Angelaki

Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

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PLATO AND THE SPECTACLE OF LAUGHTER

Michael Naas

To cite this article: Michael Naas (2016) PLATO AND THE SPECTACLE OF LAUGHTER,
Angelaki, 21:3, 13-26, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2016.1205253

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Published online: 29 Jul 2016.

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 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 21 number 3 september 2016

T his essay will be, alas, rather out of step

with much of what comes before and
after it in this volume. It will not be in the
least bit funny, I am sorry to say, and at its
best only mildly entertaining. This will be due
in large part to my own limitations, to be sure,
but also to the fact that, as I see it, comedy
must be for philosophy no laughing matter. As
someone who takes very seriously the warnings
of Plato with regard to comedy, I wish to show
here that Platonism – and thus philosophy – is
unthinkable without a vigorous critique of
comedy and, ultimately, an emphatic rejection
of it. And, as I will argue, there is nothing michael naas
funny or ironic about this critique and nothing
more serious than this rejection.
I will thus be taking issue with what appears
to be the underlying premise of this collection,
PLATO AND THE
namely, a certain compatibility of philosophy SPECTACLE OF
and comedy or, worse, philosophy’s unfortunate
neglect of comedy and urgent need for it. I will LAUGHTER
defend here, without humor, irony, or detour,
the honor of philosophy against the implicit preying; neither vampire nor vulture, she
plea that philosophy take comedy more must never be shown gorging or gloating. A
seriously or that it itself become more symbol of wisdom and philosophy, she must
comedic. My intention is thus to give a very always be represented watching over and pro-
different answer to the guiding question of tecting, smiling knowingly, without malice or
this collection, “Why so serious?” – a question conceit. For if she always looks down upon us
posed to philosophy, I take it, by those who from above, and sometimes even seems
would like philosophy to take itself less amused, she never laughs in derision, since
seriously by being more serious about comedy. she knows, and it is this knowing that makes
As a first sign of protest or resistance, then, I her so serious, that makes her reject comedy,
would like to take issue with the vehicle that has and that allows her sometimes, and sometimes
been used to present this volume, the cover in the most serious of places, to laugh ever so
illustration of the owl of Minerva with a lip- lightly, ever so knowingly, with the gentleness
sticked or blood-besmirched grin. Neither and understanding of the gods.
joker nor jackal, the owl of Minerva must As I will argue, Plato was the first to present
never, I believe, be represented mocking or us with this view from above, this philosophical

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/16/030013-14 © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2016.1205253

13
 spectacle of laughter
vision of the whole tragedy and comedy of life,
the first to have given us a theory of laughter
and of comedy that affords us at the end of
the day, and only at the end of the day, such a
modest and gentle laugh. This will thus be, I
am not joking – and you will have been suffi-
ciently warned – a very unfunny paper about a
very serious thinker who is not just an
example but the exemplar of the very serious
subject of philosophy, which has been from
the very beginning and must today remain
dead serious about comedy – dead serious
because comedy is, in the end, a matter of life
and death, which is why I risk appearing here
to be a real killjoy in what would otherwise be
a very amusing and entertaining collection.
Now before trying to show what Plato thinks
the laughable or the comic is and why he warns
us so seriously against taking it so seriously, or
why we should take it only seriously, never fri-
volously, since it is so dangerous, let me head
off from the outset an obvious objection. As
every Introduction to Philosophy student well
knows, Socrates could be very funny, wickedly
funny, bitingly sarcastic or ironic in his confron-
tation with, say, a Euthyphro or an Alcibiades, a
Meno or a Thrasymachus, a Callicles or a Diony-
sodorus. How, then, it might be asked, could
anyone whose principal dialogical character is
so funny be so serious about comedy, to say
nothing of scornful or disdainful of it? In what
follows, I will try to demonstrate that while
Plato’s Socrates – and Plato more generally –
is indeed very funny, his comedy is always in
the end motivated, directed always towards a
very serious end, always part of a pedagogical
strategy or textual economy that inscribes both
the objects of humor and the makers or specta-
tors of it in relationships of ignorance and
knowledge, blindness and insight, vice and
virtue. In other words, comedy is always part
of the very serious economy of philosophy,
and when it risks becoming anything more
than this it must itself be rejected, scorned,
laughed off the stage. As part of a philosophical
economy that trades in knowledge and ignor-
ance, comedy or laughter more generally must
always be at the expense of some and for the
benefit of others. And as long as it is at the
expense of, say, the ignorant, the bad, the
ugly, in short, the non-philosophical, and to
the benefit of their opposites, then comedy
will be, we will see, acceptable, even desirable,
but as soon as it begins to operate in excess of
this economy, as soon as it begins to serve
other ends and so begins to become comedy in
a strict and independent sense, it must be
roundly denounced.
To begin, then, let us try to ask what it is that
Plato considers to be funny, laughable,
comedic, ridiculous, absurd, or worthy of deri-
sion – notions that are not exactly synonymous
but are always related in the dialogues. To
approach this question, we will need to look at
Plato’s very systematic use of two families of
words, the first of these coming from the root
gel-verbs such as gelaō (to laugh, laugh or
sneer at) and katagelaō (to deride, scorn, or
mock), the adjective geloios (laughable, ridicu-
lous, absurd), the adverb geloiōs (ridiculously,
absurdly), the noun gelōs (laughter, a subject
of laughter), and so on, and the second from a
root that is readily recognizable in its English
cognates, from the noun kōmōidia (comedy)
to the adjective kōmōidikos (comic).1
To try to understand, then, what the comedic
or the laughable is for Plato, we must begin with
the laughable things that Plato himself would
have found readymade in the culture around
him, generally acknowledged comedic
moments or situations that then get taken up
in the drama of the dialogues in a relatively
straightforward way. For instance, there were
in Plato’s time, not unexpectedly, well-known
jokes, comedic phrases, and amusing rejoinders
that get cited or taken up more or less
unchanged by Plato in his dialogues, along
with commonly acknowledged comedic situ-
ations, laughable or absurd positions or circum-
stances.2 Think of Alcibiades’ drunken entrance
in the Symposium, which everyone, including
Alcibiades, recognizes to be a cause for laughter,
as is his earnestness in trying to attract the
amorous attentions of Socrates.3 Great comic
writer that he was, great comic philosopher
that he was, Plato was able to integrate this
readily recognizable comedic situation into his
dialogue, at once reinscribing and revising the
14

