Hi, welcome to the new Thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always, is my dear friend Alex Preu. How are you, Alex? All right, how are you, dude?
Excellent. Greg McBrayer. How are you, Greg? I'm as excited as a school boy today, David.
All right, Greg. That's bizarre. And you're calling in from where the world headquarters of? Nice people.
You know that. And home to Grandpa's Tuesday bar, and don't forget it. Yeah, those are both X-ray topics we can't discuss. And today with us is Robert C.
Bartlett, Greg's old professor from Emory University. But now in the political science department of Boston College, very, very grateful and excited to have you. How are you, Bob? I'm very well.
David, thank you. And thank you for having me. It's good to see and hear you all. I'd hear you all.
And it's a real pleasure, especially to be back with my former student, Greg McBrayer. Excellent. Greg, can you tell us a little bit, I mean, what last Bob, a little bit about his background. But I mean, their chances that most of the listeners who have read or studied Xenophon, Aristotle's rhetoric, Aristotle's politics recently in political science departments of note have used Bob's translations.
And now today, we're here to discuss his new translation of the book, Hoffman's book, Greg, Give us a little bit more of an introduction. I feel like you hit a highlight, David. Oh, and Pierre Biel. I always forget the air base.
That's the one you like the most. No, I know it is. It's my favorite book. Yeah.
So as you mentioned, Bartlett is the Barakas professor in the clinical studies of Boston College. And before that, he was the Arthur Blank. And he, h, distinguished professor at Emory University, where I met him. Bob has published White in Classical Political Thought, as you mentioned, on Xenophon.
Aristotle, Plato, New Cities, and now Aristophanes. He's translated Plato's for Tires and Metho. He's edited a edition of Volume of Xenophonous and short of credit writings. And his translations of Aristotle have become with Sue Collins is available from the University of Chicago Press.
The author recently published a translation of the art rhetoric, which you mentioned just one ago with the same press. And now we have a month today to discuss his translations of two plays by the ancient comic playwright Aristophanes. Well, thank you for that introduction. As I say, it's a pleasure to be here.
And the book that you just mentioned is called Against Demagogues, where Aristophanes can teach us about the perils of populism and the fate of democracy kind of mouthful. And as you indicated, it's simply the translations of the earliest two extant plays that we have from Aristophanes, the acarnions and the knights. And so I guess maybe we can, as we proceed, we can give a kind of rough sketch of both of those plays, why I chose them, and why I think they deserve to be read today and study today. Maybe just before you do.
Yeah, sure, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna ask if you could tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself. I gave sort of a resume kind of thing, which isn't very helpful. I just thought the listeners a little more about yourself.
Sure. And how you got interested in political philosophy as a young man, I think we have a lot of young listeners and they got excited to hear Charles Butterworth's story. So here's would be great too. Mine's probably less interesting than Mr.
Butterworth's. But well, I grew up in Canada, oddly enough. And there were really only a couple of schools, in my opinion, where you could go and get an education. McGill and the University of Toronto and I sort of by the flip of a coin went to the University of Toronto.
And I'm very glad I did grateful that I did because there I met two extraordinary teachers, scholars, Thomas Pangle and Clifford Orwin, who certainly changed the course of my life, because they introduced me to the study of political philosophy. I was originally very interested in philosophy. I was sure what that was. And then I became more interested in politics and political philosophy in particular.
I wasn't that interested in classical thought at the beginning. The two books that had really a kind of big effect, even a kind of explosive effect on me as a young man were oddly enough Hobbes's Leviathan and Tocqueville's Democracy in America. But for quite different reasons, it was in reading Hobbes who in some ways is so different from us and describes a world that's so different from ours, the case for absolute monarchy. But one of the things that struck me about that book was his case for equality, which I of course was very devoted to the principle of equality.
And in reading that book, it showed me as I'd never seen before that the world that we take for granted had ideas underlying it. And that's probably a simple thing to say. And we all, I suppose would agree to that now, but at 18 or whatever I was, it hadn't occurred to me that the world simply wasn't due entirely to chance, but that it had been in part planned and that the lives we lead and so on had been carefully orchestrated by a group of philosophers, political philosophers in particular Locke and others. And it was in reading Hobbes for some reason that that thought first occurred to me and was kind of mind blowing in way because I thought that one could begin to understand some of the forces that were had constructed the modern world.
The other book that had a big effect on me, as I say, was Tocqueville. And there, though I was Canadian and living in Canada, it seemed to me that he'd sort of x-rayed the modern soul in a way that I'd never seen before. And I was very moved by and taken with his account and still am, I suppose, of the two principles at work in modern democracy that are at odds with one another or at least can be the desire for liberty and the love of equality. And those almost sort of Nietzsche and a proton, Nietzsche and remarks toward the end of the second volume were very powerful, especially as presented by Thomas Pangle all those decades ago.
