新大学英语文化对比阅读（下）补充阅读材料-4PhilosophyofHumor.pdf

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1、Philosophy of HumorAlthough most people value humor,philosophers have said little about it,and whatthey have said is largely critical.Three traditional theories of laughter and humor areexamined,along with the theory that humor evolved from mock-aggressive play inapes.Understanding humor as play hel

2、ps counter the traditional objections to it andreveals some of its benefits,including those it shares with philosophy itself.1.Humors Bad ReputationWhen people are asked whats important in their lives,they often mention humor.Couples listing the traits they prize in their spouses usually put sense o

3、f humor at ornear the top.Philosophers are concerned with what is important in life,so two thingsare surprising about what they have said about humor.The first is how little they have said.From ancient times to the 20th century,the mostthat any notable philosopher wrote about laughter or humor was a

4、n essay,and only afew lesser-known thinkers such as Frances Hutcheson and James Beattie wrote thatmuch.The word humor was not used in its current sense of funniness until the 18lhcentuiy,we should note,and so traditional discussions were about laughter or comedy.The most that major philosophers like

5、 Plato,Hobbes,and Kant wrote about laughteror humor was a few paragraphs within a discussion of another topic.Henri Bergsons1900 Laughter was the first book by a notable philosopher on humor.Martiananthropologist comparing the amount of philosophical writing on humor with whathas been written on,say

6、,justice,or even on Rawls Veil of Ignorance,might wellconclude that humor could be left out of human life without much loss.The second surprising thing is how negative most philosophers have been in theirassessments of humor.From ancient Greece until the 20th century,the vast majority ofphilosophica

7、l comments on laughter and humor focused on scornful or mockinglaughter,or on laughter that overpowers people,rather than on comedy,wit,or joking.Plato,the most influential critic of laughter,treated it as an emotion that overridesrational self-control.In the Republic(388e),he says that the Guardian

8、s of the stateshould avoid laughter,6fbr ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter,his condition provokes a violent reaction.Especially disturbing to Plato were thepassages in the Iliad and the Odyssey where Mount Olympus was said to ring with thelaughter of the gods.He protested that

9、 if anyone represents men of worth asoverpowered by laughter we must not accept it,much less if gods.”Another of Plato7s objections to laughter is that it is malicious.In Philebus(48-50),he analyzes the enjoyment of comedy as a form of scorn.Taken generally,he says,“the ridiculous is a certain kind

10、of evil,specifically a vice.That vice isself-ignorance:the people we laugh at imagine themselves to be wealthier,betterlooking,or more virtuous than they really are.In laughing at them,we take delight insomething evil-their self-ignorance一and that malice is morally objectionable.Because of these obj

11、ections to laughter and humor,Plato says that in the ideal state,comedy should be tightly controlled.uWe shall enjoin that such representations be leftto slaves or hired aliens,and that they receive no serious consideration whatsoever.No free person,whether woman or man,shall be found taking lessons

12、 in them.“Nocomposer of comedy,iambic or lyric verse shall be permitted to hold any citizen up tolaughter,by word or gesture,with passion or otherwise”(Laws,7:816e;11:935e).Greek thinkers after Plato had similarly negative comments about laughter and humor.Though Aristotle considered wit a valuable

13、part of conversation(JNicomachean Ethics4,8),he agreed with Plato that laughter expresses scorn.Wit,he says in the Rhetoric(2,12),is educated insolence.In the Nicomachean Ethics(4,8)he warns that Mostpeople enjoy amusement and jesting more than they should.a jest is a kind ofmockery,and lawgivers fo

14、rbid some kinds of mockery一perhaps they ought to haveforbidden some kinds of jesting.The Stoics,with their emphasis on self-control,agreed with Plato that laughter diminishes self-control.Epictetuss Enchiridion(33)advises“Let not your laughter be loud,frequent,or unrestrained.His followers saidthat

15、he never laughed at all.These objections to laughter and humor influenced early Christian thinkers,andthrough them later European culture.They were reinforced by negativerepresentations of laughter and humor in the Bible,the vast majority of which arelinked to hostility.The only way God is described

16、 as laughing in the Bible is withhostility:The kings of the earth stand ready,and the rulers conspire together against the Lordand his anointed king.The Lord who sits enthroned in heaven laughs them to scorn;then he rebukes them in anger,he threatens them in his wrath.(Psalm 2:2-5)Gods spokesmen in

17、the Bible are the Prophets,and for them,too,laughter expresseshostility.In the contest between Gods prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal,forexample,Elijah ridicules those prophets fbr their gods powerlessness,and then hasthem slain(1 Kings 18:27).In the Bible,mockery is so offensive that it may d