more typical comedic scenario of the lover
rather than the beloved vying for the other’s
attention with absurd or laughable discourses
or gestures.4 As an example of the more
common comedic scenario of the lover making
a fool of himself before his beloved, there is
the amusing, almost slapstick scene of the Char-
mides, where several older men hastily shift
seats, some even falling off their benches, as
they try to make room for the beautiful young
Charmides to sit beside them.5
In addition to jokes and commonly acknowl-
edged comedic situations, the things people say
can sometimes appear ridiculous or laughable
because of who they are or, more often,
because of the contrast between their words
and their deeds.6 It is thus funny, ridiculous
even, in Plato’s lexicon, to hear someone gloat-
ing about his ancestors to people whose ances-
tors are even more illustrious;7 it is funny or
ridiculous to hear a mediocre thinker or prac-
titioner of any art boasting about his abilities
when it is clear to everyone that he would be
put to shame by a truly great thinker or prac-
titioner of that art. While such false conceits,
based, as they are, in ignorance, should really
be a cause for concern and no laughing matter,
as Socrates says in the Philebus, they nonethe-
less often make us laugh and give us pleasure
(Philebus 49e–50a). And occasions for such
laughter are in no short supply, for as Socrates
says in the Euthydemus, there are few truly
worthy men in any endeavor and most men
can be seen “making a ridiculous show at their
respective tasks” (Euthydemus 307b).
In addition to all these examples of people
being unwittingly funny, laughable in spite of
themselves, there are, of course, those who
make a living out of being funny. There are,
first of all, professional comedy writers and
those who resemble or imitate them. There are
those who, like Aristophanes, are known for
the comedies they write and for the “absurd”
or ridiculous things they say and do in everyday
life (Symposium 213c). We thus see Aristo-
phanes in the Symposium at once make up a
story regarding Eros that is at first blush
rather funny – even if there is a rather tragic
moral to it – and become subject to a prolonged
15
naas
hiccupping fit that causes great amusement in
his audience (Symposium 189b–d). Plato was
obviously well acquainted with the comedies
of Aristophanes and other comedy writers, just
as he knew the works of that other group of pro-
fessional quasi-comedians, the sophists, whose
linguistic displays were often supposed to be
both educational and humorous.8 In both
cases, he also clearly understood the potentially
destructive influence of such men and their
humor on the city.
Popular jokes, amusing words and phrases,
funny situations, ridiculous people, professional
playwrights and sophists – this is just a very
small sampling of everyday humor in Athenian
life, things that the average Athenian, or at
least the educated Athenian, would have found
funny and, importantly, would have used the
lexicon of humor or comedy to describe,
things that are then included and put to work
by Plato’s dialogues but are not substantially
transformed by philosophy or for a philosophi-
cal audience. But then there are situations of
discourse, of language or of dialogue, that
bring us closer to a more uniquely philosophical
use or inscription of comedy. If Plato often uses
the lexicon of comedy to describe commonly
acknowledged comedic words or situations, he
uses it even more frequently to describe
certain aspects of dialogue or philosophical dis-
course. Sometimes this happens simply by
transferring an everyday comedic situation
into the context of philosophical dialogue.
When in the Republic Socrates feigns to be
unable to find the fourth of the four virtues
they have been looking for, namely justice,
and then all of a sudden says he has found it,
he compares their situation to this readily recog-
nizable comedic moment from everyday life:
“the thing apparently was tumbling about our
feet from the start and yet we couldn’t see it,
but were most ludicrous, like people who some-
times hunt for what they have in their hands”
(Republic 432d). We all recognize the comedic
aspect of someone searching for something
that is right before their eyes – the house keys
that are right in their hands, the glasses sitting
on top of their head. Plato is thus reinscribing
here a readily recognizable comedic situation
 spectacle of laughter
into a distinctly philosophical or dialogical
context. And notice that what is funny about
this particular situation is that someone, a spec-
tator, sees something that someone else does
not, or better, the spectator sees that this
someone else does not see what he or she does.
Such seeing will turn out to be a key factor in
what I will call the spectacle of comedy or laugh-
ter in Plato.
This brings me to the most common use of
the lexicon of humor and laughter in Plato’s dia-
logues, the attribution of the laughable, the ridi-
culous, or the absurd to the processes or results
of dialogue or argument. Arguments themselves
are thus often characterized by Socrates, the
Stranger, or the Athenian – and there is no
coincidence that it is so often these three – as
leading to absurd or, as if this were a quasi-
synonym, illogical results. It would be a ridicu-
lous or absurd physician, a geloios physician,
says Socrates at Protagoras 340d, who makes
his patient sicker rather than better. At Repub-
lic 392d–e, it is a ridiculous or absurd teacher
who makes things more obscure rather than
less, since it is absurd or ridiculous to aim for
one thing and, because of one’s ignorance or
lack of ability, obtain the opposite. It would
thus be “ludicrous,” as the Athenian argues at
Laws 801b, for one to pray to the gods asking
for a bad thing thinking it is good, even if, as
Socrates argues in Alcibiades II, this is pre-
cisely what men often do when they lack knowl-
edge of the good: they pray for something
thinking it is good, get it, and are ruined by
it. What is particularly significant about this
example is that, in Plato’s vocabulary, such
prayer is not just paradoxical but ridiculous,
absurd, ludicrous, laughable, though also, of
course, tragic, which is why, as we will see,
comedy and tragedy are, for Plato, always so
closely aligned.
It is thus certain arguments or forms of argu-
mentation that are laughable or absurd, as are
those who engage in such argumentation.9 The
Eleatic Stranger of the Statesman argues that
it would be ridiculous to accuse someone of
being unjust or ignoble for having made others
more just or more noble, even if they did so
by force (Statesman 296d). Tautologies or
arguments that at first blush look like tautolo-
gies are thus often called absurd, as are, of
course, arguments ad absurdum, arguments
that Plato or Plato’s Socrates exposes to be
funny in others or that he even knowingly devel-
ops in order to be ridiculous by design and so
shed an even more absurd light on his
opponent.10 And then there are certain terms
that appear ridiculous, for example, the
sophist as a “knowledge merchant,” since the
argument that precedes the coining of the
term shows that certain things like knowledge
cannot be bought and sold like other kinds of
merchandise.11 There are also cases, of course,
where the use of a term initially appears ridicu-
lous but is later seen to be appropriate. In the
Protagoras, for example, Socrates argues that
while one might initially “laugh to scorn”
anyone who speaks of being “overcome by
ignorance” in a way that would mirror the
notion of being “overcome by pleasure,” the
argument ultimately shows the sense of such a
phrase (Protagoras 357d).
Now if some of these absurd arguments or
terms would have been recognized as absurd,
ridiculous, or amusing by the uneducated
reader or hearer, many would not – at least
not initially, that is, not without some philoso-
phical context. Indeed, most would need some
explaining or some education. We thus begin
to see in Plato’s dialogues a form of humor
related to philosophy proper, a humor that
requires a certain perspective or understanding
in order to see that what is funny truly is
funny. It is only the one who has followed an
argument who will see that a certain conclusion
is logical and another illogical and thus ridicu-
lous, while those who do not see the difference
or who cannot make out what is truly logical
or laughable will become themselves laughable
in turn. Though Socrates in the Hippias
Major would surely disagree with Hippias
about just what is correct and what is not, he
would agree with his sentiment that in an argu-
ment one must “accept what is correct, or if he
does not accept it, be ridiculous” (Hippias
Major 290a). The ridiculous is the illogical
and the one who does not follow what is
logical becomes himself ridiculous.
16

