On Humour

by Simon Critchley

Does humour make us human, or do the cats and dogs laugh along with us? On Humour is a fascinating, beautifully written and funny book on what humour can tell us about being human. Simon Critchley skilfully probes some of the most perennial but least understood aspects of humour, such as our tendency to laugh at animals and our bodies, why we mock death with comedy and why we think it's funny when people act like machines. He also looks at the darker side of humour, as rife in sexism and racism and argues that it is important for reminding us of people we would rather not be.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Comedy, Humor, Theory, Art, Satire

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2002

About the author

Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960 in Hertfordshire) is an English philosopher currently teaching at The New School. He works in continental philosophy. Critchley argues that philosophy commences in disappointment, either religious or political. These two axes may be said largely to inform his published work: religious disappointment raises the question of meaning and has to, as he sees it, deal with the problem of nihilism; political disappointment provokes the question of justice and raises the need for a coherent ethics [...]

Reviews

[mohsen pourramezani · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب تحقیقی است درباره‌ی لطیفه، طنز و خنده.
ه نظرم برای کسی که می‌خواهد در زمینه‌ی طنز تحقیق کند و یا اطلاعات تخصصی‌تری به دست بیارود خوب است اما ممکن است برای مخاطب عام جذاب نباشد.
خواندنش برایم جالب بود هرچند که به نظرم ترجمه‌اش می‌توانست بهتر باشد. معادل برخی از اصطلاحات را هم می‌شد در پانویس آورد. مثلا در اینجا «طنز» را معادل humour
گرفته است در صورتی که در کتاب‌های دیگری که خوانده‌ام این واژه را بیشتر به «شوخی» ترجمه کرده‌اند و «طنز» را معادل
satire گرفته‌‌اند.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't as great as I thought it would be, but there are a few little epiphanies scattered throughout its pages. It's a fairly conventional philosophical rumination on humor; not an exercise in heavy-lifting by any stretch.

[Christopher Olshefski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful as I think about comedy and humor. Also it feels surreal to be engaging with humor on an academic and philosophical level the way this book does. I’ll return to the fart jokes scattered throughout, I’m sure. At one point I thought I was reading about post-colonialism, but I realized he was making a pun: post-colonal. Get it? Colon. Where farts come from.

[CJ Bowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A joke explained is a joke misunderstood." 2

Credits Morreall with three theories: superiority, relief, and incongruity. 2

"Both brevity and speed are the soul of wit." 6

"It is this link to the body that was the reason for the Christian condemnation of laughter in the early Middle Ages, its careful codification in the later middle Ages, before the explosion of laughter in the early Renaissance, in the work of Rabelais and Erasmus." 9

"A true joke, a comedian's joke, suddenly and explosively lets us see the familiar defamiliarized, the ordinary made extraordinary and the real rendered surreal, and we laugh in a physiological squeal of transient delight." 10

"In my view, true humor does not wound a specific victim and always contains self-mockery. The object of laughter is the subject who laughs." 14

"True jokes would therefore be like shared prayers." 17

"However, in my view, humour does not redeem us from this world, but returns us to it ineluctably by showing that there is no alternative. The consolations of humor come from acknowledging that this is the only world and, imperfect as it is and we are, it is only here that we can make a difference." 17

"If laughter is essentially human, then the question of whether Jesus laughed assumes rather obvious theological pertinence to the doctrine of incarnation." 25

"What is funny, finally, is the fact of having a body. But to find this funny is to adopt a philosophical perspective, it is to view the world and and myself disinterestedly....The great virtue of humor is that it is philosophizing in action, a bright silver thread in the great duvet of existence." 62

"Humour views the world from awry, bringing us back to the everyday by estranging us from it." 65

"Ethnic humour is very much the Hobbesian laughter of superiority or sudden glory at our eminence and the other's stupidity." 70

"It is a curious fact that much humour, particularly when one thinks of Europe, is powerfully connected to perceived, but curiously outdated, national styles and national differences." 70-71. cf myth of nations.

Discusses Coen brothers, 88.

"Our wretchedness is our greatness." 111

[Christopher Gontar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Critchley's analysis of humor is mostly in error, though it points toward the true theory of humor that I presented in 2011, having begun to develop it in 2008. How does he point in the right direction? While he focuses on the fictional notion of objects or animals bestowed with humanity, this happens to be a key image of diminutive self-deception of superiority. Rather than for the reasons Critchley gives, we find the animal-as-human funny for the simpler reason that it represents a kind of small-scale "ambition," the "desire to be man."

