Aristophanes Making Fun of Socrates in His Plays An Analysis

Political philosophy is the attempt to understand the foundations of society that we are in today. In order to understand current political situation we have to try to read and recognize early writings on political philosophy, Some of the earlier works by Plato called The Republic, in the piece there are conversations between characters Socrates and Glaucon, Aristophanes, Adeimantus where they try and explain ideas and views of justice and what a truly just man and/or just state would appear How we come to the decisions as human beings that would be for the greater good of a man and/or state. One conversation between the parties was that of how a truly just state would look like and Socrates answers by declaring that a state might†¦show more content†¦Some reasons are that Aristophanes was against most of what Socrates promoted (philosophy, education). Another reason may be that most of the Aristophanes plays seen as satire comedy(records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/clouds.htm), Which is the use of humor with underlying moral purposes and also show exaggerations of things that are not considered acceptable morality. Sometimes one can also use Satire to show how some current views should be changed. People need to see how they act in order to correct it this notion supports reasons why Aristophanes may have use Socrates in his plays. To take into more detail of satire in his plays Aristophanes has several targets that he wanted to use to make his satiric point. To make his play the clouds he chose targets like Socrates, the thinkery, to exaggerate these targets dist ort them to the point where it is funny but close enough the original Socrates to make a point, to the extent that if someone did not know Socrates was they would still enjoy the play, but those who had an idea of Socrates they may have gotten more from his plays (from a political standing) than those ignorant to the situation. So to complain that Socrates in The Clouds is nothing like the real Socrates is to miss the point. Aristophanes is setting up his Socrates to symbolize in a ridiculously distorted manner certain ways of behaving which he wants his watchers/readers to see as crazy. At the same time, the description has to have some recognizableShow MoreRelated Justice for All Ages Essay example4920 Words   |  20 Pagesthem actually got it right. The current goal is to synthesize their ideas with those of Aristophanes, Euripides2, and even Richard Kraut, representing the modern academic philosopher, in an effort to further develop and test the concept of justice. In order to approach this daunting task, it is important which medium is chosen through which to proceed. Following in the footsteps of Plato and Socrates, it seems fitting to do utilize the dialogue format. The dialogue format consists ofRead Morewisdom,humor and faith19596 Words   |  79 PagesVladimir Soloviev 9 Reflections on Humor from Nietzsche to the Theatre of the Absurd 12 Humor and Wisdom in the United States: Lincoln, Beecher, Twain, Sandburg, and Buchwald 17 From The Times (of London) obituary on him (January 19, 2007) that mentioned his â€Å"wit and wisdom† in its title, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1294342.ece. 24 Humor, Wisdom, and Faith 25 Critics of Religious Dogmatism 26 Four Believers Who Stressed Humor: Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Niebuhr