For you yourselves saw these things in Aristophanes' comedy, a Socrates being carried about there, proclaiming that he was treading on air and uttering a vast deal of other nonsense. Plato, Apology, 19c.
The distinguished historian of philosophy, Justin Smith (who lives and works in Paris), has been running a series of thoughtful and insightful blog posts celebrating a joyful approach to life that makes space for the raunchy and fun (here, here, here), including satire. I agree with the tenor of his remarks.
Even so, philosophers have a history of mistrust of imagistic satire since the trial of Socrates. The mistrust may just be a matter of self-interest rightly understood (don't make fun of us!), but there is, I suspect, a wider recognition that images and satire are dangerous because affectively powerful images tend to stick, well, in one's mind consciously or not. (To be clear: philosophers like being funny and admire humorous philosophers, but that's different from satire.)* So it is no surprise that philosophers have not been kind even to philosophical satirists (restricting myself to the early modernists: De Gournay, Bayle, Toland, Mandeville, Swift, Diderot, [etc.] are barely recognized as philosophers and go unread) in their institutionalized memories. Even those that are frequently satirical (e.g., Hobbes) tend to be read and interpreted in rather earnest fashion.
The mistrust of satire because it is dangerous exists not just because satirical images can be exploited by enemies (cf. Socrates) or because philosophers are especially cowardly or more cowardly than, say, cartoonists. But, rather, satire may be thought to promote the wrong sort of laughter (say) so that the smooth functioning of reflection gets interrupted, even disabled. Interfering with such smoothness may be a good thing (I have, in fact, remarked that we need to pause it a lot more).
The wrong sort of laughter I mention in the previous paragraph is not to be conflated with the perhaps morally objectionable laughter at social inferiors (i.e., kicking down). Satire can engage in both practices -- that is, make fun of those with, say, less cultural capital and undermine public reason -- simultaneously as well as be life-affirming. Of course, there are lots of activities that undermine public reason (e.g., campaign commercials, lobbyists that insert language into treaties and legislation without scrutiny, treating corporations as persons, etc.) in ways that are generally far more harmful to any citizenry than satire. Yet, in so far as philanthropic philosophies aspire to promote public reason -- a key Enlightenment commitment, after all++ -- satire's critics do not just include the morally oversensitive and the misguided defenders of religion, but also those that wish to live in a place where arguments and facts guide us; these philanthropists may not wish to see bans on satire (or worse), but their concerns are not irrational.
*And I am not denying that there is satire to be found even among very well respected philosophers.
++Catarina Novaes Dutilh has diagnosed a streak of intolerance within Enlightenment thought; that's not my present concern.
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