Apart from the funny, ridiculous, or absurd
things that are clear or open to more or less
everyone, there are, therefore, certain things
that will appear funny to one group, one obser-
ver or spectator, and not another. This does not
mean, of course, that what is laughable or ridi-
culous is simply relative, a matter of personal
taste. On the contrary, there is a measure of
the laughable and a proper perspective from
which that measure appears. While humor is
ultimately a matter of perspective, one perspec-
tive – that of the knowing, the seeing, the edu-
cated, in short, the philosophical – is better
than all the others, better at understanding
what is logical and what is illogical and so laugh-
able or ridiculous. There is thus a crucial differ-
ence for Plato between what may seem funny to
the uninstructed or the multitude and what the
one who knows knows to be funny.
To illustrate this point, recall Plato’s famous
myth of the cave in Book VII of the Republic.
In that myth, as we all know, the prisoner who
has spent his entire life amongst shadows but
somehow gets released and is led up towards
the light eventually comes to understand, after
a period of confusion and blindness, that his
former life was one of ignorance and blindness.
Now if, says Socrates, such a man is sub-
sequently moved by pity to return to the cave
to release his fellow prisoners, he finds that
the transition from light to darkness provokes
a similar blindness to the one that occurred in
the transition from darkness to light and he
becomes for a time unable to make out the
shadows in the cave. It is right there, then, in
this difference or transition between light and
darkness, knowledge and ignorance, or
seeming knowledge and seeming ignorance,
that laughter is born. For the man who returns
to the cave – that is, to everyday life in the
polis – and who finds himself unable to make
out the shadows will now look ridiculous to
those who have never left the cave. As Plato
has Socrates argue, such a man appears ridicu-
lous to the multitude in the cave, even if those
who will have experienced what is outside the
cave – or the reader who will have followed
Plato’s image – knows that he is in actuality any-
thing but. Plato has Socrates argue, no doubt in
17
naas
part to help explain why Socrates himself often
appeared so ridiculous and why he came to be
condemned by an Athenian jury:
Now if he should be required to contend with
these perpetual prisoners in “evaluating”
these shadows while his vision was still dim
and before his eyes were accustomed to the
dark [ … ] would he not provoke laughter,
and would it not be said of him that he had
returned from his journey aloft with his
eyes ruined and that it was not worth while
even to attempt the ascent? And if it were
possible to lay hands on and to kill the
man who tried to release them and lead
them up, would they not kill him? (Republic
517a)
The one who has been released from the
prison, the philosopher, thus appears ridiculous
or ignorant even though he is not. He initially
appears laughable when assessing the common
concerns of the city, though this laugher can
sometimes turn, as Socrates is quick to see, to
derision or scorn, even anger and violence. As
Plato goes on to have Socrates say, foreshadow-
ing, clearly, the trial and execution that will
have motivated so much of Plato’s thinking:
Do you think it at all strange if a man return-
ing from divine contemplations to the petty
miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and
appears most ridiculous, if, while still blink-
ing through the gloom […] he is compelled in
courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about
the shadows of justice or the images that
cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate
about the notions of these things in the
minds of those who have never seen justice
itself? (Republic 517d)
Notions of laughter, the absurd, or the ridicu-
lous are thus crucial to Plato’s depiction of the
philosopher and to understanding Socrates’
trial and condemnation. And it is for this
reason that comedy needs to be taken so
seriously. It goes without saying that Socrates’
trial was hardly a laughing matter for Plato,
but it was perhaps born out of laughter, which
is why Plato came to see that laughter and
comedy must be strictly overseen and
controlled.
 spectacle of laughter
The multitude thus laughs over things that
are not funny, things of which they are ignorant.
But no sensible man would laugh at or scorn the
philosopher struggling to make out the shadows
in the cave. If anything, says Socrates in the
Republic, he would pity the philosopher who
has been compelled or who has compelled
himself to return to the realm of shadows, that
is, to the city, and he would be encouraged
and pleased by that initial blindness of the
man who begins his ascent out of the cave. In
other words, Socrates says, “a sensible man
would remember that there are two distinct dis-
turbances of the eyes,” that is, here, of the soul,
the one caused by the move from darkness to
light and the other from light to darkness,
and so
whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable
to discern something, he would not laugh
unthinkingly [alogistōs], but would observe
whether coming from a brighter life its
vision was obscured by the unfamiliar dark-
ness, or whether the passage from the
deeper dark of ignorance into a more lumi-
nous world and the greater brightness had
dazzled its vision. And so he would deem
the one happy in its experience and way of
life and pity the other, and if it pleased him
to laugh at it [ei gelan ep’ auteī bouloito],
his laughter would be less laughable than
that at the expense of the soul that had
come down from the light above. (Republic
518a)
“If it pleased him to laugh,” says Socrates in
the perfectly appropriate optative mood,
because the sensible man would surely not
laugh at or scorn in the same way the man
whose blindness is caused by a certain relation-
ship to knowledge and the man who dwells in
ignorance and does not even know he is ignor-
ant. If the multitude laughs, as Socrates says,
“unthinkingly,” then there remains, it seems,
the possibility of another laugher, a “thinking”
laughter, one that would be accompanied not
by scorn but, perhaps, by a kind of under-
standing if not pity. For the sensible man
might see the blindness of the ignorant and
pity him, just as he pities, though for different
reasons, the one who accepts returning to the
spectacle of the shadows after having seen the
light.12
Some things thus look funny but are not;
some opinions about the laughable – as about
anything else – are better than others. As
Socrates argues in the Theaetetus, were one to
accept Protagoras’ view that each man is the
measure of what is, then Socrates’ own science
of midwifery and practice of dialectics would
itself deserve “ridicule,” since neither he nor
Protagoras would be any better or worse at
helping us attain the truth of things (Theaetetus
161e). Hence things that seem ridiculous may
not be, and things that do not seem laughable
sometimes are – even if the philosopher’s
response to what is truly and genuinely laugh-
able, his response to the entire spectacle of
ignorance and knowledge, is less likely to be
scorn or derision than pity or else, as I suggested
at the outset, a gentle and knowing laugh. For
philosophy does not just shift the perspective
from which one laughs but, as we shall see,
transforms the very nature of laughter itself.
In many ways, Plato’s entire philosophy can
be read as a series of rewritings or recastings
of this scene of laughter from the Republic.
What is put on the scene each time is a spectacle
of vision and blindness, knowledge and ignor-
ance, the knowing vision of the one and the
blind ignorance of the many. In the Theaetetus,
Plato, still anxious, it seems, to explain or
explain away the trial and execution of Socrates
and, especially, the ridicule that was directed
towards him during it, has Socrates recount
how the philosopher often looks ridiculous to
those who do not know:
Hence it is, my friend, such a man, both in
private, when he meets with individuals,
and in public, […] when he is obliged to
speak in court or elsewhere about the things
at his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing
stock not only to Thracian girls but to the
multitude in general, for he falls into pits
and all sorts of perplexities through inexperi-
ence, and his awkwardness is terrible,
making him seem a fool. (Theaetetus 174c)
Plato’s intentions with regard to the philoso-
pher in general and Socrates in particular are
18