So that sort of, and then I gradually became more interested in classical thought, partly because the moderns who might have been so interested in rejected explicitly in the case of Hobbes again, Aristotle. And I thought well, I should probably figure out something and know something about Aristotle. I assumed, as I suppose, most young people do, that we are better than they are, were, in other words, they believe that we believe in progress. But still at a certain point, it seemed that I should probably look into the older thinkers whom we've rejected.
Was there a point in turning to these ancient thinkers where it stopped being sort of, it sounds the way you phrased it sounds a little bit like it was a kind of detour you were taking. Obviously, if this is a detour, it's been quite long. So at some point they're back on the main road. At some point, there must have been something about it that captivated.
Can you just describe that? Yes, yes. Maybe that's where you're going, sorry. No, no, no.
So my initial incentive, as I say, was just to try to see what had been left behind. I suppose it was the experience of reading Plato, and in particular, the Republic, that began to sort of open up my eyes and become more open to the possibility which on its surface seems way absurd to a modern kid, that they could be right about the most important things. And so, for example, the position of Thrasymachus and Socrates' response to him, that was and is very powerful, where the Gorgias say, the critique of justice in both polis and in calligles, especially probably calligles, these were positions, they were arguments that were in a way very powerful, and Plato's dramatic presentation of these arguments, I found just kind of it blew me away. And I just, in a way, it seemed to me that the ancients whom I was encountering then spoke to the questions or concerns that moved me.
And then it ceased to be a kind of detour, as you say, then it ceased to be in a way, the focus of my scholarly work was to try to uncover in particular political philosophy. So Bob Whitman took you on this current detour to Aristophanes. Does Aristophanes speak to your... I needed some comic relief.
I needed some comic relief. No, it's part and parcel of a sort of inquiry into Socrates. And so, influenced as I am to some degree, certainly by Leo Strauss, I was trying to understand better than I did or do. His book, Socrates and Aristophanes, one of his later books, a difficult book, a joy to read, but very difficult to at least for me to see exactly what the fundamental argument is.
And so, this book grew out of a graduate seminar I taught a couple of years ago on Aristophanes, which I'd never taught before, except for the clouds and a kind of survey class. And yeah, so this book is just a... I was dissatisfied with the translations of the acarnions and the nights that I found. And so, I did a couple of versions for my class to use, and it just sort of grew out of that.
But Aristophanes, my interest in Aristophanes, apart from the delights of reading his plays, it just is connected with my interest in Socrates. This might be a good point to introduce a question I had from reading the introduction. Early on, you refer to Aristophanes as the supreme jokester of antiquity, which at least for Greg, that's high praise. But you're looking at Aristophanes in an effort to understand Socrates, and it struck me that, and I'm just speaking personally, perhaps I'm deranged, but I always found Socrates much funnier than Aristophanes.
And I'm not sure why that is, but perhaps you could comment on the relationship of comedy to philosophy. If this is part of a more general project to understand Socrates, how does your understanding of Aristophanes, maybe just even as it is just in his book, or more generally, how does that relate to your understanding of Socrates? You can start from the question of demagogu or however you think. That's a very big question or rather a series of questions, but I'm more struck by your contention that Socrates is funnier than Aristophanes.
Although I would happily agree that Socrates is funny, he's funny and Zenifunny and Plato too. But there can also be a kind of, and this I'm sure I suspect you wouldn't disagree with, also an extraordinary beauty and powerful poetry in Plato and Plato's Socrates too, and actually there is in Aristophanes as well, occasionally. I don't have a fully worked out theory of the relation between comedy and philosophy, but I could say just very modestly sticking to the text of Aristophanes, that in the case of his clouds, of course the play in which Socrates is the star, he says that he worked on at the hardest, he labored over the most, and that it's his wisest comedy. And there are other places in the plays where he speaks of wisdom.
And I tend to conclude from this that he thought that he or Sophanes thought that comedy and wisdom, that is to say a grasp about the most important things, was entirely possible. And that's worth taking seriously so to speak today because for the most part, there's tragedy which we take very seriously for crying somehow, we're really, that's deep, and our comedy just tends to be silliness without much in the way of a pretension to wisdom. Now maybe there are exceptions to that, I don't know what he outlined or something. Certainly it has read a lot of philosophy.
But in Aristophanes, this is a theme that runs throughout. And just briefly, I guess I might say this or suggest it, that comedy seems to have permitted him the license to explore questions and even to say things that I think otherwise would have been impermissible, certainly through that perhaps the element of tragedy. He has Dionysus, a god, soil his pants twice on stage. Now it's part and parcel of something else, but these very broad and searching theological questions and so on.
