Philosophy, Humor, And The Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously 3030326705, 9783030326708, 3030326713, 9783030326715

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Introduction......Page 8
Contents......Page 12
1 The Tragic Sense of Life......Page 16
2 Evil, Pessimism and the Meaning of Life......Page 31
2 To Solve or Not to Solve…......Page 56
1 Desire......Page 57
2 Reason......Page 61
3 Resolutions of the Human Predicament: General Characteristics......Page 62
3.1 First Type of Theories: Renouncing Desires......Page 64
3.2 Second Type of Theories: Overstepping Reason’s Limits......Page 67
3.3 Third Type of Theories: Denigrating Both Desires and Reason......Page 69
4 Solving Away Humanity or Not-Solving the Human Predicament......Page 71
1 The Tragic and the Comic......Page 82
1.1 Transforming Tragic Oppositions into Comical Incongruities......Page 88
1.2 Tragic and Comical Incongruities......Page 90
1.3 Social Conflicts......Page 92
1.4 Personal Conflicts......Page 93
2.1 Self-Referential Humor......Page 96
2.2 The Sense of Humor: A Conceptual Tool......Page 98
2.3 Intrapersonal Communication......Page 102
1 Self-Knowledge......Page 111
2 Ambivalence......Page 114
3 Deliberation......Page 119
4 Living with Unresolvable Conflict......Page 120
5 Self-Change......Page 121
6 Example: Humor’s Approach to the Woman Condition—Disengaging from Shame and Disgust......Page 122
5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being......Page 132
1 Taking Ridicule Seriously......Page 133
2 Homo risibilis......Page 135
2.1 Homo ridens......Page 136
2.2 Intimations of Homo risibilis......Page 137
2.3 Fools for Christ or Philosophy’s Sake......Page 139
2.4 Theorists of the Absurd......Page 140
3 Appropriating Homo risibilis......Page 142
4.1 Humor as the Paradigm of Creative Processes......Page 145
4.2 The Basic Plot of Comedy......Page 147
4.3 Incongruity Theories of Humor......Page 152
5 Homo risibilis’ Place Within Philosophy......Page 153
1 Homo risibilis Among Contemporary Theories......Page 163
2 Joy......Page 167
3.1 The Desirability of Happiness......Page 172
3.2 The Feasibility of Happiness......Page 178
3.3 A New View of Happiness......Page 185
4 Time......Page 187
4.1 Tragic Time......Page 189
4.2 Setting Time in Motion......Page 190
4.3 Transcending Time......Page 193
1 Compassion: A Shared Ethics......Page 205
1.1 Sympathy......Page 208
1.2 Pity......Page 209
1.3 Eastern and Western Indiscriminate Loves of Humanity......Page 210
1.4 Criticism of Indiscriminate Love......Page 216
1.6 Compassion......Page 218
2.1 Humanism in the Global World......Page 220
2.2 Religion, Secularism and Skepticism......Page 223
2.3 Emotional Responses to Skepticism......Page 224
2.4 Homo risibilis......Page 232
3 Lucidity: Ridiculing Wisdom or Embracing Ridicule?......Page 233
3.1 From Wisdom to Unwisdom......Page 234
3.2 Humor, Self-love and Ridicule......Page 236
4 Concluding Remarks......Page 238
Conclusion......Page 247
References......Page 252
Author Index......Page 297
Subject Index......Page 310

Citation preview

Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition Taking Ridicule Seriously Lydia Amir

Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition

Lydia Amir

Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition Taking Ridicule Seriously

Lydia Amir Department of Philosophy Tufts University Medford, MA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-32670-8 ISBN 978-3-030-32671-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Brendan George A great human being with a wicked sense of humor

Acknowledgements

This book has been in the making for forty years. The final stages of its writing were replete with discomforting events, from misfortunes to tragedies, as is fit for a book on the human condition. For these reasons, the outcome may not live up to what I had in mind, exemplifying once one a prevalent feature of our lives. Were it not for Palgrave Macmillan Philosophy Editor, Brendan George’s immediate interest in the topic and sustained support since, this book would not have been written in its present form. With deep gratitude, I dedicate this work to him. I am indebted to Amy Kim for her invaluable help in preparing the manuscript and for her infallible dedication to this project. Lauriane Piette from Palgrave Macmillan has been most helpful. I am grateful for her patience, flexibility and understanding. Adumbrated in the last sixty pages of Amir 2014 and concretized through various issues addressed in Amir 2017 (Chapters 6–8, 12–15)

vii

viii      Acknowledgements

and Amir 2018 (Chapters 9, 12, 15), Homo risibilis, the worldview I am proposing along with its ramifications, is systematically presented here for the first time.1

1Amir,

Lydia. 2014. Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2017. Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2018. Taking Philosophy Seriously. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Introduction

This book is about the human condition. Although humor is part of its title, it has little to do with the spontaneously funny. The main theories that explain humor as we know it are ineffective in dealing with the human condition at large. Rather than merely encouraging the development of our funny bone, this study introduces Homo risibilis, a worldview that embraces contradictions in order to address effectively the ambiguities of the human condition without losing sight of its tragic overtones. Like the Buddhist’s raft, the Taoist fisherman’s net and Wittgenstein’s ladder, we can dispose of “the ridiculous human being” vision when its benefits are reaped even more easily than these mighty philosophies can get rid of their instruments of deliverance. Invoking ridicule in the same breath as the human condition seems offensive. Rather than laughing off our ridicule, however, we should take it seriously and own it. Affirming it enables us to reach the highest promises of philosophy and religion, of the East and the West. Homo risibilis or the ridiculous human being, the worldview that the following chapters introduce has the epistemological advantage of clearing unnecessary assumptions about our condition. Its soil is our daily experiences as also attested in the grand works of all civilizations. The economy of ix

x      Introduction

its epistemological demands yields plausibility to the ethical results they found. As no certainty is called upon, no doubts are to be overcome, and tranquility is not jeopardized by its dependence on dubious metaphysical and religious claims. The benefits it brings are proportionate to the efforts invested. All can attain to the mastery of the sole tool it systematically uses. The growing pleasure that accompanies its appropriation guarantees its success more easily than the formidable philosophies it seems to emulate. Homo risibilis answers both the perennial and contemporary requirement for a practical philosophy to use in everyday life. A viable worldview and a workable ideal of wisdom are needed today as much as they have been in the past. While being centered on the individual’s reflection, the realistic grasp of his situation and the personal well-being it yields bring about social consequences that fruitfully bear on the globalized world. Its egalitarian vision bases an ethic of compassion without requiring metaphysical or religious assumptions and liberates the individual for action on others’ behalf. Finding its place among the many worldviews that philosophy has offered in view of the good life, Homo risibilis is especially apt to express the minimal consensus we need in order to live in our global world. By defining the problem that philosophies and religions attempt to solve in terms we can all relate to, it enables an understanding of the other that surpasses mere tolerance. By being open-ended, it readily forms alliances with all cultures, while its non-dogmatic skepticism calls for scientific discoveries to refute it and for innovative technologies to make it redundant. The tragic sense of life has been revived through contemporary studies of evil and the renewed philosophic interest in pessimism and the meaning of life. The first chapter addresses this persistent feature of our condition with its contemporary ramifications. It concludes with a formulation that comprehends the content of the human condition found in everyday experience and expressed in the literature: It is defined by a tension between one’s desires on all levels, instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and the (im)possibility of fulfilling them, either in principle or in practice, brought to us by reason.

Introduction     xi

Various conceptions of desires and reason flesh out this formula, which identifies the human predicament as a tension that most religions and philosophies attempted to solve. A typology of the various solutions to this predicament according to the nature of their shortcomings comprise the second chapter. It concludes by suggesting that the epistemological price religions and many philosophies make us pay should not be paid. Instead, living with the unresolved tension of our situation is required to preserve our humanity, were it only possible to ease somewhat this tension. The third chapter indicates how to relieve the characteristic tension of the human condition. It relates the comic to the tragic and provides an account of humor that enables us to forge a taste for reality even though we may not find it immediately funny. The humorous outlook that allows us to comprehend the knowledge that the tragic sense of life reveals and to accept it without perishing from its sting is predicated on self-referential humor. This form of humor is introduced as a conceptual tool that holds contradictions together, enacting a fruitful internal communication that is especially apt for the inner transformation needed for philosophic self-education. The fourth chapter discloses the humorous outlook’s capacity to serve as a novel view of human rationality. It outlines humor’s ability to further the realization of various philosophic ideals. It helps attain to self-knowledge of otherwise unrecognized and unaccepted elements of the self, including ambivalence and the liberating impact its awareness has on our actions. It enables more effective rational deliberation while showing humor’s influence on emotions such as anger, fear, shame and disgust. It explains how self-changeis facilitated through the compassionate aggression that humor is, and how the relief it brings to the tension created by conflict helps us live with unresolved conflict. The chapter closes by an example of humor’s workings on the internalized attitudes toward women from which we, men and women, all suffer. While the humorous worldview that holds in balance the tragic and the comic aspects of reality is praised for the epistemological and ethical benefits it brings along, its instability and incessant repetition calls for an abiding resolution. This is the topic of the fifth chapter, wherein the

xii      Introduction

original thesis the book advances, Homo risibilisor the ridiculous human being, is compared favorably with its few antecedents and is positioned within the perennial philosophic tradition that seeks to find a harmonious place within the universe for the human being while preserving its uniqueness. The sixth chapter spells out the personal benefits this worldview brings. It explains how joy is attained; it recommends happiness also for the consequences it has on others and argues in favor of the timeliness that accompanies it. The seventh and last chapter outlines the social benefits of Homo risibilis given the global world we live in. It shows, first, how compassion best answers the need for a shared ethics and argues for the viability of an outlook that founds a morality of compassion without unnecessary assumptions. It evaluates, second, the emotional responses to skepticism and the place it holds in the contemporary world in order to plead for an open-ended approach that can be complemented by various creeds, different customs and unforeseen scientific discoveries. It argues, finally, for the necessity of a lucid and sobering worldview that responds to our shared need for a rational ideal of wisdom, and whose very content embraces its inevitable defeat.