quite clear. Socrates initially looks ridiculous to
Thracian maids and all those who do not know
him, to the many in the marketplace and in
the courts, but to those who get to know what
lies beneath that ridiculous exterior there is
something very beautiful and very serious. As
Alcibiades testifies at the outset of his enco-
mium of Socrates in the Symposium, Socrates
initially elicits laughter and derision because
of the way he looks and speaks, because he
appears like a Silenus and sounds like a satyr,
but once one comes to see what is inside his
person and his discourse, one soon stops
laughing:
If you chose to listen to Socrates’ discourses
you would feel them at first to be quite ridi-
culous; on the outside they are clothed with
such absurd words and phrases – all, of
course, the hide of a mocking satyr. His
talk is of pack-asses, smiths, cobblers, and
tanners, and he seems always to be using
the same terms for the same things; so that
anyone inexpert and thoughtless might
laugh his speeches to scorn. But when these
are opened, and you obtain a fresh view of
them by getting inside, first of all you will
discover that they are the only speeches
which have any sense in them; and secondly,
that none are so divine […] (Symposium
221e–222a)
One initially laughs at Socrates because one
cannot see what is inside him; one laughs at
the way he appears because one cannot see
what he is. In accordance with a Greek identifi-
cation of the ugly and the laughable that goes
back to Homer, Socrates is initially laughable
and ridiculous simply because he appears ugly.
For Plato as for Homer, the laughable is insepar-
able from the ugly, and the ugly indissociable
from the bad or the reprehensible. The laugh-
able is thus not simply to be laughed at but
scorned, reviled, and, ultimately, condemned.
It is no doubt telling that the only person in
Plato’s dialogues who is ever called a gelōto-
poios, that is, a buffoon, a laughingstock, is
Thersites, who is characterized by Homer in
the Iliad as the ugliest and most reprehensible
of all the Greeks (Republic 620c). Though the
definition of the ugly, and thus the laughable,
19
naas
will change in Plato, though ugliness, real ugli-
ness, will have to do with the nature of the soul
and not the body, the identification of the ugly
with the reprehensible, the false, and the laugh-
able – and the concomitant identification of the
beautiful with the praiseworthy, the good, the
true, and the serious – will remain intact.
Hence Plato will aim to convince us not
that Socrates’ ugliness is good but that Socrates
is in truth – that is, inside, in his soul –
beautiful.
While the ugly is always laughable and, thus,
reprehensible, one’s understanding or defi-
nition of the ugly or the laughable can some-
times change over time. Things that initially
appear ugly, absurd, or ridiculous can, over
time or with argument, or, even better,
through education, begin to appear not so
absurd – first to philosophers but then even
to the multitude more generally. Glaucon can
say, for instance, near the beginning of the
Republic, that “it would be absurd that a guar-
dian should need a guard” (Republic 403e),
though this is precisely what Socrates will go
on to convince Glaucon of, namely, that those
who guard the city will need philosopher
kings to watch over and guard them. Similarly,
once it has been shown that the soul has differ-
ent parts and that one part must rule over the
others, an expression such as “master of
oneself” may not be, as Socrates argues, quite
the “absurdity” it initially appeared to be
(Republic 430e–431a). Then there are practices
that, while unconventional and laughable to
everyone at the time, can eventually, with edu-
cation, be accepted and made not so laughable.
Assuming that Socrates is not himself joking at
this stage in the Republic, the suggestion that
women should exercise naked right alongside
men initially appears ridiculous, in large part,
it seems, because the unclad women will
appear ugly and, thus, laughable. But Socrates
goes on to justify the practice by arguing that
what now seems ridiculous with regard to
women seemed not so long ago to be ridiculous
with regard to men. The citizens of the polis
will thus eventually accept this practice, he
argues, just as the Athenians have accepted
the practice of men – even old, wrinkly men
 spectacle of laughter
– exercising naked. Socrates concludes the
argument in this way:
he talks idly who deems anything else ridicu-
lous, and who tries to raise a laugh by looking
to any other pattern of absurdity than that of
folly and wrong [aphronos te kai kakou] or
sets up any other standard of the beautiful
as a mark for his seriousness than the good.
(Republic 452d)
Though Socrates’ proposal may not be serious,
his justification for it sure seems to be. There
is a form or pattern of the laughable or the
absurd, one that can change both our under-
standing and our actions, and it is defined by
what is aphrōn, that is, senseless, silly, foolish,
and what is kakos, that is, ugly, but also base,
bad, wretched, and reprehensible. As Socrates
argues just a few pages later in the Republic,
the person who mocks women exercising
naked does not know that “the helpful is fair
[kalon] and the harmful foul [aiskhron],” a defi-
nition that keeps intact the identification of the
good with the beautiful and the bad with the
ugly but changes the common measure for all
these terms (Republic 457b).
What is ridiculous in Greek culture more
generally and what remains ridiculous in Plato
in particular is thus what is worthless or mean-
ingless, ugly or unattractive, lowly, vile and sha-
meful. The language of the laughable or the
ridiculous marks at once ethics and aesthetics –
even ontology. Hence Parmenides in the dialo-
gue that bears his name asks the young Socrates
whether one should assign forms to such “ridi-
culous,” “vile and worthless” things as hair,
mud, and dirt, and the answer he expects from
Socrates is clearly “no” (Parmenides 130c).
The pattern of the laughable is, it seems, some-
thing that can be learned and that can change
both our views and our actions.
Notions of the laughable and the ridiculous,
the comic and the comedic, are thus hardly per-
ipheral to Plato’s philosophy. They are in fact
absolutely central to it insofar as they mark
and are marked by the philosophical terms
and categories of reality and appearance, truth
and opinion, knowledge and ignorance, virtue
and vice, beauty and ugliness, not to mention
interior and exterior, light and darkness,
vision and blindness. There is a truth about
the ridiculous and that truth is that the ridicu-
lous is very far away from the truth, far from
the good and the beautiful.
There is, then, a social value of laughter but
also a moral, aesthetic, epistemological, even
an ontological one, and thus, as a result of all
this, a seriously political one. It is for this
reason that Socrates in the Republic and the
Athenian in the Laws both seem to suggest
that comedy, that laughter, must be strictly con-
trolled by the state. Socrates might well be per-
fectly serious when he suggests in the Republic
that the well-educated youth will laugh at or
laugh down unworthy lines of poetry or shame-
ful portrayals of the gods and that everything
must be done to prevent these youths from
becoming “prone to laughter [philogelōtas],”
for “when one abandons oneself to violent
laughter his condition provokes a violent reac-
tion” (Republic 388e–389a). Hence, Socrates
will argue, neither gods nor good men should
be represented in uncontrollable fits of laughter
and no imitations or representations should be
allowed that provoke such laughter, since
these too can have a destructive influence on
one’s character. The city will thus not allow
men to play women in lamentation, or in love,
or in labor, and especially not slaves, bad men,
or cowards “reviling and lampooning one
another [kōmōidountas allel̄ ous]” (Republic
395e). And just in case one is tempted to
think that Socrates must surely be joking here,
his counterpart in the Laws, the Athenian,
argues very similarly that “men must be
restrained from untimely laughter and tears,
and every individual, as well as the whole
State, must charge every man to try to conceal
all show of extreme joy or sorrow, and to
behave himself seemly, alike in good fortune
and in evil” (Laws 732c).
It is for all these reasons that Socrates in the
Republic and the Athenian in the Laws propose
strict regulations on comedy. When it comes to
the debate over whether representations of piti-
able or comic things help release or purge
certain emotions or reinforce and feed them,
Plato comes down squarely on the side of the
20