Maybe we can turn to the first text you translate in your new book against demagogues. Just to piggyback off what you said, the savagery that Aristophanes unleashes on a hot headlight, Cleon amazes me. I mean, it's just, was he playing with his life when, and could you describe the play, is this a kind of a risk or it's Cleon simply had to accept the way a US president might accept a savaging Saturday Night Live? Well, in the Ocarneans, he he Aristophanes says in his own name that the year before Cleon took into court because of in the Babylonians, which unfortunately doesn't survive where he'd lamp him and Cleon again.
I maybe I should say in a general way for I don't know what's listening, but Cleon was a democratic leader in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. And in this time period, the Ocarneans was produced in 425. Cleon was at the peak of his power. He was hugely influential with the Demos that is to say the Athenian people.
He had just pulled off an astounding military success on the island of Pylos and Scteria. They had captured some Spartan soldiers and and trapped them there. And Cleon back home said, Come on, if you were a real man, you could you could pull this off. I could do it in 20 days.
And Nisius, who appears in our play, the Ocarneans said, Okay, do it. And against everyone's expectations, he actually did it. So he was flying very high, his reputation was at its peak. And two Arasophanes credit, I would say he went after him.
He went after him in the Babylonians, which doesn't survive the Ocarneans. But above all the second plug, which we can turn to a little bit later, the Knights, that's where he's just savages him in some pretty daring way. So according to Arasophanes, to answer your question, there was at least a legal risk that he could be called into court. On the other hand, these two plays, the Ocarneans and the Knights, were back to back smash hits.
They won first prize in the respective festivals in 425 and 424. And so Arasophanes was in his own way, flying high. And you know, he made people laugh, true, they were laughing at Cleon, but it had many other things too. So maybe I should just give a sketch of the Ocarneans very simply.
Yeah, that'd be great. The title, the Ocarneans, it's the chorus of the play, and it's made up of old men who distinguished themselves in battle in marathon, you know, the kind of the Athenian greatest generation. And they're from the largest team or district out in the most rural part of Athens. And in the play, at least they make their money from manufacturing charcoal.
So they're very elderly, salt of the earth types. The play as a whole is a kind of comic plea for peace. The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was in its sixth year. And the hero of the show is the central character, Dick Iopolis.
And he wants peace. And he in fact goes to the Athenian assembly trying to get a peace proposal passed. It's a dismal failure. And so he does what he he does what the next best thing, which is to secure for himself a private peace with Sparta.
Now there's a word for that such a person who would do this in wartime, namely traitor. And here is where the Ocarneans come in as a chorus, because they've got wind of the fact that some guy, some Athenian, is now at peace with Sparta, and they want to kill him. And so the action, the comic action of the beginning of the play at least, is Dick Iopolis trying to save his own neck from these angry veteran of foreign wars. And he engages in all kinds of shenanigans and attempts to do that, including by the way going to visit your rippities.
It's a very interesting scene. And it shows in a way the limits of comedy that if you want to evoke pity, which he does, you have to go to tragedy rather than comedy. So that's the title and the initial at least momentum of the play comes from the tension between Dick Iopolis and these old man, the Ocarneans. I should say, by the way, that at a certain point, Dick Iopolis, who's an old farmer on stage, reveals himself to be Aristophanes, which adds an interesting wrinkle to the whole thing.
I asked a question about that. You draw a bit of a comparison between Aristophanes and Decaiopolis on those lines, and then it seems to echo later. And you talk a bit about, I just love this part of your essay on the Ocarneans. So maybe you could just present a sort of summary version of it for our listeners.
But you present them both as having a kind of private pleasure. That Aristophanes is a private pleasure unlike Decaiopolis, which sees him basically probably running afoul of his wife. Aristophanes actually has a rather public spirit and one that's compatible with justice. He's private goods are not in tension with the just, but somehow supportive of it on some level or some aspect of it.
I found that very interesting. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it's something of a long question. This to dual identity of Decaiopolis, the old farmer, who also is Aristophanes, the very young comic poet.
I think I could begin from this fact that Decaiopolis, as he proceeds, sinks deeper and deeper and deeper into pleasure-seeking. And many comic shenanigans ensue. He sets up a marketplace and starts making a killing. And by the end, we forget that he's married.
I think he forgets that he's married and enjoys extramarital delights, let's say. What to make of that? If there is wisdom in Aristophanes, what's the message so to speak of this play? Well, the simple thing to say is that he clearly prefers peace to war and the pleasures that peace make possible.
And so there's a wonderful, enthusiastic comic presentation of the joys that can go together with peace. All right. But is Aristophanes then saying that if you can't have peace, you should abandon your community and sink into an entirely private pleasure-seeking, ally Decaiopolis? And I think the answer is no.