Contents

1 The Human Predicament 1 The Tragic Sense of Life 2 Evil, Pessimism and the Meaning of Life

1 1 16

2 To Solve or Not to Solve… 1 Desire 2 Reason 3 Resolutions of the Human Predicament: General Characteristics 3.1 First Type of Theories: Renouncing Desires 3.2 Second Type of Theories: Overstepping Reason’s Limits 3.3 Third Type of Theories: Denigrating Both Desires and Reason 4 Solving Away Humanity or Not-Solving the Human Predicament

41 42 46 47 49 52 54 56

xiii

xiv      Contents

3 Handling Contradictions 67 1 The Tragic and the Comic 67 1.1 Transforming Tragic Oppositions into Comical Incongruities 73 1.2 Tragic and Comical Incongruities 75 1.3 Social Conflicts 77 1.4 Personal Conflicts 78 2 Humor: A Conceptual Tool for Handling Contradictions 81 2.1 Self-Referential Humor 81 2.2 The Sense of Humor: A Conceptual Tool 83 2.3 Intrapersonal Communication 87 4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals 97 1 Self-Knowledge 97 2 Ambivalence 100 3 Deliberation 105 4 Living with Unresolvable Conflict 106 5 Self-Change 107 6 Example: Humor’s Approach to the Woman Condition—Disengaging from Shame and Disgust 108 5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being 119 1 Taking Ridicule Seriously 120 2 Homo risibilis 122 2.1 Homo ridens 123 2.2 Intimations of Homo risibilis 124 2.3 Fools for Christ or Philosophy’s Sake 126 2.4 Theorists of the Absurd 127 3 Appropriating Homo risibilis 129 4 Explaining Resolution 132 4.1 Humor as the Paradigm of Creative Processes 132 4.2 The Basic Plot of Comedy 134 4.3 Incongruity Theories of Humor 139 5 Homo risibilis’ Place Within Philosophy 140

Contents     xv

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness 151 1 Homo risibilis Among Contemporary Theories 151 2 Joy 155 3 Happiness 160 3.1 The Desirability of Happiness 160 3.2 The Feasibility of Happiness 166 3.3 A New View of Happiness 173 4 Time 175 4.1 Tragic Time 177 4.2 Setting Time in Motion 178 4.3 Transcending Time 181 7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity 193 1 Compassion: A Shared Ethics 193 1.1 Sympathy 196 1.2 Pity 197 1.3 Eastern and Western Indiscriminate Loves of Humanity 198 1.4 Criticism of Indiscriminate Love 204 1.5 Empathy 206 1.6 Compassion 206 2 Skepticism: An Open-ended Epistemology 208 2.1 Humanism in the Global World 208 2.2 Religion, Secularism and Skepticism 211 2.3 Emotional Responses to Skepticism 212 2.4 Homo risibilis 220 3 Lucidity: Ridiculing Wisdom or Embracing Ridicule? 221 3.1 From Wisdom to Unwisdom 222 3.2 Humor, Self-love and Ridicule 224 4 Concluding Remarks 226

xvi

Contents

Conclusion 235 References 241 Author Index 287 Subject Index 301

1 The Human Predicament

The tragic sense of life has been revived by contemporary studies of evil and a renewed philosophic interest in pessimism. The first chapter uses these topics to enlighten persistent features of our condition and to formulate the general terms of the human predicament. Validated by everyday experience and expressed in world literature, various philosophies and most religions, the human condition is defined as a tension between one’s desires on all levels (instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual, spiritual) and the (im)possibility of fulfilling them, either in principle or in practice, brought to us by reason.

1

The Tragic Sense of Life

“Tragedy” refers to a literary form, and to an unfortunate event disrupting the existence of an individual or of an entire people, which violently destroys the possibility of freedom. While the “tragic” refers to both meanings of “tragedy,” it also expresses a specific tonality of experiencing and reflecting about reality. Referring to an unfortunate event as tragic often points to one’s experience, understanding and communication of reality.1 That use of “the © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_1

1

2

L. Amir

tragic” or “the tragic vision” is more restrictive than the general use of “tragedy” or “the tragic,” which associates these terms with a “catastrophe” or “the sorrowful.” Tragedy’s definition as a literary form may illuminate the initial meaning of the tragic were it not for the difficulties involved in defining tragedy,2 and the fact that the tragic vision differs from tragedy as a literary form: “Tragedy” refers to an object’s literary form, “the tragic vision” to a subject’s psychology, his view and version of reality…The tragic vision was born inside tragedy, as a part of it: as a possession of the tragic, the vision was a reflection in the realm of thematics of the fully fashioned revelation of aesthetic totality which was tragedy. (Krieger 1963, 131)

Though the poetics of tragedy can be traced back to Aristotle, Peter Szondi argues that “only since Schelling has there been a philosophy of the tragic.”3 Joshua Billings and Dennis Schmidt reprise Szondi’s classic assertion and show how German idealism influences philosophical speculation on tragedy and the tragic.4 They maintain that philosophic interest in tragedy is to be understood as both a historical phenomenon and a theoretical paradigm: Around 1800 theories of tragedy and ideas of modernity often coincide and establish a pervasive sense of modernity as tragic.5 Taken as covering post-Kantian thought, idealism in the broad sense of the word invests “a profound meaningfulness in tragedy which remains with the genre, as is visible in scholarship, adaptation, and performance.”6 Following Robert Pippin,7 Billings argues that Appropriations of tragedy around 1800 are efforts to grapple with the question of human freedom, a problem of central importance to post-Kantian thought…. Modernity seeks to understand itself by engaging with the alterity of antiquity. The idealist moment is united by common questions…which make tragedy important to the development of quite disparate philosophical approaches. They attempt to understand both the Greekness of Greek tragedy and its modernity. (Billings 2014, 6–7)

The notion of freedom is contested from philosophical and political points of view, by the Kantian critique and the French Revolution, as both cast doubts on freedom’s desirability and viability. Tragedy is newly defined

1 The Human Predicament

3

and particularly valued by some of the most significant figures associated with German idealism, such as Friedrich Schiller, the Schlegel brothers (Friedrich and August Wilhelm), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. A means of producing a certain emotional effect throughout the eighteenth century, tragedy is since 1800 a way of making sense of the world. Thus, Billings argues that “tragedy for moderns is uniquely philosophical.”8 Schelling inaugurates the philosophy of the tragic, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche carry it forward in the nineteenth century, followed by Max Scheler and Walter Benjamin in the early twentieth century. The philosophy of the tragic gives a new meaning to Greek tragedy which continues to inform philosophical, literary and historical discussions to this day. Thus, many twentieth-century and twenty-first-century thinkers have engaged with tragedy, including Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Arbogast Schmitt, Albert Camus, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler.9 With Nietzsche as its chief prophet and preacher, “the tragic sense of life” has gained recognition since the nineteenth century as a modern, neo-Christian invention.10 Modern consciousness has separated the tragic sense of life from its aesthetic origins: Fearful and even demoniac in its revelations, the [tragic] vision needed the ultimate soothing power of the aesthetic form which contained it—of tragedy itself—in order to preserve for the world a sanity which the vision itself denied…But what if we should find the Dionysian without the Apollonian? Here we would have life unalleviated, endlessly and unendurably dangerous, finally destructive and self-destructive—in short, the demonical. In effect it would be like tragedy without that moment in which the play comes round and the cosmos is saved and returned to us intact. It would be, in other words, the tragic vision wandering free of its capacious home in tragedy. (Krieger 1963, 137)

“The tragic,” liberated from “tragedy,” disengages from the therapy that the aesthetic form provides.11 The catharsis that tragedy offers by allowing the subversive elements to be healthily exposed and aesthetically overcome in the theatrical performance, as Aristotle explains in the Poetics, is no

4

L. Amir

longer available to the “tragic sense of life.” Wandering freely since their disengagement from the literary form without the cathexis once aesthetically provided, the alienated members that the tragic now discloses turn inward to nourish their indignation in the dark underground.12 The tragic tonality of reflection does not concentrate on exploring the world, but on elucidating the realities of the human condition.13 Rather than being a systematic view of life, the tragic vision allows for variation and degrees. It is a sum of insights, intuitions and feelings, to which the terms “vision,” “view,” or “sense of life,” however inadequate, more readily apply. For Miguel de Unamuno, the tragic sense of life is a subor pre-philosophy of which one is not fully aware, hence only partially formulated. De Unamuno views the tragic sense of life as reaching deep down into temperament, not so much flowing from ideas, as determining them. William James’s influence on de Unamuno is palpable, as in The Varieties of Religious Experience the sick soul’s melancholy determines the vision of its world.14 Most writers on the tragic sense of life agree on its contents, that it is the sense of ancient evil, the mystery of human suffering, the gulf between aspiration and achievement. Schopenhauer writes of “the unspeakable pain, the wretchedness and misery of humanity, the triumph of wickedness, the scornful mastery of chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the innocent.”15 His opinions have inspired similar views, both less and more extreme by comparison, such as those of Julius Frauenstädt, Eduard von Hartmann and his wife Agnes Taubert, Olga Plümacher, Philipp Mainländer and Julius Bahnsen.16 Among other thinkers who took part in the nineteenth-century pessimist controversy in Germany, Mainländer and Bahnsen are noteworthy in that they offer more unfavorable accounts of the human condition than Schopenhauer did, systematized into fullfledged philosophies.17 The recent endorsement of a mixture of pessimism and optimism by David Benatar, who follows in this tradition without necessarily acknowledging it, and by Joshua Foa Dienstag, who defends the social and political viability of pessimism, urges us to take these claims seriously.18 Nietzsche, whose thought evolves in relation to Schopenhauer’s, emphasizes suffering as the outcome of the constant struggle between the irrational, absurd and ecstatic, on the one hand (the Dionysian), and the

1 The Human Predicament

5

rational, intelligible and harmonious, on the other (the Apollonian).19 His follower, the French contemporary philosopher Clément Rosset describes Being as tragic, that is, illogical, amoral and contradictory. Being tragic in a tragic world, we are “alone, that is, loveless, base, thus valueless, and mortal, therefore, lifeless.” We are not accountable for the tension that defines the tragic; we notice this mystery but cannot accept it.20 Rosset affirms Nietzsche’s view of the human predicament: We have ventured on knowing a truth that we are unable to face. This is the truth about our contradictory and tragic destiny—tragic, in the sense that Vladimir Jankélévitch understands it, as “the alliance of the inevitable and the impossible.”21 For Richard Sewall, the tragic vision is primeval. It calls up out of the depths the first and last of all questions, the question of existence: What does it mean to exist? The tragic vision recalls the original terror, harking back to a world preceding the inception of philosophy, the consolation of later religions, and whatever constructions the human mind has devised to persuade itself that the universe is secure. It recalls the original un-reason, the terror of the irrational. It sees the human being as a bare and lonely questioner, facing the undeniable realities of suffering and death as well as mysterious and perhaps demonic forces in his nature and the external world.22 For Oscar Mandel that which tragic art teaches us is not simply that human effort fails, but that “failure lies implicit in the effort.”23 In “Tragic Reality,” he maintains that death, with its inevitable victory over effort, is the first tragic fact. The second tragic fact is socio-psychological, as the very act of living in society brings with it, unavoidably and “naturally,” friction, hate and misery. The desire or need to live among one’s kind is tragic because of the misalliance between human beings. We can list here social and political evils, work conditions and class struggles, human hostility and cruelty, or alternatively, human indifference and ambivalence, the hardships of friendship and the viability of love. Thus, “the very act of birth is tragic not only because it is simultaneously the condemnation to death,” Mandel notes, “but also because it fastens on the child the inevitability of suffering among his own species.”24 We meet these tragic facts at every facet of life. Mandel notes the intricacies of folly in wisdom, doom in success and flaw in every social reform. These are deemed the ambivalence of tragedy by Henry Alonzo Myers and