latter. Such representations may teach the spec-
tator something about the tragic or the comic,
but the state must be very careful not to let
the spectator himself imitate or indulge in
them. Socrates thus argues near the end of the
Republic that the dangers of pity that arise
from tragedy are matched by those of laughter
in comedy. Because “few are capable of reflect-
ing that what we enjoy in others will inevitably
react upon ourselves,” they do not understand
that “in comic representations [en mimes̄ ei dē
kōmōidikēi], or for that matter in private
talk,” “taking pleasure in buffooneries that
[one] would blush to practice [one]self […]
waters and fosters these feelings when what we
ought to do is to dry them up, and it establishes
them as our rulers when they ought to be ruled”
(Republic 606c–d).
This view is supported and developed once
again in the Laws, where the Athenian argues
that comedy and tragedy will not be completely
banned from the state, since we can learn from
them, but that care must be taken lest those
watching give themselves over to the emotions
depicted. It is because “a man who is gripped
by the habit of abuse cannot avoid trying to
indulge in ridicule” that the writing and rep-
resentation of comedies must be closely over-
seen. While such imitations may in fact be
crowd-pleasers, while they may provide pleasure
or, as Socrates argues in the Philebus, a mixture
of pleasure and pain, they can ruin both those
who engage in them and those who watch
them (Philebus 48a). Hence, says the Athenian
later in the Laws, “a composer of comedy or of
any iambic or lyric song shall be strictly forbid-
den to ridicule any of the citizens either by word
or by mimicry,” and when comedy or ridicule is
allowed it must be done without passion, that is,
only in jest and without emotional investment,
so that the object of ridicule can become a
lesson to those who see it without this represen-
tation having a wholly negative effect on the
character of the one doing or observing the ridi-
cule (Laws 935c–936b).13 The mixture of plea-
sure and pain that is part of comedy can serve
an important pedagogical purpose in the state,
but this purpose must always be defined and
determined by the few who know.
21
naas
“Comic representations” thus represent both
an opportunity and a threat for the state (Laws
816d). Since they cannot simply be excluded
from the state, they must be made to serve it.
Hence “all those laughable amusements which
we,” says the Athenian, “all call ‘comedy’
[gelōta esti paignia … kōmōidian],” “the
actions of ugly bodies and ugly ideas and of
the men engaged in ludicrous comic-acting”
through speech and dance, will become part of
a citizen’s education (Laws 816d–e). For it is
“impossible,” as he goes on to argue, “to learn
the serious without the comic [geloiōn ta spou-
daia], or any one of a pair of contraries without
the other, if one is to be a wise man.” And yet –
and this is crucial – while the citizen must learn
both the serious and the comic, he must not
imitate both. To become virtuous, a citizen
must “avoid ever doing or saying anything ludi-
crous, through ignorance, when one ought not,”
and the best way to achieve this is to have
models of the serious as well as the ludicrous
before one’s eyes, that is, as a spectacle from
which one can take one’s distance in the soul.
One thus must know what the ludicrous – and
thus the shameful, the ugly, the reprehensible,
and so on – is, but one must not practice it.
Hence, the Athenian concludes – and though
the idea may appear funny it seems to be pro-
posed in all seriousness – they will impose the
mimicry of the ludicrous “on slaves and
foreign hirelings and no serious attention shall
ever be paid to it, nor shall any free man or
free woman be seen learning it” (Laws 816d–e).
This is a brilliant solution to the dilemma of
how to keep and learn from comedy without
losing one’s virtue: allow citizens to attend
comic performances in order to learn the laugh-
able and its opposite, but make sure that such
things are performed by others, by inferiors, so
that citizens do not expose their souls to the cor-
rupting influence of such actions. In other words,
allow them to be spectators only – spectators at a
respectable distance.
These references to the spectacle raise one
further aspect of comedy that I would like to
look at in Plato before returning, in order to
conclude, to Socrates and the question of why
he appeared ridiculous and whether he cared
 spectacle of laughter
about this appearance. This aspect has been
assumed by almost everything that has been
said thus far, though it has not yet been made
explicit. In Plato, comedy – the laughable – is
related almost always to a certain spectacle.
Something or someone is funny or laughable,
ridiculous or absurd, because he, she, or it has
become a spectacle for others. The drunken
Alcibiades, sophists, Socrates himself, the one
looking for what he has in his hand – all these
provide a spectacle for those who can “see”
from a distance, and who can see what those
who are part of the spectacle cannot. Laughter,
ridicule, scorn, derision – all these require a
certain distance on or abstraction from the spec-
tacle, a certain haughtiness or even contempt for
what is taking place below. What is funny is
thus always seen to be funny, and this seeing
requires the distance of a spectacle. In the
Euthydemus Socrates compares the “ridiculous
state” the dialogue has put them all in to that of
“children who run after crested larks” (Euthy-
demus 291a–b). It’s a banal but telling
example. The interlocutors have become ridicu-
lous insofar as they look to the spectator’s eye –
to the spectator-adult who they also are – like
children trying to catch birds.
The ridiculous is always a spectacle, but
without the right viewpoint, without the right
seat in the theater, without knowledge, one
can mistake the serious for the ridiculous and
vice versa. In the myth of Er at the end of the
Republic, we are given just such a viewpoint
not just on our present lives but on our future
ones. We there see how our former lives influ-
ence our choice of future ones, and we see the
sometimes pitiable, sometimes comic, results
of this choice. Socrates reports Er having said
that “it was a strange, pitiful and ridiculous
spectacle, as the choice was determined for the
most part by the habits of their former lives”
(Republic 620a). This is the ultimate spectacle,
the spectacle of what is called in Philebus “the
tragedy and comedy of life [teī tou biou
xympaseī tragōidiai kai kōmōidiai]” (Philebus
49e–50b), the spectacle of all becoming, as it
were, a spectacle to which only the philosopher
has privileged access, that is, the proper
perspective.
As we just heard, the Athenian in the Laws
argues that one cannot learn the serious
without the comic, or “any one of a pair of con-
traries without the other.” In other words, one
must be spectator of both the serious and the
laughable, learn at once the tragic and the
comic. As Socrates famously tries to convince
Agathon and Aristophanes at the end of the
Symposium, these two genres are so closely
related that “the same man could have the
knowledge required for writing comedy and
tragedy” and “the fully skilled tragedian could
be a comedian as well” (Symposium 223d). If
the two great genres of tragedy and comedy
are often paired by Plato, it is because what
they share, among other things, is a certain
relation to spectatorship. The task of philosophy
would be, it seems, to try to integrate and dis-
place these two genres by introducing its own
form of spectatorship, one in which these
genres are even more closely aligned, where
the comedy of ignorance is in many senses the
veritable tragedy and the tragedy of not
knowing what is right there in front of one can
be read – or seen – as a comedy. In taking
both tragedy and comedy so seriously, Plato
would have tried to become – and how could
anyone deny his success? – at once the only
true tragedian and the only genuine comic poet.
Comedy is thus to be integrated into philos-
ophy but carefully watched over by it. Only
then will one laugh in the right way, at the
right time, and at the right things – like
Socrates. For if Socrates often appears in the
dialogues as something of a fool or laughing-
stock to the masses, to professional sophists
and others, indeed pretty much to everyone
who does not know him, it is pretty clear that
he appears in this way by choice, by strategy,
and that in the end Plato would wish to give
him, and not those who did not know him, the
last laugh. Socrates knew that he looked rather
ridiculous to the uninitiated and he did not try
to avoid the inevitable ridicule that followed
from that appearance. Alcibiades, as we
already heard, refers to Socrates’ penchant for
speaking of pack-asses and tanners and other
absurd things, and Socrates himself admits to
using from time to time rather “absurd” or
22

