 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
|
Document Details : Title: Das Komische und das Lachen Author(s): BERNET, Rudolf Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 84 Issue: emeritaatsnummer Date: 2022 Pages: 163-184 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.84.5.3290716 Abstract : Using Bergson, Freud, and Plessner, the author accounts with many examples for the nature of laughter as an expressive bodily comportment, and for the nature of the comic that prompts laughter. He claims that laughter relates directly and intentionally to a comic situation. The tension of comic situations is the result of striking contradictions that the unsettled individual meets, answers and accepts with a liberating laugh. In jokes and comedies, the comic effect is artificially created by exaggerated oddities (in particular stupidity and seriousness), and by reversals, superpositions, or displacements of meaning. Unlike tragedy, a comedy does not concern itself with the inner conflicts and desires of a singular person. Comedies and jokes rather stage general types of ridiculous human characters or qualities, and of rigid forms of behavior. Analyzing what the comic, humor, and irony have in common and how they differ, also allows us to get a better view on the function, use, and benefit of laughter. Even serious philosophical reflection can profit from laughter. The concluding remarks try to illustrate this by showing how the present situation of a pandemic is dominated by an ideology of seriousness and intolerance that prohibits both critical thought and laughter, humor, or irony. |
|
