The Morality of Laughter

7. The Charismatic Virtues: Grace • Taste • Learning

The Charismatic Virtues Why should our virtues be grave? We like ours nimble-footed. Nietzsche, The Gay Science The social virtues are acquired when virtuous acts are repeated until they become habitual. By contrast, the charismatic virtues are not a matter of repetition or stable preferences. Instead, they describe the attributes of what used to be known as a “man of parts.” The gentlemanly charieis was graceful, elegant, and clever, favored of the gods and skilled at taking chara or joy from life or turning a charisma or witty saying. He possessed, as a gift from the gods, physical ‹nesse or grace; aesthetic sense and appreciation or taste; and the intellectual attainments of learning. Grace A child ‹rst laughs like an adult when he encounters a graceless and clumsy person. An adult ‹nds the pratfall less funny, but sees other kinds of clumsiness as more risible. He must pick his way past an immense variety of complicated social events in addition to the occasional ice patch, and if he stumbles anywhere he is risible. His clumsiness might take 108 7 The Charismatic Virtues Comic Vice: Insufficiency Comic Virtue Comic Vice: Excess Clumsiness or gaucherie Grace Excessive finesse Vulgarity Taste Preciousness or camp False pedantry Learning True pedantry many different forms: the man who cuts himself shaving; the speaker who forgets to check his ›y; or the professor of municipal law who, observing a large-breasted student in the front row, begins to discuss the “Titties and Towns Act.” Sexual clumsiness—the faux pas—is a special kind of gaucherie. A colleague of mine once stopped on his way down a very public staircase to whisper something into the ear of a secretary, for which she promptly slapped him. Hard. Nothing daunted, he continued down the stairs to the receptionist, who told him he had a telephone call. He took it, rang off, and handed the telephone back to the receptionist. She held it in her left hand, like a wizened and disgusting object, and with her right reached for a can of disinfectant, which she sprayed over the mouthpiece . A very effective display of contempt all around, and a wonderful source of laughter. While grace is not one of the social virtues, there is still something distinctly social about it. Grace is best displayed in close contact with others, as on the dance ›oor. Consider the Manhattan pedestrian, who navigates his way through a crowd without bumping into other people. Like him, we can walk toward each other and, aided by some mysterious antenna, veer off at the last moment, scarcely aware of the near-miss. This requires a shared rhythm of walking, in which all parties have the same avoidance patterns. There is no such thing as private grace, any more than there is a private language. Rather, grace requires an adherence to common patterns of behavior. So regarded, grace is a solution to a coordination game. In such games, the parties are best off when they hit on the same strategy, whatever this might be. It does not matter whether the rules of the road prescribe that one veers left or veers right before an oncoming person, so long as all people break the same way. Coordination gains are not restricted to the sidewalk or highway, but may be observed in every ‹eld where we interact with one another. In particular, communication requires the coordination that knows when it is one’s turn to speak and when to keep silent, when to signal and when to receive—skills academics possess in short supply. There is such a thing as an optimum amount of grace, that gets us through life’s little corners with agility and without bruised elbows. It follows that there is also such a thing as excessive ‹nesse, where the nimbleness of the dance ›oor is exhibited at the food court. He who minces through the construction site, who sashays through the battle‹eld, who The Charismatic Virtues 109 tiptoes through the tulips, shows an excess of grace and is risible. A wellknown photograph from thirty years ago wonderfully portrays this comic vice. At a dinner for Commonwealth prime ministers at Buckingham Palace, the politicians ‹le into the dining room from a photo-op. Left behind, a youthful Pierre Trudeau performs a pirouette for the photographers , parodying the formality and elegance of his surroundings. Since an excess of grace is risible, Bergson’s account...