Socrates - Head in The Clouds

The seed of arrogance is the perception of self-wisdom. It is in this light that Aristophanes portrays the hopeless Socrates. Socrates is a man bent on arguing the unarguable for the sake of expressing some sense of higher understanding and knowledge. Aristophanes emphasizes Socrates’ detriment to society, exposing Socrates to be a man who teaches men to be idle and weasel their way out of duties and responsibilities. Aristophanes shows Socrates as a man so desperate to speak or discover something profound that he takes to examining the noise made by a gnat. Socrates attempts to convince his students that it is the gnat’s anus that is making the noise. Socrates even throws culture and tradition to the wind in search of some higher self-knowledge and wisdom bragging rights. Socrates says, stupid are those who believe in the gods of old, it is the clouds that hold sway over mankind. We get the idea from Aristophanes that Socrates is pulling thing out of thin air to sound wise.
Socrates is not really a good person or a bad person, he is more aptly a lost person. Socrates is a man with all the knowledge in the world, but he’s got his head in the clouds. In terms of a role model Socrates is a bad person. However, he is a teacher and a pursuer of higher knowledge, two things that describe many good people. The problem is that Socrates has wasted his knowledge on useless, idle things. Socrates’ knowledge could even be described as detrimental, confusing the unjust with the just. He truly is lost in his search for whatever it is he thinks he’s searching for.
With the representation Aristophanes gives us of Socrates, it is safe to say that Socrates is not doing anything useful with his life, but rather he is caught in a web of idleness. Some of Socrates great teachings revolve around twisting words so that unjust becomes just. With these teachings, Socrates feels as though he can look down on others. He has taken the pursuit of higher knowledge to the extreme, and therefore we should not admire him. Ironically, as he searches harder for the profound, he becomes more idle and useless.
Aristophanes does well in his play to satirize the philosophical “work” of Socrates. Some of Socrates’ ponderings are exaggerated to a ridiculous level. Although Greek philosophy often delved into topics seen as useless, it is quite a stretch to believe that philosophers went around asking the question “does the sound a gnat makes come from its mouth or its anus?” In this way Aristophanes makes fun of Socrates and makes him look like a fool. Paradoxically, a man so striving to be wise is seen as a fool. Aristophanes puts together a well developed plot to show what Socrates teachings inspire. Thanks to his portrayal of Socrates, we see just what it looks like to be a useless cloud gazer.