Abstract
The familiar image of Socrates as a midwife presents the philosopher as the one who aids in the birth of truth in the presence of the Good and the Beautiful. In contrast to the figure of the philosopher-midwife, Aristophanes’ Clouds depicts Socrates as the abortionist. In a moment of comic horror, a knock at the door disrupts the concentration of the philosopher-midwife, who accidentally performs an abortion on the verge of delivering a new concept (Cl. 130–40). The comic poet is often seen as mocking the philosopher with the dark, comic image of the midwife-abortionist. However, Plato himself shifts from presenting the philosopher as the midwife who delivers living truth into the world (Symposium) to the image of the abortionist who induces labor only to snuff out the life of the newly born concept (Theaetetus). I suggest that with the image of the midwife-abortionist an alliance is drawn between the comic poet and the philosopher, who self-consciously mimic one another in the act of aborting the very object of aesthetic or philosophical reflection. The Socratic figure of the midwife-abortionist points to a double movement of coming-into-being and coming-out-of-being. In this double movement, I locate a theory of subjectivity in the shape of the monstrous compound of the aborted object and its phantom double.
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Notes
- 1.
In Hegel’s work, the first mention of the subject has a theatrical character, as if subjectivity were itself a comic trope. I capitalize Subject in this context to treat the concept as a proper name of a stage character.
- 2.
Certain strands of ancient skepticism attempt to avoid the disruption of skepticism on a social and political level by limiting the skeptic’s mode on inquiry to a theoretical register. Sextus Empiricus notably argues that because philosophical inquiry cannot lead us to absolute ethical maxims, it is advisable to conform on a practical level to the laws and customs of one’s society (Outlines of Scepticism). Tragedy, however, shows us that “going along” with the laws and customs of one’s society is exactly what leads an individual into a practical epoché, caught between two ethical actions that are both demanded by one’s society but in conflict with each other. Comedy exposes the underlying societal and political contradictions that placed the individual in conflict with herself and her community. The result is total upheaval of the political and ethical systems that structured the tragic stage.
- 3.
For Hegel, self-consciousness is the main stage character of art-religion. In other words, he is interested in how self-consciousness changes shape through different aesthetic, religious, and philosophical representations of human life. Through skepticism and comedy, self-consciousness grasps itself as a pure negativity and, for the moment, will have no sense of despair or nihilism, but will be perfectly at peace with its negative content.
- 4.
The skeptic’s path of doubt leads her to absolute certainty in self. This narrative may sound vaguely Cartesian; however, this foundational self cannot even be counted as a thinking ego. As I will argue, the emergence of the subject out of skepticism takes the form of double negativity. In my framing, this double negativity will not take the form of a negation of a negation (that results in a new positive position), but rather takes the form of negativity redoubled or negative twins: the aborted object and the phantom appearance of the subject.
- 5.
The comic compound of that which appears as subject and that which is aborted at birth is repeated in what Hegel calls “the divine drama” of Christianity. On this stage, God himself mimics the comic poet and skeptic philosopher. In ushering in the birth of the Son of Man, God terminates the object of religion in the form of an absolute One. Thus, the nativity causes even the skeptic to gasp: “Oh my God, what has God done” (Hegel 1977, §752). At the incarnation what occurs on the comic stage sinks in deeper.
Hegel refers to Christ as a “monstrous-compound” (Hegel 2007, 457): a compound of a new appearance of the divine human subject and a terminated object of religion as an undisturbed unity. At the crucifixion of Christ, we come to fully realize something that was conceived between the philosopher and the comic poet, when, in a moment of comic horror, we recognize that this “monstrous-compound” belongs equally to all.
- 6.
Halliwell makes a similar case about the relationship between Socrates and Aristophanes in the introduction to his translation of Clouds (Halliwell 2015, 4–6).
- 7.
The philosopher as the object of ridicule and laughter: Tht. 172c, 174a, 174c. The philosopher’s own ridicule and laughter: Tht. 174d, 175b, 175d.
- 8.
As Halliwell argues (Halliwell 2008), the Athenians were deeply apprehensive concerning the volatile nature of mocking laughter. Given this cultural background, Socrates’ defense of critical laughter, at least in the Theaetetus, is significant. Just as the philosopher needed a comic defender, so was the comic poet was in need of a philosophical defense.
- 9.
One of Socrates’ standup routines rides on Protagoras. Socrates jokes that instead of calling man the measure, Protagoras might have chosen the pig, baboon, or tadpole (Tht. 161c–d). Socrates’ ridicule in the Theaetetus always allows the joke to be turned back onto himself. If Protagoras is correct, Socrates continues, then all of his own philosophy is the laughing stock (Tht. 161–2a).
- 10.
Theaetetus’s surprise birthing of sextuplets is replayed by Trudy Kockenlocker in Preston Sturges’ comedy The Miracle of Morgen’s Creek (Sturges 1944).
- 11.
See for example (Husserl 1989, §§36–7).
- 12.
In his commentary on the Theaetus, Burnyeat (1990) demonstrates that how one chooses to interpret Socrates’ treatment of Protagoras in 151d–84a will determine one’s overall approach to the entire text, which due to the ambiguity of this passage lends itself to very different readings. Burnyeat represents “Reading A” by George Berkeley, who argues that while Socrates embraces a Protagorean framing of perception, he denies perception as a definition of knowledge, since the object of knowledge for Socrates is imperceptible. Berkeley nevertheless identifies Socrates as cherry picking aspects of the philosophies of Theaetetus, Protagoras, and Heraclitus to arrive at his own theory of perception. Burnyeat represents “Reading B” with Richard Price, who argues that Socrates follows Theaetetus via Protagoras and Heraclitus to its own absurd conclusion that culminates in the impossibility of language (179c–83c).
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———. 2007. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson and Trans. Robert F. Brown, Michael Stewart, and Peter C. Hodgson. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Aumiller, R. (2019). The Aborted Object of Comedy and the Birth of the Subject: Socrates and Aristophanes’ Alliance. In: Mascat, J., Moder, G. (eds) The Object of Comedy. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27742-0_5
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