That certainly Aristophanes loves the pleasures of the flesh. I don't know how one could be the plays and deny it. But that I wondered whether in the passage you alluded to, I just wondered whether those pleasures that Decaiopolis enjoys of the body, booze, and so on, aren't a kind of comic presentation and therefore distortion or partial distortion of Aristophanes' own pleasures. And they would include thinking up these zany plots, these slapstick things, and presenting them on stage to the delight of a vast audience.
And it's in a way a display of his own cleverness, of his own thoughtfulness, and even of his own wisdom. And yes, I think he would take immense delight from that pleasure from that. And I have absolutely no reservations in saying that surely he was not an ascetic. But I wonder whether in the case of Aristophanes, the enjoyment of very intense private pleasures couldn't go together with a kind of public beneficence.
That he prides himself, as he says, on teaching the just things and the better things and making Athens better. And that's true, I think, that he mocks the beginning of the war and paracles for beginning the war and so on. So that there is a kind of real public spirit in this, I think, in Aristophanes that's not present in Decaiopolis. But it goes together with a genuine and deep love of certain kinds of pleasure in Aristophanes.
Yeah, it might have even been the occasion for his insights. You never know. You never know such pleasures. It could be.
There are a shortcoming Bob to this, to the Aristophanes view of foreign policy is presented in this play. I don't know if that's a fair question. He doesn't, if you were to apply the insight that we glean from Decaiopolis writ large to where the Athenians are thinking about the war. Could that in some way lead to greater harm than had they prosecuted the war in the manner which they did?
I'm sorry, what might lead to the greater harm? What would his worldview have looked like if Athens had adopted it rather than the way they went about prosecuting the war against the Spartans? I mean, I think actually Aristophanes was not hopeful that he or Decaiopolis could bring it into the war. He tried, he failed, and he went on with his life.
And I think Aristophanes makes a certain case for peace. But it's early still. It's only the sixth year of the war. I mean, they did not long it would go on.
So that in a way, there's a kind of resignation that this will continue. To some extent, it's a kind of madhouse. And I should say this, Decaiopolis, the character is Aristophanes. That's true.
And as I said in response to Alex's question, but also his name means just city. And one way to defend his selfishness, his remarkable selfishness is to remember that he could also stand for the just city. And what does that mean? It means, I think, what is the obligation of a city?
It's to protect its inhabitants, to fight those words that must be fought, to sue for peace, respectable peace, honorable peace, whenever possible, to provide for a market. That's a large part of the action of the play. Once the peace comes is Decaiopolis's market, which he protects, he benefits, but also others benefit from it. So one way you can defend Decaiopolis, who's otherwise so crazy and so zany and so selfish, it could be a kind of presentation of individual cities and even decent cities that they have these obligations to their members within the community.
And so if you view it from that way, it's much more respectable. I would add that I think the other element is what I said to Alex, that it's also a kind of commentary on Aristophanes' public spiritiveness, but also his concern for certain private goods too. Right. Bob, as we can still talk about this play, but as we transition to the next play, one of the things I was thinking about parodies together in our audience, the acarnions are sort of this group about the sticks and knights with nobility.
I sort of thought about framing it in contemporary terms, the hillbillies and the coastal elites or something like this almost maki titles, right? Because it really is sort of two different groups and so I was, I mean, that's just a silly way to try to segue into the next play, but could you give us an overview of the knights along lines that you just gave us? Yeah, that's an interesting way to put it actually, because you're quite right. The acarnions are these elderly country bumpkins on the farthest thing from Sophisticas, which is why they want to kill Decaiopolis.
And the knights, or the cavalry, could also translate it, are young men a thousand strong who, because they're cavalry and have to maintain their own horses are wealthy. So it's an upper class. And the basic plot, I could say, is this, that the Athenian Demos, the people, is personified Mr. Demos and he has a household.
And within the household, there are two servant slaves, Demos, these enissios, two of the greatest generals in Athenian history. And they are complaining about the new servant that Mr. Demos just bought called Paflogon, who's a stand, who's Cleon. This even becomes explicit.
And they're complaining about the extent to which Cleon has hoodwinked Demos. And so it's in this play, to go back to something David said a few minutes ago, where Aristophis turns his sights more directly on Cleon. And it is a very tough portrait of damning portrait of Cleon. The plot is this, that the knights of the title who form the chorus join forces with Demos and these enissios, two upper class generals, to get rid of Cleon.
And they're going to do it by finding somebody in the Demos, who is as shameless, as crude, as vulgar, as Cleon. But who will be obedient to them? He'll be their tool. And they come across a sausage seller who is a marvelous character, comic character, a buffoon, however, and extremely crude.