6

L. Amir

“the two sides of everything” by Larry Slade, Eugene O’ Neill’s protagonist in The Iceman Cometh.25 Attraction and repulsion, love and hate, illusion and disillusion, reform and reaction, utopian hope and end-ofan-age despair—these are the well-known elements of modern tragedies which may only end on a note of futility and hopelessness if the artist fails to see the justice in these dualities.26 Conrad Hyers formulates “the tragic paradigm” as a view of existence that is individually or collectively structured in terms of colliding polarities, oppositions and contradictions.27 Tragic opposition may be found within the individual, between persons or groups, in the very nature of things or on all three levels. On the individual level, we partake in a tradition that reads the psyche as characterized by a struggle between conflicting forces. At the heart of the tragic is the divided personality; the theme of the tragic psyche’s inner torment has a long history, from Sophocles’s King Oedipus to Plato, from St. Paul to medieval playwrights, from Shakespeare to the Romantics and from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Freud. Oedipus is tortured by the revelations brought about his own actions, the murder of his father and marriage to his mother. Plato sees the soul as captive of the body and the human being torn by upward and earthly desires. St. Paul’s “wretched man” in Romans 7 laments, “I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin” (22–24). Many medieval plays represent the inner struggle as a contest between the Seven Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins. This interplay is portrayed by an angel and a demon giving contradictory advice on the right path to follow. Shakespeare’s tragic outlook is repeatedly seen in “equivalence” or the balance of feelings in which the source of pleasure and joy is also the source of anxiety and grief. In accordance with our capacity for feeling, we are fated to enjoy and suffer in equal measures.28 The Romantics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries envision the human being as wrestling with irreconcilable passions that tear the psyche asunder, or as hounded by the disparity between the ideal (imagined or professed) and the real. Many of the characters in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov exemplify Dostoevsky’s conflict between faith and doubt.29 Freud describes the tension between the id and the superego,

1 The Human Predicament

7

which accounts for the conflicts within the human being and between the individual and society. The tragic finds the par excellence form of its expression in literature, as evidenced by the variety of literary works exploring the tragic paradigm since the Ancient Greeks. Examples of the tragic sense of life in the literature and drama of the nineteenth and twentieth century abound: Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , Camus’s The Stranger, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea and No Exit , and Melville’s Moby Dick exemplify it, while de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life has been a significant part of our modern sensibility. In contradistinction to literature and drama, philosophy is almost averse to the tragic sense of life. Echoing Nietzsche’s claims, Bernard Williams maintains that “moral philosophy is typically attached to the project of giving us ‘good news’ about our condition—whether in the form of the grand Hegelian narratives of progress or of Leibnizian theodicy. Even the bare Kantian fact of the good will is itself a kind of good news.”30 Along the same lines, William Desmond argues that tragedy reveals being as loss while philosophy strives to overcome this vision by placing reason where tragedy faces rupture and by constructing meaning where tragedy portrays suffering.31 Rosset suggests that philosophers generally discard the idea that the tragic sense of life can ever be developed into a philosophy. Philosophy willingly acknowledges that there is some tragic element in existence, literature and art, yet it refuses to admit that philosophy itself can be tragic. Rosset conjectures that a “tragic philosophy” would be inadmissible for it would repudiate all other philosophies, whose goal is to conciliate the human being to existence. Thus, philosophers willingly leave the tragic to art and literature. This explains the difference one often notices between contemporary philosophical and literary traditions of the same civilization, the latter basking in tragic brilliance and the former ignoring the tragic altogether.32 This attitude toward the tragic explains why few philosophers can be deemed tragic, and why the philosophical status of those considered tragic is openly disputed. Among the latter, Rosset mentions Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal and Kierkegaard; Schopenhauer is often dismissed as

8

L. Amir

an unhappy man.33 Moreover, the prominent tragic philosophers Pascal, Kierkegaard, Lev Shestov and even de Unamuno, to whom we owe the expression “the tragic sense of life,” only partly deserve this characterization because they pursue the consolation that the “good news” of religion offer.34 Along the same lines, George Steiner points to Christianity’s promise of salvation for all repenting sinners as the origin of tragedy’s demise. In The Death of Tragedy, he identifies the “unfaltering bias towards inhumanity and destruction in the drift of the world” as the foundations of the tragic, which Christianity has undermined. For Steiner, tragedy is predicated on the assumption that there are in nature and in the psyche occult uncontrollable forces able to madden and destroy the mind. A “happy ending” does not await us in some other spatial and temporal dimension beyond the tragic, wounds are not healed, and a broken spirit is never mended. Similarly, Karl Jaspers defends the position that the Christian promise of salvation stands in direct opposition to the unredeemable fatality of the Greek tragic vision: “The chance of being saved destroys the tragic sense of being trapped without chance of escape.” To the same effect, I. A. Richards considers tragedy as possible only to a mind that is for the moment agnostic or Manichean, as “the least touch of any theology which has a compensating Heaven to offer the tragic hero is fatal.”35 To the short and otherwise problematic list of tragic philosophers, we should add Schopenhauer, who sees the eternal strife of will against will as the ultimate nature of things, his followers Mainländer, Bahnsen and Nietzsche, who sees himself as the first tragic philosopher,36 and a few French philosophers, such as George Bataille, Cioran,37 and especially Rosset, who considers himself the sole follower of Nietzsche’s tragic legacy.38 However different the tensions and terrors that each age suffers, they all confront the same abyss: The tragic vision remains constant.39 The tragic sense of life is attentive to the constitutive contradiction of the human predicament because it recognizes “the inevitability of paradox, of unresolved tensions and ambiguities, of opposites in precarious balance.”40 This constitutive contradiction has been variously described not only by philosophers but also by various other scholars. For example, Freud formulates the human condition’s defining contradiction as a split between the id and the superego, and between the

1 The Human Predicament

9

individual and society, as noted above. Human conflict is necessary inasmuch as diverse tragedies plague everyone’s life: These include the tragedy of becoming an adult given the fate of one’s childhood, the life-long “repetition” of childhood scenarios, libidinal contradictions reflecting the wandering nature of human desire which creates the difficulty of loving, and the tragedy of the superego, which leads to the limitations of self-knowledge and of truthful self-evaluation. Evaluating Freud’s tragic views, Paul Ricœur emphasizes both the irresolvable situation in which desires can be neither suppressed nor satisfied and the ensuing narcissistic humiliation that even the most lucid awareness of the nature of conflicts cannot diminish.41 Emile Durkheim believes that the constitutive contradiction is best expressed as the antagonism between the dual aspects of the human being, as an organism and an individual construed by society. Similarly, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann perceive a dialectical process between the biological organism and the social self, while Claude Levi-Strauss and Agnes Heller point to the conflict between nature and culture.42 In philosophy, the most widespread view of this constitutive contradiction is between body and soul or mind. As noted above, Plato views the soul as dragged down and clouded by the dense and imperfect world of matter. The soul is torn apart by opposite desires, haunted by a vague recollection of the pure realm from which it has fallen.43 Pascal’s famous description of the human being as a “thinking reed” summarizes the contradictions that characterize humankind: What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe. Who shall unravel this confusion? (Pascal, Pensées, VI, 347–8; VII, 434)44

Contemporary accounts of tragedy may shed additional light on the tragic. In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Martha Nussbaum points to three different themes in Greek tragedies. The first is seen as an undeniable yet ordinary fact of human life: Good people are ruined because of things that are out of their control, which just happen to them. The second theme is more disturbing, but

10

L. Amir

some cases are alleviated by ignorance and the presence of physical constraint: Tragedy shows how circumstances whose origins are not within good people’s control make them do things that are otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments. Finally, the third theme is a more intractable case, which deserves to be characterized as “tragic conflict.” It is a case in which “we see a wrong action committed without any direct physical compulsion and in full knowledge of its nature, by a person whose ethical character or commitments would otherwise dispose him to reject the act. The constraint comes from the presence of circumstances that prevent the adequate fulfillment of two valid ethical claims.”45 Here, Nussbaum follows Hegel’s view of the tragic as an ethical conflict between two rights46 : We have been considering situations, then, in which a person must choose not to do (have) either one thing or another. Because of the way the world has arranged things, he or she cannot do (have) both…He wants, however, to do (have) both…we have, then, a wide spectrum of cases in which there is something like a conflict of desires…: the agent wants (has reason to pursue) x and he or she wants (has reason to pursue) y; but he cannot, because of contingencies of circumstances to pursue both. (Nussbaum 2001b, 27)

Nussbaum mentions a case in which the motivations driving the pursuit of X are not desire, but moral issues that cannot simply be avoided by eliminating desire.47 However, various scholars have criticized Hegel’s reading of tragedy because the tragic resists moral interpretation. For example, Ricœur argues that Hegel sees tragedy in moral terms because such reading enables him to rescue free will from the restrictions of circumstances.48 Nussbaum’s achievement lies less in her moral reading of tragedy than in emptying its religious content by deeming it a “questioning and an enacted testing of theodicy.”49 Accounts of tragedies that emphasize their a-morality (such as Ricœur’s) and point critically to their religiosity (such as Nussbaum’s) complete the descriptions of the tragic given so far. I do not examine additional attempts to assess the nature of tragedy as the primary concern of this chapter is

1 The Human Predicament

11

the tragic sense of life.50 I attempt now to generalize the various descriptions of the tragic by suggesting an encompassing formula that dispenses with the particulars of each vision and renounces specific metaphysical assumptions. I suggest that the experience common to human beings is a tyranny of desires, needs and wishes seeking satisfaction on the instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual and spiritual levels, together with the awareness of the (im)possibility of satisfaction that reason reveals. Not only it is notoriously difficult to know what we really want, not to say, what we really need, but the simultaneous satisfaction of various desires, needs and wishes that seem to be constitutive of the human being is extremely difficult, often impossible, to achieve, particularly if we take into account the epistemological and ethical costs that reason refuses to pay.51 Such a description of the human predicament can be assessed through three wellknown philosophical theories that describe the inherent unsatisfaction of the relationships we entertain with the world, others, and ourselves. A famous formulation of our predicament is found in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus: The “absurd” arises as a result of the world’s failure to meet our demands for meaning.52 We may consider Camus’s “absurd” as the tension between our need for value and meaning, on the one hand, and the awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling that need in the world, on the other. This makes the absurdity of our situation an inner situation rather than an objective one and enables to describe it as a case of desires frustrated by one’s awareness of the (im)possibility of fulfilling them. That the world fails to meet our demands for meaning suggests that the world might have satisfied these demands if it were different. Yet Thomas Nagel rightly remarks that what perpetuates doubt regarding the limited aims of individual life also makes difficult to dispel doubt about the very idea that life is meaningful. Once fundamental doubt has begun, it cannot be laid to rest. It is not that desires might have been satisfied under different circumstances, but that there simply does not appear to be any conceivable world in which irresolvable doubts do not arise, at least for human beings. Consequently, the absurdity of our situation derives not from a gap between our expectations and the world, but from a tension within ourselves.53

