds a basket of coal hostage at knifepoint, parodying a scene from Euripides’ lost tragedy the
Telephus where Telephus held the baby Orestes hostage. The Acharnians, fearing for the fate of their precious
charcoal (making charcoal was one of the chief economic industries of the deme Acharnae), they agree to refrain
from violence until Dikaipolis is at least given the opportunity to speak.
Having freed himself from immediate danger, Dikiaopolis nonetheless worries that he will be unable to
convince the Acharnians that he has acted justly. In particular, he fears that his defense of the Spartans will provoke
the ire of the patriotic Acharnians, men who are “deeply delighted when some fraudulent personage eulogizes them
and the city, whether truly or falsely” (371-373). He remarks, moreover, that it is precisely this weakness for
flattering praise that Athens’ politicians have exploited in order to fuel the push for war among its citizens. Finally,
he notes, in taking on the persona of the comic poet, how the politician Cleon abused him for his critique of Athens
in the Babylonians, produced in the previous year. While the Babylonians exists today only in fragmentary form,
the extant fragments seem to reveal that the chorus of the play was composed of slaves, representing Athens allied

63
Acharnians, 497-501. All translations from the Acharnians are taken from the Loeb edition of Jeffrey Henderson.
64
See Luppe (2000), for a useful attempt to reconstruct the rivalry between Aristophanes and Kratinos, a comic poet
from the generation preceding Aristophanes. The parabasis of Knights (507-550) also provides a good example of
the types of attacks comic poets would make against their rivals.

13
cities, working at a mill.65 If such reconstructions are accurate, then the hostile reaction to Babylonians is hardly
surprising, given the play’s rather direct critique of Athenian imperialism in front of Athens’ allied cities / imperial
subjects.66 At the very least, the scene indicates the propensity of Aristophanic comedy to critique the city and its
practices, and the potential for such critiques to be met with hostility. What Dikaiopolis, and the poet, will present
to the city of Athens will not be a false eulogy, but rather, critical ideas that might be shocking to those who hear
them.
In preparing himself for his defense speech and his critique of the city’s war policies, Dikaiopolis goes to
the house of Euripides in order to deck himself out in the tragic raiment of a beggar. In a literal sense, Dikaiopolis
dons the tragic garb of Telephus in hopes of concealing from the hostile chorus the truth of his identity.
Figuratively, Aristophanes adopts the authority of tragic poetry in his attempt to educate the citizens of Athens and
in doing so, claims a place for comic poetry as a rival to tragic poetry. As it is constructed, the entire scene offers
the audience a view of political persuasion in action, one that exposes the means by which politicians manipulate the
emotions of their audience, flattering and deceiving the citizenry of Athens to pursue a war that was, at least from
the perspective of farmers such as Dikaiopolis, contrary to their own best interests; it also reveals the techniques that
tragedy employs to stir an emotional response within its audience. At the same time, Aristophanes shows comic
poetry engaging with these same techniques, demonstrating, rather metatheatrically, how Dikiaopolis goes about
deceiving the Acharnian chorus. Nevertheless, it is a form of deception that is, oddly enough, utterly transparent;
while the chorus might be ignorant of Dikaiopolis’ ruse, the audience in the theater is fully aware of the
protagonist’s actions and motivations. As a whole, the scene performs, quite ingeniously, the claim that Dikiaopolis
makes for comic poetry’s ability to educate the city. By showing the audience the techniques by which they might
be deceived, the comic poet educates the audience to be better spectators, both in the theater, and in the Assembly
and law-courts.67
Aristophanes’ rivalry with political oratory is indicative of a similar pattern. In the Knights, Aristophanes’
biting satire of the politician Cleon, the poet allows us to draw certain crucial comparisons between Cleon’s upstart
political rival, the Sausage-Seller, and the poet himself. Both men are new to their respective scenes, the Sausage-
Seller having been taken just that morning from the agora and thrust into the political spotlight while the poet is
engaged in the task of producing his own play for the first time. Moreover, the arrivals of both the politician and
poet have been prophesied after a succession of politicians and comic poets, respectively. Hence, the comic poet is
cast as competing both with his poetic rivals and the politicians for the affections of the dêmos. Yet, as the play
progresses, we learn that this competition is heavily one-sided. Politicians like Cleon seek only their own private
interest; they flatter, manipulate, and deceive the people in order to advance these interests; and they succeed, for the

65
For attempts to reconstruct the plot of Babylonians, see Norwood (1930) and Henderson (2008).
66
At the City Dionsyia festival, where Babylonians was produced in 426, representatives from the allied cities
would be in attendance, and would present their tribute payments to officials of the city. For general accounts of the
pre-performance rituals at the City Dionysia, see Pickard-Cambridge (1968) and Goldhill (1990) and (2000).
67
A number of scholars have written on the metatheatrical aspects of Aristophanic comedy. Dobrov (2001) is
mostly concerned with the metatheatrical relationship between Aristophanic comedy and Greek tragedy. While
Slater (2002) is more concerned with the political dimensions of metatheatricality, he focuses mainly on the ways in
which Aristophanic comedy performs, and makes visible, the act of theatrical production.