laughable figures or images – for example, the
image of himself as a gadfly (Apology 30e). He
also knew, of course, that to the many, to soph-
ists, to comedy writers such as Aristophanes,
the enterprise of philosophy itself appeared ridi-
culous and laughable. In the Republic, he jests
that if asked to explain clearly the nature of
the good his powers may fail him and he will
“cut a sorry figure and become a laughing-
stock” (Republic 506d). Socrates thus knew
how easy it is for philosophy to be ridiculed,
which is why he himself, he says, must defend
it so vigorously, to the point of appearing
himself ridiculous to the uninitiated.14 Callicles
in the Gorgias no doubt expresses a view that
would have been held by many, and especially
by anyone who would have seen the Clouds:
philosophy is perhaps a fine thing for a young
boy, he says, but for a grown man it is a “ridicu-
lous” undertaking (Gorgias 485e). As Callicles
puts it in an analogy that pits the ridiculous
child against the bold and serious adult male,
there is a certain charm in hearing a little
child lisp, but “when one hears a grown man
lisp, or sees him play tricks, it strikes one as
something ridiculous and unmanly, that
deserves a whipping” (Gorgias 485b–c).
But Plato’s Socrates could accept ridicule by
the ignorant. He seemed to believe that one
must pursue what makes good or logical sense,
one must act and speak in accordance with the
truth, even if it will “appear ridiculous to
some” (Laws 830c). As he says to Glaucon in
the Republic as he embarks on the three
waves of paradox, “The fear is not being
laughed at, for that is childish, but, lest,
missing the truth, I call down and drag my
friends with me in matters where it most
imports not to stumble” (Republic 450e–
451a). But if Socrates, if Plato, accepts or even
seems to invite such scorn or derision on the
part of those who do not know, it is, it seems,
because he knows that such derision is really
unwarranted and that those who make fun of
him in the end make fun of themselves. Socrates
could accept ridicule or even engage in self-ridi-
cule because he knew, because Plato knew, that
such ridicule can always be converted before the
philosophical eye into a sign of knowing, a sign
23
naas
of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Hence
Socrates could accept appearing ridiculous in
the eyes of the many, in the eyes of sophists or
the uneducated, just so long as he did not
appear ridiculous in his own eyes or in the
eyes of anyone who might see like him, that is,
just so long as he did not appear ridiculous in
the eyes of philosophy. Hence Socrates says
during his trial that he will not do like most
men when arguing for their lives, that is,
pander to the jury and beg for mercy by bring-
ing his wife and children before the court. Such
actions, he says, “make the city ridiculous”
(Apology 35b), not to mention, I think we are
to understand, he himself. Socrates might well
allow himself to be laughed at by those who do
not really know him, but he must refrain from
doing anything that makes himself laughable
or ridiculous in the eyes of those who do, that
is, in his own eyes or in those of anyone who
dons the perspective of philosophy, anyone
who understands the spectacle of philosophy.
It is for this reason, I think, that we find so
many references to laughter, ridicule, and
comedy in dialogues where we would least
expect them, that is, in those dialogues sur-
rounding the trial and death of Socrates.
If Plato’s views about just about everything
were initially formed or informed by his associ-
ation with Socrates, and especially by Socrates
during his final days, it is perhaps not so surpris-
ing that a certain conception of comedy and of
laughter grew out of those last days as well.
Recall that in Plato’s Apology Socrates goes
so far as to attribute negative popular opinion
about him in Athens to a well-known “writer
of comedies” (Apology 18d), that is, to Aristo-
phanes, who in the Clouds portrayed him as
“a busybody, investigating the things beneath
the earth in the heavens and making the
weaker argument the stronger,” that is, as a
sophist and nature philosopher, but also as
something of a buffoon (see Apology 19c).
Throughout the Apology, Socrates expresses
concern that he – that philosophy – will be
scorned or ridiculed because of Aristophanes’
misleading portrayal. But he seems even more
concerned that his actions might be mocked or
