October 21, 2020

Bergson on Laughter pt. 1 – History (Episode #145) | Philosophize This! with Stephen West

Check out the Philosophize This! Podcast Page & Episode Notes

“Once you can get people to laugh at something, they never take that thing as seriously ever again” – Paraphrased quote by Voltaire
Comedy and tragedy may seem like polar opposites at first, while they are actually very similar
– They aim to offer a different perspective
– In tragedy, the sacrifice of a hero can evoke a socio-political change in society
– In comedy, the socio-political situation is ridiculed to cause a shift in the public consciousness
Theories of laughter
- Superiority Theory
  - We laugh at things when we feel superior to some element of the joke or situation
- The Relief Theory
  - Sees laughter as a psychological tool to help us release tension
- The Incongruity Theory
  - Aristotle said that the easiest way to make an audience laugh is to set some expectations and then violate them
- Henri Bergson’s Hybrid Theory
  - He synthesizes the strongest parts of the other theories and adds a social element of laughter
    - Laughter has the function to regulate our culture and community

Aristotle was the first to cite “The Incongruity Theory” of laughter in his work Rhetoric

Host: Stephen West (@iamstephenwest)
This is the first part of a series discussing an essay written by Henri Bergson called “Laughter
- In this episode, Stephen sets the stage for Bergson’s essay by discussing the different theories of laughter proposed by different philosophers

We often consider laughter as a marker of happiness
However, throughout history philosophers trying to understand laughter always found a negative connotation to it
Two central themes of theater in ancient Greece were comedy and tragedy
- Comedy and tragedy may seem polar opposites at first, while they are actually very similar
  - In both, there is a problem that arises and a character steps up to offer a solution
  - Both aim to subvert the expectations of the viewer
    - They aim to offer a different perspective
  - In tragedy, the sacrifice of a hero can evoke a socio-political change in society
  - In comedy, the socio-political situation is ridiculed to cause a shift in the public consciousness
  - “Once you can get people to laugh at something, they never take that thing as seriously ever again” – Paraphrased quote by Voltaire

Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, and Descartes viewed laughter through the “Superiority Theory”
- We laugh at things when we feel superior to some element of the joke or situation
  - A common saying is that there’s always a victim in comedy
  - This explains why we laugh when people fall, or when comedians make fun of themselves
    - We feel superior to them
  - When we are laughed at, we feel inferior to the group
- The Superiority Theory cannot explain why we often feel pity for people who are worse off than us
  - It would expect us to laugh
Later, people like Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud proposed “The Relief Theory”
- This theory sees laughter as a psychological tool that helps us release tension in our bodies
- However, we can all think of examples where laughter has nothing to do with releasing tension
The most popular view on laughter is known as “The Incongruity Theory”
- Aristotle was the first to cite it, in his work Rhetoric
  - He said that the easiest way to make an audience laugh is to set some expectations in their heads and then violate them
- This doesn’t mean that anything surprising is supposed to make us laugh
  - We don’t laugh at the incongruity itself, we laugh at the resolution of the incongruity within the context of our expectations
- Again, also this theory doesn’t always hold
Maybe there is no formula for laughter, or maybe these formulas have been too fragmented in the past

He synthesizes the strongest parts of the other theories and adds a social element of laughter
- Laughter has the function to regulate our culture and community
- This is a debated issue to this day
  - Some people still hold that comedy is a tool to speak the truth to power
    - A way to create social change by pointing out what’s wrong with the World
  - But you can also see comedy as just a way to get people to laugh, with no other meaning, by simply saying totally ridiculous things
Both of these approaches are currently considered “Comedy”
- Yet it’s difficult to understand why we laugh at things that are seemingly so different
- This is what Henri Bergson tries to explain in his essay called “Laughter”

comedy, philosophy
Notes By Giorgio Parlato