Redeeming Laughter Redeeming Laughter The Comic Dimension of Human Experience PETER L. BERGER W DE G WALTER DE GRUYTER BERLIN · NEW YORK About the Author Peter L. Berger is a University Professor at Boston University. He is the author of many books in sociology and religion, including The Social Construction of Reality (with Thomas Luckmann), The Sacred Canopy, A Rumor of Angels and, most recently, A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity. Copyright © 1997 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Berger, Peter L.: Redeeming laughter : the comic dimension of human experience / Peter L. Berger. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1997 DBN: 95.027928.5© ISBN 3-11-015562-1 SG: 11 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berger, Peter L. Redeeming laughter : the comic dimension of human experience / Peter L. Berger, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-015562-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Comic, The—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Wit and humor—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. BR115.C63B47 1997 97-12095 233—DC21 CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Berger, Peter L. Redeeming laughter : the comic dimension of human experience 1. Comic, The - Religious aspects 2. Comic, The - Psychological aspects I. Title 152.4 ' 3 ISBN 3-11-015562-1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 To the Memory of My Father George W. Berger Table of Contents Prefatory Remarks, Self-Serving Explanations and Unsolicited Compliments ix Prologue xiii PART I. ANATOMY OF THE COMIC 1 The Comic Intrusion 3 2 Philosophers of the Comic, and the Comedy of Philosophy 15 3 Laughing Monks: A Very Brief Sinitic Interlude 39 4 Homo Ridens: Physiology and Psychology 45 5 Homo Ridiculus: Social Constructions of the Comic 65 6 Interlude: Brief Reflections on Jewish Humor 87 PART II. COMIC FORMS OF EXPRESSION 7 The Comic as Diversion: Benign Humor 99 8 The Comic as Consolation: Tragicomedy 117 9 The Comic as Game of Intellect: Wit 135 vili Table of Contents 10 The Comic as Weapon: Satire 157 11 Interlude: The Eternal Return of Folly 175 PART III. TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF THE COMIC 12 The Folly of Redemption 187 13 Interlude: On Grim Theologians 197 14 The Comic as a Signal of Transcendence 205 Epilogue 217 Prefatory Remarks, Self-Serving Explanations, and Unsolicited Compliments People who work in bookstores tend toward a pessimistic worldview, or so I have observed. This is very understandable, given both the quantity and (mostly) quality of the merchandise they are obliged to sell. And then there is the problem of classification: just where in the store is a particular book to be located? I can foresee that this book will raise this question in a particularly irritating fashion, thus contributing to the malaise already afflicting what I consider to be one of the more honor- able occupations in our generally depressing age. Is this book to be placed in the humor section? In religion? In sociology? The predomi- nance of Jewish jokes might suggest Judaica, the defense of Oscar Wilde gay and lesbian studies. By currently fashionable principles of literary theory, the author is the very last person to say how a book is to be understood. Nevertheless, if a choice is to be made, I would suggest a division: some books under humor, some under religion. It is certainly about humor; and the underlying argument as well as the finale are religious, and the title intends to make this clear from the beginning. People who review books are, of course, even more pessimistic than those who sell them. As someone once observed, even-handed malice is the cardinal virtue of the critic. This book will provide ample oppor- tunity for the exercise of this virtue. It takes its material from many fields, in most of which I have no professional competence. I have made an effort to use my sources responsibly, and I have taken some advice, but I'm confident that there are misinterpretations and, more important, omissions at various points of my argument. This knowledge has caused periodic attacks of anxiety during my work on the book. I have consoled myself with two thoughts. First, the literature about the nature of the comic, while vast, is singularly unsatisfactory in answering some of the basic questions about the phenomenon, partly because so few authors have been willing to step beyond the boundaries of their professional competencies; in other words, the comic is a subject that cries out for unprofessional treatment. Second, I have reached an age, tottering on χ Redeeming Laughter the edge of senility, where I can afford to be reasonably nonchalant about what people say about me. However, I will say this much in my defense: I have no delusions about being some sort of Renaissance man; I do have certain obsessions. I have been obsessed with the question of the nature of the comic all my life, ever since my father, an inveterate teller of jokes, encouraged me to tell my own about the time when I entered kindergarten, where according to reliable sources I made a nui- sance of myself as I faithfully followed the paternal mandate. Sooner or later, I had to write this book. It is easy to say what this book is not. It is not a jokebook, though I very much hope that readers will occasionally laugh. Put differently, it is a book about humor, but not primarily a humorous book. It is not a treatise in any of the intellectual disciplines from which it draws, and my own discipline of sociology is not at all central to my main argument. And, while it draws mainly on works of literature to illustrate the differ- ent modes of the comic, it is not a work of literary criticism. This book is a prolonged reflection about the nature of the comic as a central human experience. Its main argument can be stated succinctly: Humor—that is, the capacity to perceive something as being funny—is universal; there has been no human culture without it. It can safely be regarded as a necessary constituent of humanity. At the same time, what strikes people as funny and what they do in order to provoke a humorous response differs enormously from age to age, and from soci- ety to society. Put differently, humor is an anthropological constant and is historically relative. Yet, beyond or behind all the relativities, there is the something that humor is believed to perceive. This is, precisely, the phenomenon of the comic (which, if you will, is the objective correlate of humor, the subjective capacity). From its simplest to its most sophisti- cated expressions, the comic is experienced as incongruence. Also, the comic conjures up a separate world, different from the world of ordinary reality, operating by different rules. It is also a world in which the limitations of the human condition are miraculously over- come. The experience of the comic is, finally, a promise of redemption. Religious faith is the intuition (some lucky people would say the convic- tion) that the promise will be kept. Even if the main argument of this book is stated in such a brief form, it must be clear that it cannot be sustained within any given intellectual discipline. Philosophy would be the only plausible candidate but, as becomes clear quickly, philosophers have been of only modest use in the exploration of the comic phenomenon. Having started on the argument, I had to improvise as I went along. I had no foolproof method at hand (the word foolproof, come to think of it, is very appropriate here). The aforementioned kindergarten stood in Vienna, which may be of meth-