The Clouds by Aristophanes shows a contrast between the old and the new. We can witness this in the competition between the Just and Unjust speech. Pheidippides’ new ways become more important than Strepsiades, his father’s ways. Pheidippides disrespects his father’s authority and shuns his ways. Their relationship is similar to the just and unjust speech. While the just speech stands for the customs, traditions, and mores in Ancient Greek existence, the unjust speech represents the newfangled concept that goes against the doings of the old traditions. As a result, we see a strong competition between these two ways of life. Pheidippides represents the Unjust while his father Strepsiades corresponds to the Just.
The contest between the Just Speech and the Unjust Speech also explains the social transformation is a process of intense search and learning, which requires constant moments of analysis, reflection, and questioning. The private world, in this sense, has understood that in a world as changing and fast as we live now, who do not adapt and is not constantly reinvented, loses. This cultural change that has reached different aspects of modern life has also attained the level of the public. The adoption of co-creation, design thinking, collaborative work, open innovation, among others are proposing new ways to think about the public and reach new approaches to transform reality. Pheidippides’ behavior towards his father Strepsiades shows how old is losing its grip on society.
This contest is significant in that during this time; the Athenians were trying to synchronize between religion and science. Religion in this sense represents what used to be their point of reference. However, with the development of science, the old ways of the Athenians started to appear vague. When new-fangled scientific theories were beginning to arise and be questioned, many individuals started to understand things better.
The Unjust Speech states that the Just was old. Eventually the Unjust speech defeats the Just speech and flourishes in Greece. This contest between the Just speech and the unjust speech is a manifestation of how the old is slowly losing to the new forms of life not just in Greek mythology but also in real life. We can associate the Unjust speech to the main historical phenomena associated with modernity (capitalism, humanism, national states) before they are formed over the centuries. Two of the factors that most contributed to the decline of the medieval mentality and the transition to a new era was Humanism and the Renaissance, movements that developed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Humanism contributed to the individual and collective revaluation of everything human. Its objective was the enhancement of human dignity.
As can be seen in The Clouds, Aristophanes explains his repudiation of the new pedagogies that insurrection in Athens. It is important to clarify that Aristophanes erroneously chose Socrates as the target of his criticism because he identified with him the most famous representative of those individuals for whom he was deeply disdained: the sophists, the wise men who paid to teach the art of rhetoric to overcome any litigation. Similarly, it is as if, for criticism of the churches, we point to Jesus Christ. Socrates was a Master in teaching the instrument and not responsible for their misuse of it. The Just personifies civic values, respect for traditions and elders. Already the Unjust incorporates the new values, where hedonism, cunning, and opportunism are praised.
For instance, anguished, the old and indebted Strepsiades regrets that as the phases of the moon change, the maturity of the debt is approaching. In spite of all his despair, both the son and his slave do nothing but sleep and lazy around. It is useless to lament, then, with the possibility of war, it is easy for slaves to disown. Unable to succeed in Socrates, for lacking intellectual preparation, he insisted and praised that he had succeeded in persuading and enrolling his son. Strepsiades celebrates and does not hide his expectation with the success that the art of rhetoric promises.
To the son, Pheidippides, the two modes of saying are presented, that is, the two types of Reasoning: Fair and Unjust. The first to manifest is the Just. He addresses himself to the Unjust, asking him to advance and introduce himself to the spectators, he (the Unjust), who is so convinced. The son gets ready to go where the father wants and says that it is even easier to defeat him before the public. Strepsiades, indignant asks who Pheidippides is to try and beat him.
Undoubtedly, Aristophanes manages to introduce an element of confusion into that delicate fabric that separates what we consider a true philosopher and sophist that Plato later strives to distinguish from the master Socrates in his dialogues. In that, I think, is part of the joke of the comedy: in disconcerting the viewer pretending to ignore the difference. Thus, the fineness of his art obtains with Socrates, as a comic person, something different from the exaggeration or the mistake. We see a philosopher in the act of being subjected to a delicate process of deconstruction.
Philosophers have always hated to be confused with what they are most alike, that is to say, taken by sophists. Comedy has emerged in Greece, we know, more or less parallel to the tragedy, and is distinguished by its demystifying character. If the tragedy lives on the myth which is given to some extent by the characters, the comedy concentrates on dissolving: this is why it is said that it is part of those parties of reversion, in which things come to something other than which they usually are, at least while the party lasts.
But you ask me a complicated question: of whether there was a sophistical side in the philosopher who occupies us. There are indications that this was so, although in large part this is quite innocent. Socrates also appears inviting his house to discuss important issues, if we are to believe Plato in the Timaeus. He is not so far removed from a role of head of school. In the Menexeno, tries to rival the rhetoricians giving a speech that says is from Aspasia. Sophists are usually orators, and the very fact that they sometimes have to rival them through speeches shows how close they are. At the time Aristophanes wrote Clouds, I have the impression that it was not as easy to distinguish them as now or in Plato's day we suppose it was. There was a majority that condemned Socrates, among other things, because he was believed to be an atheist and irreligious sophist. Socrates' Apology is a testimony to this popular confusion.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is hard to account for the richness of content and forms of a work of art as complex and diverse as the comedies of Aristophanes. They are literature and are theater; reflect the reality of their time and at the same time deform it; show us themes and figures of daily life, and are full of fantasy. Aristophanes made theater, his battlefield, where he carried the political, social, educational and religious concerns of his day. Sarcastic, these comedies are easy and pleasant to read: rich in puns, jocosity, and even obscenities. Targeting the most influential personalities, he did not spare elders or young people, poor or rich