Politics of Socratic Humor

Abstract

How was Socrates funny? Was he an ironist? Did he mock his interlocutors and, in doing so, show disdain for both them and the institutions of Athenian democracy? These questions were debated with great seriousness by three generations of Greek writers and helped to define a primary strand of the Western tradition of political thought. This book reconstructs the debate between ancient Greek authors concerning the nature and purpose of Socratic humor. It compares the Socrates presented in Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophical schools in order to demonstrate that humor was a key aspect of Socrates’s legacy in and after the classical period. It further shows how these ancient depictions of Socratic humor were shaped by the political context in which they were written and illustrates why Socratic intellectualism was thought to be dangerous to democratic authority. Practices of humor are connected with the operations of power; this book details how humor enabled Socrates to navigate relations of power between himself and his interlocutors. By attending to the politics of humor, these ancient writers explored the political implications of Socratic conversation in ways that shed new light on the relationships between humor, power, and democratic authority.