14
most part, due to the somewhat gullible nature of the Athenian dêmos. In contrast, the comic poets (read:
Aristophanes) truly seek the best interests of the dêmos. While Aristophanes might employ some of the same
deceptive techniques as the politicians, the performance of the comedy itself makes these techniques so transparent
that they lose any deceptive quality they might have possessed when deployed by these politicians.
In this sense, Aristophanes constructs his comic poetry as both a direct rival of political rhetoric, yet at the
same time, as a distinctive form of political speech that is particularly well-equipped for education rather than
deception. While there is doubtless a bit of comic boasting inherent in this claim for the educational power of comic
poetry, the idea that comic poetry, and the laughter it incites, derives support from the incongruity theory of laughter
articulated in the first part of this paper. If such forms of laughter can truly lead those that engage in them towards
self-conscious reflection, then we can see how Aristophanic laughter, constructed and framed as it is, might indeed
have a strong claim to make about its educational power. First, it is a type of laughter that is specifically geared
towards making citizens better observers of themselves while acting, and hence, towards prompting them to be more
thoughtful in the political decisions they make. Second, this type of laughter can also be useful in exploring the
incongruities within Athenian democratic thought and practice.
We can see how this second form of laughter as political rhetoric operates most clearly in the realm of
political ideology. While numerous facets of Athenian democratic ideology are explored within Aristophanic
comedy, it is on the particular tension between two different conceptions of democratic freedom that I wish to focus
my attention here.68 Aristotle, in the Politics, offers the clearest account of the two types of political freedom. As
Aristotle writes:
“Freedom is the supposition of the democratic regime, for it is the usual thing to say that only in this regime
do people partake of freedom, since freedom, they say, is what every democracy aims at. One sort of
freedom is to rule and be ruled in turn, for popular justice is numerical equality and not equality according
to merit…Another sort of freedom is to live as one likes (to zên hôs bouletai), for they say this is the work
of freedom since to live as one does not like is characteristic of the slave. This, then, is the second defining
mark of democracy. From it has come the feature of not being ruled (to mê arkhesthai), by anyone at all
preferably, but, failing that, of being ruled only by turns” (1317a40ff., Simpson translation).

It is perhaps not difficult to envision how these two conceptions of freedom might come into tension with each
other. The first conception of freedom – freedom as ruling and being ruled in turn – goes hand-in-hand with the
basic institutional framework of Athenian democracy. It invokes the principle of equality under the law (isonomia),
and, more specifically, the idea that everyone was equally entitled to speak (isêgoria) and equally entitled to have a
share in rule.69 In short, it is a type of freedom that is only made possible within a type of political regime that
protected certain ‘civil liberties,’ or, as Josiah Ober has argued, noting the absence of anything that strictly meets the
contemporary liberal or democratic definition of a ‘right’ within democratic Athens, certain ‘quasi-rights’ that were
contingent, for their actual concretization, upon the participatory nature of Athenian democracy.70 The second
conception of freedom – ‘living as one wants’ – certainly overlaps with the first conception insofar as the ability to

68
Most studies of the politics of Aristophanic comedy do not focus on the connections between it and Athenian
democratic ideology. An exception is McGlew (2002), which is a thoughtful study of the connections between
Aristophanic comedy and the ideology of Athenian citizenship.
69
Raaflaub (2004), pp. 230-231.
70
Ober (2006), ch. 4.

