The Paradox of ‘Making the Worse Argument the Stronger’: Kenneth Dover and His Reading of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ in Aristophanes’ Clouds

Sir Kenneth James Dover (1920–2010) was a distinguished classical scholar, knighted for services to scholarship in 1977. Dover was an eminent figure in twentieth-century British scholarship: he was the President of the British Academy, the head of the Corpus Christi college in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of St Andrews. His work focused on the stylistics of Greek prose, Greek sexuality, Thucydides, Plato, but especially on Aristophanes, to whom he devoted two editions with commentary (on Clouds and Frogs) and a book aimed at a more general readership. In my paper, I will deal with Dover’s reading of a much-discussed passages of Aristophanes’ Clouds, namely the contest between two dramatis personae of the play—the “Stronger speech” and the “Weaker speech” (v. 889-1114). This part of the play has paradoxical features, since the aim of both contestants is to overturn the arguments of their opponent. The contest ends with the paradoxical triumph of the weaker speech and the defeat of the stronger speech: the stronger speech surrenders and goes over to the side of the weaker speech. This switch of identity has been perceived as paradoxical since Antiquity: in his Apology, written decades later than Aristophanes’ Clouds, Plato recalls this play as the comedy in which Socrates “made the worse argument the stronger” (Ap. 18b-c). Kenneth Dover has brilliantly shown that the contest between the two speeches deals with two opposed models of education that are themselves paradoxical: the old vs. the new education. The old education propounds the age-old value of temperance (sophrosune), but its obsession for homosexual voyeurism makes it unable to stick to it; the new education differs strikingly from the ascetic education that is taught within Socrates’ school, pleading for an unbridled life of pleasure. My paper is devoted to Kenneth Dover’s reading of these paradoxical features. I claim that these features are essential for understanding key aspects of Aristophanes’ Clouds, as well as the reception of this play among later authors (esp. Plato).