12

L. Amir

Another view that bears on the suggested description of the human predicament is Sartre’s characterization of the clash between the self and the other, between the individual and the group.54 In No Exit , Sartre exemplifies our difficult coexistence by famously declaring that hell is other people. In Being and Nothingness, our dependence on, struggle with, and shame in front of the other are described as an undeniable fact of human existence. This is so because I live under the gaze of the other, which objectifies me. Following Hegel, Sartre maintains that the other’s judgment of what I am is vital to my self-consciousness. However, he further argues that my freedom ceases with the other’s existence as his gaze alienates me and forces me into a particular being. “If there is an Other, whatever or whoever he may be, whatever may be his relations with me, and without his acting upon me in any way except by the pure upsurge of his being—then I have an outside, I have an essence.”55 As the other mediates between me and myself, shame ensues. I am ashamed of the way I appear because being an object under the other’s gaze also enables the objectification which is the condition of my own self-evaluation. If the image reflected to me has nothing to do with me I may be irritated or angry by the other’s judgment; however, being ashamed of it means that I recognize myself in it: I am as the other sees me. Sartre’s further account recalls Hegel’s description in the Phenomenology of Spirit of the emergence of self-consciousness in two distinct beings. Hegel sees human desire as fundamentally a desire for recognition, each self-consciousness seeking recognition in the other. This movement taken to extreme is a struggle to death in which the person who is ready to die for this dominance masters the other, who prioritizes life at the expense of abstract self-consciousness. However, the recognition sought is impossible by such lordship, since in this situation the bondsman is not free to offer it. Similarly, Sartre describes human relations as a struggle to annihilate the other’s freedom or enslave the another consciousness, a project that backfires if successful. I need a free subject to validate me, an object cannot do; but subjugating the other objectifies his subjectivity. This continual clash of freedoms or self-consciousnesses may be construed as a tension between one’s desires, which for Sartre is the impossible project of being God, and one’s awareness of other existences, who desire the same and whom one

1 The Human Predicament

13

ought to take into consideration when the problem is formulated in moral terms. The final theory that bears on the proposed formulation is Immanuel Kant’s, who views metaphysical questions as necessarily rising from the nature of reason while transcending reason’s power to answer them: Human reason has this particular fate that it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. (Kant 1929, xviii)

In Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Kant speaks of “metaphysics, with which, as fate would have it, I have fallen in love but from which I can boast of only a few favors.”56 In the Critique of Pure Reason, he maintains that no matter how unsuccessful our metaphysical efforts may be, “we shall return to metaphysics as to an estranged beloved.”57 Kant holds that reason has a proper aim and an internal drive to reach it; because this drive is necessarily frustrated, the internal tension Kant describes is steady and consists of the inevitable quest for metaphysical answers and the simultaneous awareness of the impossibility of satisfying it.58 Kant identifies yet another tension, that between nature and freedom, is and ought, which conditions all human existence.59 This bears consequence on the relation of virtue to happiness: We may hope for the two to coincide and strive by being virtuous to create a world in which they do, but as the two are distinct their coincidence is out of our cognitive reach. Kant here reprises Augustine and Martin Luther’s view of the necessary discontinuity between religious conduct, on the one hand, and reward or salvation, on the other. Young Nietzsche’s compliment to Kant, calling him “tragic,” may be justified as Kant raises “unresolved tension to something like the fundamental principle of human being.”60 The three examples that Camus, Sartre and Kant provide help illustrate the heart of human tension as dissatisfaction resulting from the clash between expectations and the perception of reality. Yearning is frustrated by acknowledging the impossibility of its fulfillment. Among the constant sources of frustration, we may count spiritual desires, the need for meaning, the thirst for knowledge, our dreams of happiness and hopes for

14

L. Amir

immortality, the yearning for homeliness in the world, whether by love or other means, as part of a community, with another human being or with oneself. In certain cases, the frustration arises simply due to practical hindrances. For instance, though I want to see you, I may not be able to because I am blind, or because you are far away, or deceased. Often, the frustration is due to more theoretical reasons that inhibit the realization of desires in principle, because these reasons are inherent either in desires, or cognition, or in the conflict between those two. I may want to see you but also do not want to see you, I may want to see you but you may be invisible (God), or I may want to see you but I am restricted to this spectrum of colors. As Williams puts it: The world was not made for us, or we for the world…our history tells no purposive story…there is no redemptive Hegelian history or universal Leibnizian cost-benefit analysis to show us that it will come out in the end….the world is only partially intelligible to human agency and is itself not necessarily well adjusted to moral aspirations.61

The way I portrayed the tragic so far lends support to its universality. However, the view that the tragic is accessible to all is controversial. Some thinkers do deem the tragic an essential element of the universe,62 or a pervasive aspect of it,63 making it perceivable by all. Others see the tragic as accessible to only a few persons. For example, Scheler argues that some of us are nearly blind to the tragic.64 Nietzsche and more recently Benatar conjecture that the truth may be too much for many people to bear.65 Sewall maintains that the tragic sense of life is an attitude toward life with which some individuals seem disposed to a high degree, others less so, but which is latent in every person and may be evoked by experience.66 De Unamuno finds the variability of the tragic sense of life as characteristic of nations rather than individuals.67 Americans are considered to be averse to it, perhaps as a consequence of their vision of the “indefinite perfectibility of man” that Alexis Tocqueville noted as early as 1835. Stanley Edgar Hyman exemplifies this claim by appealing to reconstruction undertaken by American psychoanalysts of Freud’s views along less “gloomy, stoic, and essentially tragic” lines than his “applied” psychoanalysis. He argues that the effect of this reconstruction “has been to re-repress whatever distasteful

1 The Human Predicament

15

or tragic truths Freud dug out of his own unconscious or his patients’ and to convert the familiar device of resistance into revisionist theory.”68 However, Dienstag maintains that there is a respectable tradition of pessimism in America as well.69 The controversy over the accessibility of the tragic is related to further debate on whether the tragic sense of life can be taught. Lionel Abel believes that one arrives at the tragic sense of life only after experiencing tragedy: “One does not acquire or develop the tragic sense,” he maintains; “it is not realized, but imposed; one never possesses it, one has to be possessed by it.”70 While acknowledging that personal tragedy is one way to arrive at the tragic sense of life, Schopenhauer points to an additional route to it: Appropriating his philosophy arms us with the required knowledge of reality as tragic. However, this knowledge falls short of the denial of Will required for the release Schopenhauer advances.71 Whether the tragic sense of life should be enhanced is yet another controversial topic. Various authors believe that a tragic sense of life ought to be fostered,72 especially because they see “a perhaps unconscious but forceful onslaught on our sense of the tragic that threaten[s] to destroy it utterly.”73 More than one hundred years ago, James worried about the fate of the sick souls in the hands of the happy-minded: “The evil facts which [healthy-mindedness] refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”74 The views of the happy-minded do not suffice for a philosophy; the sick souls understand reality more accurately yet at the price of terrible sufferings. However, the happy-minded would do away with the sick souls if they could. James’s concern is validated by the views of his colleague, George Santayana. Deeming the existentialists “sick souls,” Santayana refuses to engage with their thought.75 More recently, Robert Solomon objects to Dienstag’s characterization of existentialists as pessimists, a lesser insult yet still stigmatizing as well as false.76

16

2

L. Amir

Evil, Pessimism and the Meaning of Life

The tragic view of life’s relation to evil, its bearing on the meaning of life and association with pessimism are the topics I now tend to following the renewed philosophic interests in evil, meaning and pessimism. This discussion sets the tragic sense of life in relation to other approaches to the human predicament. It further discloses that the tragic sense of life is intimately connected with specific approaches to evil, progress and reason. This ties it to a phase in philosophy, religion andart that may be revised to fit current times and address contemporary problems. Tragedy is an encounter with evil, which threatens the very meaningfulness of our lives. Or so it is portrayed by various theorists of evil, among them Susan Neiman in Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy.77 Neiman’s study puts evil on the agenda by probing its pertinence to contemporary philosophic concerns. Her work has spurred further studies: Franklin Perkins explores the ways in which the problem of evil is addressed in ancient Chinese philosophy, various scholars formulate anew the relation between the tragic sense of life and modern approaches to evil, and contemporary studies of pessimism refer approvingly to Neiman’s work.78 Neiman argues that while the twentieth century avoids discussions of evil, it should be the central topic of philosophy.79 Comparing the way philosophers reacted to the Lisbon earthquake to the way we address Auschwitz, she rejects the distinction between natural and human evils and argues that the problem of evil can be stated in nontheistic form. The difference between those various evils can be traced to Gottfried W. von Leibniz’s classical account in Theodicy.80 He distinguishes metaphysical evils both from physical or natural evils and from moral or human evils. The first kind of evil points to the inherent limitations of creatures; the second refers to suffering, for which God is responsible; and the third is attributed to free will and thus removed from the responsibility of God, although insofar as He created beings capable of doing evil he may be vicariously held accountable. A current term at stake in naturalizing evil is “radical evil,” famously rejected by Hannah Arendt in her account of Adolf Eichmann’s character and deeds.81 The problem of radical evil is usually traced to Kant’s view

1 The Human Predicament

17

of freedom. Because freedom requires free will, which chooses deliberately to do evil, it cannot be found within the Kantian phenomenological world where everything is causally determined. However, a similar view is defended in the first philosophical account given of evil, in Augustine’s justification of hell and heaven.82 Augustine separates evil action from God the creator of man, maintains the status of human beings as supernatural and grounds an idea of human responsibility that can justify eternal torture as a punishment. The relevance of Neiman’s argument to this chapter lies in its disclosing the theodicies at work in the way the problem of evil has been approached from Leibniz to Arendt. Similarly, the tragic sense of life evolves out of the emphasis that German idealism has put on the need for redemption that tragedy occasions, as tragedy confronts our yearning for the infinite with our limits. The tragic sense of life is a neo-Christian problem that feeds on the death of God, but also on the so-called death of philosophy and the rejection of personal happiness as well as progress and reason. These rejections tie the tragic sense of life with pessimism and the death of philosophy explains the turn to art which enabled its formulation. The philosophic spur may have been the denial of Leibniz’s theodicy and the acceptance of Kant’s critical philosophy; but the historical juncture on which the new view of the tragic was meant to bear is the Enlightenment view of progress as epitomized in the French Revolution. The turn to art intimated in Kant’s third critique was to replace philosophy, the end of which colored the human predicament with somber tones. This is also the epoch in which the phrase “the meaning of life” orginates with an eye to artistic egotism as the key to a narrative that would answer it. Kant’s critical philosophy and the Enlightenment view of progress as epitomized in the French Revolution catalyze the tragic view of life. Tragedy is considered newly important as the genre of peripeteia that can represent and grasp historical chaos, “the spiritual violence of the time,” extending to political, philosophic, artistic and religious life. The tragic view of life obviously rejects Leibniz’s optimism in the Principles of Nature and Grace According to Reason, with his defense of divine justice and his argument for “a pre-established harmony between the kingdoms of nature and grace, between God as architect and God as monarch.”83 Thus, Perkins rightly notes,