And he does go after Cleon. And he stands toe to toe with Cleon, spouting some eye-watering back and forth, which I leave for the readers to discover on their own. This is a respectable program, after all. I'm going to quote that.
And he can translate it. It's not true. That is absolutely false. You cannot translate heiressophis without doing a recitation of its juiciest parts.
No, but I, well, just as a footnote, I would say, but I would recommend the scene back in the acarnions in the marketplace with a McGarry and Combs and has to sell his two daughters. It's quite something. Oh, yeah, you're that was, uh, that was good. I can also say, parenthetically, that there were some funny discussions with my copy editor as to whether certain words required hyphen or not, you know, I won't go into it.
But very earnest scholarly conversations back and forth with my copy editor. So really quick, Bob, I have a question in Greek with the, um, uh, the vulgarity, it's there, right? I mean, this isn't, you know, we're searching for a word in English. I mean, it's there in, in the ancient Greek.
Absolutely. They had a rich vocabulary. Okay. I was always curious about at least as rich, rich, richer than any, you know, 14 year old boy.
Gotcha. Gotcha. And he coins a lot of these phrases. So the humor is also part of the novelty, right?
When he puts together a weird, when he, when he, this together a weird word that has all sorts of implications. It's yeah. No, that's certainly true. Um, so back, back to the sausage seller and Cleon, uh, he manages to get Mr.
Deimos old Mr. Deimos to shift his affections from Cleon to himself. And so he becomes leader, undisputed leader of the Demos, the democracy. And to that extent, the Knights and the Mosse, these ennistias of one, they've triumped.
They've gotten rid of Cleon. And this is a wonderful thing in the play. Cleon of course, it's still very powerful. Um, unfortunately, the sausage seller does not do the bidding of the wealthy.
He turns out to be a kind of naturally gifted democratic leader, um, whom they stumbled across. And one of the, the more interesting, among the more interesting things in play is the end. There's this triumphant razzle dazzle end, where the sausage seller boils as you would boil a hot dog. He boils Mr.
Deimos and makes him young and new again. And then so as the curtain descends, so to speak, Athens has been restored to its vigorous youth. And Cleon's gone is wonderfully capable leader in the sausage seller is in charge and everything is, is terrific. And again, one has to ask if the play is something more than just pratfalls and things, which I think it is.
All the way to that. You know, what is Aristophanes's political message that he despises Cleon, I think is beyond dispute, that it would be a good thing to get rid of him. And that happens in the play, which is one of the reasons why it's so delightful. But what is the real world equivalent, the non-comic equivalent, if you like, of A, discovering the sausage seller by chance and B, boiling Deimos.
Um, the first thing you just, luck is required, you know, naturally gifted democratic leader. Aristophanes thinks that could happen, but it's, you know, shot in the door. The boiling, the rejuvenation, that's impossible. There is no equivalent to that.
And I'm inclined to think that for Aristophanes, once civic virtues are gone, it's difficult and probably impossible to recapture them. We're not going back to this beautiful age, whatever it was, Golden Age. That's not good, Bob. That's fine.
I'm sorry. And we have to go forward, not back. Um, enjoy the piglets, right? Yeah, well, something like that.
I mean, there are certain pleasures, um, around, I mean, he does, but cutting against what I just said is the attack on Glee on. And in a way, from the more interesting thing about this play, the, the Knights, isn't so much the attack on Glee on the Demagogue, although that is certainly important. Aristophanes, I think in his public spirit, it must also does something very daring, which is extremely rare, at least in my experience to hear today. And that is a critique of the Deimos.
Deimos is a buffoon and he needs to smarten up in his way. Wasn't there, weren't there even possibly legal prohibitions against criticizing the Demos on stage? It might. This was very rare at any rate, right?
Yeah, there's a line in Xenophon in the, in the very fine volume we put together on the, the regime of the Athenians. I wasn't fishing, but yeah, far enough. I'm glad I remembered it there. You could poke fun individuals within the Demos, but to, but to criticize or ridicule the Demos was, was not to be done.
And he did it. And he did it successfully. And I think that's something we probably need to think more about these days. We hear a lot of condemnation of demagoguery and so on.
Fine, I don't have a problem with that. Leading the Demos, that's what a demagoguery is. And it wasn't by the way, I should say, a necessarily pejorative term. It became one as it is for us, but it wasn't originally just leading the demons, a leader of the people.
That's not a pejorative term, but it became one. And, and yes, that's something to be watchful for. But the qualities of a people that lend itself to being bamboozled in these ways, that in a way, I think is the more interesting part of Aristophanes's critique. And it's striking to me the extent to which in and through the element of comedy, he was able to say, in effect, look at yourselves, you're suckers for every passing religious huckster.