18、eservedeath,as when a group of children laugh at the prophet Elisha fbr his baldness:He went up from there to Bethel and,as he was on his way,some small boys came outof the city and jeered at him,saying,uGet along with you,bald head,get along.Heturned round and looked at them and he cursed then in t

19、he name of the Lord;and twoshe-bears came out of a wood and mauled forty-two of them.(2 Kings 2:23)Bringing together negative assessments of laughter from the Bible with criticismsfrom Greek philosophy,early Christian leaders such as Ambrose,Jerome,Basil,Ephraim,and John Chrysostom warned against ei

20、ther excessive laughter or laughtergenerally.Sometimes what they criticized was laughter in which the person losesself-control.In his Long Rides,for instance,Basil the Great wrote that raucouslaughter and uncontrollable shaking of the body are not indications of a well-regulatedsoul,or of personal d

21、ignity,or self-mastery(in Wagner 1962,271).Other times theylinked laughter with idleness,irresponsibility,lust,or anger.John Chrysostom,forexample,warned thatLaughter often gives birth to foul discourse,and foul discourse to actions still morefoul.Often from words and laughter proceed railing and in

22、sult;and from railing andinsult,blows and wounds;and from blows and wounds,slaughter and murder.If,then,you would take good counsel fbr yourself,avoid not merely foul words and foul deeds,or blows and wounds and murders,but unseasonable laughter itself,(in Schaff 1889,442).Not surprisingly,the Chris

23、tian institution that most emphasized self-control一themonastery-was harsh in condemning laughter.One of the earliest monastic orders,of Pachom of Egypt,forbade joking(Adkin 1985,151-152).The Rule of St.Benedict,the most influential monastic code,advised monks to prefer moderation in speechand speak

24、no foolish chatter,nothing just to provoke laughter;do not love immoderateor boisterous laughter.In Benedicfs Ladder of Humility,Step Ten is a restraintagainst laughter,and Step Eleven a warning against joking(Gilhus 1997,65).Themonastery of St.Columbanus Hibernus had these punishments:He who smiles

25、 in theservice.six strokes;if he breaks out in the noise of laughter,a special fast unless ithas happened pardonably(Resnick 1987,95).The Christian European rejection of laughter and humor continued through theMiddle Ages,and whatever the Reformers reformed,it did not include the traditionalassessme

26、nt of humor.Among the strongest condemnations came from the Puritans,who wrote tracts against laughter and comedy.One by William Prynne(1633)encouraged Christians to live sober,serious lives.Christians should not beimmoderately tickled with mere lascivious vanities/9 Prynne wrote,or lash out inexces

27、sive cachinnations in the public view of dissolute graceless persons.When thePuritans came to rule England in the mid 17th century,they outlawed comedies.At this time,too,the philosophical case against laughter was strengthened by ThomasHobbes and Rene Descartes.Hobbes Leviathan(1982 1651)describes

28、humanbeings as naturally individualistic and competitive.That makes us alert to signs thatwe are winning or losing.The fbiTner make us feel good and the latter bad.If ourperception of some sign that we are superior comes over us quickly,our good feelingsare likely to issue in laughter.In Part I,ch.6

29、,he writes thatSudden glory,is the passion which makes those grimaces called laughter;and iscaused either by some sudden act of their own,that pleases them;or by theapprehension of some deformed thing in another,by comparison whereof theysuddenly applaud themselves.And it is incident most to them,th

30、at are conscious ofthe fewest abilities in themselves;who are forced to keep themselves in their ownfavor by observing the imperfections of other men.And therefore much laughter atthe defects of others,is a sign of pusillanimity.For of great minds,one of the properworks is,to help and free others fr

31、om scorn;and to compare themselves only with themost able.A similar explanation of laughter from the same time is found in Descartes5 Passionsof the Soul.He says that laughter accompanies three of the six basicemotionswonder,love,(mild)hatred,desire,joy,and sadness.Although admittingthat there are o

32、ther causes of laughter than hatred,in Part 3 of this book,“OfParticular Passions,“he considers laughter only as an expression of scorn and ridicule.Derision or scorn is a sort of joy mingled with hatred,which proceeds from ourperceiving some small evil in a person whom we consider to be deserving o

33、f it;wehave hatred for this evil,we have joy in seeing it in him who is deserving of it;andwhen that comes upon us unexpectedly,the surprise of wonder is the cause of ourbursting into laughter.And we notice that people with very obvious defects such asthose who are lame,blind of an eye,hunched-backe

