The Forgotten Comedy of the Socratic Turn

• Author: Jeremy J. Mhire
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912913475364
• Date: 01 December 2013
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

66(4) 732 –744

© 2013 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912913475364

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Article

By his own admission, Leo Strauss’s focus in his book

Socrates and Aristophanes is the profound change

Socrates underwent as his fervent interests in nature, so

aptly caricatured in Aristophanes’s Clouds, shift pro-

foundly to questions of the good, the just, and the noble

for which he is immortally known.1 For those willing to

grant even the slightest credence to Aristophanes’s por-

trait, Strauss’s focus is indeed important: were there rea-

sons theoretical rather than idiosyncratic that led the once

passionate student of nature to concern himself in an

equally passionate way with political life?2 Certainly the

status of moral and political matters is at issue in

Socrates’s turn, to say nothing of the distinction itself

between nature and convention.

Political theorists especially would do well to consider

Socrates’s turn as does Strauss, for implied therein is a

question central to the history of political thought: what is

political philosophy?3 Following Strauss’s approach in

this matter is not altogether easy, however. Despite his

focus on Socrates, the theme of Socrates and Aristophanes

is poetry’s quarrel with philosophy, and Strauss’s method

is to interpret comprehensively Aristophanes’s extant

corpus. In one sense, Strauss’s approach is understand-

able; Aristophanes’s poetry—especially his Clouds—

provides the earliest evidence of the manner in which

Socrates lived before his turn to political philosophy. But

in another sense, Strauss’s approach seems odd; of

Aristophanes’s eleven surviving plays, only in Clouds

does Socrates figure prominently, and that prominence is

negative, that is, his philosophizing is the subject of a

caricature. By turning to Aristophanes’s corpus as a

whole, Strauss makes poetry rather than philosophy his

concern as such. To that end, Strauss seems intent on tak-

ing seriously poetry’s claim to wisdom.4

Regardless of whatever else it may mean, Strauss’s

approach requires thinking poetically about philosophy

as the condition for understanding political philosophy. It

may also imply that, whatever their deeper disagree-

ments, poetry and political philosophy agree in this fun-

damental respect: both are of a mind as to the character of

“pre”-Socratic philosophy. Strauss gives some indication

that this is in fact his view; he ends Socrates and

Aristophanes with an unremarkable though pregnant

assertion: the best account of Socrates’s turn to political

philosophy, and presumably the one he bases his interpre-

tation upon, is offered by the ninth-century Persian phi-

losopher al-Razi in his The Philosophical Way of Life.5 As

did Aristophanes, al-Razi shows the “early” Socrates to

475364PRQXXX10.1177/1065912913

475364Political Research QuarterlyMhire

1Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jeremy J. Mhire, Louisiana Tech University, P.O. Box 9988, Ruston, LA

71272, USA

Email: jmhire@latech.edu

The Forgotten Comedy of the Socratic

Turn: Assessing the Role of al-Razi’s The

Philosophical Way of Life in Leo Strauss’s

Socrates and Aristophanes

Jeremy J. Mhire1

Abstract

Leo Strauss ends his Socrates and Aristophanes with a pregnant assertion: the best account of the Socratic turn is offered

by al-Razi in his The Philosophical Way of Life. Al-Razi’s account thus provides two invaluable opportunities: to gain some

insight into Strauss’s unique understanding of Socrates, and the chance to examine the problem of Socrates from a

nontraditional vantage point. Taking advantage of these opportunities reveals an oft-overlooked moment in the history

of political philosophy: Socrates’s discovery of the regime. This essay examines al-Razi’s account while also casting a

new light on Strauss’s own scholarship.

Keywords

Strauss, Socrates, Aristophanes, al-Razi, regime