The use of prophecy, fake prophecy is a big part of the play. The endless promises of material goods, healthcare and things like this, social security, all of these things, you're just suckers. And he was very tough. And in some ways, very brave, I think, in laying these things out.
So David, to get back to your point, I don't think it's a despairing plan on how a comedy could be despairing. There's a tough critique of Cleon and an exhortation to watch for such types. Are we going back to the days of marathon? No, we are not.
But that doesn't mean we can't be improved in certain signal ways. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. No, the reason I ask is sometimes there's some comedians that you listen to them and you laugh and you laugh and at a certain point, it's kind of like the darkness of a punchline can really set in.
So the laughter can turn to despair, it can become kind of bleak and dark. But what you're saying is on balance and not just with respect to the two plays you translated, but the whole of his corpus that survives, would you describe Aristotle and he says a kind of like a happy warrior or I mean, gives you tough medicine, but in the end is hopeful or does can it lead to a kind of bleak outlook on political life? On political life in particular? No, I mean, maybe life simply.
Well, there is the problem of death, which rears its head and the hope for mortality, but maybe we won't get into that. No, I think, I mean, there's, I don't know of another body of literature that is so expressive of a kind of joy of life. There probably is, but it's not known to me that there's a kind of Joar Viv in Aristophanes, a kind of man exaniness, at least in some of the plays, that's just delightful. And I mean, one of the difficulties in talking about comedy, it's very difficult, at least for me, since I'm not a comedian to bring that out, one has to discover it, I think on one's own, either by reading or watching it.
But no, he's, I would put it this way, there's a certain moderation, believe it or not, in Aristophanes, despite the zeniness and the extremes in which he goes on stage, but there are also certain limits. I mean, he burns down Socrates's house, but he certainly doesn't kill Socrates, he can't kill someone in the comedy. So on the one hand, there are important passages in the place in the Frogs, for example, there's a famous passage in which he urges a reconciliation between the democratic and oligarchic factions, which it said at least he received a kind of public prize for it, so that there are these interventions in the public square in his plays that are clearly such, and he boasts of that, and he boasts of his teaching, you know, the Athenian something. But at the same time, I just think there isn't a kind of hope for either a return to a golden age on the one hand, or even for peace in any, you know, soon, Decaiopolis tried, it was a disaster, Aristophanes tried, you could say, and it just didn't work, and you could either let that crush you or you carry on, and I don't think in any way it crushed him.
So there's a kind of acceptance of human foibles and even a kind of madness in the world on Aristophanes's part, but that did not lead him simply to retreat and tell silly jokes. There is many, many silly jokes, wonderful jokes together with a certain public spiritiness and that remains, and I did, I conclude from that, that he thought he could do some good around the margins, and those who are dissatisfied with improving things on the margin, I think he would say, and other classical thinkers would say, well, your expectations are wrong. You know, you're the one who'll be disappointed on me, right? Something like that.
And I asked what you learned about comedy or laughter, what makes things funny, or what's the role of laughter in human life? That must be the least funny question or answer, what makes things funny? I don't know. You're, well, I'm laughing at your questions, so I found your question funny, I guess.
No, as I said earlier, I don't have a theory of comedy and in a way I hope I don't ever have one. You might drain the thing itself of its vital forces, I don't know. Here I could go back to something that was said at the beginning. Alex, it's awkward, he's funny, I certainly agree there's comedy and there's obviously comedy and Zenefen but also in Plato, and that's probably underappreciated.
And maybe I could venture this thought, which I'm not at all sure of, but that if you understand yourself and the world as it is, to the extent that's possible, there seems to be a place for laughter. There's a beautiful example of this in an extreme circumstance, namely the execution of Socrates in Zenefen's portrait of it in the apology. When he went if he's devoted followers, he's starting to cry, oh my goodness, you're being put to death unjustly, and Socrates said, would you prefer that I die justly, and then he laughed? I mean, that's, he wasn't despairing at that moment, and I don't fully understand that, and then sure, I couldn't replicate.
But that's a sign of something, I think, that there's a certain there's a certain place for levity in human life, let's believe it there. This might be a good point to transition to the Twitter questions, and as much as somebody asked about funny facts, this phrase I think Strauss uses it, right? I mean, I'll rephrase the question, maybe this is more of a lightning round question, Greg, is this a question? I feel an insult coming right now, but I just want to know if Greg, no, no, no, no, we wouldn't shame you in front of your former mentor.
My question is just, this is adapting a Twitter question. Do you have a favorite funny fact? You talked about comedy being somehow in touch with reality, right? Yeah, with things that they are.