34、d,or who have received somepublic insult,are specially given to mockery;for,desiring to see all others held in aslow estimation as themselves,they are truly rejoiced at the evils that befall them,andthey hold them deserving of these.(art.178-179)2.The Superiority TheoryWith these comments of Hobbes

35、and Descartes,we have a sketchy psychologicaltheory articulating the view of laughter that started in Plato and the Bible anddominated Western thinking about laughter for two millennia.In the 20th century,thisidea was called the Superiority Theory.Simply put,our laughter expresses feelings ofsuperio

36、rity over other people or over a former state of ourselves.A contemporaryproponent of this theory is Roger Scruton,who analyses amusement as an attentivedemolition of a person or something connected with a person.If people dislikebeing laughed at,“Scruton says,“it is surely because laughter devalues

37、 its object inthe subjects eyes”(in Morreall 1987,168).In the 18th century,the dominance of the Superiority Theory began to weaken whenFrancis Hutcheson(1750)wrote a critique of Hobbes9 account of laughter.Feelings ofsuperiority,Hutcheson argued,are neither necessary nor sufficient for laughter.Inla

38、ughing,we may not be comparing ourselves with anyone,as when we laugh at oddfigures of speech like those in this poem about a sunrise:The sun,long since,had in the lapOf Thetis taken out his nap;And like a lobster boild,the mornFrom black to red began to turn.If self-comparison and sudden glory are

39、not necessary fbr laughter,neither are theysufficient fbr laughter.Here Hutcheson cites cases of pity.A gentleman riding in acoach who sees ragged beggars in the street,fbr example,will feel that he is better offthan they,but such feelings are unlikely to amuse him.In such situations,we are ingreate

40、r danger of weeping than laughing.To these counterexamples to the Superiority Theory we could add more.Sometimeswe laugh when a comic character shows surprising skills that we lack.In the silentmovies of Charlie Chaplin,Harold Lloyd,and Buster Keaton,the hero is oftentrapped in a situation where he

41、looks doomed.But then he escapes with a cleveracrobatic stunt that we would not have thought of,much less been able to perform.Laughing at such scenes does not seem to require that we compare ourselves with thehero;and if we do make such a comparison,we do not find ourselves superior.At least some p

42、eople,too,laugh at themselves一not a former state of themselves,butwhat is happening now.If I search high and low for my eyeglasses only to find themon my head,the Superiority Theory seems unable to explain my laughter at myself.While these examples involve persons with whom we might compare ourselve

43、s,thereare other cases of laughter where no personal comparisons seem involved.Inexperiments by Lambert Deckers(1993),subjects were asked to lift a series ofapparently identical weights.The first several weights turned out to be identical,andthat strengthened the expectation that the remaining weigh

44、ts would be the same.Butthen subjects picked up a weight that was much heavier or lighter than the others.Most laughed,but apparently not out of Hobbesian“sudden glory/9 and apparentlywithout comparing themselves with anyone.3.The Relief TheoryFurther weakening the dominance of the Superiority Theor

45、y in the 18th century weretwo new accounts of laughter which are now called the Relief Theory and theIncongruity Theory.Neither even mentions feelings of superiority.The Relief Theory is an hydraulic explanation in which laughter does in the nervoussystem what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam

46、 boiler.The theoiy was sketched inLord Shaftesburys 1709 essay“An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor,“thefirst publication in which humor is used in its modern sense of funniness.Scientists atthe time knew that nerves connect the brain with the sense organs and muscles,butthey thought that nerves

47、 carried“animal spirits一gases and liquids such as air andblood.John Locke(1690,Book 3,ch.9,para.16),for instance,describes animalspirits as“fluid and subtile Matter,passing through the Conduits of the Nerves.Shaftesburys explanation of laughter is that it releases animal spirits that have builtup pr

48、essure inside the nerves.The natural free spirits of ingenious men,if imprisoned or controlled,will find outother ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint;and whether it be inburlesque,mimicry,or buffoonery,they will be glad at any rate to vent themselves,and be revenged upon their c

49、onstrainers.Over the next two centuries,as the nervous system came to be better understood,thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud revised the biology behind theRelief Theory but kept the idea that laughter relieves pent-up nervous energy.Spencer5s explanation in his essay“On the Physiolo

50、gy of Laughter”(1911)is basedon the idea that emotions take the physical form of nervous energy.Nervous energy,he says,“always tends to beget muscular motion,and when it rises to a certainintensity,always does beget it”(299).Feeling passing a certain pitch habitually ventsitself in bodily action”(30