Plato and the Easter Bunny

Peitho: Examina Antiqua, 2024

Plato and Aristophanes is commendable for the range of interpretations, as well as related books and articles, consulted in it, from North American interpreters who take a ‘Continental’ approach such as John Sallis, Michael Naas and Marina McCoy, to Italian interpreters such as Claudia Barrachi and Cinzia Arruzzo, to U.S. interpreters out of the Anglo-American tradition such as Julius Moravcsik, Gregory Vlastos and Debra Nails, to classicists and classical historians such as Michael Vickers, Helen Foley, Arthur Pickard-Cambridge and Arnaldo Momigliano, to various interpreters influenced by (and including) Seth Benardete and his teacher, Leo Strauss, such as Drew Hyland, Charles Griswold and Michael Davis. Plato and Aristophanes: Comedy, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Just Life is a well-informed, ambitious and appealing book, one that holds out promise of more good work to come.

2024

This is my doctoral thesis - at last finished. It aims, as I put it, to 'lift the weight' of Aristophanes by redirecting our attentions to the 'other' comic poets, primarily through a thorough analysis of the Protagoras' reliance on Eupolis' Kolakes (or 'Flatterers'). The title would have been better written as 'an analysis of the Protagoras *through* Eupolis' Kolakes'. The thesis is in many ways the culmination of my previous work but far exceeds it in detail and in major components: the third chapter, for example, sees in the Kolakes a 'competition in wisdom' characteristic of poets and sophists, the likes of which we see in Aristophanes' Frogs. I argue Plato appropriated or alluded to that competition in the Protagoras when showing Socrates and Protagoras locked in combat. I also argue, in the fourth chapter, that the Gorgias and the Protagoras are *metaphysically* linked just in respect of Plato's understanding of flattery as a fundamental feature of sophistry (at a certain point in his career, to be clear). There is of course much to be done on it yet, but I especially look forward to developing the conclusion--Plato's response to himself on the Middle Comic stage in the 'Digression' of the Theaetetus (unfortunately I had to rely on Farmer's - albeit excellent - translations of Middle Comic passages re: Plato due to haste; also I'm still perfecting my written 'British English' over my natural Americanisms; something also happened with the Word document after uploading here in terms of formatting; some infelicities, etc). In any case, a close analysis of Plautus and other sources with their profound similarities to the dialogue form (in the other Socratics too, not just in Plato) will help us, I aim to show in future, understand the *origin and development* of Sokratikoi Logoi as such, and perhaps also the development of comedy too throughout the period of Plato's literary and philosophical life. There are too many people to thank here for helping me with this project over the years, and only a few could be recognised in the document alone. Here is a snippet from the abstract not included in this document. It contains the spirit of the work: This thesis has two aims. The first is to reorient the scholarly norm when thinking about Plato in relation to the genre of Greek Comedy. That is, since modern scholarship started taking Plato’s relationship to comedy seriously as a means of analysing his work, it has been dominated by the thought and writings of Aristophanes, especially his extant Clouds. I aim to show that such scholarship has become overburdened by this figure. Socrates, for example, was a character of concern for many poets of the fifth century, those contemporary with Aristophanes. What, then, can or should we say about Plato’s reactions to the ‘other’ comic poets surrounding him both before and during his life? I thus aim in this thesis to ‘lift the weight’ of Aristophanes from the standard scholarly procedure in the discourse on Plato’s intertextual dealings with comedy.'

Dialegesthai, 2022

Was Plato the comic poet the same person as Plato the philosopher? Since the Philosopher quoted the Comic poet in Alcibiades I, his joke should be taken very seriously. This paper proposes an assessment relying to the older chronological data much more than to Hellenistic and modern contempt of comic poetry.

Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 2022

How could even Plato have endured life' , Nietzsche asks in Beyond Good and Evil, '-a Greek life he repudiated-without an Aristophanes?' Marina Marren's Plato and Aristophanes interprets Aristophanes' plays alongside Plato's Republic to reveal how the 'comic register' in Plato's writing advances the philosophical project of self-examination. According to Marren, the love of humor in education and social mores can dampen the allure of a self-satisfied life and thus preclude such a life's worst outcome in a tyrannical character. Studying the political comedies of Aristophanes, then, educes 'philosophical revaluation' of many of the ostensive cornerstones of the argument in the Republic: the best regime, perfect equality, and the philosopher king, to name a few. In light of Marren's thoughtful and suggestive argument, then, we might respond to Nietzsche's question: Aristophanes did not just help Plato to endure the Greek life he repudiated; Aristophanes informed Plato's own articulation of philosophy and his dramatic invocation of the just life in readers of the Republic. Comic self-ridicule, Marren argues, 'is a practice attendant on our capacity to know ourselves' (p. 5). We need to learn to acknowledge our less admirable characteristics and comedy brings us to laugh at our shortcomings. To turn comedy on ourselves, however, depends on being willing not just to laugh at others but to entertain jokes at our own expense. Aristophanes possessed extraordinary skill at drawing audiences into this self-facing comedy, confronting Athenians with their own political realities through risible and resonant characters. Plato, Marren suggests, learned from Aristophanes how to 'ridicule corrupt desires … and to explode political ideals from within' (p. 8). Both accomplished this through comedy, which 'raises serious questions playfully' (p. 9). Rereading the Republic with this Aristophanic sensibility allows Marren to 'put pressure on the prescriptive tenor of the dialogues' (p. 17). Plato's dialogues, Marren proposes, are 'often, if not most of the time … read too literally, too seriously, and too self-assuredly, that is, too tragically' (p. 20). Her playful, comic reading promises new understandings of the Republic and revisions of its apparently earnest teachings.

Socrates and Adeimantus, 2020

The role of Socrates with Adeimantus in Plato's Republic along with a short analysis of the story of the Cave. The sixth century Platonist Dionysius the Areopagite uses a method of affirmation and denial which is the same method Plato uses in the Parmenides however he brings to this method his own stamp of interesting originality. From reading his works I realised that this method helps understand the whole of Plato's philosophy in two simple terms. The method is called cataphatic theology and apophatic philosophy which can be compared with each section of the divided line. Cataphatic theology is the affirmation of speech-which is classed as progression. The opinion and belief side of the divided line. Apophatic philosophy is the subsequent denial of speech-classed as reformation. The noumenal side of the divided line. The etymology of the two words, in both cases φάναι phanai means to speak, the "Apo" comes from apophēmi, meaning "to deny" and the "cata" coming from κατά kata to intensify which is to increase multiply and generate hence progression. This is the first theme we are going to examine; the second theme is the allegory of the cave. All of us even the cave dwellers are looking for the good, so when I first became seriously interest in philosophy, I thought the study of Plato was for University intellectuals and thus I spent my spare time learning the theories of the Eastern spiritual philosophies. Eventually I risked reading a copy of the Lobe translation of the Timaeus, which I confess proved my initial thoughts correct, I did not understand a single line and I could not even attempt to read the pages on the left-hand side.

Taking a cue from the presence of a komodoumenos named Aristyllos who appears in two aristophanic passages (Ar. Eccl. 644–50bis and Plut. 312–5, where he is derided as fellator and coprophile) a complicated theory has been concocted, according to which he can be identified with Plato (Aristyllos was a hypocoristic form of Aristocles, his real name): to show that Aristophanes would have made fun of a first draft of Resp. V (449a–57d), where kallipolis is characterized by the political role played by women, by their sexual freedom, by the community of women and children and by the sharing of goods, the author of this theory is forced to predate books of Politeia, to backdate the Ecclesiazusae and, finally, to subtract fr. 551 K.–A. to the Telemēssēs of Aristophanes. We will try to show how a more economic interpretation of the comic aristophanic mechanisms is sufficient, respecting literary and testimonial evidence, to revise this construction.

Introduction Andrea Capra Part I: Comedy in the Elenctic Dialogues i. Comedy and Laughter in Plato’s Early Dialogues Edith Hall ii. The Cook, the Relish-Maker, and the Philosopher Kathryn Morgan iii. Flatterers and Philosophers: On the ‘Pleasure Principle’ of the Protagoras William Strigel iv. The Mask of ‘Socrates’: Metatheatrical Comedy and Self-Knowledge in Hippias Major Sonja Tanner v. Platonicomic Business: Comedy and Platonic Theatre In Theages Sarah Miles Part II: Comedy in the Transitional Dialogues vi. Comedy in the Shadow of Death: Plato’s Menexenus Andrea Capra vii. The Deadly Play of Plato’s Euthydemus Gwenda-Lin Grewal viii. Plato and the Philosophical Art of Mockery Pierre Destrée Part III: Comedy in the ‘Middle’ Dialogues ix. Plato’s Use of Parody Franco V. Trivigno x. The Comic Worldview: Plato’s Symposium 189c ff. Anthony Hooper xi. Plato and the Discourse of Humour in Republic 10 Richard Hunter xii. Aristophanic Utopia s and Plato’s Kallipolis Michele Corradi xiii. The Last Laugh: Plato and the Comedy of Death Gabriele Cornelli

2011