Humor, Philosophy, and Religion

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Humor, Philosophy, and Religion

• by Don L. F. Nilsen
• and Alleen Pace Nilsen

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Thomas Aquinas SenecaHappy People vs. Boors
Grumps

• Thomas Aquinas called a happy person a
  eutrapelos, and defined this person as a
  pleasant person with a happy cast of mind who
  gives his words and deeds a cheerful turn.
• Seneca said, Bear yourself with wit, lest you be
  regarded as sour or despised as dull. Now those
  who lack playfulness are sinful, those who never
  say anything to make you smile, or are grumpy
  with those who do, Aristotle speaks of them as
  rough and boorish (Morreall 2008 218).

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AristotleComedy is ugly

• Comedyis an imitation of people who are worse
  than the average. Their badness, however, is not
  of every kind. The ridiculous, rather, is a
  species of the ugly it may be defined as a
  mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or
  destructive. The comic mask, for example, is
  unseemly and distorted but does not cause pain
  (Aristotle 1459).
• Aristotle wrote that a good way to get a laugh in
  speech is to set up an expectation in the
  audience and then jolt them with something they
  did not expect (Aristotle 1459).
• (Morreall 2008 214-215)

4
Henri BergsonElan Vital vs. Mechanical Behavior

• Bergson claims that when we suppress our elan
  vital and manage our lives with logic, we act
  in rigid, mechanical ways, treating new
  experiences merely as repetitions of previous
  ones.
• Bergson says that we laugh when we see the
  mechanical encrusted on the living. (Morreall
  2008 229)

5
Cicero

• In Chapter 63 of On the Orator, Cicero said
• The most common kind of joke is that in which we
  expect one thing and another is said here our
  disappointed expectation makes us laugh. But if
  something ambiguous is thrown in too, the effect
  of the joke is heightened
• (Morreall 2008 216).

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René Descartes Scornful Laughter

• René Descartes wrote that the people who most
  often laugh at others are people with very
  obvious defects such as those who are lame, blind
  of an eye, hunch-backed, or who have received
  some public insultfor, desiring to see all
  others held in as low estimation as themselves,
  they are truly rejoiced at the evils which befall
  them.
• (Morreall 2008 219)

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Sigmund FreudWit, The Comic, and Humor

• Freuds Wit (Tendentious Humor)
• Telling jokes is like dreaming, a way to let
  repressed feelings into the conscious mind.
  Because we express our hostile or sexual feelings
  rather than repress them, we save the mental
  energy we would have expended to repress those
  feelings. That saved energy is vented in
  laughter. (Morreall 2008 224)

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Freuds Comic

• An example of the comic would be one of Rube
  Goldbergs drawings of a fantastically
  complicated device to do some simple task, such
  as watering a plant.
• Freud says that at first we would try to
  understand how each part of the machine moves the
  next part, but then acknowledging that the
  drawing is just a cartoon, we would stop trying
  to figure out how it works, and we would smile or
  laugh. (Morreall 2008 224)

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Freuds Humor

• Mark Twain told about when his brother was
  working on a road-building project, and an
  explosive charge went off blowing him into the
  sky and setting him down far from the
  construction site.
• His brother was docked half a days pay for the
  time he was in the air absent from his place of
  employment.
• (Morreall 2008 224-225)

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William HazlittWeeping Laughter

• William Hazlitt said, Man is the only animal
  that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal
  that is struck with the difference between what
  things are and what they ought to be. We weep at
  what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious
  matters we laugh at what only disappoints our
  expectations in trifles.
• (Morreall 2008 227)

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Immanuel KantLaughter is Nihilistic

• Laughter is an affectation arising from the
  sudden transformation of a strained expectation
  into nothing.
• (Morreall 2008 226)
• NOTE In a way, this is the opposite of the
  epiphinal nature of the punch line of a joke.

