A Portrait of the Artist in Politics: Justice and Self-Interest in Aristophanes' Acharnians

The first extant play of Aristophanes, Acharnians, contains an eerily modern thought-experiment: what if justice is self-interest, rightly understood? The drama examines evidence for the hypothesis in three contexts: international relations; relations between the citizen and the polity; and a special case of the latter, relations between the artist and the polity. The drama shows how rudimentary justice can be secured by promoting economic interests over citizenship and artistic dissent over loyalty. Historically, these thoughts on justice—as refined in Aristophanes' later works—constitute an ancient analog of early liberal thought with its derivation of justice from interest. They represent a pre-Platonic position on justice that differs from both Sophistic and conventional Greek thinking. Normatively, Aristophanes' thought sheds light on weaknesses in modern justice theory. By making the artist's political function the linchpin of a vision of justice, Acharnians suggests a new way to view justice in relation to self-interest.