The next several weeks will go much easier if you simply spend the time to blow through the Clouds. You can access the text here or buy it using our affiliate link here. You won’t regret it.
There are very few plays about philosophers—in fact Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens is one of the few others that comes to mind. But most that do exist are tragedies, not comedies like the one we have before us. Recall Socrates was charged with not believing in the gods of the city, with corrupting the youth, and with making the weaker argument the stronger. In a sense all of these can be summed up in the following charge: Socrates undermined the conventional standards of Athens. Here it’s worth noting that political philosophy necessarily questions the political opinions of the political community—that’s its whole purpose, to question opinions to discover the truth. As such, this play is a key to coming to understand Socrates and what happened to him.
Now why is this a comedy and not a tragedy? Which is better suited to philosophy? Tragedy requires you to be under the conventional view of what is noble, whereas comedy puts one above these things and allows one to look down upon them. Tragedy therefore is much better suited to religion and comedy may share a special relationship with philosophy.
Having read The Clouds, do you consider it to be a fundamental criticism of Socrates’ activity? Or is it perhaps a friendly caution to Socrates?
It’s difficult to see it as simply a criticism. For instance, Aristophanes makes Just and Unjust Speech appear without Socrates, and it is Aristophanes himself who makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger in front of the whole city. It is Aristophanes (not Socrates) who provides a public presentation of just how easily Just Speech can lose. If one looks closely and reads between the lines one can also see what Aristophanes has to say about the other two charges.
There are some interesting features of the play itself. For instance, at line 517, Aristophanes breaks the drama and appears himself. He makes it clear that this is a piece of fiction; he claims wisdom, but not philosophy; he provides us with a metaphor, that is, that the play is a child and needs to be nurtured; he wants to make the Athenians think, to speak with the wise; he never wants to say the same thing twice; he’s an innovator; she wants fame and makes fantastic claims for the audience: they’ll become famous too for their wisdom in appreciating Aristophanes is work! But do we remember any of them? No, but we certainly remember Aristophanes. Glory cannot be had by all; it is not a shareable good.
One can think here of the Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Can any of you tell me what happened in Gettysburg? Can any of you name even one man who died there? And yet, how many of you have heard these words before? Long after the deeds are forgotten, the words live on.
Returning to Aristophanes, his other plays are much more typical of comedy, filled with sex, sacrilege, body and bawdy humor—the Clouds is almost a chaste play in comparison … almost. What is the connection between civilization and vulgarity? Notice most vulgarity is humor of the body, related to incontinence, to a lack of control of the body. It’s someone who passes gas at an inappropriate moment; it’s someone who really has to take a dump; it’s making public that which all of us have to do and which all of us do do in private. Aristophanes may be saying that it’s funny to laugh at people who take the body too seriously. Civilization seems to be able to recognize that the body places certain limits on us, but that it should not be the limit on us. Civilization requires that we rise above our body, if in no other way than that we be willing to risk death for things that are worth dying for.