Leo Strauss on the problem of Socrates in "The Clouds"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2357797589752Schlagworte:
Socrates' problem, Rationality, Philosophy and poetry, Tragic and comic, Leo StraussAbstract
The comedy The Clouds by Aristophanes is one of the main direct historical sources available on Socrates, alongside the Socratic dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. However, the portrayal of Socrates in The Clouds differs substantially from the portrayals of Socrates in the texts of Plato and Xenophon. According to Leo Strauss, these portrayals were responses to Aristophanes and were constructed around the “problem of Socrates,” that is, the problem of the place of rationality in human life and the tense relationship between philosophy and society, issues that appear intertwined with the conflict between philosophy and poetry. According to Strauss, there would be a great underlying agreement between Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon regarding Socrates’ astonishing lack of prudence. For them, Socrates would be a purely theoretical and apolitical man who dangerously ignored the power of the alogon in social and political life. Plato and Xenophon would be more prudent than Socrates, more aware of the limits of reason in social and political life, and would have constructed a more prudent and respectable Socrates in the eyes of the city with the aim of saving philosophy from the city’s repression and saving the city from the corrupting effects of philosophy. In this movement, philosophy becomes political philosophy and reconciles in a way with poetry, incorporating the tragic and the comic into a superior ironic unity.
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