Attempts to trace the conceptual history of the bios theōrētikos have tended to begin with the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, in which the bios theōrētikos emerges as an ideal among philosophers as they attempt to articulate and evaluate what it means to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of intellectual activity as an end in itself. In this study, I present a new account of the early history of the bios theōrētikos by interpreting this fourth-century philosophical discourse in relation to fifth-century comic discourse about contemporary intellectual culture. Drawing on the work of intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg, I argue that Plato’s presentation of the theoretical philosopher as a laughable figure allows us to draw a conceptual connection between the Platonic-Aristotelian bios theōrētikos and the comic poets’ characterization of Socrates. I show that the comic poets consistently contrast Socrates with the Sophists, presenting him as a thinker who is laughable for his pursuit of useless knowledge to the detriment of his own well-being. Further developing this observation, I challenge the prevailing interpretation of Aristophanes’ Clouds, demonstrating how in this play, too, Socrates is primarily characterized as an unworldly and impractical theorist who pursues his research with no concern for practical benefits. I argue also that this understanding of the comic Socrates helps us to understand why the comic poets associate Socrates and the tragedian Euripides, who both as a character on the comic stage and as a tragic playwright plays an important role in contemporary attempts to think through the value of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.After demonstrating how we can interpret the comic poets’ depiction of Socrates as a mocking critique of a life dedicated to the pursuit of insubstantial and ineffectual knowledge, I consider the influence that this comic discourse exerts on Plato’s novel conceptualization of philosophy as a way of life that holds intellectual theōria as its highest activity. In tracing how this comic critique of philosophy functions as a thematic through-line in four Socratic dialogues in which he advances his particular understanding of philosophy, I argue that for Plato, the comic critique of philosophy represents an inherent tension between the philosopher and the non-philosophic political community, one which will eventually lead to the theoretical philosopher’s complete rejection of political activity. Thus, through a generically grounded and philosophically informed re-examination of the characterization of Socrates in the extant corpus of Old Comedy, I show that it is not Plato or Aristotle in the fourth century, but Aristophanes and the comic poets of the fifth, who took the first steps in articulating and evaluating the concept of a bios theōrētikos understood as a life dedicated to the pursuit of intellectual activity as an end in itself.