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Soren KierkegaardTragedy vs. Comedy

• The tragic apprehension sees the contradiction
  and despairs of a way out, while the comic
  vision faces the same contradiction but sees a
  way out. In many situations, Kierkegaard said,
  the comic perspective can be more imaginative,
  more insightful, and wiser than the tragic
  perspective.
• (Morreall 2008 227)

13
Paul McGhee, Jerry Suls Thomas Schultz

• Paul McGhee says that humor is a reaction to
  incongruity.
• Jerry Suls and Thomas Schultz say that we dont
  enjoy humor because of the incongruity itself,
  but because in our minds we are able to resolve
  the incongruity.
• (Morreall 2008 228)

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John MorreallComic Vision vs. Tragic
VisionPsychological Differences

• Complex vs. simple conceptual schemes
• High vs. low tolerance for disorder and ambiguity
• Seeking out vs. avoiding the unfamiliar
• Divergent vs. convergent thinking
• Critical vs. noncritical thinking
• Emotional disengagement vs. engagement
• Willingness to change mind vs. stubbornness
• Pragmatism vs. idealism
• Getting second chance vs. finality
• Celebration vs. denigration of body
• Playfulness vs. seriousness
• (Morreall 2008 240-241)

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Comic Vision vs. Tragic VisionSocial Differences

• Anti-heroism vs. heroism
• Pacifism vs. militarism
• Forgiveness vs. vengeance
• Social equality vs. inequality
• Questioning vs. acceptance of authority
• Situation ethnics vs. duty ethics
• Social integration vs. social isolation
• (Morreall 2008 241)

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PlatoLaughter as Ridicule

• Plato conflated what we now call humor with
  laughter, and treated the laugh of ridicule as
  the only kind.
• For him laughter was itself an emotion or it
  expressed an emotion, and so it fell under his
  general objection to emotionsthat they override
  rationality and self-control.
• (Morreall 2008 213)

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William SpencerDescending Incongruity

• William Spencer talks about laughter being
  related to incongruity, but he said
• Laughter naturally results only when
  consciousness is unawares transferred from great
  things to smallonly when there is what we may
  call a descending incongruity.
• (Morreall 2008 223)
• (Kuipers 2008 362)

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Laughter in the Bible

• When laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is
  associated with one of three things.
• In descending order, they are
• Hostility
• Foolishness
• Joy (Morreall 2008 212)

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• Laughter and Hostility
• For laughter and hostility, consider Psalm 594-8
  which implores God to have no mercy on villains
  and traitors. But you, O Lord, laugh at them,
  and deride all the nations (Morreall 2008 212)
• Laughter and Foolishness
• For laughter and foolishness, consider Genesis
  1717 When God tells Abraham at age 99 that he
  and his aged wife Sarah will have a son

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• Abraham fell on his face and laughed.
• On hearing the news, Sarah also laughed with
  disbelief, and when God confronted her, she
  compounded her foolishness by denying that she
  had laughed.
• (Genesis 1812-15 Morreall 2008 212)

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• Laughter is again associated with foolishness in
  a Bible passage which reads
• Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness
  of countenance the heart is made glad.
• The heart of the wise is in the house of
  mourning but the heart of fools is in the house
  of mirth.
• (Ecclesiastes 73-6 Morreall 2008 213)

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• Laughter and Joy
• But laughter can also be associated with joy in
  the Bible as in
• When the lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we
  were like those who dream. Then our mouth was
  filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts
  of joy (Psalm 1262)
• In the New Testament, Jesus says, Blessed are
  you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
• (Luke 621 Morreall 2008 213)

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Evangelism Paradox

• Evangelism is related to the awakenings, and is
  associated with fundamentalist Christianity. The
  religious world used to be divided between the
  Catholics and the Protestants, but now the
  division is more between the Evangelicals and
  mainstream religion (Sheffield 17).
• The word evangelism comes from the Greek
  evangelion, and is composed of eu (meaning
  well) and angelos (meaning messenger). It
  translates directly into Old English godspell
  or gospel (meaning good word) (Sheffield 1).

