Plato's Laughter , livre ebook

PLATO’S LAUGHTER
SUNY series in Ancient Greek Philosophy

Anthony Preus, editor
PLATO’S LAUGHTER
SOCRATES AS SATYR AND COMICAL HERO

Sonja Madeleine Tanner
Cover image of Satyr and Dionysus by the potter Hieron used with permission by the antique collection of the State Museum of Berlin Prussian cultural heritage ( Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz ).
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tanner, Sonja, 1972-
Title: Plato’s laughter : Socrates as satyr and comical hero / Sonja Madeleine Tanner.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2017. | Series: SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016056708 (print) | LCCN 2017040526 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438467382 (e-book) | ISBN 9781438467375 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Plato. | Laughter. | Comic, The. | Wit and humor. | Socrates.
Classification: LCC B398.C63 (ebook) | LCC B398.C63 T36 2017 (print) | DDC 184—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056708
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Dedicated to

MARK, JACKSON, LIAM, and AUDREY, and the many different kinds of laughter we share.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Superiority Theory of Laughter
Playful and Consequential Laughter
The Incongruity Theory of Laughter
The Chapter Breakdown
CHAPTER 1 The Apology of Socrates: Is Socrates a Comical Hero?
The Comical Apology
Socrates and the Homeric Hero
Socrates and the Traits of Comical Heroes
Humanity as Laughable and Self-Directed Laughter
CHAPTER 2 The Laches’s Comical Structure and “The Refined Thinkers Who Are Really Poor”
The Laches’s Comical Structure
Lysimachus as a Comical Figure
Nicias as a Comical Figure
Stesilaus as a Comical Figure
Laches as a Comical Figure
Courage, Laughter, and Self-Knowledge
Conclusion
CHAPTER 3 Tumbling Down to Earth: Laughter, Limitation, and Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Charmides
Laughter on the Bench
Tragic and Comic Laughter
Socratic versus Critian Sōphrosynē : Theory and Practice
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 Naming the Nameless: Logos, Laughter, and Self-Forgetting
Laughter and Logos in the Cratylus
Laughter and False Speaking in the Euthydemus
Logos and the Satirical
CHAPTER 5 Bawdy Politics: Satyrical Laughter and Self-Knowledge in the Symposium
Aristophanes’s Hiccups
Socrates as Satyr
Conclusion
CONCLUSION Poneria , Self-Knowledge, and Comical, Platonic Optimism
NOTES
WORKS CONSULTED
INDEX
Acknowledgments
So many have helped to make this book better than it otherwise would have been, whether through direct support on the material or inspiring conversations. The remaining warts are entirely my own. May Logos itself enjoy the occasions for laughter that these shortcomings provide, evidence as they may be of the self-forgetting involved even in writing on self-forgetting. Particular thanks go to Andrew Kenyon; the SUNY Press, and its anonymous reviewers; the UCCS philosophy faculty and students, especially Raphael Sassower, Allison Postell, Mary Ann Cutter, Lorraine Arangno, and the Committee on Research and Creative Works for its support; Colorado College’s philosophy faculty and students, Jonathon Lee, Bernie Freydberg, Rob Metcalf, Michael Naas, Shane Ewegen, Carolin Hahnemann, Naomi Reshotko, Arindam Chakribarty, Nalin Ranasinghe, Dmitri Nikulin, Monica Vilhauer, Edward Butler, Russell Ford; and the two gentlemen within earshot at a conference whose eyebrows shot way up when they overheard that I was working on comedy in Plato who, oddly, made me think that I might—just possibly—be on to something worthwhile.
More personally, I would like to thank Jackson, Liam, and Audrey, not only for being the lights of my life but, more specifically, for sleeping and thereby allowing me to write this; and August and Ava, my furry office companions, whose protective vigilance on two continents kept me safe from many a postal carrier and inquisitive squirrel while writing. Finally, my most heartfelt appreciation goes to Mark for offering support and inspiration in so many ways, including always being able to make me laugh, without which this would not have been possible. Thank you, my love.
An earlier version of the chapter 4 was originally published as “Comedy as Self-Forgetting: Implications of Sallis’ Interpretation of Plato’s Cratylus” in Journal of Speculative Philosophy 27, no. 2 (2013): 188‒98.
Introduction
[Plato] was so modest [aidemon] and well-regulated [kosmiois] that he was never once seen to laugh excessively [gelon huperagan … komikon].
—Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Plato is funny. This single conviction immediately puts me and this book at odds with the bulk of almost two millennia of Platonic scholars and literature. It has, with some regularity, raised eyebrows. This book is, in a sense, a defense and explication of this conviction. I am not trying to make the reader laugh, nor am I suggesting that Plato was a comedian, especially not a comedian instead of a philosopher. What I am trying to suggest is that Plato frequently uses and incorporates the comic and laughter in his dialogues in philosophically meaningful ways that have thus far generated scant attention. What have we missed by neglecting these? What if we have simply failed to hear Plato’s laughter?
There are a number of ways of answering this question. For one, I will argue that we have overlooked an exuberance in the dialogues that is not necessarily tied to ideological commitments, and that is often missing in how we read Plato and perhaps in our very comportment to philosophy itself. For another, I will argue we have missed all conceptions and uses of laughter other than the one type of laughter that is commonly thought to be recognized by “Plato”: derisive or malicious laughter. In addition, we find instances of what we today might term slapstick , playful joking, farce, parody, plays on words, and satire.
Much has been written about Socratic irony, itself a kind of humor. Irony, however, tends to center on the rhetorical and the intellectual. Laughter can arise from a broader range of sources, including the physical, and itself constitutes a potentially corporeal, emotional, and intellectual reaction. It is not eirōneia (nor is it the Latinized irony) that describes the interlocutors’ boisterous jostling of each other on the bench in the opening of the Charmides . And the reaction Socrates describes is not one of ironic detachment from the situation, a sort of laughter from above, but is instead situated, physical, and involving “much laughter” ( gelōta polun ) ( Charmides 155c). Even if we do not go quite as far as Kierkegaard, who deems irony “infinite, absolute negativity,” irony carries with it negative, empty, and destructive connotations that need not be associated with laughter. 1 Laughter is more robust and capable, as I will argue, of addressing a fuller range of gelastic occurrences in the Platonic dialogues than is generally recognized.
Laughter is an ambivalent force for the Greeks; powerful and life-affirming at times, but prone toward excesses and potentially devastating at others. Historically, it undergoes a philosophical change in Plato where Socrates suggests that being laughed at does not matter, whereas for many prior and contemporary tragic figures, the specter of being laughed at can be a fate worse than death. 2 Socrates actively defuses laughter’s potency in this regard, and plays up its capacities to promote self-reflection and humility. What is to be feared, for Socrates, is not being laughed at, but lacking the self-knowledge that enables actions and beliefs that are ridiculous, or to be laughed at. Indeed, Socrates presents himself as a comic figure in a number of ways, participates in laughter, and repeatedly suggests himself (and others) to be, in some way, ridiculous. These are striking developments in the social function of laughter, but they are predicated on philosophical shifts in the meanings of laughter, meanings that elude us when we interpret the dialogues as strictly solemn.
The title of this book thus refers to occurrences—both actual and potential—of laughter in various forms in the dialogues. Actual occurrences of laughter in the dialogues are infrequent, but this is entirely consistent with laughter in Greek literature as a whole, where it is more often anticipated than actualized, and so an account of laughter must expand to accommodate this. 3 Indeed, laughter can be intensified by being left out, or implied, as I will suggest happens in the Symposium , when the ostentatious Aristophanes undertakes an assortment of “cures” for his hiccups while the speeches in praise of eros proceed. Laughter may also be the appropriate response of another set of participants in the dialogues—their readers, or audience. 4 This is where the concept of laughter becomes, perhaps, most difficult. How does one know what ought to induce laughter? Given cultural, social, and historical differences, how do we know what would have made a classical Greek laugh?
These are very challenging questions, to this day. Laughter is not reducible to theory, to what one knows, but remains intractable. 5 I cannot explain what is funn