How anyone can deny a principle like that and prefer the threadbare alternatives--objectively--is beyond me. Is it worth it to reject something so ingenious and original as that, all to support the inferior status quo? Surely you can understand an argument as simple as this, so if you don't agree or fail to act, you are delinquent. By flouting the rule of reason you refuse to grow up. You are being asked repeatedly to respect truth, like a rebellious twelve-year-old.

The desire to be man in beings that are non-human, is not literal of course, but only figurative. And the less than human is a sign referring to type-differences among actual humans.

But what is signified in that case is real. And wherever there is any kind of ambition -- which is comical if it is small -- there's self-deception. All humor and comedy either constitute or represent this idea. But the aspiration in the thing-as-human is an elementary fact of experience, and the explanation is original to me. I point to that originality not in my own interest but to indicate a remarkable deficiency in psychology and philosophy. This book does gesture at this truth about power advancement as expressed in such juxtapositions, never yet explicitly acknowledged by the human race. Yet otherwise, the book is not of much value. Worse, perhaps, Critchley might also have made a better interpretation of what he presents as the opposite of thing-becoming-human. For when mentioning "man becoming animal" he does not tell us that this transformation is epitomized in the punishment of mortals in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In other words, he misses the strong possibility that this reversed transformation is more tragic, or at least more mythological than comic.

All of Critchley's analysis of humor, then, continually returns to the image of the human as divided between soul and body as a sign that the mind does not belong to the body and is too great for it. Critchley thinks that all humor alludes to this image of the human as a thinking animal or thinking inert object. On that point he is correct. Humor does indeed always allude to this image to one degree or another. He is right to note a break or discrepancy that makes any less-than-human thing endowed with consciousness look ridiculous for that endowment.

But the error is to claim that our disposition or response of amusement consists in recognizing the futility of the effort to close this gap between soul and body. To say as Critchley does that our sense of humor makes use of that undeniably humorous image in such an overly complex way is really a jest masquerading as analysis. For it is somewhat witty that the explanation of humor would be made even more ineffectively pedantic than it naturally is. And it is an idea in which Critchley is influenced by Freud, who thought that the explosive moment of getting humor and of laughing itself were signs of discovered futility. It did not work well with Freud, who did not publish a single correct explanation of a complex joke, even superficially.

Critchley seems to agree that we see a ridiculous person as being mismatched as to "soul" and "body." Their soul in this sense represents the behavior or higher mental ability they have strangely acquired or pretend to have. Their body, being that of an animal or a child, may be understood as their actual life, the reality that they face and are in denial of. Critchley only sees the surface of this relation, not what is going on at the heart of it, nor why it is humorous or comical.

Those, in any case are the ideas through which humor arises for its own sake and as the driving force or substance of social conversation, a competency in mirth which it seems truly fortunate to possess. Persons who ridicule either themselves or others are still at least using the same image when they create humor more abstractly.

The mismatching of a soul and body then, is a central image that is found in humor and comedy. It calls for an explanation or reason for its effect. The simplest and most convincing reason, is that this ridiculous object, like all others, represents diminutive selfish self-deception. And the humor response is just a mental vicarious imitation of that mad condition.

The fact that the soul mismatched with its human body evokes delusion, explains why it is a non-serious and comical image. And when Critchley focuses on the inner experience of fracturing, he takes us in a more serious direction. Mental fracturing is not unique to the comic. This particular sort of desire, since it is abstract (and deriving from phenomenology), belongs more to tragedy than to comedy. Although the image of the thing as human is comical, the striving for integration that it might evoke is a tragic nisus or effort, not a comic or humorous one.

Many have written -- for example Alenka Zupancic -- about how all serious things are at all times vulnerable to humor, though we never find them to be inherently or objectively ridiculous. So for Zupancic as well as Critchley, it does look as though all people and figuratively even things seek to preserve themselves from the fracturing that leads to their being seen as ridiculous, or to their breaking into laughter. But because this larger category applies to all things and not merely minds, it does not support Critchley's thesis at all.