15
‘live as one wants’ can also be envisioned as dependent on the presence of a political system that allows for and
promotes such freedom. Indeed, such a connection between ‘living as one wants’ and the practices of democracy is
attested in the Periclean Funeral Oration: “The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our
ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be
angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes (ei kath’ hêdonên ti drai)…” (II.37.2). Yet, there is also a sense in
which this second conception of freedom exists in tension with the idea of ruling and being ruled in turn. As
Aristotle notes, the idea of freedom as ‘living as one wants’ carries with it a preference for not being ruled at all. In
this respect, the idea of freedom as living as one wants can also manifest itself in a less civically-minded desire for
individual freedom at the expense of the freedom of one’s fellow citizens.
In the Republic, of course, Socrates identifies democratic freedom entirely with Aristotle’s second
conception, satirically noting that even the animals within a democratic regime enjoy the freedom to act as they
wish. In the comedies of Aristophanes, however, we are presented with a much more nuanced view of democratic
freedom, one that recognizes the potential tension between freedom as ruling and being ruled in turn and freedom as
living as one wants. For example, in the Birds, Aristophanes depicts two old men who leave Athens in search of a
quiet place where they will no longer be bothered by their fellow citizens interfering in their freedom. In the course
of their search, they ask Tereus, the mythical king of Thrace who was transformed into a hoopoe bird, if he knows of
a place where they can resettle and lead quiet lives. Peisetaerus, the more dominant character of the two old men,
decides that rather than resettling in an already existing city, they will form their own city amongst the birds, one
where they will be free to act as they wish. After concocting a false theogony explaining that the birds were the
original and rightful rulers of the universe, he persuades them to aid him in his quest to form a city in the sky and
overthrow the Olympian gods. In what follows, Peisetaerus’ actions become increasingly violent and tyrannical. He
acts hubristically toward those who arrive in his newly-founded city either seeking to sell their skills and wares or
seeking residence therein, and he threatens the goddess Iris with sexual violation. He even cannibalizes some of the
birds that have dissented to his rule (by this point in the play, Peisetaerus himself has been transformed into a bird).
What the action of the play reveals is troubling connection between Peisetaerus’ original motivations for
leaving Athens and his newfound desire to create, and rule over, a city in the sky. While he claims to seek a quiet
place free from the political troubles that bothered him in Athens, this quest for a quiet place is quickly abandoned
when he is confronted with the opportunity to engage in politics on his own terms. In Cloudcuckooland (the name
that is given to the city in the sky), he is not only completely free to act and do as he pleases, he arranges for the
overthrow of the Olympian gods and becomes the sole ruler (turranos) of the universe. In the character of
Peisetaerus, then, we can see the ways in which the conception of freedom as living as one wants can be dangerous
for, and come into conflict with, the idea of freedom as ruling and being ruled in turn. His actions not only
demonstrate a preference for not being ruled, but also for a desire for permanent rule as the fulfillment his basic
desire for freedom. Moreover, his desire for rule is parasitic upon the ability of others to live freely, in either the
sense of freedom as ruling and being ruled in turn or in the sense of freedom as living as one wants.
In this sense, Birds exposes the tensions between these two conceptions of freedom by exploring the
implications of the idea of freedom as living as one wants and the effects upon society that are wrought when

16
individuals attempt to live according to such principles. In this respect, the play is a type of ideological thought-
experiment, one that comically envisions the potential incongruities in the ways Athenian citizens conceived of
freedom within their democratic polity. As such, it is representative of Aristophanic comedy as a whole, and its
political salience in its exploration of the various facets of Athenian democratic ideology. In this way, we can see
how Aristophanes fashioned the genre of comic poetry as a type of political rhetoric diametrically opposed to the
deceptive rhetoric of the politicians he attacks. It is a type of comic rhetoric that not only exposes the pretensions of
such politicians, but also has the power to expose the shortcomings of Athenian democratic thought and practice,
inciting democratic, and communal, self-reflection.

IV.
Platonic Laughter

Plato, of course, denies that there is much that is admirable in the form of civic education Athenian citizens
received from poetry. At the same time, it has long been recognized that Plato also employs his own forms of poetry
throughout his philosophical dialogues, both in the form of the philosophical myths that occupy prominent places in
dialogues such as the Gorgias, Republic, and Phaedrus, as well as in his borrowings from the genres of tragedy and
comedy in his construction of the philosophical dialogue as a literary form in its own right. Yet, while a number of
studies have been devoted to exploring the connections between tragic drama and Plato’s dialogues, relatively little
attention has been paid to both Plato’s critique of comic poetry and laughter, as well as his debt to this literary genre.
Though Plato admittedly focuses much more heavily on critiquing tragic poetry in his overall critique of poetry in
the Republic, I would argue that his critique of comic poetry is no less important for an understanding of his
ambiguous relationship with poetry. Moreover, it is perhaps comic poetry and laughter that have left a much more
indelible mark on Plato’s construction of the philosophical dialogue. In the final section of this paper, I turn to an
assessment of Plato’s critique of comic poetry, and the overall place of laughter in his philosophical and political
thought.
In order to assess the place of laughter within Plato’s political thought, it is necessary to begin with the
critique of poetry that Socrates articulates in the Republic.71 In books II-III and X, Socrates puts forth two related,
but distinct, arguments for banishing the poets from the ideal city that is constructed in speech during the procession
of the dialogue. In latter half of book II and the beginning of book III, Socrates and Adeimantus discuss what types
of stories (muthous) should be told to the children being educated to become guardians of Kallipolis. Socrates’
concern centers on the types of beliefs that enter the souls of the young on account of the stories they hear, and he
argues that they must supervise the storytellers (muthopoiois) lest the future guardians’ souls are shaped in an
unacceptable fashion. Of utmost importance are the stories told about the gods: they must always be depicted as
good, and as only the cause of good things (even when they punish human beings they do so not to destroy them, but
to benefit them) (379c2-380c4); they must never be shown as changing their forms since, in being neither deficient
in beauty or virtue, they would have to change into what is worse, and no one, whether god or human, would
deliberately make himself worse in any way (381c6-8); finally, that the gods never lie nor seek to deceive human

