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Laughter an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Henri Bergson was an early 20th century French philosopher. Bergson's essay on laughter states that laughter is an intellectual response. We laugh because we feel uncomfortable when the unexpected occurs. When in a situation over which we have no control occurs, laughter is a release. We laugh when someone falls on a banana peel. We laugh when someone has toilet paper stuc...more
Paperback, 104 pages
Published
November 12th 2008
by Book Jungle
(first published 1900)
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Philosophers are people who pick the obvious and easy, discuss them, and end up making them difficult and incomprehensible. We all know, for instance, what "time" (7:30 am) and "space" (I found a parking space for my car!) are. But here comes the philosopher who'll say that since time isn't eternity, then there was a time when there was no time, in a place before there were places and spaces, and then somehow at the instant between nothingness and somethingness there was a pu...more
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الضحك في هذا الكتاب ليس أداة تسلية , بل الأولى أن يكون حافز تفكير, كما يذكر ذلك برغسون حين كتب عن الضحك وعلاقته بالتصلب والسهو وبالتكرار وبالاوتوماتية كمحاور تناول الضحك في الكتاب .
يتسائل الضحك ماذا يعني ؟ ماذا يوجد في عمق الشيء المضحك ؟
ويحلل ذلك بعقل المُفكر الحزين الذي يرى أن ساعة الأنس ليس خالية من نكه مرارة تفرضها تراجيدية الحياة ويتساوى بهذه المرارة الفيلسوف واللامبالي من الناس , الممثل والمشاهد .
تناول الهزل بالذات أقل مما تناول المكان الذي يجب التفتيش عن...more
Interesting exploration of what the comic is, in gesture, in words, in character. Only problem: examples primarily from French dramatic comedies. Ideas, finally, focus on how the human falls towards the mechanical, and that laughter is socially valuable as corrective.
Although I read Bergson as a philosophy student which predisposed me to try and try to find the gems this book must surely contain, I just couldn't get beyond the archaic and hyperbolic style. Typographically it is full of ALL CAPS shouting (was that in the original or just this edition?), apparently to make the key concepts stand out. The problem is that the examples don't deliver (or perhaps they are just too specific to the wrong era--too dated--and thus not general enough to make the univers...more
prix nobel de littérature 1927
*
" Du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant ".
Cette formule n'est pas elle-même plaquée mécaniquement par Bergson sur le rire ! Bien au contraire, c'est un Bergson à la fois psychologue, sociologue, philosophe de l'art et moraliste qui écrit Le Rire.
Essai sur la signification du comique en 1900, au cœur d'une œuvre dont ce livre est une étape majeure, et d'un moment dont il traverse tous les enjeux.
Une dive...more
*
" Du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant ".
Cette formule n'est pas elle-même plaquée mécaniquement par Bergson sur le rire ! Bien au contraire, c'est un Bergson à la fois psychologue, sociologue, philosophe de l'art et moraliste qui écrit Le Rire.
Essai sur la signification du comique en 1900, au cœur d'une œuvre dont ce livre est une étape majeure, et d'un moment dont il traverse tous les enjeux.
Une dive...more
I don't have this exact edition. I just read the version on Project Gutenberg, which was even cheaper than the Dover copy. It's way fun stuff, especially for philosophy--well-written, smart, thoughtful without being pompous. His examples are a bit outdated and Frenchified, but then, it was written a long time ago, in France. His connections to William James make sense, as he writes in a similar style that's oddly expansive at the same time that's it's brief and light. Especially interesting if y...more
honnête
Facile writing, but Bergson follows the well tread tracks of his antecedents in focussing on only a small subset of cases. Interestingly, Bergson motive for laughter is simultaneously the main motive for horror - the notion of man solely as object. Nietzsche said most pithely everything the Bergson said and more: "Laughter is an epigram on the death of a feeling."
I can't imagine a more lucid explanation of literary comic effects and how to implement them. This little-known classic should erase the need for any writer to bother with other books explaining comic technique, and it does so in 96 pages of large print. Essential.
*SLO prevod+filozofska intuicija+uvod v metafiziko
J'ai trouvé que son point de vue était trop subjectif et qu'il dévalorisait vraiment le rire, il n'a pas assez pris en compte les côtés positifs du rire selon moi.
A fine introduction to the meaning of what is comical, baring it down to the core, which sadly is mostly missing from what is considered comedy today.
He attempts to break down what makes something funny - not very well, although it provides a few laughs itself.
awesome
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Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was one of the most famous and influential French philosophers of the late 19th century-early 20th century. Although his international fame reached cult-like heights during his lifetime, his influence decreased notably after the second World War. While such French thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Lévinas explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, it is ...more
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“Sans doute une chute est toujours une chute, mais autre chose est de se laisser choir dans un puits parce qu’on regardait n’importe où ailleurs, autre chose y tomber parce qu’on visait une étoile. C’est bien une étoile que Don Quichotte contemplait.”
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