So maybe just an example of that funny fact, it's that's not drawn from Xenophon or someplace that maybe our listeners haven't listened to, but something ordinary. Oh, in general, I guess what I could say the gap between our aspirations and our more modest realities. That could lead to despair, I grant, but it should probably lead to laughter. I think you're agreeing with me, then, that Socrates is funnier than Aristophanes, but no, I agree with that.
I agree that he's funny. I don't agree with this one. I actually had a question that kind of falls up on this. You talk a little bit here and there about Aristophanes kind of having two audiences, right?
Ordinary citizen. He says that. Yeah, you'll have the ordinary citizen, and then he'll have the wise and you see actual or potential, I think, at one point, which implies I think if you're going to see actual or potential, that there's some kind of education that maybe happens by watching his place. I think also that the main question I had coming off of this is how much are Aristophanes protests that people don't understand them just part of the humor and kind of the laughability of wisdom?
Is he poking fun at his own wisdom there? And how much of that is genuine? Sorry, the protests in the blaze. Yeah, I didn't get a word or, you know, people didn't understand that or etc.
How much of those are him poking fun at himself, or ridiculing or making fun of wisdom as he did with Socrates? And how much of that is genuine worry about the place of wisdom in political life? I mean, the clearest case that I recall off the top of my head is the revised version of the clouds in which the first version only one third place, which is last place. And then in the revision, perhaps as he says, you know, you screwed up.
This is my wisest play and you didn't get it. I suspect he doesn't have a whole lot of hope for wisdom, you know, with a capital W making its way in the public sphere. He distinguishes between the laughers and the audience and the wise in one play, for example. Some will judge me for my jokes, which are excellent, and others can judge me for my wisdom.
Now he says both things in one play so that everyone can hear him claim both things. It's not a secret that he regards himself as wise. But what the wisdom consists of, that would be more difficult to access, I think. I mean, the birds would be the prime example here where there's a revolution, a rebellion against the Olympian gods.
And the Olympian gods don't come off very well. It's amazingly narrow, it seems to me. But no, I think he thinks there's a fundamental division as I think, as far as I know all the classical thinkers did, between the wise who were few and the many who were not wise. And that the exploration and above all the presentation of wisdom had to take that fact into account.
Plato generally speaking availed himself of the tools of tragedy to do it, or stopping us of course availed himself of the tools of comedy. Yeah, I think the birds great, you were giving equivalents of the titles. I think the birds, the equivalent would be something like Ohio because it's a flyover country. Sorry, it's an awful joke.
Yeah, it's terrible. We are coming up against what comedy isn't. Yeah, we I'm developing a theory of comedy, even I'm the guy who thinks Socrates is funnier than Aristotle's clearly much as well. We're getting close to the end of the show.
We can go to some questions. But before I forget Bob, this is a question we've debated the three of us privately, but now publicly. Oh, no, no. Do you think you can bench more than Greg McBrayer?
Greg says you can bench 300 pounds. I think that would make you the strongest drowsy in the live. I think I've seen him deadlift like a thousand pounds, which is a this is a great. I kind of want this to remain in lore.
But oh, yeah. So you're video of the car. I'm quite sure that Greg could outbench me. No, no, no.
Okay. So what's a more serious one serious question? He's one or two more serious. I'm just worried about Greg.
This sounds like elder abuse, having a bench press so much. So a question from Thomas Cleveland, who, you know, right? He's top billing as a BC graduate. He asks, doesn't the comic poet appeal to the most vulgar sentiments of envy and revenge in order to win?
Isn't this a kind of demagoguery? So wondering whether there's a sort of demagoguery to the comic poet in his desire for victory? He certainly wishes to be a demagogu in the sense that he wants to lead the Demos in his to a degree to a modest degree. But I deny the premise of the question that he simply uses envy and what was a revenge, desire for revenge.
No, he makes use of comedy. We don't want to kill Cleon. We just laugh at him. You know, you don't typically want to kill that one.
Anger and comedy. I mean, anger and laughter, excuse me. It's very difficult to get those things to coexist in the human soul at the same time. In fact, I think it's impossible.
No, he, I would say that he punctures into moral indignation far more than he inflames it. So, so he so he so Cleon becomes a kind of laughing stock. So everybody's ridiculous in a way. Dick Iopolis is the sausage shell, certainly is although he proves to be rather more impressive than at first glance.
Cleon, of course, Demos, Demos, and he's a drunk, you know, nisius has one of the greatest proofs for the existence of God, which is a comic proof. So no, I don't I take I see the question that I see the thrust of the question, but I don't think it's true to the spirit of Aristophanes. Yeah, one distinction I noticed, thinking just as you were, you were laying that out as you kind of distinguished Aristophanes from the demagogue, at least in the lower sense of a demagogue, insofar as their relationship to the common good, I think Aristophanes has far more, what's the word, a happier relationship with the common good than the demagogue does say the least. And in an odd way, he depends on the affins, even more than say, Socrates, that all of Socrates depended on it too.