71
All quotations are taken from C.D.C. Reeve’s translation of the Republic, unless otherwise noted.

17
beings (383a2-5). In the sphere of human actions, the stories told by the poets must encourage the young guardians
to be courageous in the face of death and temperate in obeying their rulers and ruling over the pleasures of food, sex,
and drink. Excluded from the city, then, would be Achilles’ famous remarks in the Odyssey that “I would rather
labor on earth in another man’s service, a man who is landless, with little to live on, than be king over all the dead”
(386c4-387b6) as well as his insulting speech against Agamemnon in the first book of the Illiad (389e12-390a2).
Having decided on the proper regulation of the content of poetry, Socrates and Adeimantus proceed to
inquire into its style (394c7-8).72 More specifically, Socrates explains that they must investigate the two modes of
storytelling employed by the poets: narration (diêgêsis) and imitation (mimêsis). Socrates begins by asking
Adeimantus whether or not they would want their guardians to be imitators, and proceeds to offer two arguments
against the practice of mimêsis. First, imitation would violate the principle underpinning the establishment of a
division of labor within the city, “that whereas each individual can practice one pursuit well, he cannot practice
many well, and if he tried to do this and dabbled in many things, he would surely fail to achieve distinction in all of
them” (394e1-6).73 It follows from this argument that the guardians should never imitate any of the craftsman, but
must focus on their own task within the city. Second, and closely related to this argument, is that if the guardians do
imitate anything, then they must only imitate those things that are appropriate to them – “people who are
courageous, temperate, pious, free, and everything of that sort” (395c3-6). Again, it follows that the guardians
should not imitate slaves, or drunkards, or madmen. The moderate man will prefer the style that employs mostly
narration with only some imitation (provided that it is imitation of good deeds and good men), rather than a more
mixed, imitative style that, while it might be more pleasing, “does not harmonize with our constitution, because
there is no twofold or manifold man among us, since each does only job” (397d9-e2). In accordance with the
argument, they would admit only the “pure imitator of the good person” (397d4), one who would make his story fit
the patterns that they laid down in setting out the education of the guardians (398b1-4).
In book X, Socrates, drawing on the tripartite division of the soul and the theory of the forms articulated
between books III and X, extends his original critique of mimêsis, arguing that all forms of poetic imitation should
be banned from the city in speech. In contrast to the arguments put forth in books II and III, where the content and
style of poetry are scrutinized, Socrates’ critique, in book X, centers on an epistemological argument about the
nature of poetic knowledge. According to Socrates’ argument, the mimêsis that lies at the heart of the tragic poet’s
craft is but a representation of a certain appearance of reality, rather than an attempt to imitate ‘what is as it is’ (to
on, hôs ekhei; 598b2). Like the painter who paints an image of the couch created by the craftsman (rather than the
form of the couch made by the god), the tragic poet produces illusions (phantasmata; 599a3) rather than things as
they are. In contrast to the user of a particular object who possesses knowledge (epistêmê) and the maker who
possesses true belief (pistin doksa), the poetic imitator “has neither knowledge (eisetai) nor correct belief (ortha

72
The distinction in Greek is between ‘that which it is necessary to say’ (ha lekteon) and ‘how it is necessary to
speak’ (hôs lekteon). While Reeve translates, rather loosely, the former as ‘content’ and the latter as ‘style’, the
translation adequately captures the distinction Socrates is making.
73
Nehamas (1999), p. 253. “To imitate other sorts as well would be an instance of polupragmosunê.”

18
doksasei) about whether the things he makes are good (kallos) or bad (ponêrian)” (602a8-9).74 Rather, he will
imitate whatever appears good to the ignorant masses (tois pollois te kai mêden eidosin; 602b3), and in this way, be
thought of as speaking extremely well about various subjects in front of those who are likewise ignorant (601a4-
b4).75
From this perspective, Socrates is now able to offer a deeper critique of poetry than the one presented in
books II and III. From the idea that the poets are ignorant of the truth, he argues that imitative poetry necessarily
appeals to the appetitive part of the soul. In so doing, it “arouses and nourishes this element in the soul and, by
making it strong, destroys the rational one – just as someone in a city who makes wicked people strong, by handing
the city over to them, ruins the better ones” (605b2-5). In gratifying and strengthening the appetitive part of the
soul, poetry helps to create, by analogy, a bad constitution within the soul of its audience. Moreover, the corrupting
effects of poetry are not confined to the ‘lower’ elements of society; rather, it has the power to corrupt all but the
very few best individuals. Poetry nurtures and waters the appetitive desires that should be dried up through a proper
education focusing on reason and good habits, and has the power to charm even those who are aware of its
enchanting power. To allow imitative poetry free rein in Kallipolis, then, would be tantamount to dethroning the
philosopher-kings, and hence, to removing reason from its rightful place in the well-ordered regime.
While the majority of Plato’s critique of poetry in the Republic is directed against tragic poetry, there are a
number of moments in the dialogue that make clear that the critique is meant to apply to comic poetry, and the types
of laughter it elicits, as well. In book X, Socrates makes this connection explicit in discussing how laughter, and
especially communal laughter, can move us in ways that are decidedly against our better judgment. As Socrates
explains “if there are jokes you would be ashamed to tell yourself, but that you very much enjoy when you hear
them imitated in a comedy or even in private, and that you don’t hate as something bad, aren’t you doing the same
thing as with the things you pity? For the element in you that wanted to tell the jokes, but which you held back by
means of reason because you were afraid of being reputed a buffoon, you now release; and having made it strong in
that way, you have been led unawares into becoming a comedian in your own life” (606c2-9). In other words,
viewing acts of comic mimêsis - seeing others make jokes that we know to be shameful – can be just as disruptive of
the type of psychic harmony that constitutes justice in the soul as tragic poetry. Just as tragic scenes or mourning
and lamentation lead us to sympathize with individuals who engage in these shameful acts, strengthening the natural
appetite within us that desires such actions, ultimately weakening our ability to avoid them, comic poetry, through
the vehicle of laughter, has the power to nurture and strengthen the appetitive part of our souls.

