Comic Wisdom: The Case of Aristophanes

In the fifth century, comic and tragic theatre were integral to the city’s religious festivals. In celebrating the civic gods, and Dionysus the god of theatre in particular, the staging of dramas had religious and political significance. When Plato criticizes poetry a century later, he is not attacking drama or recitals of Homeric epics as idle amusement, but as the spiritual and moral foundation of Greek city-states. He wishes to replace that foundation by his philosophy and a new theology.

Plato’s critique treats Greek poetry as a homogeneous tradition. This obscures the fact that poets were often in conscious rivalry both within and across genres. Comic playwrights would make fun of each other besides mocking tragic poets. The heterogeneity of poetic practice opens up the possibility that parts of its tradition might actually be immune to Plato’s critique or potentially capable of responding to it. My project makes such a case for the playwright of Old Comedy, Aristophanes. I argue that in his extant plays we can discern what I call a kind of comic wisdom: an understanding of the nature of human community that both results in and makes use of a comic attitude towards human things. Aristophanes, in other words, sees his role as comic poet as indispensable and beneficial to the city.

The first part of my talk will introduce some contemporary philosophical theories on humor. In the second part, I apply those theories to some representative passages in Aristophanes’ plays and suggest that the majority of his jokes and the construction of the plot have at least two major functions. One is mockery of socially undesirable behavior. The other makes the comic stage a site of wish fulfillment, where jokes lend public voice to otherwise repressed desires. Paradoxically, it is in the temporary suspension of the conventions and laws of the city-state that Aristophanes strengthens them. In the last part, I contrast Aristophanes’ attitude towards laughter with Plato’s and Aristotle’s general disapproval of it and evaluate their respective positions.