18

L. Amir

The optimism about divine justice manifests a deeper optimism, that human categories, judgements, and values are commensurable with the structure of the universe itself, that we are fundamentally at home in the world, or that the world is ultimately coherent and intelligible in both epistemological and ethical terms.84

Optimism is challenged by experience. The tragic view of life argues that we should confront the fact that things do not always work out, which leads us to recognize the problem of evil. While tragedy has always dealt with the problem of evil—Aristotle takes its core to be pity and fear occasioned by undeserved misfortune—it is certainly not regarded as a morality play in antiquity. None withstanding the pivotal role of Schiller, Schelling creates the notion of the tragic, which is fleshed out in conversations between Hegel and Hölderlin of the later 1790s, taking on a central role in the Hegelian dialectic and later endorsed by other German philosophers. However, it is August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature that brings about the explosion of discourse on the tragic. Delivered in Vienna in 1808, published the following year and translated into various languages, these lectures convey an idealist viewpoint on tragedy to the widest audience. Some of the central assumptions of idealist thinking on tragedy that Schlegel articulates is the concept of “the tragic” itself as defined in relation to poetry and drama in a systematic fashion. Related to “seriousness [Ernst],” the concept of the tragic stems from “the need, inherent to our essence, for the infinite, at the limits of the finite in which we are confined.” Schlegel explains: All that we create and do is transient and insignificant; death, towards which every moment, well or poorly used, brings us, stands everywhere in the background […] then every mind that is not impervious to pain must be overtaken by an unspeakable sadness, against which there is no other means of protection than the consciousness of a vocation extending beyond the earthly. This is the tragic mood [die tragische stimmung ].85

Schlegel’s description recalls Schiller’s account of the sublime86 and is explicitly named the tragic sublime later in the lectures.87 By talking about the tragic instead of tragedies, he contributes to the reification of the

1 The Human Predicament

19

concept, which also appears in Shelling’s lectures. Thus, for Schlegel the tragic is prior to, and independent from, instances of tragedies, which may or may not be tragic. Moreover, he argues that only Greek works can manifest the essence of tragedy, as dramatic forms were created by none other than the Greeks. Billings notes that Schlegel’s lectures propagate “the hypostasis of the tragic and the essentialization of Greek tragedy” that are already present in various idealist approaches. The echoes of idealism’s tragic thought can be followed into the philosophies of Schopenhauer, K. W. F. Solger’s Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel’s Aesthetics lectures, and Kierkegaard.88 Reminding us that Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin were “all trained to be pastors—not philosophers, poets, or philologists,” and that their philosophies intend to be “tragic theologies,”89 Billings sums up the genealogy of the tragic thus: The connection between art and the supersensible, dimly suggested in Kant and elaborated by Schiller, was developed into a full-blown philosophy of art by idealism. Tragedy became a privileged object of this philosophical development, since it was seen by most thinkers of the period, following Kantian notion of the sublime, as the negative presentation of the absolute….Most commentators on Greek tragedy do share the assumption that tragedy presents an insight into questions and problems of great importance— whether philosophical, ethical, religious, psychological, social, or political. These very contexts for understanding tragedy are unique to approaches since 1800, and their continuing importance in research today reveals traces of a residual and often unacknowledged idealism. (Billings 2014, 226; emphasis added)

Tragedy is the nearest access humans have to a higher realm. It represents freedom as it is known and experienced in history. The end of tragedy is conceived as a paradox, a loss that is also a gain, but most importantly, for idealists, tragedy presents us with a world that “must somehow find redemption.”90 Along the same lines, Perkins notes that modern tragic views cannot be separated from a Christian lineage that defines human beings as longing for the infinite, tracing Descartes’s yearning back to Plato. At the beginning of modern philosophy, the Cartesian Meditations presents the awareness

20

L. Amir

of the infinite as constitutive of human consciousness. This reformulates Augustinian views expressed in the Confessions, which can be traced back to Neo-Platonism. Though the Neo-Platonism that Augustine encountered was not Plotinian anymore, but rather a philosophical religion among various competing religions,91 Augustine’s yearning for the infinite can still lead to Plato’s Symposium. There, Plato points to the gap between humans and the pure and divine forms of beauty and goodness as defining the very love of wisdom that is philosophy. The tragic sense of life’s confrontation of the problem of evil does not consider evil as caused by the existence of a beneficent God. To the contrary, modern tragic views seem to mourn for a lost God, which keep them under the spell of theism: Taking human self-awareness as constituted by a sense of lack already holds a certain tragic tone, but the real tragedy—or absurdity—comes if we lose the belief in this infinite being. This is “the death of God,” leaving what David Farrell Krell brilliantly calls, with reference to Ahab, “the phantom limb of the absolute.” (Krell 2005, 14; Perkins 2014, 36)

This observation is confirmed not only by Billings and Schmidt’s studies of German views of tragedy, but also by Neiman’s survey of the problem of evil.92 It seems that modern philosophy’s approaches to evil and the tragic sense of life are imbued with Christian meanings.93 Apart from the obvious case of Christian philosophers who address the problem of evil (Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Kierkegaard), other philosophies involve various religious approaches. We may differentiate between explicit theological claims (about God’s existence) and goals (theodicy or the justification of God),94 such as found in the philosophy of Hegel95 ; more or less explicit religious assumptions and justifications, such as exemplified by the philosophies of Kant,96 Schopenhauer97 and the Romantics; and implicit religious ideas and purposes that are disclosed in such philosophies as Nietzsche’s, Camus’s and others proponents of the absurd.98 Christian assumptions are also found in the nineteenth-century German controversy over pessimism, which Frederick Beiser thoroughly analyzes in a recent study.99 Schopenhauer’s thought is at the basis of this

1 The Human Predicament

21

debate about the value of life, which left no German intellectual indifferent, whether positivist or neo-Kantian. Schopenhauer is not the only pessimist of his era, however, and Nietzsche not his sole or even best critic. Beiser reveals the Christian ideals at work within the worldviews of notable pessimists, such as Frauenstädt and Eduard von Hartmann. Especially, intriguing is Mainländer’s attachment to Christian notions despite the extreme pessimism of his philosophy and his early suicide following his view of death as the sole redemption.100 While Beiser’s study of pessimism recognizes the pertinence of Nietzsche’s views to the pessimism controversy, it does not address them.101 Some scholars argue that tragedy results from a double bind, a conflict between values that cannot both be satisfied102 ; not so Nietzsche, who follows Schopenhauer in generalizing pessimism to the human capacity to grasp and understand the world. Tragedy for Nietzsche is the monstrous or uncanny dread we feel when things defy the principle of sufficient reason, a problem Schopenhauer first formulated in terms of a metaphysics of an irrational Will. To continue the argument introduced above, the affinities of both thinkers with Christianity should be emphasized: Schopenhauer deems his philosophy “the only true Christian philosophy” even though he replaces its view of redemption with another; Nietzsche’s defense of suffering does not sufficiently differ from Christianity’s to justify his virulent attack on the Christian worldview, many ideas his mature philosophy advances are recognized as Lutheran in origin and the religious undertones of his thought are now commonly exposed.103 Dienstag refers to a lesson-plan found in the notebooks of another notable Christian, Simone Weil, to establish the pessimistic relationship between time and tragedy: “All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.”104 He underlies the sense of linear time at stake with various forms of pessimism, such as the cultural pessimism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Giacomo Leopardi, the metaphysical pessimism of Schopenhauer and Freud, the existential pessimism of Camus, de Unamuno and Cioran, and the Dionysian pessimism of Nietzsche. Coupled with the rejection of the idea of progress that pessimists share, it leads to boredom, a sense of the irony of history which the rejection of reason from Rousseau to Heidegger underlines, a denial of the possibility of happiness and a feeling of the absurd situation of

22

L. Amir

humankind. A recurrent theme with pessimists is the rejection of reason, according to Dienstag, and the rejection of the French Revolution and of the materialism advanced in the Enlightenment, according to Beiser. What is the relation that holds between pessimism and the tragic sense of life, then? It is difficult to answer this question for pessimism is even more variably defined than the tragic sense of life. While we have seen that the latter allows for degrees and variations, pessimism as a philosophic position does not answer to one definition. It is described differently by those who criticize it, such as Marie-Elme Caro and James Sully,105 by those who defend it as an ethical or existential theory, such as Benatar, and by those who emphasize its varieties, either by explicating the controversy it occasions, as Beiser does, or by exploring its political viability, as Dienstag does.106 However complex the issue of comparing the tragic sense of life with pessimism may be, I believe we can assert the following: While pessimism entails some variant of the tragic sense of life, the contrary is not necessarily true: the tragic sense of life needs not commit to pessimism. If pessimism means that this is the worst possible world, the tragic sense of life needs not assume that; if pessimism is synonymous with the view that non-existence is preferable to existence, this does not follow from the tragic sense of life. If, as Perkins holds,107 the tragic sense of life maintains a stance of affirmation that pessimism lacks, not all tragic thinkers can be characterized as affirming life. Most importantly, the antipathy to both progress and reason that characterizes some versions of pessimism is not necessarily entailed by a tragic sense of life. And, especially foreign to the sensibility a tragic sense of life expresses is the further use of pessimism as a tool for persuasion for or against political issues. While pessimism has been and still is enlisted for or against social causes,108 the tragic sense of life strikes me as more quietist than militant and therefore tends to remain within the individual and existential domain rather than engaging in political polemics. We noted above how most Germans rejected both the French Revolution and the materialism the Enlightenment advanced. One additional particularity of the German response is of interest in this study of the tragic: in turning away from philosophy, German thought embraces art. Beginning with German idealism, it becomes possible to see art as a “quasiphilosophical form, the locus of a truth different from—and for some,

1 The Human Predicament

23

more profound that—the truth of philosophical discourse.” Tragedy as understood by German idealism brings a change in the attitude toward artistic practices. It is a transformational moment that the works of Goethe and Schiller exemplify, as later the works of the Schlegel brothers, Tieck and Novalis, Kleist and Hölderlin exemplify Romanticism. Kant’s aesthetics plays an important role in bringing about the new attitude toward art. First, it grants aesthetic judgment a significant place as the means of associating the theoretical and practical domains of philosophy. Second, it restores some of the comfort that Kant’s first critique denies: The sublime allows the experience of the subject’s freedom, which otherwise lies beyond the realm of sensible experience. Billings explains how the Kantian sublime “appears as an indirect experience of the intelligible realm to which Kant’s philosophy had seemed to deny access.” Therefore, Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, thinkers of the 1790s and 1800s enlarged the scope of Kant’s vague notion of the philosophical significance of the beautiful into a philosophy of art, which could see artistic beauty as the instance of the rational and the divine within the sensible. It was Greek tragedy more than any other art form that provided the ground and inspiration for this aesthetic turn in philosophy.109