74
In this respect, the argument against poetry advanced in book X of the Republic is markedly distinct from the
discussions of poetry found in the Apology, Ion, and Phaedrus. In these three works, Socrates criticizes does not
criticize the poets for failing to say wise things; rather, he attributes the source of their wise utterances not to their
actual possession of wisdom, but to divine inspiration. As such, they are unable to given an account of the wise
things they say.
75
It should be noted that this argument against poetry bears a particular affinity to the arguments Socrates’ levels
against rhetoric in the Gorgias. There, Socrates asserts that an orator would only be more persuasive about a matter
concerning health amongst those who do not know (458e3-459c2). Later in the dialogue, Socrates makes an explicit
connection between oratory and poetry, culminating in the assertion that poetry is a type of oratory (502b1-d8).
These arguments will be discussed in fuller detail in Chapter 4.

19
 This argument – that laughter has the power to damage the proper education and ordering of the parts of the
soul - is anticipated in book III when Socrates states that the guardians for his city in speech must not be lovers of
laughter (philogelôtas; 338e4). There, Socrates comments on laughter’s transformative power; whenever someone
yields to strong laughter (ephiêi iskhurôi gelôti), such laughter seeks out a great change (388e4-6). As such,
laughter has the power to overcome even good men, and representations of such men overcome by laughter, and
especially portrayals of the gods as overcome by laughter, must not be received into the city. In particular, Homer
must be censored for representing, at the end of the first book of the Illiad, the Olympian gods as overcome by
unquenchable laughter (asbestos gelôs) at the site of Hephaistos limping through the hall, serving his fellow gods
nectar in a divine parody of the beautiful Ganymede. Gone also, we might presume, would be the laughter that
Thersites famously directs against Agamemnon in the second book, as well as the laughter that is subsequently
directed against him due to the blow struck by Odysseus.
Finally, in book V, Socrates returns to a criticism of comedy in defending his proposal that female
guardians should undergo the same process of education as their male counterparts. Socrates notes that perhaps
many of the things they are now saying would appear laughable (geloia) if they were actually practiced, on account
of their being contrary to custom (para to ethos) (452a7-8). Moreover, the most laughable (geloiotaton) aspect of
his proposal would be the idea that women would be exercising naked – and next to men! - in the palaestras. While
Socrates recognizes the potential laughter such a scene might invite, he urges his interlocutors not to fear the jokes
(skômmata) that will be made about such a change to the customary musical and physical training. They must
remind those who would engage in such jesting to be serious, and to remember that it was not long ago that the
Greeks themselves thought the idea of men exercising naked to be shameful and laughable (aiskhra einai kai geloia;
452c7). Eventually, when it was proved that this was a superior way to organize the physical training of men, such
laughter faded away. For Socrates, this demonstrates “it is a fool (mataios) who finds anything ridiculous (geloion)
except what is bad, or tries to raise a laugh (gelôtopoiein epikheirôn) at the sight of anything except what is stupid
(aphronos) or bad (kakou), or – putting it the other way around – who takes seriously any standard of what is
beautiful (kalou) other than what is good (agathou)” (452d7-e1). Rather than simply laughing at what is contrary to
custom, the poets should – but do not – consider the goodness or badness of that which is contrary to custom. In
ignoring this criterion, the comic poets, and the laughter they incite, serve to hinder, rather than advance, the
philosophic investigation of the truth.
These three examples allow us to piece together the argument that Socrates advances against comedy and
laughter in the Republic. Like poetry in general, comic poetry and laughter are not governed by knowledge; rather,
they are directed toward that which appears laughable from the viewpoint of the many. As such, they are potentially
disruptive of the forms of psychic and political harmony that the argument of the dialogue works to establish.
Moreover, given the power of laughter to produce strong changes in those exposed to it, it would seem to follow that
laughter has a naturally corrupting influence. In certain respects, this critique of laughter mirrors Plato’s critique of
democracy, insofar as both rely upon the opinions of the many. In this sense, the critique of laughter presented in
the Republic is not a critique of laughter per se, but rather, a critique of democratic laughter.