considered ridiculous, that he himself might
 spectacle of laughter
be scorned as a coward by those who see him
during the trial or who will hear of his trial
and death afterwards. Socrates thus famously
compares Achilles’ reaction to his mother’s pro-
phesy regarding his death in battle to his own
impending doom as a result of the trial: “when
he [Achilles] heard this, [he] made light of
death and danger and feared much more to
live as a coward and not to avenge his friends,
and ‘Straightaway,’ said he, ‘may I die, after
doing vengeance upon the wrongdoer, that I
may not stay here, jeered at [katagelastos]
beside the curved ships, a burden of the
earth’” (Apology 28d). Like Achilles, Socrates
seems to have feared being laughed at more
than being killed – laughed at or made laughable
not before the multitude but, it seems, before
himself, his own best spectator. A certain
Greek system of values thus remains intact
from Homer to Plato. Though Socrates’ Plato
will have redefined courage in terms of living
and dying for philosophy rather than the
honor of a slain friend, the identification of
the coward with the laughable is left unaltered.
This same concern for ridicule continues una-
bated after the trial as Socrates awaits his
execution. When Crito implores Socrates to
flee prison, in part because of the impression
of cowardliness they are creating by not aiding
him in his escape, Socrates turns this very
same concern not to look cowardly or foolish
into a reason for not fleeing (Crito 45e). He
rejects Crito’s plan to escape and flee to Thes-
saly in disguise because, he says, people would
be amused “to hear of the ludicrous way in
which I ran away from prison by putting on a
disguise, a peasant’s leathern cloak or some of
the other things in which runaways dress them-
selves up” (Crito 53d).15 Socrates is afraid, it
seems, of being mocked or laughed at, scorned
or made a laughingstock, in his absence or,
indeed, after his death, in the eyes of philos-
ophy, eyes that will continue to see and with
which he will be seen well beyond his death.
Laughter is thus a very serious concern in the
Apology, in the Crito, and, as we are now about
to see, in the Phaedo, the dialogue in which
Socrates tries to prove the immortality of the
soul – a serious subject if ever there was one.
Though the day could not be more tense or
the situation more serious, there are many refer-
ences to laughter and many people laughing. As
Socrates himself sums up the situation, “I do
not believe anyone who heard us now, even if
he were a comic poet, would say that I am chat-
tering and talking about things which do not
concern me” (Phaedo 70b). While Socrates
demonstrates throughout the dialogue an extra-
ordinary ability to make others, his interlocu-
tors and friends, laugh, the seriousness of the
situation seems to make such laughter at once
less expected and more appropriate. Phaedo tes-
tifies at the beginning of his narrative to the
strange atmosphere that prevailed in the
prison that day. “And all of us who were there
were in much the same condition, sometimes
laughing and sometimes weeping” (Phaedo
59a). This alternation between tears and laugh-
ter is due in large part to Socrates, who feels
obliged, it seems, to lighten the atmosphere
and let his friends see that he was not taking
his own death as seriously as they were. When
Socrates says that philosophers who have
studied “nothing but dying and being dead”
should not be troubled when they finally face
death,
Simmias laughed and said, “By Zeus,
Socrates, I don’t feel much like laughing
just now, but you made me laugh. For I
think the multitude, if they heard what you
just said about the philosophers, would say
you were quite right, and our people at
home would agree entirely with you that phi-
losophers desire death, and they would add
that they know very well that the philoso-
phers deserve it.” (Phaedo 64b)
Even though his death is just hours away,
Socrates gets both Simmias and Cebes to
laugh, the two friends who are so hesitant to
pose objections to Socrates’ claims about the
immortality of the soul (see Phaedo 62a, 101b).
But, once again, this ability to get others to
laugh is matched by his own concern that he
not be laughed at or become an object of ridicule
either at the moment of his death or in any sub-
sequent accounts of it. When, near the very end
of the dialogue, Crito suggests not taking the
24

