In Deference to the Other: Lonergan and Contemporary Continental Thought

8. Lonergan and the Ambiguity of Postmodern Laughter

Chapter 8 Lonergan and the Ambiguity of Postmodern Laughter RONALD H. MCKINNEY, S.J. I n the 1980s I wrote several articles arguing for the right to consider Bernard Lonergan’s work in the context of what we now refer to as “postmodernism.”1 However, in 1991, I reversed myself and wrote a paper in which I tried to deconstruct the foundational character of his thoughts.2 Perhaps it is time for me to reexamine my ambivalent stance toward Lonergan by means of a curious postmodern device: showing something marginal in a thinker’s work to be quite central after all. In Insight, Lonergan’s attempt to deal with the problem of liberation is facilitated by his making reference to “possible functions of satire and humor.”3 His discussion here of the relevance of Kierkegaard’s categories of comedy for his overall project takes a mere three pages of space in a work containing 748 pages in all. Indeed, to my knowledge, this is the only treatment of the topic of humor to be found anywhere in Lonergan’s collected works. And yet I wish to argue in this chapter that it is precisely this apparently marginal issue of laughter for Lonergan that allows us to see in an intriguing way to possible postmodern dimensions of his thought. Before attempting an analysis of these significant few pages in Insight, I must first provide the reader a context for understanding how crucial the topic of laughter is for understanding the postmodern project. Therefore, I will first examine the debate surrounding Umberto Eco’s brilliant and successful novel, The Name of the Rose. This postmodern masterpiece concerns the discovery of Aristotle’s lost manuscript, Poetics II, regarding the nature of comedy, and the murderous intrigue it provokes in 141 a medieval monastery centuries ago. This novel provides Eco the opportunity to raise, within a narrative format, the theoretical issue of the role of laughter in our postmodern culture. However, Karl-Josef Kuschel, who claims to be defending a more Christian notion of laughter, has accused him of advocating a “nihilistic” perspective on comedy. Finally, before ending with an analysis of Lonergan’s work, I will consider Kierkegaard’s own theory of comedy and tragedy in light of the current debate as to whether Kierkegaard himself can be regarded as a protopostmodernist. Hopefully, the reader will discover that laughter provides a very important lens for assessing the postmodern nature of Lonergan’s thought. Eco versus Kuschel Eco’s The Name of the Rose presents two divergent ways of assessing the therapeutic value of laughter in our postmodern world.4 There is the view of Jorge, a Benedictine monk who denounces the dangers of laughter and desires to hide Aristotle’s book on comedy from the world, and the opposing perspective of William of Baskerville, the Franciscan who champions Aristotle’s affirmation of laughter. Knowing full well that Scripture never mentions that Jesus ever laughed, Jorge follows the Benedictine tradition in his mistrust of laughter . He argues that not “everything that is proper to man is necessarily good. He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating” (131). Jorge, an ardent supporter of traditional authority, claims that our proper function in life is to contemplate the truth, not to laugh at it, since laughter only fosters doubt (132). Jorge admits that the church allows simple peasant folk their entertainment during the time of carnival as a way of purging unhealthy emotions , but still “laughter remains base, a defense for the simple, a mystery desecrated for the plebeians” (474). He opposes the world’s discovery of Poetics II, since it would give people Aristotle’s valued permission not to fear the devil: “That laughter is proper to man is a sign of our limitation, sinners that we are. But from this book, many corrupt minds like yours would draw the extreme syllogism, whereby laughter is man’s end!” (474). In Jorge’s mind, the discovery of this long-forgotten book would help people leap to the conclusion that what is base and marginal is actually the way to salvation; indeed, they would be likely to accept the art of mockery 142 In Deference to the Other in place of the...