The familiar image of Socrates as a midwife presents the philosopher as the one who aids in the birth of truth in the presence of the Good and the Beautiful. In contrast to the figure of the philosopher-midwife, Aristophanes’ Clouds depicts Socrates as the abortionist. In a moment of comic horror, a knock at the door disrupts the concentration of the philosopher-midwife, who accidentally performs an abortion on the verge of delivering a new concept (Cl. 130–40). The comic poet is often seen as mocking the philosopher with the dark, comic image of the midwife-abortionist. However, Plato himself shifts from presenting the philosopher as the midwife who delivers living truth into the world (Symposium) to the image of the abortionist who induces labor only to snuff out the life of the newly born concept (Theaetetus). I suggest that with the image of the midwife-abortionist an alliance is drawn between the comic poet and the philosopher, who self-consciously mimic one another in the act of aborting the very object of aesthetic or philosophical reflection. The Socratic figure of the midwife-abortionist points to a double movement of coming-into-being and coming-out-of-being. In this double movement, I locate a theory of subjectivity in the shape of the monstrous compound of the aborted object and its phantom double.