DIALOGUE AND COMEDY IN THE WORK OF PLATO. AN APPROACH TO THE GENRE ISSUE

Abstract

In the following text I intend to discuss one of the most controversial interpretations published recently of the Cratylus. The Montgomery Eugene’s text Plato’s Cratylus, a Comedy of Language is a text that attempts to reveal a sort of comedy in the Cratylus dialogue. My interpretation goes in another path: It intends to connect the Platonic writing genre with tragedy instead of comedy. Furthermore, it aims to evidence a lack of interpretative rigor based on the propositions in which Eugene based his interpretative exercise. It is done with the purpose of show that, even though laughter is present in Plato’s work, its interpretation as a determining factor cannot be useful in the serious comprehension of the topic exactly addressed in the Cratylus: The relationship human-world (ideal?). Thus, identifying by extension Plato’s work with comedy is an interpretation path that far from helping in the ideal construction of a polis, instead it deteriorates.