Plato's Laughter

Socrates as Satyr and Comical Hero

Sonja Madeleine Tanner

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781438467368, 9781438467375
• eBook ISBN: 9781438467382
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Plato was described as a boor and it was said that he never laughed out loud. Yet his dialogues abound with puns, jokes, and humor. Sonja Madeleine Tanner argues that in Plato's dialogues Socrates plays a comical hero who draws heavily from the tradition of comedy in ancient Greece, but also reforms laughter to be applicable to all persons and truly shaming to none. Socrates introduces a form of self-reflective laughter that encourages, rather than stifles, philosophical inquiry. Laughter in the dialogues—both explicit and implied—suggests a view of human nature as incongruous with ourselves, simultaneously falling short of, and superseding, our own capacities. What emerges is a picture of human nature that bears a striking resemblance to Socrates' own, laughable depiction, one inspired by Dionysus, but one that remains ultimately intractable. The book analyzes specific instances of laughter and the comical from the Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium to support this, and to further elucidate the philosophical consequences of recognizing Plato's laughter.

1

The Apology of Socrates: Is Socrates a Comical Hero?

This chapter proposes that, contrary to what Socrates seems to suggest in the Philebus, comedy and laughter can not only contribute to self-knowledge, but they suggest the contours of what such knowledge might look like. Existing literature has largely focused on the self-reflexive character of the wisdom Socrates claims to have in the Apology, wherein he maintains only to know that he knows nothing, including of himself. Such lack of self-knowledge lies at the heart of what is laughable, but Socrates’s awareness thereof distinguishes two forms therein. Parallel to the forms of wisdom Socrates articulates at Apology 20d, run two forms of what is laughable. Like the more-than-human wisdom, assuming oneself falsely in possession of self-knowledge renders one an appropriate object of derisive laughter. Akin to what Socrates deems human, wisdom is the recognition of oneself as lacking self-knowledge, and therefore as being laughable in a more playful and self-reflexive way. Socrates, I will propose, embodies precisely this self-knowledge in the Apology, revealing himself to be not identical, but remarkably similar to, a comical hero. His comical dramatization in the Apology indicates the contours of potential self-knowledge, including harmonizing one’s words and deeds, recognizing both our limited selves as well as our tendency toward hubris, and that unless and until we achieve such self-knowledge, we remain fundamentally laughable.

Self-knowledge is presented as discrete from the laughable in the Philebus. Socrates suggests there that the “nature of the ridiculous [to geloion]” is “a kind of vice [ponēria] that derives its name from a special disposition; it is, among all the vices, the one with a character that stands in direct opposition to the one recommended by the famous inscription in Delphi” (Philebus 48c). While Socrates could easily be referring to the maxim “nothing in excess,” for comedy and laughter are most certainly excessive, it is much more likely that he is referring to the maxim “Know thyself [gnōthi seauton].” What makes one laughable, it seems, is not knowing oneself.

And yet, Socrates, in the Apology, declares himself to lack such knowledge. Indeed, Socratic Wisdom appears to consist in precisely this awareness.

Now perhaps I will seem to some of you to be joking [paizein] Know well, however, that I will tell you the whole truth. For I, men of Athens, have gotten this name through nothing but a certain wisdom. Just what sort of wisdom is this? That which is perhaps human wisdom [anthropinē sophia]; for probably I really am wise in this. But those of whom I just spoke might perhaps be wise in some wisdom greater than human, or else I cannot say what it is. For I, at least, do not have knowledge of it, but whoever asserts that I do lies and speaks in order to slander me. No please, men of Athens, do not make a disturbance, not even if I seem to you to be boasting somewhat. For “not mine is the story” that I will tell; rather, I will refer it to a speaker trustworthy to you. Of my wisdom, if indeed it is wisdom of any kind, and what sort of thing it is, I will offer for you as witness the god in Delphi. (Apology 20d‒e)

Socrates’s wisdom, he concludes, rests in his awareness of his own ignorance, or lack of knowledge, rather than in any positive, epistemic state. Comparing himself to the person who believes himself to be wise, but turns out not to know what he thinks he knows, Socrates says, “I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know” (Apology 21d). Socratic wisdom is cast in negative terms: it is constituted by not assuming his own knowledge. Put less awkwardly and more positively, it is an awareness of a lack of wisdom, a condition that allows Socrates to inquire further, but one that has consequences for how we see ourselves and for how we see Socrates.