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• Evangelical television preaches family values
  in which a womans place is in the home. But at
  the same time it places women into very public
  roles (Sheffield 6).
• Many Evangelicals simply refer to themselves as
  Christians, meaning that they have been born
  again or saved. This leaves mainstream
  Christian denominations puzzled or angered by the
  implication that they are not Christians
  (Sheffield 11).

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Conrad Hyers and Harvey CoxThe Bible as Satire
and Festival

• Conrad Hyers sees in the Story of Jonah as a
  satire on a reluctant prophet. In many stories
  about Jesus, too, he finds wit, imagination, and
  an openness to people characteristic of someone
  with a sense of humor.
• In the Bible, Harvey Cox sees festivity in terms
  of conscious excess, and celebrative affirmation.
  Cox closes his book by asking Christians to
  think of Christ as a harlequin!
• (Morreall 2008 232)

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John the EvangelistThe Importance of Play

• When people were scandalized at finding him at
  play with his disciples, he requested one of his
  questioners who carried a bow to shoot an arrow.
  When this had been done several times, the man,
  on being asked wither he could keep on doing so
  continuously, replied that the bow would break.
  Whereupon the blessed John pointed the moral that
  so, too, would the human spirit snap were it
  never unbent.
• (Morreall 2008 218)

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MORMONISMInsider-Humor to Question Attitudes

• A cartoon that appeared in the Brigham Young
  University newspaper in Utah showed a bloodied
  and battered student rising from a pile of stones
  that had been thrown at him.
• As a campus police officer comes up, the student
  explains, All I said was Let he who is without
  sin, cast the first stone.

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• Another Mormon joke is a story about St. Peter
  taking visitors around Heaven and telling them to
  tiptoe past the room where the Mormons are,
• because they think theyre the only ones here.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 117)

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Punishments for Laughter

• The monastery of Columban in Ireland assigned
  the following punishments He who smiles in the
  servicesix strokes if he breaks out in the
  noise of laughter, a special fast unless it has
  happened pardonably.
• The strongest condemnations of laughter came
  from monastic leaders. The Essenes, an early
  Jewish monastic group, had imposed a penance of
  thirty days for those who guffawed foolishly.
• (Morreall 2008 217).

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TIBETAN BUDDHISMLaughter and Open Mindedness

• When John Cleese asked the Dalai Lama why in
  Tibetan Buddhism people laugh so much he
  responded that laughter is very helpful to him in
  teaching and in political negotiations, because
  when people laugh, it is easier for them to admit
  new ideas to their minds.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 57)

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Zen Buddhism

• Zen masters use koans to break peoples
  attachments to incongruities like What is the
  sound of one hand clapping?
• The most comic vision among traditional
  religions is in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, the most
  tragic vision is in certain forms of Judaism and
  Calvinist Christianity. Virtually all the New
  Religions of the past fifty years have embraced
  the comic vision.
• (Morreall 2008 241)

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!YURI NIKULINS JOKETrousers vs. The World

• Yuri Nikulin was known as the Russian Charlie
  Chaplin. When he died in 1997, his New York
  Times obituary recounted his favorite joke

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• !!
• An American actor rails at his New York Tailor
• God needed only seven days to create the
  universe and it took you 30 days to make a pair
  of trousers?
• Yes, answered the tailor, But look at the
  world, and then look at the trousers.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 38)

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• Christmas ISecular Christmas
• Secular Christmas Card
•  
• Christmas II--Digital Story of Nativity
  Christmas
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vvZrf0PbAGSk
• Father Guido Sarduccis Five Minute University
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vkO8x8eoU3L4
• History of Five Religions
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vx-sIF78QYCI

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• Mr. Diety
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQzf8q9QHfhI
• Philosophical Cartoons
• http//www-personal.umich.edu/cmpbell/Philosophy
  20Cartoons.html
• Philosophical Humor
• http//consc.net/phil-humor.html
• Philosophy Cough Jokes
• http//www.philosophyblog.com.au/philosophy-jokes-
  philosophers-humour/
• Silent Monks Singing Halleluia
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vZCFCeJTEzNUfeature
  related

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