The image of the human as divided between soul and body is funny just because it is an image of delusion or selfish self-deception. It is impossible that there is any other reason. The human is thus seen as a thing or animal that aspires to the human. Just as in the Sartrean dictum that "man is the desire to be God," so we should say, though it is not literally true, that "dog is the desire to be man." But all mere "things" appear as signs of the desire to be "man," to be sentient or conscious, things of which a more powerful human type is more exemplary than a weaker one.

I have confronted Critchley in person on the question why he doesn't want to see these images in this simple sense of delusion or petty ambition, and he has given no reason why he doesn't want to see it that way. One might write a book now about how unobjective and irrational our academic culture has become. Perhaps it would have even further positive effects than improving this issue of humor theory.

Well -- have it your way for now--don't entertain ideas and truth but promote what is worthwhile in individuality, difference, and contingency. But if public opinion turns around, then philosophy might follow suit by adopting a more honest position about emotion and human nature.

[Hannah Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst Critchley and I have differing views of the nature and definitions of humour, I found this to be an interesting read with some insightful ideas I hadn't thought about previously. A good contemporary look at the philosophy of humour, building on some more historical theories. Without a baseline understanding of these previous theories I think some elements could be harder to follow. For me it lost a star as I found myself struggling to see the woods for the trees at certain points and I felt at times it could have been more focused on the discussion of humour without the additional focus on other areas which at times felt unnecessary.

[Mike Bularz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit pretentious sounding, through use of (name of person who created idea)+ -ian, -ism, and strange vocab like "bathetic".. that and it is basically a plagiarism of John Allen Paulos's "Mathematics and Humor"

Despite that it is still a well written, clever and challenging book on a subject that is hard to write about.
very insightful and well worth the effort.

[Monokl Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felsefeye giden yolun da başarısızlıktan geçtiğini savunan Critchley, Mizah Üzerine adlı kitabında mizahı egonun kendisini gülünç bulmasıyla harekete geçen bir anti-depresan olarak nitelendirir. Mizaha farklı bir yönden bakmanızı sağlayacak, akıcı bir felsefe kitabı olan Mizah Üzerine çalışmasını Monokl Öneriyor!

[Ulas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mizah üzerine felsefe kitabı, okumasının çok zor olduğunu söyleyenlere hak vermekle birlikte, yavaş ve sakin bir şekilde okuyarak anlatılanları kavrayabilirsiniz. Yine de belirli bir felsefe bilgisine sahip olmak bu kitaptan daha çok şey almanızı sağlayabilir. Okurken keyif aldığım bir kitap oldu, mizaha olan ilgim sayesinde diyelim.

[Beybulat-Noxcho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mizah üreten dugyusal geçişin birdenbireliğine değinmek espirilerin kendine has zamansal boyutuna dikkat çeker. Her komedyenin sorgusuz sualsiz kabul edeceği gibi zamanlama her şeydir ve gülünçlük ustalığı, duraksamaların, tereddütlerin ve sessizliklerin itinalı kontrolünü, o ufsak espiiri dinamitini patlatmanın tam vaktini bilmeyi gerektirir. Bu bakımdan espiriler iki zamansal boyutun ortak bilgisini içerir: süre ve an” (s.23)

“Yüz kaslarının kasılıp rahatlmasından, diyaframın da buna uyum sağlayan hareketlerinden ibaret olan kasla ilgili fenomendir kahkahadır” (s.24)

“Kahkaha, kalbin sağ boşluğundan gelen kanın, ciğerleri birdenbire ve birçok defa şişirerek, çiğerlerdeki havanın nefes borusundan sözsüz ve patlayıcı bir ses halinde, ivmelenerek çıkmasına sebep olmasından ileri gelir. Ciğerlerin şişmesi kadar bu havanın çıkması da, diyaframın, göğüsün ve boğazın bütün kaslarını iterler, böylece de bu kaslarla bağlantılı olan yüz kaslarını da hareket ettirirler. Bu sözsüz ve patlayıcısı ses ile yüzün bu hareketine kahkaha adı verilir” (s.24)

“Binlercesine eşit derece niyetlense de , Hiçkimse üstüne alınmadı” (s.31)

“Yine benim görüşüm, mizahın bizi bu dünyadan alı koymayıp, aksine başka bir alternatif olmadığını göstererek bizi bu dünyaya mecbur bırakmasıdır” (s.33)

“Filozof Aristoteles böyle diyor. Hayvanların Parçaları Üzerine adlı kitabında “İnsanoğlu dışında hiçbir hayvan gülmez”der (s.41)