The significance of this passage extends further. There is ambiguity as to which “god in Delphi” Socrates is referring. Apollo seems the more obvious one, but Dionysus, associated not only with wine but with drama and comedy, was also worshiped at Delphi for three months out of the year, in Apollo’s absence. Could Socrates be playing on this ambiguity here? If the god in question is one associated with comedy, we may find a far more risible tone to the Apology, and perhaps, to the dialogues in general. The passage itself is deeply comical. At the very point where Socrates notes the jurors’ outrage over his apparent boasting, he offers a yet more outrageous claim, namely that no mere mortal, but indeed, a god will provide witness in his favor. And this from a man on trial for impiety. Socrates claims to lack self-knowledge, but distinguishes the wisdom of being aware of this lack from ignorance of it. This awareness may enable inquiry into self-knowledge, but it also begins to sketch the content of human self-knowledge. If these types of wisdom are exhaustive, then we may participate more in the Dionysian and a bit less in the Apollonian than we flatter ourselves in believing. We may be, in other words, fundamentally laughable.

Under a tree sacred to Dionysus,1 Socrates, in the Phaedrus, extends this lack of wisdom to self-knowledge, saying, “I’m not yet able, in accordance with the Delphic inscription, to know myself [gnōnai emauton], and it seems ridiculous [geloia] to me to investigate things that don’t concern me while still lacking that knowledge” (Phaedrus 229e‒230a). Two points emerge from this. The first is that self-knowledge is primary for Socrates, as suggested by various interlocutors who say that Socrates typically brings the discussion back around to the persons involved (Laches 188a). The second point is a broader one about humans generally. Laughable is anyone who investigates things without that knowledge, and yet we are hard-pressed to find anyone in the dialogues—including Socrates—who has such self-knowledge. Does Socrates’s own, qualified lack of self-knowledge then not render him laughable? If Socrates himself lacks it, especially given his persistent pursuit of such knowledge, is there much hope for anyone else? And if not, does this not suggest that the majority of people—perhaps even all persons—are fundamentally laughable?

Just as Socrates suggests a distinction between his own and most others’ wisdom, here too we find a significant difference. The difference between Socrates and those believing themselves to have greater-than-human-wisdom is not one of self-knowledge, for both appear to lack it. The difference lies in the stance each takes concerning whether one has it. Being aware of one’s lack of self-knowledge enables seeing oneself as laughable. An ancient precedent for what Simon Critchley calls self-directed and other-directed laughter emerges from this.2 Self-directed laughter acknowledges one’s own remaining laughable, whereas other-directed laughter tends to assume otherwise. But are we reading Plato anachronistically in suggesting two seemingly modern conceptions of laughter as well as their applicability to humanity? This chapter concludes with a brief look at ancient precedents and antecedents for what might otherwise seem a decidedly modern view of comedy and laughter.

If Socrates is indeed some form of a comical hero, what follows from such a presentation? Socrates plays the comic hero to prove that laughter can and ought to be directed at oneself, and at remedying one’s lack of self-knowledge. The laughter provoked by this is self-directed laughter, and it is through playing the comical hero that the character Socrates helps to establish such laughter. Plato’s Socrates develops a novel, but not entirely unprecedented, conception of laughter in the process.

The Comical Apology

Plato’s Apology of Socrates, although interrupted by dialogue, is as close to a Socratic monologue as we have in Plato’s works. In it, Socrates draws frequent comparisons between himself and an assortment of Greek heroes in a grand and excessive defense that becomes, instead, offense.3 Comparisons to heroes seem particularly ill-fitting given Socrates’s outrageous behavior in the court room, including calling a god as his witness, insulting the jury, and suggesting, after being found guilty, that his punishment should be being treated like an Olympian victor. His provocations are met with outbursts from the jurors, noted in the dialogue. It is a very puzzling apologia if read straightforwardly, but a web of literary connections will help to contextualize some of the dialogue and offer support for Socrates as a hero. But this brings up a further puzzle: given Socrates’s allusions to and comparisons with heroes, what kind of hero behaves as Socrates does in the Apology? In other words, what sort of hero is Socrates?

