The comedy/satire thread.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Nicely done, Puf.

This was shared on another thread, worth posting here as well.

(Hat tip to Elvis)

[brainpanhandler]

[dada]

I'm arguing that Plato's Republic is satire. With every section, we are taken by logic, step by step and perfectly rationally, to the most fantastic conclusions. From education we come to a music that outlaws all modes save one or two. From gymnastics, to medicine, to allowing all defective bodies to suffer and die being best for the sufferers and the state.

The conclusions are always incredible on their face. The juxtaposition between the logic and the insanity it produces, brings the funny.

Maybe the funniest section is about what type of narratives are to be permitted. After throwing out most of Homer and the traditional stories of gods and heroes in a long passage worthy of Giordano Bruno, Plato doesn't go so far as to have Socrates say that the Republic itself would be banned in our most harmonious society, instead we are allowed to follow the logic to the silly conclusion, ourselves.

At the end of this section we come to the popular cave analogy. We wonder, how do we know if the citizens inside the cave are really outside, and the ones outside are really inside? We can tell when a citizen moves from one to the other. On leaving the cave, the citizen's temporary blindness as the eyes adjust is accompanied by pain. On coming back to the cave, the temporary blindness is painless. The pain comes after, while stumbling around in the dark, crashing into things. The slapstick effect always gets a guaranteed laugh from the citizens in the cave.

That's comedy for you. There is laughter that accompanies leaving the cave as well, but it is the laughter that comes from the joy of seeing a citizen get away from the cave. Of course those outside the cave would rather not go back, and those in the cave think leaving the cave is unhealthy, anyone caught helping others to leave should be punished severely, for their own good and the good of our most harmonious city.

[Laodicean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhVCGl-Huqg

[JackRiddler]

I'm arguing that Plato's Republic is satire. With every section, we are taken by logic, step by step and perfectly rationally, to the most fantastic conclusions. From education we come to a music that outlaws all modes save one or two. From gymnastics, to medicine, to allowing all defective bodies to suffer and die being best for the sufferers and the state.

The conclusions are always incredible on their face. The juxtaposition between the logic and the insanity it produces, brings the funny.

Maybe the funniest section is about what type of narratives are to be permitted. After throwing out most of Homer and the traditional stories of gods and heroes in a long passage worthy of Giordano Bruno, Plato doesn't go so far as to have Socrates say that the Republic itself would be banned in our most harmonious society, instead we are allowed to follow the logic to the silly conclusion, ourselves.

At the end of this section we come to the popular cave analogy. We wonder, how do we know if the citizens inside the cave are really outside, and the ones outside are really inside? We can tell when a citizen moves from one to the other. On leaving the cave, the citizen's temporary blindness as the eyes adjust is accompanied by pain. On coming back to the cave, the temporary blindness is painless. The pain comes after, while stumbling around in the dark, crashing into things. The slapstick effect always gets a guaranteed laugh from the citizens in the cave.

That's comedy for you. There is laughter that accompanies leaving the cave as well, but it is the laughter that comes from the joy of seeing a citizen get away from the cave. Of course those outside the cave would rather not go back, and those in the cave think leaving the cave is unhealthy, anyone caught helping others to leave should be punished severely, for their own good and the good of our most harmonious city.

This makes a lot of sense to me, whether or not it can be known, though really in some sense nothing can be known for sure about the intended tonalities and registers of an ancient text translated from a no-longer spoken language referring to the civil-war-level debates of a long-dead civilization since wallpapered countless times during two millennia of appropriations and reinterpretations and mythologizations by members of subsequent civilizations. (Your idea has been argued by others, but I can't find the essay I had in mind specifically. I thought it was Cinzia Arruzza's phd dissertation.)

Like, how do we know how Genesis et al. were read, back in the times when they were first recorded in writing?

What I also like about this is that it allows entry of Gulliver's Travels into the main-sequence canon of ('Western' or at any rate British) political philosophy, as well as sociology (before it was called that), where it belongs. I honestly think it a greater work than the standards from Hobbes, Locke, and Smith. In your reading Plato's doing something like Gulliver's Travels 2,100 years earlier.

You should probably start a Republic thread and consolidate your posts on it so far.

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[dada]

Decided not to start a Republic thread. Just don't see it becoming a big discussion here. Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, I don't start threads. But so, by insisting that the rational part of the soul is the natural ruler, and the irrational, emotional, appetitive part of the soul needs to be suppressed to logically arrive at our perfect city, Plato has made Socrates into Mr. Spock. The Republic is the tyranny of the rational.

In Avicenna's recital, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, the rational part plays the appetitive part against the quick-to-anger high-spirited part, tempering the anger with pleasures, over-indulgences with force. The rational soul keeps them occupied while it travels with Hayy ibn Yaqzan as its guide. In the Republic, the rational soul uses the high spirited part to suppress the appetitive part.

So what, right. There's more to this thought, maybe I'll come back around to it.

"He will rather,” I said, “keep his eyes fixed on the constitution in his soul, and taking care and watching lest he disturb anything there either by excess or deficiency of wealth, will so steer his course and add to or detract from his wealth on this principle, so far as may be.” “Precisely so,” he said. “And in the matter of honors and office too this will be his guiding principle: [592a] He will gladly take part in and enjoy those which he thinks will make him a better man, but in public and private life he will shun those that may overthrow the established habit of his soul.” “Then, if that is his chief concern,” he said, “he will not willingly take part in politics.” “Yes, by the dog,” said I, “in his own city he certainly will, yet perhaps not in the city of his birth, except in some providential conjuncture.” “I understand,” he said; “you mean the city whose establishment we have described, the city whose home is in the ideal; [592b] for I think that it can be found nowhere on earth.” “Well,” said I, “perhaps there is a pattern of it laid up in heaven for him who wishes to contemplate it and so beholding to constitute himself its citizen. But it makes no difference whether it exists now or ever will come into being. The politics of this city only will be his and of none other.” “That seems probable,” he said."

[BenDhyan]

Fwiw, the mention of Gullivers Teravels in Jack's post above triggers this tidbit that I believe is an example of prescience of the two moons of Mars.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707059?seq=1

[JackRiddler]

Shockingly beautiful and inspiring. #iwanttobelieve

Apparently serious, though. I can't tell.

[Iamwhomiam]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQ7XTL-z_U