Satire In Aristophanes The Clouds

Comedies often provides laughter and entertainment while presenting social, political, cultural, philosophical, and theological ideas and problems. Within the comedy genre, satire presents itself in a form of sarcasm, irony and humor. It is the combination of entertainment and critique to criticize the ignorance of the person or society. It has three elements: entertainment, critical reflection to awaken the audience and to address issues and questions. It does not seek to harm, but it seeks the truth and its purpose is to create a reform purpose. To avoid the truth, people use the Inferior Argument, an argument created without facts and support to manipulate ideas and language, but created eloquently to convince others and succeed one’s self-interest.

Aristophanes’ comic play, The Clouds, focuses on satire and high comedy to illustrate his conservative beliefs about the nature of higher education and its social purpose while paralleling relation with Greek society with today’s society. From Aristophanes’ viewpoint, he also represents a philosophical speculation to denounce the importance of god and mortality. Such representation is illustrated in the play like Socrates as an influential and admirable leader and Strepsiades seeking to learn the Inferior Argument.

Aristophanes uses satire to illustrate the nature of higher education and its social purpose. In his first point, he suggests education give one the power of language and sophisticated reason is to obscure the truth which questions the credibility of society. In the

In order to escape his debts, Strepsiades seeks help from Socrates to learn the Inferior Argument, an eloquent argument to convince others and succeed one’s self-interest. However, unable to learn anything, Strepsiades convinces his son to attend the Pondertorium and learns the Inferior Argument by becoming educated. The nature of education is what Aristophanes questions the audience in the play, does higher education help to reform and elevated? It is known to be failure since it is walled off from society. In one scene, Strepsiades asks, “Who on earth is that hanging about up there?” and the student says “Himself...Socrates…You call him! I’m, eh…very busy.” (24). “Himself” is capitalized, symbolizing a god-like form that student stirs away. In the play, he is known to be semi-divine and elevated teacher and his foot on the basket and head in the clouds represents the abstract world. This enhances philosophical speculations because Aristophanes questions Socrates as a figure who is admired and never challenge or engaged in dialogue due to his teachings at the Thinkery. There is no real intellectual activity if Socrates is not questionable; therefore it creates of consequences for society when there is no reliable access to truth, leading to suspicion. Socrates’ intellect just creates a boundary between them and