Recent political developments across a number of countries raise urgent questions about the relationship between expertise and democratic authority. If citizens are politically equal, does that mean their opinions should have equal weight? By what right can one critique fellow citizens and their knowledge claims? And how can an “expert” do so without undermining democratic norms or alienating the target of critique to such a degree that their arguments are simply disregarded?

John Lombardini’s The Politics of Socratic Humor is a careful and exhaustive study of the ways in which Socrates’s gelastic practices—that is, his humor, and particularly his irony—were presented by his chroniclers. Lombardini goes beyond the appearance of Socratic irony in Plato, the usual source, to probe the presentation of Socratic irony in Aristophanes, Xenophon, Aristotle, and Hellenistic sources. Paying an impressive level of attention to context, Lombardini argues that anxieties surrounding Socrates’s humor, especially when it was perceived as mockery of fellow citizens or the larger project of Athenian democracy, fundamentally shaped the ways in which his chroniclers portrayed him. Even later discussions of the role of humor in political life that were not primarily focused on Socrates (such as Aristotle’s) were written in the long shadow of that character.

Lombardini takes care to note that his methodological approach is not aimed at uncovering the historical figure of Socrates and how he actually practiced irony in fifth-century Athens; it is motivated instead by his interest in later debates regarding the meaning of Socratic humor. Depending on the writer, then, we get a very different Socrates: a boor who hubristically proclaims his superiority over the demos, a self-effacing ironist who never quite lets on what he thinks in order to draw fellows into his elenctic philosophizing, or a teacher who uses confrontational mockery to improve those who want to lead the demos. Lombardini argues, “The result is neither a democratic nor an antidemocratic reading of the politics of Socratic humor, but one that can explain both its challenge to democratic politics and its potential as a resource for reimagining democratic practices” (p. 25).

Following a concise introduction to the main themes of the book, chapter 1 begins with Aristophanes and focuses primarily on an analysis of Clouds. Lombardini deftly outlines Athenian ideas about democratic authority, demonstrating how Aristophanes framed Socrates’s intellectualism and mockery as a threat not only to claims of democratic equality more generally, but also to the accountability practices that shored up Athenian democracy. Aristophanes then inverts this mockery, making Socrates himself into an object of laughter. This allows the audience to reject Socratic claims of intellectual superiority, buttressing the democratic ideology in the polis.

Chapter 2 moves to the more familiar territory of Socratic irony in Plato, but through the lens of Lombardini’s effort to analyze that irony in light of a larger debate about the antidemocratic implications of Socrates’s work. Ranging over a number of dialogues, Lombardini sees eirôneia there as a solipsistic form of irony—a type of practical joke in which the ironist him- or herself is the main audience. This is an incredibly indirect form of pedagogical mockery, potentially lost on interlocutors. In contrast to Aristophanes’s depiction, Plato’s Socrates does not engage in those practices to undermine democratic norms, nor does he do so to offer some particular teaching. Instead, the point is to push forward the elenchus that could ultimately benefit Athenians. Here the book emphasizes the psychological implications of Socratic humor, paying special attention to the ways in which Plato dramatizes the interlocutors’ varying reactions to Socrates. As a result, readers see how the ambiguous effects of Socrates’s humor are fundamentally shaped by the relationship between Socrates and the particular interlocutor. This positions Plato as being primarily focused on explaining the range of reactions to Socrates and how he both threatened and negotiated democratic norms.

Chapter 3 moves to Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates, which argues that Socrates never denies possessing knowledge (in contrast to the Platonic Socrates) but instead uses that knowledge to be of service to the polis. The goal of the more direct form of Socratic irony there is to facilitate Socrates’s effort to make his knowledge useful to Athens by motivating elites to educate themselves.

Chapter 4 transitions to Aristotle and away from texts that use the figure of Socrates in direct ways. Still, it suggests that the lingering anxieties about the relationship between Socrates’s gelastic practices and democracy were key to Aristotle’s discussion of humor. His account of eutrapelia—the virtue of joking and laughing well—plays a central role as a counterpoint to his predecessors’ discussions of Socratic humor. Lombardini shows how Aristotle connects Socratic irony with magnanimity, whereas eironeia more generally is positioned as a “vicious” practice, so even the truly magnanimous practitioner still lacks the reciprocity necessary for political friendship.

Chapter 5 takes up the Hellenistic period, reviewing the legacy of Socratic eironeia in Epicurean, Stoic, and Cynic thought and the role such practices might take in both philosophical education and in crafting a life outside of convention. The final chapter continues this consideration of eutrapelia as “educated hubris” centered on a reciprocal generosity on the humorist’s part, one that holds out the possibility not only of teaching but also of learning from one’s interlocutors.

Lombardini’s attention to the psychological elements of the texts and the variation in reception is impressive and convincing, opening productive avenues for political theorizing. In this effort, he helps reveal the psychosocial aspects of democracy and the challenges of both political critique and civic education. Given the current assaults on expertise from pathological forms of populism (particularly at a moment when some expertise is critically important for addressing an existential threat such as climate change), the therapeutic possibilities of irony deserve careful consideration—as do irony’s threats to democratic norms and community.

At the same time, I wanted to hear more about how these ideas and insights might travel. Although the book’s central contribution lies in the detailed contextualization of the presentation of Socratic humor in these particular sources, Lombardini also hints at the potential significance of his analysis beyond the Athenian and Hellenistic contexts. With the Aristotle discussion, readers do get more of this broader examination, so I was less prepared for the shift back to Socrates in the Hellenistic texts. My attention had shifted to this broader treatment of humor in politics and how these power dynamics play in different regime types. How might these gelastic practices look today? What are the critical divergences? What might be done to counter the negative aspects of irony in particular, and is doing so worth the risk?

Alternatively, even a more focused conclusion on the continued impact of Socratic humor and these texts might suffice; that is, not just in the Hellenistic era, but also today. In either case, I think this would also likely require a more involved discussion of the layers of audience—not only Socrates himself, the interlocutors, and his chroniclers, but also the spectators to Socrates’s examination of others (Athenians who might have read these texts) and contemporary readers and scholars. The politics in each of these cases would be different, as Lombardini notes, but I was seeking an examination of those differences. Given the state of contemporary politics and the questions swirling around democratic power, the role of expertise, and civic education, spending time unsettling our ideas with Lombardini’s detailed analysis is a fine start—and one I hope will be brought back into the present.