Socrates and Aristophanes

by Leo Strauss

In one of his last books, Socrates and Aristophanes, Leo Strauss's examines the confrontation between Socrates and Aristophanes in Aristophanes' comedies. Looking at eleven plays, Strauss shows that this confrontation is essentially one between poetry and philosophy, and that poetry emerges as an autonomous wisdom capable of rivaling philosophy.

"Strauss gives us an impressive addition to his life's work—the recovery of the Great Tradition in political philosophy. The problem the book proposes centers formally upon Socrates. As is typical of Strauss, he raises profound issues with great courage. . . . [He addresses] a problem that has been inherent in Western life ever since [Socrates'] the tension between reason and religion. . . . Thus, we come to Aristophanes, the great comic poet, and his attack on Socrates in the play The Clouds. . . [Strauss] translates it into the basic problem of the relation between poetry and philosophy, and resolves this by an analysis of the function of comedy in the life of the city." —Stanley Parry, National Review

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History

332 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

Leo Strauss was a 20th century German-American scholar of political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss authored books on Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi. In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory.

Reviews

[Abd Ar-Rahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aristophanes' argument against political philosophy and philosophy in general can be summed up as follows: the discovery of nature isn't politically innocent. As the ground upon which the political community and the philosopher depend necessitate a contradiction between rational inquiry and the general beliefs, unmoderated philosophy is an enemy of the political community and also of the very conditions of philosophizing. The tension between physis and nomos from the philosophical point of view, makes philosophy a real corrupter of the young from the point of view of the city. Nietzsche's critique of Socrates is an extrapolation of this line of thought. Philosophy, in most cases, destroys the very conditions of philosophizing.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the play clouds yourself instead, this guys basically tells you every part of the plot with some smart remarks (and I assume that’s what he’s gonna do for the rest of the book and other plays)

[Will Spohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last semester I took a class on Aristophanes' Frogs, and during that class we read (but only translate the Frogs, obviously) over the semester all of Aristophanes' works except for the Peace, Assemblywomen (which I had read before), Knights, and Birds. It was very interesting to hear what Strauss had to say about Aristophanes after having heard what my own, obviously non-Straussian, professor said. The question of interpreting Aristophanes as Strauss did is still on my mind, but I think that the relation between Socrates and Aristophanes, and thus between philosophy and poetry, is more pressing. I will try and remember what I have read here in interpreting Greek elsewhere.