20
 Indeed, the passage from book V cited above implicitly acknowledges the existence of a type of laughter
that is not governed by the doksai of the many. Moreover, such laughter, I would argue is made manifest in the
various forms of laughter found within the Platonic dialogues. If we look closely at the Platonic dialogues, we can
see laughter being employed in a number of interesting ways that would appear, at first glance, to contradict the
critique of laughter that is advanced in the Republic. First, on the philological level, the use of geloios (laughable)
and its related terms, katagelastos and gelaô, is extremely widespread.76 In fact, the terms are deployed throughout
a wide range of Plato’s dialogues, and are particularly prevalent in the Theaetetus, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus,
Protagoras, Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Republic, and Laws. In all of these cases, geloios and its related terms are
deployed in a set of related ways: Socrates himself or his arguments appear laughable to his interlocutors; Socrates
fears that his own arguments might appear laughable; Socrates views the arguments of his interlocutors as laughable.
In all of these cases, laughter reflects an uncertainty in the philosophical progression of the dialogue, one that both
invites and permits the dialogue’s interlocutors and readers to reflect on the soundness of the arguments advanced.
On a literary level, perhaps the most obvious example is Plato’s representation of Socratic irony. In
contrast to the original sense of the Greek word eirôneia as ‘dissembling,’ Socratic irony involves not simply
deception, but the more subtle practice saying something other than what one means.77 As such, Socratic irony
functions to represent Socrates himself as a puzzle, both to his interlocutors and to the readers of the Platonic
dialogues, by creating a mask without ever revealing what, if anything, is being masked.78 As a species of the
comic, Socratic irony unsettles those who are subject to it, forcing his interlocutors to question exactly what it is that
Socrates means when he speaks ironically. For example, when Socrates either self-depreciatingly disavows his own
knowledge, or, conversely, praises the knowledge of others, we are left wondering whether Socrates is attempting to
conceal his own knowledge from his interlocutors or subtly mocking the pretensions his interlocutors have to
knowledge of their own. In either case, we are left wondering, along with many of Socrates’ interlocutors, whether
he is being serious or joking.
Yet, Plato’s use of laughter on the literary level is not confined to the portrayal of Socratic irony. Closer
attention to the literary dimensions of the Platonic dialogues reveals a profound engagement with the genre of Attic
Old Comedy and its comic techniques and tropes. Despite the critique of comedy in the Republic, these
engagements suggest that found the genre of Attic Old Comedy “congenial to his own project.”79 In the Protagoras,
for example, there is a strong parallel between Plato’s depiction of the sophists at the house of Callias and the chorus

76
A TLG search for geloios and its related terms in the Platonic corpus yielded 339 occurrences. The breakdown
for the particular works listed below are as follows: Theaetetus, 23; Phaedo, 12; Symposium, 21; Phaedrus, 11;
Protagoras, 14; Euthydemus, 19; Hippias Major, 17; Republic, 68; Laws, 37. One of the interesting facts about this
breakdown is that the works that prominently employ these terms are distributed throughout the ‘early’, ‘middle’,
and ‘late’ dialogues.
77
Nehamas (1998), p. 50. Nehamas, rightly, takes issue with Vlastos’ conception of ‘complex irony’, which,
drawing on the theories of Cicero and Quintillian, understands irony of saying the opposite of what one means. For
Nehamas, ‘complex irony’ is at once too simple and formulaic to capture the phenomenon of Socratic irony, which
ultimately entails the (either successful or unsuccessful) concealment of what Socrates means.
78
Ibid, p. 67.
79
Nightingale (1995), p. 187.

21
of Eupolis’ Flatterers (Kolakes).80 In Plato’s dialogue, Socrates describes the movements of the sophists in terms
reminiscent of a comic chorus, detailing the manner in which they follow Protagoras’ almost musical voice and
mimic the choregic strophes and antistrophes.81 Likewise, while the chorus of flatterers in Eupolis’ play of that
name is not a chorus of sophists,82 the definition of sophistry as a type of flattery in the Gorgias83 allows us to see
how Plato might have been drawing on Eupolis’ comedy for his own critique of Protagoras and his followers.84
There is a similar parallel between Plato’s Gorgias and Aristophanes’ Knights which reveals that, in
constructing his critique of rhetoric, Plato was highly influenced by Aristophanes’ comic critique. Aristophanes’
Knights, produced at the Lenaia festival of 424 BCE, is a biting satire of the politician Cleon and his style of
leadership, as well as a comical vision of the competition between rival politicians for the affections of the Athenian
dêmos. In the play, the contest between Paphlagon (the character created to represent Cleon) and the Sausage-Seller
(his upstart political rival) for political leadership of the city is framed in terms of which man can, in a literal
fashion, better ‘serve’ their master, Mr. Demos, with the largest quantity and highest quality of tasty treats; it
presents the relationship between Mr. Demos and Paphlagon as charged by an unhealthy eroticism85; and, it raises
the fundamental question of whether the dêmos or the politicians are the true holders of political power in the
democratic city. Readers of the Gorgias might quickly recognize how these themes are drawn upon in Socrates’
critique of political rhetoric. For Socrates, rhetoric is nothing more than a subspecies of flattery, one that bears a
specific analogic relationship to the ‘art’ of pastry-baking; Socrates criticizes Callicles for his love of the dêmos, an

80
Ibid, p. 186.
81
“When we went in we found Protagoras walking in the portico flanked by two groups. On one side were Callias,
son of Hipponicus, and his brother on his mother’s side, Paralus, son of Pericles, and Charmides, son of Glaucon.
On the other side were Pericles’ other son, Xanthippus, Philippides, son of Philomelus, and Antimoerus of Mende,
Protagoras’ star pupil who is studying professionally to become a sophist. Following behind and trying to listen to
what was being said were a group of what seemed to be mostly foreigners, men whom Protagoras collects from the
various cities he travels through. He enchants them with his voice like Orpheus, and they follow the sound of his
voice in a trance. There were some locals also in this chorus, whose dance simply delighted me when I saw how
beautifully they took care never to get in Protagoras’ way. When he turned around with his flanking groups, the
audience to the rear would split into two in a very orderly way and then circle round to either side and form up again
behind him” (314eff.)
82
Contra Nightingale.
83
“So pastry baking, as I say, is the flattery that wears the mask of medicine. Cosmetics is the one that wears that of
gymnastics in the same way; a mischievous, deceptive, disgraceful and ill-bred things, one that perpetrates deception
by means of shaping and coloring, smoothing out and dressing up, so as to make people assume an alien beauty and
neglect their own, which comes through gymnastics. So that I won’t make a long-style speech, I’m willing to put it
to you in the way the geometers do – for perhaps you follow me now – that what cosmetics is to gymnastics, pastry
baking is to medicine; or rather, like this: what cosmetics is to gymnastics, sophistry is to legislation, and what
pastry baking is to medicine, oratory is to justice.” (465aff.)
84
Ian Storey argues that, given that these kolakes are not sophists, that we do not have to conclude that Plato took
over this scene from Eupolis’ comedy. Rather, “Plato is giving his twist to the story, by turning the kolakes of
Eupolis into would-be sophists; he may also have owed more of his picture here to Ameipsias’ Konnos, which did
have a chorus of phrontistai” p. 192. The passage above from the Gorgias allows us to see what the connection
would be, for Plato, between a chorus of flatterers and one of sophists.
85
Of course, the idea that such politics possesses an erotic dimension would not have been considered altogether
strange for a late 5th-century Athenian audience. We might recall here the Periclean Funeral Oration, recounted by
Thucydides, that calls upon the male Athenian citizens to look upon their polis as a lover (erastês) would look upon
his beloved (erômenos). What is ‘unhealthy’ about the formulation as it is presented in the Knights is the overly
passive position Paphlagon’s love for the dêmos suggests. This theme will be discussed in greater detail in chapter
2.

22
affection that ultimately makes him subservient to their desires; and, finally, the Gorgias presents a vision of
Athenian democracy where no one, neither the dêmos nor the politicians, can be said to exert genuine political
agency.86
All of these examples, both philological and literary, suggest that Plato’s relationship to comic poetry and
laughter is much more ambiguous than the critiques encountered in the Republic might seem to admit. Thus, in
order to better understand Plato’s use of laughter along these dimensions, it is necessary to move beyond the
Republic and turn to the discussion of laughter presented in the Philebus. In contrast to the Republic, Socrates’
conception of laughter in the Philebus does not center on forms of laughter that emanate from the opinions of the
many. Rather, Socrates identifies the laughable with ignorance. Yet, it is not just any type of ignorance that
warrants laughter, but rather, one that is intimately connected with ignorance of oneself – hence, as Socrates
explains, the laughable derives its name from a type of disposition that stands in direct opposition to Delphic
exhortation to ‘Know thyself.’87 More specifically, this self-ignorance can manifest itself in three distinct forms:
self-ignorance with respect to money and other possessions (48e1-2), self-ignorance with respect to one’s physical
attributes (48e4-6), and lastly, self-ignorance with respect to one’s virtue (and, as an important subset of this type of
self-ignorance, with respect to wisdom; 48e8-49a2). It is the third form of self-ignorance that Socrates identifies as
most pervasive, leading people to have false pretensions about their knowledge.
Viewed from the standpoint of the conception of laughter articulated in the Philebus, Plato’s
‘entanglement’ with Attic Old Comedy, along with his other uses of laughter, becomes more explicable. The type of
laughter articulated in the Philebus does not rely on the opinions of the many for its articulation; rather, it relies on a
perceived incongruity between a person’s actual attributes and his or her inflated sense of self. Hence, Plato’s use of
laughter indicates a respect for laughter’s transformative power, provided that such laughter is employed in a critical
fashion, one that seeks to expose pretension, especially in the realm of knowledge. For example, when Socrates
claims, in the Gorgias, that rhetoric is nothing other than a form of flattery, akin to the ‘art’ of cookery, his
definition is a direct challenge to the claim of men like Gorgias that rhetoric entails knowledge of what is just and
unjust, as well as a critique of the so-called power orators actually exercise within democratic politics. It is a form
of laughter insofar as it paints Gorgias, and men like him, as self-ignorant with respect to their craft and its power.
Moreover, it is a technique of criticism that Plato borrows explicitly from the genre of Attic Old Comedy.
Finally, the conception of laughter in the Philebus points us toward a third, philosophical dimension of
laughter, in addition to the philological and literary dimensions discussed above. The identification of the laughable
with self-ignorance intimately connects the laughable to the very project of Socratic philosophizing itself. As
Socrates explains in the Apology, his life-long quest to understand the Delphic Oracle’s utterance concerning his
personal wisdom led him to investigate the claims of all those who were reputed to be wise (tôn dokountôn sophôn),
thinking that he might be able to refute the oracle by discovering someone who was in fact wiser than he. In his

