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Comedy and Platonic Interpretation
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Comedy and Platonic Interpretation

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Philosophy and Classics in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 1219

Editor

Prof. Dr. Sonja Tanner

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA
Interests: ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the intersection of philosophy and literature; classics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nietzsche describes the Platonic dialogues as the lifeboat on which Socrates rescues the drowning, older forms of poetry, only to finish off comedy. Comedy thus appears as the lone form of poetry abolished, rather than resuscitated, by these dialogues. Recent and forthcoming works counter this, addressing questions regarding the status of comedy in these dialogues by centering on Plato’s use of humor and Platonic critiques and appropriations of comedy. One of the challenges that acknowledging comedy in these dialogues poses is how this affects the interpretation. Thus, the aim of this Special Issue of Humanities is to provide a multi-disciplinary approach focusing on how comedy in the Platonic dialogues impacts how we interpret them. Papers concerning all aspects of the Platonic dialogues and their reception are welcome, including, but not limited to, the following:

  • How comical content and/or comical form (comical structure, multigenericism, metatheatrical elements, etc.) change and possibly even constitute a form of philosophical thinking or argument;
  • How reading comical dimensions impacts issues of gender;
  • Affective work on comical aspects in the dialogues;
  • How Platonic dialogues engage with (the works of) Aristophanes and other comical poets;
  • The reception of dialogues, including how later ancient thinkers (Cicero, Quintilian, Plutarch, etc.) interpreted comical matters in the dialogues;
  • How comical dimensions in the dialogues have impacted determinations of their authenticity. 

Prof. Dr. Sonja Tanner
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Platonic dialogues
  • philosophy and comedy
  • Socrates and Aristophanes
  • literary interpretation 
  • ancient humor

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 351 KB  
Article
The Comic Mask of Socrates: Irony, Initiation, and the Pedagogy of Laughter in Plato’s Symposium
by Shlomy Mualem
Humanities 2026, 15(7), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15070089 - 6 Jul 2026
Viewed by 228
Abstract
Nietzsche claimed, in The Birth of Tragedy, that the Platonic dialogues are the lifeboat on which Socrates rescues older poetry, only to finish off comedy. This article contests that claim. Distinguishing comedy (a mode organized around to geloion, whose object Plato [...] Read more.
Nietzsche claimed, in The Birth of Tragedy, that the Platonic dialogues are the lifeboat on which Socrates rescues older poetry, only to finish off comedy. This article contests that claim. Distinguishing comedy (a mode organized around to geloion, whose object Plato himself defines in the Philebus as self-ignorance) from irony (a two-level device of meaning), it argues that Socratic irony in Plato is comic in a precise threefold sense: genealogically, as the inheritance of the eirōn-mask from the Aristophanic Clouds; structurally, wherever the dialogues frame it for staged laughter; and thematically, as the instrument of the laughing exposure of doxosophia. Drawing on Kierkegaard’s reading of the Socratic maieutic as ‘indirect communication’ and Vlastos’s concept of ‘complex irony,’ the article offers a close reading of Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium within the generic frame Plato himself names at 222d: the satyr-play, ‘tragedy at play,’ in which tragic material is held inside a laughing form. The speech’s mythological imagery (Silenus, Marsyas, Corybants, Sirens) carries a coordinated dark sub-text that reverses its overt meaning—the satyric signature, not a departure from the comic. Against Vlastos, who locates pedagogical failure in Alcibiades’ self-deception, and Lane, who finds complex irony’s deliberate indeterminacy ethically indefensible, the article proposes a meta-ironic resolution: Plato stages both positions simultaneously, performing at the authorial level the very pharmakon-logic the speech describes—a seriocomic philosophical method grounded in the mythological ambivalence of the theatre of Dionysus. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Comedy and Platonic Interpretation)
20 pages, 330 KB  
Article
Plato on Laughing at People
by Sarah Lemoine (Jansen)
Humanities 2026, 15(6), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/h15060080 - 19 Jun 2026
Viewed by 533
Abstract
In this paper I explore the ethics of laughing at people, drawing on Platonic moral psychology to show why malicious laughter is spiritually destructive. Contra the view that Plato opposes laughter, I argue that for Plato, laughter plays an important role in discourse. [...] Read more.
In this paper I explore the ethics of laughing at people, drawing on Platonic moral psychology to show why malicious laughter is spiritually destructive. Contra the view that Plato opposes laughter, I argue that for Plato, laughter plays an important role in discourse. Through a new analysis of both the dialectic and drama of the Philebus, I argue that Plato distinguishes between specific forms of bad and good laughing at people; the former harms the soul and stifles human inquiry, whereas the latter benefits the soul and furthers human inquiry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Comedy and Platonic Interpretation)
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