The Morality of Laughter

1. Laughter as Superiority: Hobbes and Bergson • The Normative Foundation Laughter as a Signal

Laughter as Superiority How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus What is lighter and more frivolous than laughter? And yet the most serious thinkers have puzzled over what makes us laugh. From Plato to Kant, philosophers have sought to de‹ne the risible, and even made jokes to explain their theories. Henri Bergson had a genuine sense of humor, and Freud’s jokes (often Jewish ones) were delightful. The shnorrer supplicates the Jewish philanthropic baron for money to take the ‘cure’ at Ostend, as the physician has ordered him to take seabaths for his ailment. The baron remarks that Ostend is an especially expensive resort, and that a less fashionable place would do just as well. But the shnorrer rejects this out of hand. ‘Herr Baron, nothing is too expensive for my health!’ Or, “This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army does not believe in her innocence.”1 But that was then. Modern scholars lack Kant’s light touch, and laughter no longer is a subject of philosophic enquiry. One searches, almost in vain, through the pages of scholarly journals for any sign of wit, for writers today have little time for pasquinade, lampoon or satire. In learned reviews ridicule is thought in poor taste, and the young academic soon learns that humor is a bad career move. The loss of a sense of humor has impoverished academic discourse, where nonsensical theories that could not survive the test of ridicule are now taken seriously. Before adopting a fashionable idea, we ought ‹rst to enquire whether it twigs our sense of humor. Now, if laughter usefully 3 1 identi‹es nonsense, it warrants serious (well, not wholly serious) study. What is it that sparks our laughter? What do Menippean and Augustan satire, vulgar guffaw and polished laughter, have in common? What purposes might laughter serve, and when might it mislead? In this book I stretch a few simple ideas as far as I can, to see if they break. That is the way in which ideas are tested—even the skeptic will admit that this is a useful exercise. Too often, scholars aspire to the condition of a judge: guarded, balanced, and impartial. The result is like an editorial in a sensible liberal newspaper, exquisitely fair and utterly predictable . If short on novel analysis, modern scholarship is safe, for it takes no sides and offends no one. It splits every issue down the middle, offering a neat little slice for everyone. The wonderful thing about such scholarship is that one needn’t actually read it. It suf‹ces to glance at the footnotes , to make sure that all the proper authorities are cited and in the proper order. I shall takes sides, then, and argue that a superiority thesis best explains when we laugh. Laughter signals our recognition of a comic vice in another person—the butt. We do not share in the vice, for we could not laugh if we did. Through laughter, the butt is made to feel inferior, and those who laugh reveal their sense of superiority over him. Superiority theories provide only one of the many explanations that have been advanced to explain laughter. In addition, there are incongruity theories, relief theories, hybrid and other theories. J. Y. T. Greig listed eighty-eight theories of laughter and comedy.2 However, I take the world to divide neatly between superiority and nonsuperiority theories, with only the former affirming that laughter always signals a sense of superiority. Since they describe different aspects of laughter, nonsuperiority theories might overlap with each other and with superiority explanations of laughter. Superiority refers to status differences between jester and butt, incongruity to a mental puzzle, and relief to an emotional state; and there is no reason why we might not ‹nd all three elements in a single laugh. The butt’s defect might seem incongruous, and in laughing we might feel a sense of relief that we are superior to a comic vice. So understood , nonsuperiority theories would not pose a challenge to the superiority account of laughter. For my purposes, therefore, a rival theory is one that denies laughter’s need for a sense of superiority. I distinguish between positive and normative theories of superiority. Part I defends a Positive thesis, which asserts that in laughing we signal a the morality of laughter 4 personal sense of superiority...