Aristophane

Summary

Dominique Pagani discusses Aristophanes mainly through a formula he borrows from Hegel and repeats from 2016 to 2023: the laughter of his comedies resounds over the ruins of Athens, or of the Greek city12. In his view, Aristophanes closes the Greek aesthetic cycle: comedy comes after the tragic movement and marks its end3. He uses him to illustrate a more general idea, that the comic is the final stage of the great aesthetic cycles4. He speaks sometimes of humour, sometimes of "sneering", to describe the moment when Greek tragedy comes to an end5. In a different context, he cites him among the sources on Socrates: Aristophanes provides the oldest testimony in the Socratic doxography. He also counts him, as the "comedy-maker", among Socrates' accusers, since *The Clouds* equates Socrates with the physicists6.

1. 1Hegel on the Beach 5/52 Feb 2016 · 2:22:46
2. 2#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata15 Jan 2021 · 12:50
3. 3#9 Pictures at an Exhibition: art, seen from here or from the other side?10 Feb 2022 · 58:33
4. 4#16 Return to the logics of the subject30 Jul 2020 · 1:11:51
5. 5Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre”29 Sept 2023 · 23:58
6. 6From Plato to world revolution14 Jul 2022 · 12:32

Summary produced automatically from 12 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.