Clouds: Intellectuals and Philosophy

Performed at a particularly dramatic moment during the first phase of the Peloponnesian War, in the thick of the ensuing moral and political crisis in Athens, Clouds focuses on the conflict between tradition and modernity, between fidelity to the values of the democratic polis and the new sophistic-Socratic culture that those values strongly challenged. This conflict, expressed in the comic plot on the dual familial/generational and cultural/philosophical levels, with its important ethical, political, and sociological implications, sheds invaluable light on the peculiar status of intellectuals and philosophers in Athens during the 420s. This chapter will explore the figure of the intellectual in Athenian society, against the backdrop of the so-called Greek enlightenment of the classical age, together with the problem of the historicity of the character of Socrates sketched in the Clouds. After a brief summary of the plot, we will turn to the idea of the fraudulence of arguments from science, rhetoric, sophistry, and philosophy, and, in general, the polarity between practical life and intellectual activity.