It should come as no surprise, then, that the expression, “the meaning of life,” originates in the same era and the same circle as does the tragic sense of life. Although I do not dwell on the details of the genealogy and peripeties of “the meaning of life,” I consider the circumstances of its birth relevant to the present discussion. Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia attribute the phrase “the meaning of life” to the Romantics who studied with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “the true father of Romanticism”110 : The phrase originates in German…among Fichte and his students during the final years of the eighteenth century. Most of the “Jena Romantics” were Fichte’s students at some point: Novalis, the Schlegel brothers (Friedrich and August), Schleiermacher, Tieck, Shelling and Hölderlin. Of these we seem to owe the phrase specifically to Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel…. (Leach and Tartaglia 2018, 276)

24

L. Amir

To undermine the deterministic materialism of the French enlightenment along with the universalist social agendas of the philosophes which degraded the drama and value of life, Fichte amended Kant’s philosophy to move beyond the skeptical defense against materialism. Kant has stopped short of true reality, according to Fichte, who discloses this reality to be his own will when understood as a limited manifestation of the infinite will. His Vocation of Man thematically turns on the relations between life and meaning. He regains his confidence in the latter, after a skeptical crisis, through faith in an infinite and benevolent will, arguing that only the spiritual domain gives “meaning, purpose, and value” to the sensible one.111 In this, he echoes Friedrich Schlegel, who maintains: “Only in relation to the infinite is there meaning and purpose, whatever lacks such a relation is absolutely meaningless and pointless.”112 Thus, Novalis notes, “We live in a colossal novel (writ large and small),” and uses for the first time the expression the meaning of life in writing: “Only an artist can divine the meaning of life.”113 However, Fichte had faith; and in Novalis, the Fichtean notion of will reaching outward in faith is identified with love. The Romantics yearned for eternal love, the key to world and life, which symbolizes the yearning for the meaning of life. As values are created by an act of will, we are supposed not only to be receptive to the holy will by reading the book of life, but also to write the book of life or our own meaning into reality. The latter is a distinctively Romantic contribution. It is also the origin of our contemporary view of human narrative as bearing meaning.114 The Romantics may have coined the expression, “the meaning of life,” and offered an answer to it. However, the relation that the tragic sense of life entertains with the question of the meaning of life runs deeper than that. Terry Eagleton, who has written on both questions, pertinently notes in Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic that tragedy may be one of the most powerful meaning-of-life questions without an upbeat solution, as it prepares us to entertain “the most horrific responses to it.”115 This is what makes philosophy so inimical to the tragic. Both may deal with ultimates; yet contrary to philosophy which at its best has always provided an “analytic of ultimates,” and sometimes even an harmony of

1 The Human Predicament

25

ultimates, tragedy is “an art of the conflict” of such ultimates, an art “of discord that cannot be effaced or overcome but that opens upon catastrophe and ruins.”116 Schmidt explains: Tragedy is not only the literature of crisis; it is equally the literature of impossibles and incommensurables, the literature of our vulnerability and fragility. In tragedies we are reminded that we live in a larger role than that of our own making or control, and yet a world to which we are answerable. …While before an infinite, a god, we experience the infinity and inexhaustibility of our limits, in tragedy, we are reminded of the possibility of encountering the monstrous….We experience limits, of what is beyond measure and capture by any calculus. This experience…is finally the experience of death, which is the preeminent force of the limit of moral life, and so it is the experience out of which each of us must think and understand ourselves. We suffer rather than cognize our relation to what is exposed in tragedy as the alterity to which we belong. (Schmidt 2001, 7–10)

The tradition that emphasizes tragedy continues with Nietzsche, Benjamin and Heidegger. While Hegel points to the entanglements and contradictions that lie at the heart of the human life, Heidegger presses the point most rigorously in writing about “guilt” and “the tragedy of appearance” as such.117 We may be surprised by the association of this tradition with the end of philosophy, which Schmidt notes all along his study. More significantly, the role German idealism assigns to tragedy is unsettling: Tragedy is closely associated with history, leading occasionally to visions of a new birth, such as with Hölderlin, yet most alarmingly also to explanations of the horrors of the twentieth century. Discursive thought has extracted the tragic out of tragedy; the conceptualization of the tragic has taken away the pity and the fear experienced in ancient Greece. Although Hegel does not see tragedy as abstract logic and acknowledges the role of pathos in it, tragedy for him is “at its best when it becomes an idea,” Schmidt notes.118 After all, and in another context, it is Hegel who writes, “the wounds of spirit heal and leave no scars behind.”119 A good example of the consequences of the turn to discursive thought is Heidegger’s recourse to the analysis of tragedy to explain his adherence to National Socialism and its doings.120

26

L. Amir

The turn to art both in relation to history and the meaning of life, the view of tragedy as the negative presentation of the absolute, the religious undertones that attend most discussions of evil, the pessimist rejection of reason and progress from Rousseau through Schopenhauer to Heidegger, and the fixation on the absurd as unresolved yearning for God together clarify what is at stake in modernity. We may now consider revising the notions that underlie the significant features of modern times. We should rethink its paradigm once its potential toxicity is disclosed.121 To that purpose, I briefly introduce here two alternatives, naturalism and a comedic approach, and propose a third option based on them in the remainder of my study. First, Neiman rightly excludes Benedict Spinoza from her account of approaches to evil.122 Spinoza famously argues that naturalism does not square well with the problem of evil, a point he articulates critically in the Ethics: Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men’s way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of nature, but of things which are outside nature. Indeed, they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. And they attribute the cause to human impotence, not to the common power of nature, but to I know not what vice of human nature, which they therefore bewail, or laugh at, or disdain, or (as usually happens) curse. And he who knows how to censure more eloquently and cunningly the weakness of the human Mind is held to be Godly. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part III, Preface)

Spinoza distances himself from Democritus, the laughing philosopher, and Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher123 ; his thought does not present us with a comical account of the human condition. However, it is noteworthy that apart from naturalism, yet another tradition is absent from current accounts, as Schmidt notes twice in his study of tragedy: Comedy should have been an issue…The reader is right to ask how it can be absent. My only defense in this case is simply to say that it strangely,

1 The Human Predicament

27

but clearly, is in fact absent as a question in the history of philosophy. I apologize for continuing in the tradition of this fundamental mistake. … In the end, the full treatment of the relation of tragedy and philosophy…need to address the place of comedy in that relation. Both Hegel and Nietzsche will acknowledge this—if only marginally—while in Heidegger and Hölderlin one finds only a remarkable absence even of the word.124

Humor theorists, such as Arthur Asa Berger, Conrad Hyers and John Morreall, have taken note of the comic worldview’s potency when compared with the tragic outlook.125 Humor has been significant in the nineteenth century, the era that gave birth to pessimism’s notoriety, sometimes even promoted to the rank of religion.126 Bahnsen, a reputed pessimist, advocates humor to alleviate his pessimism, while Nietzsche and Kierkegaard emphasize humor’s necessity for truthful living.127 Schmidt may be unaware of contemporary studies that complement those that focus on philosophy’s relations with tragedy, which probe instead philosophy’s relations with various forms of the comical.128 And, the question of the role of comedy in the history of philosophy does exist, even if recently formulated.129 Moreoever, we may consider proposing a new paradigm to accommodate the contemporary situation. The current study aims at reclaiming reason’s powers while differentiating it from those of poetry, tragedy or music. The contradictions involved in the human condition do not need a literary form to account for them, especially as this form does not resolve them without the help of a theodicy or without referring to fate to make even more salient their tragic import. Nor do we need to make sense of these contradictions through a narrative that would dismiss some of them, as narratives must do for the very coherence that structures them. The contradictions that inhere in the human condition certainly do not point to the end of philosophy, as Schmidt suggests. Rather, they require a philosophic vision of the human being that can account for contradictions, a view of rationality that helps us preserve the knowledge that we have painstakingly gathered from the tragic sense of life while softening its sting, so that we can better perceive the tragic’s content, take it into account while deliberating, yet deflate its influence. To that purpose, I further explain in the next chapter the general formula of the human predicament I distilled out of the tragic sense of life, of its

28

L. Amir

relations with the problem of evil, pessimism and the meaning of life in order to evaluate the viability of the religious and philosophic responses that it has generated in the course of history. Based on ordinary experience and described in the literature, the human predicament I introduced in this chapter should be recalled here: It is defined as a tension between one’s desires at all levels (instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual and spiritual) and the (im)possibility of fulfilling them, either in principle or in practice, brought to us by reason.

Notes 1. Chirpaz (1998, 4). 2. “…It seems that there cannot be a true theory of tragedy, for underlying every theory of tragedy is the assumption that tragedy has a set of necessary and sufficient properties.” This is the motto of Paul Gordon’s monograph on tragedy (Weitz 1967, 160; quoted in Gordon 2001). This claim characterizes comedy no less than tragedy. As Robert Corrigan notes, we are “moving in the right direction in criticizing the ‘formalistic fallacy’ which assumes that a certain theme or structure can be identified that strings together all the varied beads of comedy” (Corrigan 1965, 3; quoted in Hyers 1996, 9). 3. Szondi ([1961] 2002, 1). 4. See Billings (2014, 8) and Schmidt (2001, 4). 5. Joshua Billings assigns its birth to “a few small, interconnected circles, centered geographically on the Weimar/Jena area (with a few satellites) over the fifteen years between Schiller’s first essay on the tragic sublime in 1792 and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807” (Billings 2014, 222). 6. Billings (2014, 222). So much so that Billings asserts that “if…we today think of tragedy both as central to our understanding of Attic culture and as profoundly meaningful to our own lives, then in some ways we remain idealists” (Billings 2014, 16). However, by “idealists,” he does not refer to the more specialized sense of the word, to the philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and their immediate circles, with Hölderlin important in the early development, but to a more general sense that describes the tendency to employ forms of speculative thought in reaction

