Socratic Philosophy In Aristophanes Play Clouds

When Aristophanes composed his comedy play Clouds, his goal was to portray philosophy, at the very least Socratic philosophy, as a threat to the city, and society. If Philosophy’s principles were followed, the city would crumble around its foundations, because philosophy and politics were two opposing forces that could not be reconciled together. While Aristophanes approached this idea in a humorous way, he was deadly serious that Socrates posed a tangible threat to society. He believed that Socratic philosophy would cause the city to degrade due to its impious leanings, an education that would promote disobedience to the laws, and its danger towards the political system. On the other hand, a student of Socrates, Plato, while recognizing the …show more content…
When the plan to attend the Thinkery is first proposed, Strepsiades mentions that they will teach the unjust and just arguments for a fee (Aristophanes, line, 98). This immediately associates Socrates with the Sophists, a group of men who claimed wisdom in the art of rhetoric and reasoning. However, they were most often associated with fallacious reasoning, the type one would call the unjust argument. The unjust argument, while capable of easily winning over the just discourse, was known to be morally unsound; it was associated with the “sleazy” and with corruption. This was the type of argument that the Thinkery was known for, and the type that Strepsiades wanted to learn in order to go back on his debts. Another way the poet presented Socrates as dangerous to Athens was through his disbelief in the gods. Ancient Greece, especially Athens, was a society that relied heavily on its piety; religion was everything to the people, and life itself was based around it. During the conversation between Strepsiades and Socrates, Strepsiades swears “by the gods” to pay for the Thinkery’s services. Socrates immediately admonishes him, saying, “What gods indeed to swear by! For first of all, we don’t credit gods” (Aristophanes line 246-248). This was a blatant dismissal of the Greek religion; something that was considered a crime; though Socrates would later admit to believing …show more content…
This is all not to say that Plato-as-Socrates did not recognize that philosophy posed some danger to political society. He realized that philosophy was more often than not, concerned with very abstract notions of justice and other concepts. However, he also presented the idea that politics had to involve more than just what the rulers said it should. It was too caught up in the concrete, and did not look beyond that. That is why Socrates explored the idea of political philosophy instead of the natural sciences. He wanted to study what affected humanity directly; how they thought and how they interacted with the world around