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
Key Takeaways
- “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
- He synthesizes the strongest parts of the other theories and adds a social element of laughter
- Superiority Theory
Books Mentioned
- Aristotle was the first to cite “The Incongruity Theory” of laughter in his work Rhetoric
Intro
- 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
Comedy and Tragedy
- 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
- Comedy and tragedy may seem polar opposites at first, while they are actually very similar
Historical Overview of Laughter
- 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
- We laugh at things when we feel superior to some element of the joke or situation
- 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
- Aristotle was the first to cite it, in his work Rhetoric
- Maybe there is no formula for laughter, or maybe these formulas have been too fragmented in the past
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
- 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
- Some people still hold that comedy is a tool to speak the truth to power
- 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”