1 The Human Predicament

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

29

to the critical philosophy of Kant. It indicates a broad swath of philosophers from the 1780s forward, of which some, though not all, considered themselves “idealists.” See Billings (2014, 2n1). Billings focuses of the historical conditions of thought that bear on the new approach to tragedy. This distinguishes his study from most Anglophone literature on the subject, such as Schmidt (2001), Eagleton (2003), Krell (2005), and Young (2013). Pippin (1997, 1999). Billings (2014, 1). It is only around 1800 that works of art are considered in such philosophical and often metaphysical terms. Greek tragedy fulfills a leading role in this development as the foundation for the concept of “the tragic.” Extending beyond the aesthetic context, it is applied to history, politics, religion and ontology. The evolution of terms in the German language denoting “tragedy” that Billings notes (from trauerspiel to tragödie) is another indication that “tragedy” and “tragic” acquire a normative force that remains within the genre, marking it out for its profundity and universality. On the terms referring to tragedy before and after 1800, see Billings (2014, 14). On tragedy in the twentieth century, see Young (2013). Galle (1993, 34, 39). On the relationship between the tragic and tragedy, see Silk (1996), Most (2000), and Goldhill (2012). Krieger (1963, 137). For accounts of the human condition, see Malraux (1933), Camus ([1942] 1959), Arendt (1958), Kekes (2010, 2016), and Benatar (2006, 2017). However, every ambitious philosophy contains an account of the human condition. In what follows, the references to the tragic sense of life, evil, pessimism and the meaning of life bear also directly on the evaluation of the human condition. Unamuno (1972, 5) and James ([1902] 1985, 137–38). Schopenhauer (1969, I, 252–53). For Hartmann’s views, see Hartmann (1869, 1877); for the views of Mainländer and Bahnsen, see Note 17 below; and for those of Frauenstädt, Taubert and Plümacher, see Beiser (2016). Bahnsen presents a tragic view of life (1877) developed in the wake of Schopenhauer’s philosophy but based on his own metaphysics of Will. For Bahnsen, Will is not one, as it is for Schopenhauer, but many; individuation is no illusion for him, as it is for Schopenhauer. Thus, the

30

L. Amir

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

consequence of Bahnsen’s pluralist metaphysics is the necessary contradiction of wills. Because this contradiction is ontological rather than merely epistemological (a view that Hartmann criticized), it cannot be undone (1980–1982). While Bahnsen at first accepts the possibility of redemption, he later rejects the idea as unviable, making of Schopenhauer an optimist for enabling liberation from reality. Thus, his final position is that no redemption is possible. However, humor plays a significant role in alleviating the suffering of life, although Bahnsen is at pains to show that it is not redemptive. For his view of humor, see the references in Note 127 below; for his philosophy, see Bahnsen (1872, 1877, 1879, 1980–1982). Both Bahnsen and Mainländer reject Schopenhauer’s redemption as a denial of the will through asceticism. The latter, known for his Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The Philosophy of Redemption [1886]), develops a philosophy of his own in the wake of Schopenhauer, yet rejects not only Schopenhauer’s redemption but also his objections to suicide. He sees death as redemptive and follows his recipe with an early suicide. For his views, see Mainländer (1876, 1886, 1996). Bahnsen and Mainländer offer more extreme accounts of the nature of reality and of possible deliverance from it than Schopenhauer does. See the excellent study of both thinkers and Hartmann’s criticism of Bahnsen in Beiser (2016, Chapters 9 and 10). See also Dahlkvist (2007), especially for the relationships of Nietzsche to these thinkers. Benatar (2006, 2017) and Dienstag (2006). Other favorable accounts include Heinegg (2005). Nietzsche (1966). Rosset ([1960] 1991, 19, 22, 90; my translation). Jankélévitch (1998, 313). Sewall (1965, 37). Mandel (1963, 60). Mandel (1963, 61). Myers (1956, 98–109). Myers (1956, 101). Hyers (1996). Myers (1956, 100). Hyers (1996, 24–25). Williams (1996). Desmond (1993). Rosset (1993, 12).

1 The Human Predicament

31

33. Rosset ([1960] 1991, 13). 34. The Russian French philosopher, Leo Shestov, developed his philosophy in response to the tragic sense of life he found in Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in conjunction with his critique of Kant. Acknowledging the horrors and chaos of life is all that is needed for tragic philosophy. It does not aim to teach the truth, as a more systematic philosophy does, but to probe and articulate the most personal, challenging and paradoxical human experiences about the true and the good, and primordial and ultimate questions about the meaning and purpose of life. George Bataille studied with Leo Shestov, who influenced his own tragic philosophy. Shestov’s followers, Nikolai Berdiaev, Aleksei Losev and Merab Mamardashvili, form the early twentieth-century Russian existentialist school of philosophy. See Shestov (1969), Martin (1969), Philonenko (1998) for Shestov’s philosophy, and Clowes (2007) for Shestov’s followers. 35. See Kerr (1967, 37, 45). 36. Nietzsche (1979, III, BT, Section 3; 1968, Section 1029). For further information on this topic, see Amir’s forthcoming Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson). 37. Cioran is a Romanian French philosopher. See Cioran (1973, 1990) and Parfait (2001). For Bataille, see Bataille ([1943] 1976), Land (1900), and Botting and Wilson (1998). For Bataille and Nietzsche, see Warin (1994), and the references in the note below. Giacomo Leopardi is an interesting case. Although a poet, he is referred to as a thinker. Quoted approvingly by Schopenhauer, he is enlisted for the cause of pessimism by the German philosopher and by others who seek to make him famous in that way. He is considered the Italian at the root of the German controversy over pessimism. He emphasizes boredom, unhappiness and suffering, but also humor and laughter. I address his thought at length in my manuscript, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). See also the excellent accounts in Dienstag (2006) and Dahlkvist (2007). 38. Rosset ([1983], 34; 1993), “Notes on Nietzsche.” For further information on Bataille and Rosset, see Amir’s forthcoming manuscript, The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset. 39. Sewall (1965, 39). 40. Sewall (1965, 120). 41. Ricœur (1974, 155–59).

32

L. Amir

42. See Durkheim ([1914] 1964, 325–50), Berger and Luckmann (1967, 180–83), Luckmann (1971, 41–9), Levi-Strauss (1963–1976, 1967, 1– 47; 1969–1980), and Heller (2005, 21). 43. See Plato, Phaedrus; Republic. 44. Pascal’s thoughts evolve out of Montaigne’s Essais ([1924] 1965). His Pensées may be understood as a reflection on, sometimes a rewriting of, the latter text. However, as Pascal ignores the humor that gives Montaigne’s thought its flavor, he changes its meaning and introduces a tragic tonality into it (Pascal 1976). On Montaigne (and Pascal), see Amir’s Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 45. Nussbaum (2001b, 25). 46. Szondi (1978, 165–74). 47. Williams (1973). Nussbaum also emphasizes in other works our inability to do everything we ought to do, such as in Nussbaum (1990). On this topic, see also Iris Murdoch’s classic reflections on the good (1970) and a religious transcription of this claim in Pihlström (2011, 2014, 72n13). Sami Pihlström emphasizes the irrevocability of evil and suffering: Everything we do or not leaves irrevocable traces, yet it is radically contingent. We live in the grip of moral luck, as theorized by Nagel (1979) and Williams (1981), whose pervasiveness “may make the demands of morality either illusory or, perhaps even worse, too tragic to live with” (Pihlström 2014, 59). 48. Ricœur (1969, 217). 49. Steiner (1996, 136). 50. See Nussbaum (2001b) also for the references. See studies following Nietzsche’s view of tragedy, such as Sallis (1991), Gordon (2001), and Witt (2007); see monographs on the tragic, such as Szondi ([1961] 2002) and Myers (1956); see anthologies addressing the meaning and nature of tragedy, such as Corrigan (1965), Abel (1967), and Michel and Sewall (1963); and anthologies examining the relationship between tragedy and philosophy, such as Beistegui and Sparks (2000), Kaufmann (1969), and Georgopoulos (1993). 51. The interplay of frustration and temperance (or regulation) also applies to theories that consider rational thinking an emotional process. Because in this case rational thinking is still in competition with other emotiondriven processes, the dichotomy between cognition and the passions remains. See Hurley et al. (2011, 84). Additionally, the formula proposed is compatible with theories that consider emotions rational because the

1 The Human Predicament

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

33

conflict between emotions and rationality does not disappear. See Fridja (2004, 82). Camus ([1942] 1959). Nagel (1987, 54). Sartre ([1943] 1957). Sartre ([1943] 1957, 321). Kant (1992–, Ak. 367). Kant ([1788] 1929, A850/B878). For the drives and aims proper to Kantian reason, see Yovel (1980, 15–19) and Johnson (2006, 51–52). Among others’ favorable accounts, Walter Benjamin admires Kant’s dualism for his honesty. See Benjamin (1980, II, 32). Neiman (2002, 75, 328n5). Williams (1993, 163, 164, 166); this view is endorsed by Kekes (2016, 9). Scheler (1963, 27). Santayana (1922, 144). Scheler (1963, 27). Benatar (2017, 205). Sewall (1965, 37). Unamuno (1972). Hyman (1965, 278, 292). Although this tradition includes such figures as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry Adams, George Santayana, Lewis Mumford and W. E. B. Du Bois, to name a few, who have as much claim on the cultural history of the nation as any other, Dienstag still notes that pessimism is often particularly derided in the United States (Dienstag 2006, 37). Benatar maintains that our coping mechanisms are so strong that the pessimist has a difficult time getting a fair hearing, and there are various attempts to bolster optimism and undercut pessimism, some subtle and some explicit (Benatar 2017, 11, 205). Abel (1967, 178). Schopenhauer (1969, II, 638). Krieger (1963) and Muller (1956). Krieger (1960, viii). James ([1902] 1985, 137–38). See Amir (2018, Chapter 4).

34

L. Amir

76. See Solomon’s review (2007) of Dienstag’s Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2006). Solomon takes pessimism to be interchangeable with negativism. He is disturbed by the common reference to existentialism as a negative philosophy. He believes its association with atheism is one of the reasons of the misinterpretation of the whole movement. He lists its religious advocates and denies that a world without God as seen by atheistic existentialists is necessarily meaningless. He concedes that the emphasis on gloom and hopelessness characterizes the movement in the early years of existentialism in postwar Europe. Later, however, through the influence of American optimism, meaninglessness is recast into a challenge and the death of God into a sense of liberation. Existentialism eventually presents itself as a positive philosophy, in works like Sartre’s lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism” and Camus’s essay “The Rebel.” As responsibilities enhance rather than encumber our existence, existentialism is a philosophy of hope, which Solomon views as defining American individualism and insistence on self-reliance. “Why does existentialism have so much trouble shaking its nihilistic and gloomy image?” he asks, “To be sure, its leading promoters are rarely pictured with happy faces, but then how many philosophers in history have ever been depicted as smiling?” (Solomon 2007). 77. See Neiman (2002). Among other studies of evil that associate it with the problem of meaning, Bernstein (2002, 2005) are noteworthy. Pihlström argues thatJames also conceives of evil and meaning is this way: Acknowledging evil and the potential disharmony and even absurdity of life, James sees in understanding or the lack of it the key to the question of life’s meaning (James [1897] 1979; Pihlström 2014, 55). 78. Franklin Perkins addresses the problem of evil in ancient Chinese philosophy (2014). He argues that “although the problem of radical evil in European philosophy is determined most of all by theological concerns, it is implausible to assume it has no basis in human experience” (Perkins 2014, 40). Pihlström, who tackles the problem from a Western theistic point of view, argues in Taking Evil Seriously in favor of “an understanding of human beings’ place in the world that might be described as ‘melancholic,’ or an understanding that acknowledges the ‘tragic sense of life’” (Pihlström 2014, 14). Recent studies of pessimism, such as Dienstag (2006) and Beiser (2016), refer appreciatingly to Neiman. An exception is David Benatar’s study, who objects to the grounds of Neiman’s dismissal of pessimism (2017, 245n4). For additional modern approaches to evil, see Kekes (1996, 2016, Chapters 5 and 6). In her introduction

1 The Human Predicament

79.