“Beckett’in “neşesiz gülmek” dediği” (s.49)

“İbranice’de “İsaac” ya da İshak ismi “gülecek olan lişi” anlamına gelir. ..Tanrı’nın da mizah duygusundan yoksun olmadığını gösterir. Aslında çocuğunun olduğunu öğrendiğinde Abram, şaşkınlık içinde gülmeye başlar. O’na olan inançlarını ödüllendirmek için Tanrı, yaşlı çiftin isimlerine heceler ekler, AbrAHam ve SarAH olur isimleri: tersine bir “Ha-Ha” (s.58)

“Trevor Griggith’in dediği gibi “Cehaleti besleyen espri kendi seyircisini aç bırakır” (s.92)

“Attilla the Hun ile Winnie The Pooh arasındaki ortak nokta nedir? Her ikisinin de göbek adı aynı” (s.95)

“bu seyircinin gülmeceye değil mumyalanmaya ihtiyacı var” (s.96)

“Freud’un kendi tabiriyle, befreiend, erhebend. Mizah üzerine yazdığı kısa yazıyı şu sözlerle biriktirir, “Bak! İşte dünya, çok tehlikeli görünen dünya! Çocuklar için yalnızca alaya alınmaya değen, bir oyunda başka bir şey olmayan dünya. Yani mizah, kendi gülmeye, kendini gülünç bulmaya dayanır, bu mizah acıklı değil aksine kurtuluş, avuntu ve çocuksu bir yükseliştir bizim için. Mizahın çocuksu yönleri önemli olmakla birlikte Freud’un mizah anlayışı ile erken dönem espiriler kuramı arasında ilginç zıtlığı ortaya çıkarmaya da yarıyor” Freud şöyle der: Mizahın, espirilerde büsbütün eksik olan bir asaleti, kıymeti vardır; zira espiriler sırf bir tür haz getirisi elde etmeye veya bir saldırıya hizmet eden haz getirisini yerleştirmeye yararlar” (s.113)

[Colin Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why is it important to theorize humor? Simon Critchley's answer in On Humour is a universal one. He writes, "Humour is an exemplary practice because it is a universal human activity that invites us to become philosophical spectators upon our lives" (18). Critchley's suggestion that humor "invites" subjects to philosophical speculation, which is best understood as a necessity that the subject can reject but with severe consequences. According to Critchley, most communicative interactions result in sensus communis, which is to say, common sense. But humor functions "as moments of dissensus communis" because "humour is a paradoxical form of speech and action that defeats our expectations, producing laughter with its unexpected verbal inversions, contortions and explosions, a refusal of everyday speech that lights up the everyday" (19). For Critchley, defamiliarization is one of humor's key features, but so is his theory of humor's debt to Hegel. Humor is a transcendent encounter that exists in the non-transcendent material (i.e., sensus communis). Humor simultaneously gestures beyond sensus communis (i.e., dissensus communis) while also grounding itself in sensus communis, which Critchley suggests is the way humor can "recall us to" common sense (18).

All of these initial musings render humor paradoxical. But humor's paradoxical contours reify the subject's paradoxical contours. Critchley writes, "Humour confirms the human being's eccentric position in nature, as improper within it, as reflectively alienated from the physical realm of the body and external nature. Yet, on the other hand, what takes place in humour, particularly in satire, is the constant overstepping of the limit between the human and the animal, demonstrating their uneasy neighbourhood. But, bringing together both sides of this paradox, we might say that the studied incongruities of humour show the eccentric position of the human in nature...The human being is anphibious, like a boat drawn up on the shore, half in the water, half out of it" (36). This recalls Freud's theory of the unconscious, which suggests that humans possess, for example, affirmative qualities and the inverse of those qualities. All of this indicates that humanity has something "ridiculous" about it, and it is this ridiculousness that humor effectively uncovers, whether we like it or not (59).

For Critchley, humor is a reckoning with contradiction (i.e., paradox). For Critchley, humor articulates how divided, wretched, and ridiculous we are, but, for Critchley, "our wretchedness in our greatness" (111). Humor reveals what is unmistakably finite and infinite about us. Moments of infinity cannot exist beyond our finitude because the finite has housed within it points of infinity.

