Near the beginning of Book 3 of the Republic, Plato, through Socrates, tells us that the guardians, the soldier-police force of his ideal state, should not be lovers of laughter (φιλογέλως).  Why should this be?

First we must get a sense of what this term means, since some might mistakenly take laughter-loving to be, quite loosely, engaging in laughter at all.  But this is clearly an extreme construal of the term; rather, it is clarified by similar terms used in Book 6 where Socrates invokes “lover,” “wine-lover,” and “honor-lover” and others to hone in on what we mean by “love” in such words (474e-475b).  Socrates explains that the “love” in common between these uses of the term mean that,

whatever we say someone loves, it is necessary to say of him, if this is said correctly, that it is not the case he loves one part of it and does not love another part, but he loves all of it”  (Republic, 474c9-11) (1)

This is to say that the true lover of X does not love discriminately. As he later says of a lover of learning, he is not “annoyed at learning” (475b11). (2)  The lover of X is neither finicky nor does he refuse any appearance of X, but he cannot get enough of it, as we might say.  This lover of learning, the true philosopher, tastes of all learning and learns with delight (475c6-8). 

So we learn from this that a “lover” of X, pursues X to the extreme, has a mania for it, a certifiable obsession for finding and cherishing, say, wine, in all its forms.  This is one reason, then, why we do not want our military force of guardians to be lovers of laughter.  We do not want them to be pursuing laughter at the expense of the bodily and mental training necessary for a disciplined military.

But there is another reason to be wary of letting our soldiers indulge in loving laughter.  Mimesis is an overarching theme in Book 3 and it touches on laughter here as well.  At 395b-c Socrates says that we want our guardians to attend to one thing, the freedom of the city.  To this end they should be educated to imitate men who are, “courageous, moderate, pious, free and all such traits” (395c4-5). (3)  Not explicitly mentioned here, but obviously in mind, are the comedic plays of authors such as Aristophanes.  The characters in these plays are crude and buffoonish. As Aristotle characterizes comedy, these people are perceived to be beneath our station in life.  We have also been told that we need poets to compose characters who are worthy of emulation, unlike the sordid tales of adultery among the gods or unmoderated rage we find in Homer, for example.  Combining the above ideas, we do not want our guardians to have the disposition of laughter-loving, nor do we want to provide material which would encourage and develop the baser elements of character, which would distract guardians from their singular goal of ensuring the safety of the city.  We do not wish of our guardians buffoons, nor do we wish our city to be a haven of fools. 

REFERENCES:

(1)
ὃν ἂν φῶμεν φιλεῖν τι, δεῖ φανῆναι αὐτόν, ἐὰν ὀρθῶς
λέγηται, οὐ τὸ μὲν φιλοῦντα ἐκείνου, τὸ δὲ μή, ἀλλὰ πᾶν
στέργοντα

(2)
περὶ τὰ μαθήματα δυσχεραίνοντα 

(3)
ἀνδρείους, σώφρονας, ὁσίους, ἐλευθέρους, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα