Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy

Lydia B. Amir

Description

By exploring the works of both Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Søren Kierkegaard, Lydia B. Amir finds a rich tapestry of ideas about the comic, the tragic, humor, and related concepts such as irony, ridicule, and wit. Amir focuses chiefly on these two thinkers, but she also includes Johann Georg Hamann, an influence of Kierkegaard's who was himself influenced by Shaftesbury. All three thinkers were devout Christians but were intensely critical of the organized Christianity of their milieux, and humor played an important role in their responses. The author examines the epistemological, ethical, and religious roles of humor in their philosophies and proposes a secular philosophy of humor in which humor helps attain the philosophic ideals of self-knowledge, truth, rationality, virtue, and wisdom.
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Shaftesbury: Ridicule as the Test of Truth

The Good Life
The Comic
Ridicule
Humor and Wit
Concluding Remarks: Humor, Good Humor, Ridicule, and the Shaftesburean Good Life

Intermezzo: Hamann: Humor and Irony as Categories of Understanding
The Good Life
Humor and Irony

2. Kierkegaard: Humor as Philosophy at its Best

The Good Life
The Comic
Irony
Humor
Concluding Remarks: The Comic, Humor, and the Kierkegaardian Good Life

3. Humor and the Good Life

The Comic and the Tragic
Humor
Ridicule
The Good Life

Notes
Bibliography
References
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Humour
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438449388
• Langue: English

Extrait

HUMOR AND THE GOOD LIFE IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY
HUMOR AND THE GOOD LIFE IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY
S HAFTESBURY , H AMANN , K IERKEGAARD
Lydia B. Amir
Cover: Jan Steen. The dancing lesson . 1660–1679. oil on panel. 68.5 × 59 cm (27 × 23.2 in). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amir, Lydia.
Humor and the good life in modern philosophy : Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard / Lydia Amir. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4937-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Life. 2. Wit and humor. 3. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1671–1713. 4. Hamann, Johann Georg, 1730–1788. 5. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855. I. Title.
BD435.A58 2014
128—dc23
2013003304
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Shaftesbury: Ridicule as the Test of Truth
The Good Life
The Comic
Ridicule
Humor and Wit
Concluding Remarks: Humor, Good Humor, Ridicule, and the Shaftesburean Good Life
Intermezzo Hamann: Humor and Irony as Categories of Understanding
The Good Life
Humor and Irony
Chapter 2 Kierkegaard: Humor as Philosophy at its Best
The Good Life
The Comic
Irony
Humor
Concluding Remarks: The Comic, Humor, and the Kierkegaardian Good Life
Chapter 3 Humor and the Good Life
The Comic and the Tragic
Humor
Ridicule
The Good Life
Notes
Bibliography
References
Index
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations are used in the text, followed by page numbers indicated by Arabic numerals. Roman capital letters indicate parts, books or volumes, and Roman lower-case letters indicate chapters.
WORKS BY ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER SHAFTESBURY
CR: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc ., ed. John M. Robertson, in two volumes, 1963
CR3: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc ., 6 th edition, corrected, in three volumes, 1737
Inquiry: Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit
Letter: Letter Concerning Enthusiasm
Life: The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury
Misc.: Miscellaneous Reflections on the Preceding Treatises, and other Critical Subjects
Moralists: The Moralists , a Philosophical Rhapsody
P.R.O.: The Shaftesbury Papers in the Public Record Office in at Kew, Surrey.
Essay: Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour
Soliloquy: Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author
WORKS BY SØREN KIERKEGAARD
AC: Attack upon “Christendom”
CA: The Concept of Anxiety
CD: Christian Discourses
CI: The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to S ocrates
COR: The Corsair Affair
CUP : Concluding Unscientific Postscript , edit. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
CUPL: Concluding Unscientific Postscript , trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie.
ED: Edifying Discourses
EO: Either/Or
FSE: For Self-Examination. Judge For Yourself!
FT: Fear and Trembling
JC: Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est
JP: Journals and Papers
PA: The Present Age
Pap.: Papirer
PC: Practice in Christianity
PF: Philosophical Fragments
PV: The Point of View for My Work as an Author
R: Repetition
SLW: Stages on Life’s Way
SUD: The Sickness unto Death
SV: Samlede Værker
TC: Training in Christianity
WL: Works of Love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to Erin Kelly, Lionel McPherson, and Yehuda Shavit—wonderful philosophers and dear friends—for their practical help, commendable patience, and unflinching support. The initial research for the book was facilitated by the help of Sarah Blatcher Cohen and Gary Cohen, who promised to change my life, and did.
I am indebted to Simon Critchley for alerting me to the importance of Shaftesbury and to the Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen for hosting me. I express my heartfelt gratitude to Larry Ventis and Larry Mintz, who hosted me as a visiting scholar respectively at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, and at the University of Maryland, Maryland. In Williamsburg, I enjoyed the college’s updated library on humor as well as the support and interest of John Morreall, who, at the time, had written all the major books on philosophy and humor. I am deeply grateful to him.
I am truly obliged to the philosophers who commented on previous drafts of the monograph: Erin Kelly, Yehuda Shavit, Noa Shein, Alicia Tessler, Yair Shlein, and Eli Benzaquen. I am grateful to David Segal and Itay Ehre for their advice on subjects pertaining to their respective areas of expertise.
I owe much to the patience of various English editors: Judi Felber, Kate Neptune, David Kelly-Hedrick, and especially Linda Landau, who managed to guide the work to completion.
I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues and friends at the International Society for Humor Studies, the International Society for Value Inquiry, and the various associations of Practical Philosophy for their sustained interest in and support of my work.
I owe particular thanks to my faithful assistants, the staff and academics of my department, especially Simi Sarig, Hillel Nossek and Eva Berger, who supported my research. The extraordiany help of the librarians at the College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel, and the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, is greatly appreciated.
I am especially grateful to my parents and my loyal friends for their patience, support, and love.
Last but not least, I wish to express my gratitude for the financial support provided for this research, first, by the chairs of the School of Media Studies (Arnon Zuckerman) and the Department of Behavioral Sciences (Amichai Zilberman) at the College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel; and, later, by the Research Fund of the Research Authority (Hillel Nossek, Zvi Safra, Seev Neumann) of the College of Management Academic Studies, Rishon LeZion, Israel. The former enabled me to start the research, and the latter, to bring it to completion.
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study is to investigate the role of humor in the good life. Various disciplines, such as medicine, psychology, and the social sciences, have praised humor for its individual and social benefits. 1 However, the question of the good life is fundamentally a philosophical question; it is important to inquire into whether philosophers have given humor any role in the good life.
Although philosophers have always been interested in laughter, the accepted view is that they have rarely approved of it as a practice or as a subject worth exploring. Still, I suggest that a thorough study of ancient philosophy reveals a variety of relations between philosophy and the comic that have been epitomized in legendary figures such as the ridiculous philosopher (Thales), the laughing philosopher (Democritus), and the comical philosopher (Socrates). This relationship is also seen in the conceptions and practices of philosophy as comedic (Plato, the Cynics) and in views that associate the comic with the ideal of the gentleman––wit as a virtue (Aristotle)––or with human nature in general––laughter as the mark of the human (Aristotle). These relations between philosophy and the comic developed into traditions in Antiquity that have survived throughout the Middle Ages and flourished in the Renaissance before being rediscovered in the Modern era. 2 Before the eighteenth century, however, pace some laughing philosophers of the Renaissance, philosophers seldom gave humor or any other form of the comic a prominent role in the good life. This study seeks to redress the neglect of such an important topic by concentrating on the small number of modern philosophers who have explicitly entrusted humor with a role in the good life as they conceive it.
Only two answer this description: the eighteenth-century British philosopher, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard refers to Shaftesbury when introducing his interest in the legitimacy of comic, their thought on this subject is related mainly through the work of the eighteenth-century theologian and critic, Johann Georg Hamann. 3 One more philosopher has given humor a prominent role within the good life, the French contemporary philosopher, Gilles Deleuze; as he is a postmodern philosopher, I address his thought elsewhere. 4 Frederich Nietzsche and George Santayana have prioritized instead laughter ’s role in the good life, and their thoughts on the subject are examined in a separate study. 5 This study focuses, then, on the respective views of the good life of Shaftesbury, Hamann, and Kierkegaard, and the role they assign in it to humor and other related forms of the comic. The latter include, first, the comic in general as well as in its relation to the tragic; good humor, ridicule and wit for Shaftesbury; and finally, irony, for both Hamann and Kierkegaard. This investigation concludes with my contribution to the discussion of humor in the good life. Drawing on recent research on humor, the tragic, the comic, and ridicule, I propose a prominent role for humor in the good life, which is accessible and perhaps even useful to contemporary readers.
When I mentioned to a colleague that I was writing a book on humor and philosophy, he laughed and sai