Jacob Howland claims that the Apology uses thematic and formal elements of tragedy to expose the political paradoxes in which the good of the whole is pitted against that of the individuals in it. Reading the Apology in line with classical tragedy allows us to see that it is the city itself that constitutes the true tragic figure because it is the city, and not Socrates, that acts in ignorance.4 Howland’s essay is illuminating and important in acknowledging the complex relationship between the literary and philosophical, but stops short of recognizing the comic elements at work in the Apology, elements that one might not expect, given the dialogue’s serious topic. According to Howland, Socrates’s speeches and deeds “do not fit the mold of comic drama.”5 It is Meletus, for Howland, rather than Socrates, who jests. However much the dialogue draws from tragedy, I wish to show here some of the many ways in which the Apology resembles comedy. Socrates’s speeches and deeds do fit the mold of comic drama, Socrates does indeed jest, and Socrates himself resembles quite strongly the comic hero.

The Apology is exemplary in putting not just Socrates, but philosophy itself, on trial. As Sallis writes, “his defence speech will itself constitute an exemplification of that very practice against which the accusations have been brought.”6 That practice, as the Apology represents it, is infused with comedy. Greene writes that “The Apology is a comic justification of the life lived in the spirit of comedy—the exposure of pretension—at the behest of a god: surely this is piety! The unpopularity of Socrates arises from the fact that the public has no sense of humor …”7 Socrates dramatically exposes the pretension of the jurors voting to convict, exposing their pretense to judge, rather than merely to react emotionally. He does this by giving them something to react to: a marvelous display of comic insolence and philosophical tenacity that is, in and of itself, shocking coming from someone whose life hangs in the balance. It is, however, a display perfectly consistent with the modus operandi of Socrates’s life and practice as “lived in the spirit of comedy.” Greene’s claim is itself provocative: should the jurors have laughed at Socrates rather than sentence him to death? If so, is this the proper response to the Apology for us readers as well?

Laughter is one, but certainly not the only, appropriate response to the Apology. Socrates’s comic antics have philosophical points. They are part of the dramatic critique and provocation toward philosophy that Socrates offers the jurors and the audience. Why does Socrates provoke the jury? There are shorter and longer answers to this. The short answer is that he does so because he had always provoked the “men of Athens,” and consistent with what he promises to do, he continues in the Apology his life work of provocation. What the Apology makes apparent is the extent (and the stakes) to which Socrates is willing to go to do this. In the Euthydemus, he puts on the line his reputation as a philosopher, and with it, possibly, his honor or glory. In the Apology, he is willing to sacrifice his life. What he shows is that none of these things—reputation, honor, glory, life, and even being laughed at—matter so much as does living the kind of life, and presumably, dying the kind of death, that is examined. In doing so, Socrates criticizes the fundamentals of the Homeric heroic code. And yet, in the Apology, he compares himself repeatedly to heroes who adhere to this code. The question then becomes why Socrates is willing to put all he has on the line, and it is a question that is at least partly resolved in the longer answer.

The longer answer to why Socrates provokes the jury is that he uses comic provocation to expose their pretensions to judge and thus tests the limits of logos and its persuasive power. On what basis can Socrates distinguish those who properly “judge” him from those who are mere “men of Athens”? Socrates does not so much argue his defense as he enacts it. Rather than trying to prove his own innocence, Socrates shows the ineptitude of those assigned to judge and the lack ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Apology of Socrates: Is Socrates a Comical Hero?
• Chapter 2 The Laches’s Comical Structure and “The Refined Thinkers Who Are Really Poor”
• Chapter 3 Tumbling Down to Earth: Laughter, Limitation, and Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Charmides
• Chapter 4 Naming the Nameless: Logos, Laughter, and Self-Forgetting
• Chapter 5 Bawdy Politics: Satyrical Laughter and Self-Knowledge in the Symposium
• Conclusion Poneria, Self-Knowledge, and Comical, Platonic Optimism
• Notes
• Works Consulted
• Index
• Back Cover