[Juan Camilo Velandia Quijano · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not an easy book. English is not my first language but I read it and understand it pretty well... But this is high-level scholar English that mixed up my mind and my neurons... Even trying to translate it to my mother language was, sometimes, very hard to understand.

The exploration of humor and its origins is always interesting, there are a few chapters that talk about it and gave me a lot of information, there is clearly enough investigation on the matter to write about this. But the fact that it kept going back to Freud and Nietzsche only made things more complicated and difficult. I know their work and the importance, but do we ALWAYS need to go there?

Still, an enjoyable book, an impressive work of research and valuable lessons about humor.

[Hamid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting philosophical examination of humour through various and competing frameworks. Suffers significantly from an irritating abuse of language inherent in capital-P Philosophy which makes it meandering at best and extremely annoying at worst. Thank the heavens I chose not to plop for Philosophy at university.

If you can penetrate the philosopholinguistics (boom, have at ye) barrier then there's some good food for thought here. Using this as the springboard for a wider exploration of humour.

[Ayşegül AYTAÇ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitap tek başına mizah kavramını bütünsel olarak ele alan bir felsefe kitabı değil. Aslında kitabın ismi -mizah üzerine- bu yönünü ele veriyor ama ben okuyunca anladım. Anlatımını bu sebeple karışık buldum. Mizah üzerine örnekleri ve analizlerini anlayabilmek için ilgili ön okumaları yapmak faydalı olacaktır. Ama okunması gereken bunca şey varken bu çaba başka kitaplara da harcanabilir. Diğer taraftan, bazı fransızca ifadeler -muhtemelen tam karşılıklarını bulamayacakları için- çevirisiz (oldukları gibi) bırakılmış olsa da genel anlamda oldukça başarılı bir çeviri olduğunu söyleyebilirim.

[Nikola Novaković · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to humor studies, but spends perhaps a bit too much of its short span (only around 110 pages) talking about Freud and not developing many of the other fascinating ideas it introduces.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

taking "if you have to explain the joke, the joke's not funny" to a new level. i'm not a philosophy guy, maybe it's good if you are. it's not simon critchley's fault i had to read this for a class and use it for an essay. but i don't have to like it!

[Andrew Chappell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish this guy was even somewhat readable.

[Ben Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laughter at oneself is better than laughter at others. Get ridiculous, wiser, wittier and comforting.

[Little Beyza · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Tajh Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Critchley introduces (at least to me) a lot of really insightful pieces of information on humor and how we as people view it.

[Femke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Veel interessante filosofen passeren de revue, maar het boek bevat weinig originele gedachten.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. Something to think about I guess.

Found it in a philosophy free bin.

Worth skimming through.

Humor is cool.

[Julie Rosenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

So glad I'm done with this book. It was most of the time boring and well....meaningless.

[Charles Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

From antiquity to modernity, drawing on the work of a vast array of authors, e.g., Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Anthony Earl of Shaftsbury ("liberty loves humour"), Henri Bergson (the mechanization of humans), Beckett (risus purus), and Freud (the mellowing of the superego). This book turns the comical insight out to reveal delectable insights about what we find funny, e.g., feelings of superiority, "hydraulic" psychological relief, the felt incongruity of what we know or expect and what actually takes place. Critchley reveals the humanity of humour in being able to laugh at himelf and finding oneself ridiculous. Humour is a great anti-depressant that does not lead one to escape reality but to face up to it more intensely, but not with certain lightness.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

one could say it is admirable to undertake a bit of a philosophical run at humor. in the end, there's not much new to think about here. it's pretty clear that good master simon and i share attitudes towards humor, but the reassurance wasn't necessarily worth the hundred pages or so. there are a couple moments of concision (a rarity for anyone admittedly engrossed in philosophy) that are nice, potentially useful for a future statement or something. i guess i don't want to dog it, but really, your time might be better spent elsewhere if you are studying oomedy. if you're looking at cross-breeding freud, beckett and nietzsche, this might be your bag.

[an infinite number of monkeys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good but not great introduction to a difficult subject. It starts out heavy on examples of what humor is instead of any theory of why it is, and ends up with a bit too much Freud. Mr. Critchley is a little narrow in his focus (the book's only 111 pages), but does well enough to inspire further reading.

[Karmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of the best books on humour I've read. It's clear, short, concise, funny and readable. Author makes really good summary of the main theories on humour, adding his own critical thoughts on the in a witty way. Loved it!