The Politics of Socratic Humor

Was Socrates an ironist? Did he mock his interlocutors and, in doing so, show disdain for both them and the institutions of Athenian democracy?&#160; These questions were debated with great seriousness by generations of ancient Greek writers and helped to define a primary strand of the western tradition of political thought. By reconstructing these debates,&#160;<I>The Politics of Socratic Humor&#160;</I>compares the very different interpretations of Socrates developed by his followers&mdash;including such diverse thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and the Hellenistic philosophers&mdash;to explore the deep ethical and political dimensions of Socratic humor and its implications for civic identity, democratic speech, and political cooperation. Irony has long been seen as one of Socrates&rsquo; most characteristic features, but as Lombardini shows, irony is only one part of a much larger toolkit of Socratic humor, the broader intellectual context of which must be better understood if we are to appropriate Socratic thought for our own modern ends.