The Timeless Clouds

In his play, Clouds, Aristophanes presents the ideas of the Superior and Inferior arguments. These arguments represent the old Athenian way of education and the new Athenian way of education, as taught by the sophists. The play criticizes these ways of thinking, making the Inferior Argument out to be a corrupting and negative influence, and the Superior Argument out to be a blind fool. The point Aristophanes was trying to make, was that neither of these arguments was the correct way of educating the youth of Athens at the time.

This idea that Aristophanes presents in his play, is a timeless theme. The idea of new (liberal) ways of doing things, is almost always seen by society to be immoral at first, whereas the old (conservative) ways of doing things, are sometimes seen to be foolish and ingrained in society for no other reason than tradition. While the play itself does not suggest that the Inferior Argument's (liberal) ways of education hold any unseen virtues, it does show that the Superior Argument's (conservative) ways are also not entirely correct.

We can look at any point in history and see the clash of new ideas with society. During the Civil War, which was fought over the idea that slavery was unjust, or the Women’s rights movement, which was fought over the idea that women should have all the rights that men do, or anytime before or after these examples, we will find ideas and concepts that we could relate to the Superior and Inferior arguments.

Even today, we can look at ideas that only until recently, and even to this day in some cases, were seen to be corrupt and immoral, just look at homosexuality. This idea was regarded a majority of the population to be obscene until only fairly recently, even to this day, there are many people who will argue that acting on homosexual impulses goes against the laws of nature, or the will of God. We could also look at the idea of sex outside of marriage, while there are also many other reasons to not have sex outside of marriage, such as STD’s, the immorality of the act was what had prevented the act from being widespread in society for many centuries. It was not until only recently that these ideals (Superior Arguments) were challenged by new ways of thinking (Inferior Arguments) during the sexual revolution during the 1960-80’s.

Aristophanes seemed to present Socrates in a rather bad light in his play, but what was his real intent behind his satirical representation? Looking at the play’s surface, one might think that he was merely insulting Socrates, but Socrates himself is said to have “Characterized Aristophanes as not attacking him, but a generic intellectual or sophist of his own invention.” (Quote on page 86 of the book) Socrates did not see Aristophanes as insulting him, so perhaps his representing Socrates was not an attack on Socrates or the Sophist way of thinking in particular, but the conventional idea that all new, or ‘Inferior’ ways of thinking are immoral, and that the traditional, or ‘Superior’ ways of thinking are always perfect. If this was indeed the thought process behind Aristophanes’ Clouds, than I for one, think the man was a genius.