Topic Subtopic Discover what humor is from the perspective of history’s great philosophers. Philosophy Modern Philosophy T “Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into h e the [audio or video player] anytime.” P Take My Course, Please! h —Harvard Magazine ilo s o p The Philosophy of Humor “Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s h y best lecturers are being captured on tape.” o f —The Los Angeles Times H u Course Guidebook m “A serious force in American education.” o r —The Wall Street Journal Professor Steven Gimbel Gettysburg College Steven Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College, where he also served as the chair of the Philosophy Department. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. At Gettysburg College, Professor Gimbel has received the Luther W. and Bernice L. Thompson Distinguished Teaching Award and was named to the Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Chair for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities. He has published several books, including Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. THE GREAT COURSES® Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 USA G Phone: 1-800-832-2412 u www.thegreatcourses.com id e Professor Photo: © Jeff Mauritzen - inPhotograph.com. b o o Course No. 4156 © 2018 The Teaching Company. PB4156A k Published by THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard | Suite 500 | Chantilly, Virginia | 20151‑2299 [phone] 1.800.832.2412 | [fax] 703.378.3819 | [web] www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2018 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Steven Gimbel, PhD Professor of Philosophy Gettysburg College i Take My Course, Please! The PhilosoPhy of huMor Steven Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College, where he also served as the chair of the Philosophy Department. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. At Gettysburg College, Professor Gimbel has received the Luther W. and Bernice L. Thompson Distinguished Teaching Award and was named to the Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Chair for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities. Professor Gimbel’s research focuses on the philosophy of science, exploring the nature of scientific reasoning and the ways in which science and culture interact. He has published numerous articles as well as several books, including Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy; Defending Einstein: Hans Reichenbach’s Early Writings on Space, Time, and Motion; Exploring the Scientific Method: Cases and Questions; Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion; and Einstein: His Space and Times. Professor Gimbel’s other Great Courses are An Introduction to Formal Logic and Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science. ■ ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iNTroDuCTioN Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Course scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 leCTure GuiDes Lecture 1 The universality of humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Lecture 2 The objectivity of humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Lecture 3 The science of laughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Lecture 4 Truth and humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Lecture 5 Comedy and Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Lecture 6 irony and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Lecture 7 satires, Parodies, and spoofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Lecture 8 stop Me if you’ve heard This one: Jokes . . . . . . . . 46 Lecture 9 Theories of humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Lecture 10 superiority Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Lecture 11 inferiority Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Lecture 12 Play Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 iii Take My Course, Please! The PhilosoPhy of huMor Lecture 13 relief Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Lecture 14 incongruity Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Lecture 15 Cleverness Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Lecture 16 humor Theory revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Lecture 17 humor ethics: Boundaries and limitations . . . . . . 97 Lecture 18 Who Can Tell ethnic Jokes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Lecture 19 Comic Moralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Lecture 20 situational ethics and humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Lecture 21 The Necessity of humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Lecture 22 Comedian ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Lecture 23 socially Progressive Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Lecture 24 ridiculousness and the human Condition . . . . . . 140 suPPleMeNTary MaTerial Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 image Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 iv Take My Course, Please! THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMOR Everyone loves a good laugh. Humor is a universal human attribute, and every society has jokes of some form or another. However, humor has long been thought too unimportant to consider philosophically. Thankfully, that has recently changed. In the last decade, the philosophy of humor has become a recognized subfield of the discipline. This course is designed as an introduction to the questions and proposed answers philosophers are considering. The course is divided into three sections: general questions about humor, humor theory, and humor ethics. Each of these sections is comprised of eight lectures. The first section starts by setting out the object of this course’s study, humor, in its universality and multiple forms. Topics in this section include the universality of humor, the objectivity of humor, the relationship between jokes and truth, comedy and tragedy, and satire. The middle section of the course is dedicated to what philosophers call humor theory. The foundational questions for this section include: What is humor? What makes a joke a joke? Is it possible to determine parameters that make a given utterance an act of humor? These lectures look at the work of philosophers both ancient and contemporary, and examine different philosophical accounts of humor. The final section of the series considers humor ethics. It can hurt to be the butt of a joke, and a common question is if there are jokes only certain people can tell. Topics covered in this section include the morality of humor, the timing of jokes after an incident that inspires them, and the question of what moral standard professional comedians should be held to. Humor is interwoven into the fabric of human society. This course dedicates itself to the questions of what exactly humor is and what roles it plays. ■ 1 The Universality of Humor LECTURE 1 ThE UnivErSaLiTy of hUmor leCTure 1 Philosophers have been writing about humor at least since Plato in the 4th century BCE, but it is only in the last couple of decades or so that philosophy of humor has been recognized as a legitimate subfield of philosophy with professional organizations and a blossoming literature. Humor is a multifaceted, intricate philosophical concept. This lecture looks at how it manifests in different cultures and societies. CULTUrE anD hUmor Humor is a rich philosophical topic precisely because it seems to be everywhere. Wherever there are humans, there is humor. For example, think of what is probably the first joke many people experience: peek‑a‑boo. Once people acquire the ability to understand that things they can no longer see still exist, they use it as a joke by hiding a thing and making it reappear. Comedic television programs are broadcast from every country. If there is a culture, there is humor there. While all cultures have humor, there is a question of whether they all mean the same thing by humor. Cultural relativism is the view that the concept of humor is culture dependent. What is meant by the notion of humor in one culture is different from what is meant by humor in a different culture. 3 Take My Course, Please! The PhilosoPhy of huMor The main piece of evidence that cultural relativists point to is the fact that people often do not find the humor of other cultures funny. For example, locals may find something hilarious, but visitors will not even realize that there has been a joke made. Universalists, on the other hand, will contend that there is a difference between humor and the content of humor. It may be true that specific jokes require background knowledge, but while the meat of the joke might be local, the formal structure of the joke might be found cross‑culturally. hUmor anD PoWEr Another philosophical debate about humor is this: Do jokes about that which is revered in a society impinge upon the reverence? To those in power, it will often seem to be so. Humor is seen as a subversive force in society. The source of this power seems to come from three elements. The first is that people often use humor to degrade something. To be the butt of a joke is to be diminished. The second is that the nature of many jokes is to invoke a frame shift or some other mechanism that forces a person to see the familiar in a way that is unusual. If a person’s power comes from having people see things the way that person wants them seen, anything that implies that there are multiple interpretations may be a threat. Finally, humor often comes from the disaffected. Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of a double consciousness that members of a minority group will be forced to adopt. Everyone sees the world through the concepts of the powerful, but those in the out‑group will also have their own sense of the world. This often leads to the ability to create humor out of the conflicts between these two ways of seeing. 4