He needs an audience, you know, a certain cultivated on, you know, there are other reasons why I think he was public spirited, but that would be one of them. Bob, we're getting a little short on time here. So we're going to turn to lightning round questions, just quick questions. Can we do one more?
We got we're still just made a segue. Yeah, one more question. Go ahead. You just pointed you pointed at me.
I understand what's I didn't know you were going that direction. I mean, this is Bob, I read a run a show every time. I don't know why these these these monkey knuckleheads don't read it. I don't follow it.
Yeah, you know, I mean, this is a question. Maybe if he read Bob's translation of the rhetoric, you could have persuaded us, yeah, I'm only in the chapter one. So another question, this is by Pablo Spoppadopoulos, who's a graduate of University of Dallas, political science department, I think, teaches at a Wisconsin now, he says, he has a number of questions, but I'm going to go on one that seems a bit more timely. He says, if our humorless comics by which you need stand up comedians are themselves among those who need to be ridiculed, what does that tell us about a regime and about the vocation of comedy in our regime?
I find it's very odd, it's hard, stand up comedians are so ridiculous nowadays and they're sanctimoniousness, but it's very hard how do you ridicule them without seeing to take something silly, very seriously. Seriously, yeah, my only response to that that interesting question is when I taught Aristophanes to undergraduates as I did the year before I taught it to graduate students, I read some quotations from Chris Rock Seinfeld and somebody else. Oh, that's good. Saying basically, we never play colleges anymore, because comedy is basically dead on college campuses.
You can't say so many things. I'm butchering the equation, but it's very good, both especially Chris Rock, but Seinfeld too. And I read that to students as a kind of prophylactic for myself, hoping that they wouldn't get angry over the course of this. Mr.
I must hasten to say they did not, at least not that I could tell. Yeah, our comedy is some of its clever, but most of it is not the best of my knowledge. It's all basically from one side. You know exactly the position they'll take on any moral and political question.
And it just, so even if the joke has a certain width to it, a certain levity, the position itself is nothing daring. Who are the most daring comics? Clearly Jerry Seinfeld with his bits about shampoo bottles and stuff like that. I know who she's hearing from a college campus, but it's also on pretentious.
He doesn't claim to be pretend to be more, whereas some of these comics who are so out there, you know, so daring, they're just you know, they're just attacking the things exactly the things that you think they would attack and they and voila, they do. You know, I don't really follow contemporary comedy, I'm sure there are listeners who protest and say, I bet you haven't heard so and so on. They're probably right. But David will explain what a prophylactic is to you later.
Let's move on to the lightning round at this point. He has no idea what one is. He's never counted right out of the yeah out of the the three co-hosts here. I'm the only one that's you know, reproduced.
So right, let's get serious. Right. So Greg, gas the lightning rounds. We don't know.
All right. All right. All right. All right.
All right. Let's do long. All right. Yeah.
The esteemed professor. All right. Favorite work of literature? Ah, Moby Dick.
Hi. Moby Dick. Very good. But I have to say Stumdall too.
That's not one work. I'm very much a famous Stumdall. Why? The intelligence, the width, and the psychology.
Okay. Best politician in your lifetime. You can pass on some of these. Yeah, this one.
Runaway. Favorite place you've ever lived. Boston. Favorite place you've ever visited?
Parents. Which is your first car. It was a baby blue Malibu. Is this from a song?
My life is a song. Favorite work of philosophy? The Nick McKean Ethics. Best physical accomplishment.
I'm most proud of. My deadlift. Have you read any nicknames? Yes, but I'm not going to say them.
Oh, that's too bad. I can't believe we got through this, by the way, without even mentioning that the new thinkery is named after our staff. Here we are in the final moments of podcast. We have one last Twitter question.
I think it's saving for last. And this is from actually from David Barr. I don't know why he tweeted a question when he's on the podcast, but he asks. Oh, you don't have to read this.
Yeah, no, we have to. Bartlett is a great scholar and teacher. So how do we explain the failures private, professional, and otherworldly of a student Greg McBrayer? He forgot to be asked.
That wasn't meant to be asked. David, you're forgetting one fundamental consideration and that is nature. Just don't. That's right.
That is some sloppy, sloppy clay. Well, I was about to say it's been a real honor to have my professor from undergrad on it. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you. Name the plus. Yeah, name the book again, Bob.
It's against demagogues. What are our softness, can teach us about the parables of populism and the fate of democracy available at the end of September from the University of California Press. Beautiful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
Thank you.