86
There are a number of similar parallels between other Aristophanic comedies and Platonic dialogues. For
example, there is significant thematic overlap between the Frogs and Symposium, as well as between the Birds and
Republic (as a whole), the Assemblywomen and Republic V, and Wasps and Republic VIII-IX. Unfortunately, a
comprehensive discussion of all these examples of intertextuality is impossible within the scope of this paper.
87
48c6-9. Estin dê ponêria men tis to kephalaion, hekseôs tinos epiklên legomenê; tês d’ au pasês ponêrias esti
tounantion pathos ekhon ê to legomenon hupo tôn en Delphois grammatôn.

23
encounters with the various ‘wise’ men of Athens – be they politicians, poets, or craftsman – Socrates discovers that
all of these men, even those who do possess some sort of wisdom, suffer from self-ignorance. In the case of the
politicians, Socrates declines to name even a single thing about which they are wise. The poets, who do say many
wise things, are nevertheless unable to provide an account of the many fine things they say. Finally, the craftsmen
not only know many fine things, they are presumably able, by way of Socrates’ omission, to explain these pieces of
knowledge as well. Yet they, like the poets, are still self-ignorant, in the sense that they are ignorant with respect to
the limits of their individual knowledge. Both the poets and the craftsmen fall victim to the false assumption that
their particular areas of knowledge provide them with knowledge of many other important pursuits. It is in this
sense that they are self-ignorant, and hence Socrates’ quest demonstrates that his superiority with respect to wisdom
consists precisely in his knowledge of his ignorance, and hence, in his apparent lack of self-ignorance.
Thus, by revealing his interlocutors to be self-ignorant, there is a sense, based on the definition of laughter
in the Philebus, in which Socrates is also revealing them to be laughable. Such laughter, unlike that of the comic
poets Socrates criticizes in the Republic, is not based on the opinions of the many; rather, it is based on a
demonstration, through the method of the elenchus, that Socrates’ interlocutors are self-ignorant with respect to
wisdom. Such an understanding of the Socratic method, as not only inducing aporia through refutation, but also of
inducing such aporia by showing one’s interlocutors to be laughable, provides new insight into the animus that
Socrates invokes in his philosophical quest to prove the verity of the Oracle’s utterance concerning his wisdom. It is
perhaps unsurprising, then, that the Socratic method does invoke such ire, nor that the young men of Athens take
such pleasure in seeing it exercised on their elders.

V.
Conclusion

In the comic poetry of Aristophanes and the philosophical dialogues of Plato, we are confronted with two
very different forms of laughter. Aristophanic laughter is a democratic form of laughter; it is laughter that is both
addressed to the dêmos and for the dêmos. While it is a form of laughter that often questions the ability of the dêmos
to make good decisions, it is nonetheless structured in such a way that it is a form of self-laughter. In this sense, it
constitutes a form of communal self-critique, one that necessarily places great faith in the ability of the dêmos to
become better observers of their actions in the political sphere.
Plato, of course, doubts the critical power of such communal, democratic laughter. For Socrates in the
Republic, such laughter merely reinforces and re-inscribes the unreflective opinions and dogmas of the dêmos
without questioning the validity of these assumptions and without reflecting on the truth of these opinions. At the
same time, Plato recognizes the potential of laughter as a critical force when it is directed, by philosophers, at the
ignorant ideas of the many. In this sense, Platonic laughter is a form of anti-democratic discourse, one that seeks to
discredit both the ideology of democracy and the processes of democratic decision-making.
Looking to Aristophanes and Plato, then, allows us to see more clearly what is at stake when we talk about
laughter as a form of discourse in democratic societies. It can help us to see both laughter’s critical power and its
potential shortcomings. Plato’s critique both confirms Habermas’ suspicion of the perlocutionary effects of comic

24
speech, while at the same time seeks to harness such effects for its own philosophical purposes. Moreover, the
connections between Socratic philosophy of laughter would seem to confirm Habermas’ critique of laughter as an
inappropriate form of democratic discourse, insofar as it has the potential to humiliate and mock its targets.88 Yet,
this should not deter us from exploring the potentially positive contributions, exemplified in Aristophanic comedy,
that laughter can make to democratic discourse. As a form of discourse that is specifically geared toward reflection
and critique, laughter can help democratic citizens to be more cognizant of the ways in which they exchange reasons
with one another, and most of all, of the modes by which they hold each other accountable.

88
In this sense I would argue, contra Euben, that Socratic dialogue does not constitute a form of idealized
democratic discourse in the Habermasian vein.

25
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