| My dissertation offers an analysis of the political dimensions of laughter and comic speech in the comedies of Aristophanes and dialogues of Plato. Through readings of Aristophanes' Knights and Birds, I demonstrate how Aristophanes' comic speech functioned as a form of reflexive democratic criticism, and provided a medium for citizens to communally reflect on the practices and principles of democracy. Constructed as both a form of, and an alternative to, rhetorical forms of discourse, Aristophanes' comic speech also fostered the capacity for political judgment by identifying, exposing, and ridiculing deceptive discursive practices. In placing these comedies in dialogue with Plato's Gorgias and Republic, I argue that Plato's critique of Athenian democracy is both dramatically and conceptually indebted to Aristophanes' exploration of rhetoric and freedom in Knights and Birds, respectively. While Plato is critical of democratic forms of laughter, which he argues merely reinforce the opinions of the many, he readily employs both other-directed and self-reflexive forms of philosophically-guided laughter. In the former category, Plato deploys comic techniques to ridicule democratic practices and principles, while Socrates uses laughter, irony, and other comic practices to critique the arguments of his interlocutors. In the latter category, Socrates marks his own arguments as potentially laughable, thereby using laughter as a tool for promoting further philosophical thought and dialogue. Drawing on Aristotle's remarks on the relationship between laughter and friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, and Eudemian Ethics, I conclude by suggesting a framework for theorizing laughter as a political virtue for democratic citizens. |
