ABSTRACT
The ideas expounded by Socrates in the Philebus - a delightful dialogue - first became more known from the Latin translation of Marsilio Ficino, the Florentine Platonist. When Ficino's Latin translation is used, there is no problem: the motor of laughter is our perception not of ugliness but of ignorance. The playfulness of Socrates produces some deliberate obfuscation, but he neatly isolates the two misfortunes or evils which naturally provoke laughter. The first is ignorance; the second is silliness or clownishness. Some readers fused madness and ignorance together. Making folly, madness, the trigger was a great enrichment of both the theory and practice of laughter-raising. Not until 1561 did the medical philosopher Cornarius arbitrarily change 'madness' back to 'ignorance', firmly emending the Greek by putting a gamma into anoia and translating accordingly. He defends his emendations in a learned commentary entitled Eclogue.