hemlock just yet since Socrates is allowed to
wait until the sun is fully down, Socrates jus-
tifies not waiting by making reference yet
again to ridicule:
Crito, those whom you mention are right in
doing as they do, for they think they gain
by it; and I shall be right in not doing as
they do; for I think I should gain nothing
by taking the poison a little later. I should
only make myself ridiculous in my own
eyes if I clung to life and spared it, when
there is no more profit in it. (Phaedo 117a)
Socrates thus spurns the chance to spend a few
more hours upon the earth, arguing that he
will gain nothing by it and will be mocked for
coveting life in this way. Surveying his entire
life from above, as it were, he sees that he
risks more by clinging to life than not. He is
thus able to maintain a distance on himself
and his own life, just as he was able, as Alci-
biades in the Symposium testifies when he
recounts his unsuccessful attempt to seduce
him, to show such “lofty disdain [hyperēpha-
nias],” “such superiority and contempt, laugh-
ing my youthful charms to scorn, and flouting
the very thing on which I prided myself” (Sym-
posium 219c). Socrates is able, even on this final
day, to see himself from a certain height, a bit
like the locusts, former Muses, he imagines in
the Phaedrus looking down from the tree
above on him and Phaedrus; these Muses
would be content if Socrates and Phaedrus
were seen conversing, like Socrates is seen con-
versing on his final day, but if they were seen
sleeping in the shade of the tree, the Muses
“would quite justly laugh at us, thinking that
some slaves had come to their resort and were
slumbering about the fountain at noon like
sheep” (Phaedrus 258e–259b).
Socrates thus made others laugh on that last
day while he himself was most concerned, it
seems, that he would not be laughed at, that
he would not become ridiculous in his own
eyes and in the eyes of all those who see and
think like him. But then there is this. It is on
this day, in this dialogue, and right near the
end, that Socrates himself also laughs for what
I believe to be just about the only if not the
25
naas
only time in the Platonic dialogues. As we
have seen, Plato’s Socrates often jokes, he
often makes others laugh, he is often laughed
at, but rarely – indeed almost never, not
before the end – does he himself laugh. But
near the very end of the Phaedo, Socrates
laughs – Plato has him laugh – over what
appears to be the most serious of subjects.
When asked by Crito how he would like to be
buried, Socrates says, “However you please, if
you can catch me and I do not get away from
you.” And Phaedo, the narrator, continues:
And [Socrates] laughed gently [gelasas …
hes̄ ukheī ], and looking towards us, said: “I
cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that the
Socrates who is now conversing and arran-
ging the details of his argument is really I;
he thinks I am the one whom he will pre-
sently see as a corpse, and he asks how to
bury me.” (Phaedo 115c)
Plato has Socrates laugh at a time when, to
others, it is no laughing matter. But this laugh
is, notice, under control; it is a gentle laugh
that is meant to signal his control, a sign of
his composure and his distance, as he speaks
of himself in the third person, already separated
from himself, it seems, already able to watch
himself from above, able to witness the spectacle
of his own end, as it were, with knowledge about
who or what the real Socrates is and who or what
is the mere semblance or appearance of him. He
laughs here at the end of life as a sign that he
knows that the end of life, the end of a certain
life, that the death of the body, is not in the
end as serious as all that. And perhaps that
would be, in the end, the serious, the very
serious, lesson of Plato and philosophy. Philoso-
phy’s lesson would be that comedy is no laugh-
ing matter, always a matter of life and death,
and that when one understands this, when one
sees this, when one sees life and death with
the eyes and from the perspective of a philoso-
pher, then one will no longer abandon oneself
to laughter or laugh at others in their ignorance
but will simply, at the end, and from afar, with
one eye on the spectacle and another eye else-
where, laugh ever so knowingly and ever so
gently …
 spectacle of laughter
… unless, of course, it will have all been an
elaborate ruse, the first great and still ongoing phi-
losophical joke, Plato’s very
serious attempt to let Socrates
have a laugh at long last, to let
philosophy have the last laugh,
while everything else down below
just makes a spectacle of itself.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by
the author.
notes
1 Though I will cite very little of Plato’s Greek in
this paper, the reader can be assured that every
passage cited in translation that makes reference
to laughter, scorn, or derision, to what is absurd,
ridiculous, or ludicrous, or to comedy and the
comedic, contains some form of one of these
two families of words. Throughout this paper I
cite the Loeb Classical Library Edition of Plato’s
dialogues (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP).
2 See, for example, Phaedrus 236c, Alcibiades I
121d, Statesman 266b, 266c, Symposium 174e,
Seventh Letter 347d, Republic 509c.
3 Symposium 212e, 222c.
4 Lysis 205b, Symposium 181d.
5 Charmides 155b.
6 Hippias Major 294a, Republic 406c.
7 Alcibiades I 121b.
8 See Euthydemus 276b, 300d, 303b.
9 See Symposium 199d, Gorgias 509a, 512d, Hippias
Major 297d, Phaedrus 257c, Protagoras 355a, c–d,
Sophist 252b, Laws 858a, Theaetetus 147a, 154b,
158e, 191a, 205b, Parmenides 128c–d.
10 Republic 505b.
11 Sophist 224b; see also 227a, Republic 527a,
600b, Theaetetus 200b.
12 This crucial distinction between what appears
comical or ridiculous to the uninstructed and
what truly is comical can be found throughout
the Platonic corpus. In the Second Letter, Plato –
assuming it’s Plato – bears witness to the fact
that the doctrines of philosophers often appear
ridiculous to the uninitiated:
Beware, however, lest these doctrines be
ever divulged to uneducated people. For
there are hardly any doctrines, I believe,
which sound more absurd than these to the
vulgar, or, on the other hand, more admirable
and inspired to men of fine disposition.
(Second Letter 314a)
13 Even certain comic sounds and characters must
not be imitated (see Laws 669d).
14 See Republic 536b–c, 499c.
15 What Socrates imagines for himself by fleeing
the city is not unlike the way he characterizes
unjust men at the end of the Republic:
I will say of the unjust that the most of them,
even if they escape detection in youth, at the
end of their course are caught and derided,
and their old age is made miserable by the
contumelies of strangers and townsfolk.
(Republic 613d)
It is also perhaps worth comparing, in this regard,
Socrates’ reaction to his impending death to
Cephalus’. Whereas Cephalus suggests that old
age has caused him to take more seriously tales
of the afterlife that he had previously scorned,
Socrates seems to take more seriously the kinds
of tales that will be told about him after his death
(Republic 330d).
Michael Naas
Department of Philosophy
DePaul University
2352 N. Clifton Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614
USA
E-mail: mnaas@depaul.edu