80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

35

to The Many Faces of Evil (2001), Amélie Rorty reminds us that cruelty is not relegated to the extraordinary but is very much part of everyday life. “If any one feature distinguishes twentieth-century philosophy from its predecessor, it is the absence of explicit discussion of the problem of evil…Engagement with the problem of evil continued in British philosophy through McTaggart and Bradley, to disappear almost entirely with Bertrand Russell” (Neiman 2002, 288–89). Leibniz, Theodicy, Section 22 (Gerhardt 1978, VI.115). See Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ([1963] 1992) as well as her subsequent work. Arendt’s account, who has attracted many a criticism, is sympathetically discussed in Sias (2016, Chapter 7), where he defends a neo-Arendtian theory of evil, and more critically addressed in Neiman (2002), who discloses its role within the theodicy Arendt seems to be engaged in (300–4). Augustine (1993, 30). Quoted in Perkins (2014, 76). Perkins (2014, 41). August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 45; 1962–1974, 5, 41–42. Quoted in Billings (2014, 224). Schiller is the first German idealist to move tragedy into the domain of ontology: Aesthetic art offers an insight beyond what can be known to reason. The tragic sublime stems from the conflict of sense and intellect and is the proof of the moral determination of humanity. See Schiller (1960). The Kantian sublime explains the tragic pleasure taken in Greek tragedy in Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 69; 1962–1974, 5, 64. See Billings (2014, 225, 227). See Billings (2014, 133). For the tragic theologies devised by these three thinkers, see there, Chapter 5. Billings (2014, 227). Billings further notes there that the Aristotelian catharsis translated by idealists as the sublime responds to a far deepened sense of the horror of the tragic. “Today, tragedy can seem to indict existence as a whole and must offer a correspondingly sweeping sense of reconciliation. Or, alternatively, tragedy can be the genre of nihilism, a representation of horror or the strangeness of existence.” David Cooper outlines the changes Iamblichus introduces to later NeoPlatonism to cater for the growing anxiety about “a non-natural being

36

L. Amir

92.

93.

94.

95.

96.

and its being in the world, which called for a salvation and for the theurgical (the magic) addition.” He notes that after Iamblichus, philosophy becomes as much a religious as a philosophical movement. NeoPlatonism spread to Athens and mingled philosophy with Christianity, Gnosticism and Pagan religions. Thus, “it looked like another religious movement. This is how Augustine of Hippo encountered it” (Cooper 2012, 386). Billings (2014), Schmidt (2001), and Neiman (2002). Neiman argues that the problem of evil can be stated in nontheistic form. However, her alternative history of philosophy reveals the extent to which the problem is approached through theistic lens. It is more difficult to get rid of the theological vocabulary associated with the problem of evil than secularized thinkers suppose, as Dews convincingly argues. See Dews (2005). For a criticism of theodicy as obscene, see, among others, Bernstein (2002) and Pihlström (2014). Other scholars who objected to a reconciliation with evil include James ([1909] 1975, 137–8), Levinas ([1969] 1974) and Jonas (1996). For Levinas, see Critchley (2007), James and Jonas rejected also the cold (and sheltered) exercises of Leibniz and Hegel and are led to postulate a finite, limited God. Jonas famously called theology a luxury of reason (1996). Spiritual longings are needs of the whole man that James speaks about ([1897] 1979), who incorporates emotion and will, and apart from reason, a passionate nature as well. Hegel’s philosophy is a “theodicy.” On this point, see Neiman (2002, 86– 7, 103); both Hegel and Hölderlin understand Greek tragedy through the lens of theodicy, which explains why there is a focus on reconciliation at the end of tragedy (Billings 2014, 134, 135, and Chapter 5). Billings writes that from a practical point of view, reason demands that one acts as if the postulates of Christian religion are absolutely valid, at the same time that reason denies the theoretical certainty of religion, since statements about God pertain to the noumenon. See Billings (2014, 134). Neiman argues that Kant’s emphasis on the discrepancy between happiness and virtue is theological and that all his philosophy flirts with the wish to be God (2002, 60–84). Even Kant could not withstand the tension of his philosophy, the real tragedy it represents between a purposeful being and a non-purposive universe. Thus, he allows us to act as God when legislating in ethics. Moreoever, his third critique points to a feeling of purpose in nature itself, false of course, but which gives us the illusion that we are after all not entirely mistaken in the purposiveness

1 The Human Predicament

97. 98.

99.

100. 101.

102. 103. 104. 105.

106.

37

we see and not entirely alone in the purposiveness our reason demands. Matthew C. Altman and Cynthia D. Coe bring Freud’s diagnosis of Kant to bear on this point: Kant is melancholically mourning God (Altman and Coe 2013, 169–76). Schopenhauer explicitly refers to his “doctrine” as “the only true Christian philosophy” (Schopenhauer 1893, 27). For Nietzsche, see Neiman (2002, 220–27), and especially 224 for the religious undertone of his views. My own account is found in various places: Amir, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press), and Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work under contract for de Gruyter). Frederick Beiser takes issue with the way Karl Löwith describes nineteenth-century thought in Germany in Von Hegel zu Nietzsche: Der revolutionäre Bruch in Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts (1949) and sets the history aright by reinstating Schopenhauer and his legacy in the pessimism controversy in the second half of that century (Beiser 2016). See Beiser (2016, Chapter 9). Beiser’s elaborate study of the nineteenth-century German controversy about pessimism makes a point of leaving Nietzsche aside (Beiser 2016). He does not refer to a previous study that positions Nietzsche within this controversy (Dahlkvist 2007), nor to nineteenth-century accounts of the controversy that Dahlkvist addresses, such as Caro (1878) and Sully (1877). See, for example, Hook (1974). See Notes 97 and 98 above. Weil (1978, 197) and Dienstag (2006, 244). Caro (1878) and Sully (1877). These are nineteenth-century studies of pessimism, written in French and English, respectively, during the pessimism controversy. Dienstag lists various features associated with pessimism which the pessimist thinkers he singles out do not all share. His family resemblance approach to pessimism leads to controversial results: His list includes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose pessimism may be disputed, existentialists whom Solomon does not identify as pessimists, while it leaves out prominent nineteenth-century German pessimists, such as Bahnsen and Mainländer, as Dahlkvist shows (Dienstag 2006; Solomon 2007; Dahlkvist 2007). Moreover, the relation Dienstag finds between time and pessimism has been criticized by the latter study. Dahlkvist’s study of nineteenth-century pessimism focuses on figures such as Schopenhauer,

38

107. 108.

109. 110.

L. Amir

von Hartmann and Leopardi and identifies four variants of pessimism. Dahlkvist argues that pessimism eventually became synonymous with the view that “existence cannot be justified, which means as much as that non-existence is preferable to existence” (Dahlkvist 2007, 14–15). A more restricted meaning of pessimism is held by von Hartmann and Eugen Dühring, who associate the notion more exclusively with concerns about the value of life. Lesser-known pessimists such as Mainländer and Bahnsen and anti-pessimists such as James Sully and Elme-Marie Caro discuss the doctrine in the terms established by Hartmann and Dühring, rather than Schopenhauer, or so Dahlkvist argues. See Meyer’s review of Dahlkvist’s work (2008). Perkins (2014, 42). See the argument used in the nineteenth-century pessimism controversy by Hartmann, Taubert and Plümacher: Ameliorating the social conditions of workers would not reduce unhappiness, as it is inherent to the human condition (Beiser 2016, 169–200). Roger Scruton’s The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope may serve as a contemporary example that explicitly uses pessimism to advance other views. In this case, to reinstate the New Testament’s vision and counter the “freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it” (Scruton 2010, 5). Scruton denounces unnecessary panics and false salvations, especially the attempt to make human beings different from what they are instead of loving them as they are, as well as various fantasies such as transhumanism and the cyberneds, which he writes back into the sixties. Optimism is underlined by an unrealistic view of human nature; indeed, an addiction to unreality informs the most destructive forms of optimism: a desire to cross out reality, as the premise from which practical reason begins, and to replace it with a system of compliant illusions (Scruton 2010, 25). Nor will systematic pessimism do: Prophets are such pessimists, who take the imperfections of the human world as defining it and offer to replace it with another kind of unreal hope. This informs Muhamad’s view of heaven and the Old Testament prophets (Scruton 2010, 29), while the spirit of the New Testament is to put true hopes in the place of false hopes, forgiveness in the place of submission and pertinently for this study, irony in the place of unity (Scruton 2010, 228). Billings (2014, 80). Berlin ([1983] 1991, 58). See Leach and Tartaglia’s Postscript at the end of the anthology they edited, The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, (2018, 274–83).

1 The Human Predicament

39

111. Fichte ([1800] 1987, 27, 99). Fichte uses “Bedeutung.” 112. Schlegel ([1800] 1971, 241). Schlegel uses the word “content” (Gehalt). 113. Novalis ([1797–1799] 1997, 66, 135). The expression appears at the end of Schlegel’s Lucinde: “the holy meaning of life” (Schlegel [1799] 1971a, 129). Thomas Carlyle was influenced by Schlegel and knew Lucinde well. The phrase appears in English in his novel, Sartor Resartus ([1833–1834] 2000). At the same time, “nihilism” makes its appearance as well, among the detractors of Romanticism. See Leach and Tartaglia (2018, 274–83). 114. For the meaning of life, see Metz’s comprehensive study 2013. The meaning of life is further addressed in Chapter 6 in relation to happiness. 115. Eagleton (2007, 18–19). See Eagleton (2003). 116. Schmidt (2001, 34–35). 117. See Schmidt (2001, 8n8). 118. Schmidt (2001, 120). 119. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, paragraph 669; quoted in Schmidt (2001, 120). 120. For Heidegger, see Schmidt (2001, Chapter 6). 121. I believe that it was through the Romantic movement which turned one’s will into the creator of the world that personal tragic toxicity has been projected unto it. 122. Neiman (2002, 10; see also 59–60). 123. For these philosophers, see Amir (2014b). For Spinoza’s naturalism, see Amir, Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work under contract for de Gruyter). 124. Schmidt (2001, xiii, 19). 125. Berger (1993), Hyers (1996), and Morreall (1998, 1999). See also Critchley (1999) and more recently Nikulin (2014). Like Bertolt Brecht, Neiman argues, Arendt maintains that comedy undermines evil more effectively than does tragedy: “The diabolic can be ambiguous; the ridiculous is not” (Neiman 2002, 302). 126. See Amir (2014a, 207–17) and Moland (2018). 127. For Bahnsen’s view of humor, see Beiser (2018, 2016, Chapter 10). For Kierkegaard on humor, see Lippitt (2000) and Amir (2014a, Chapter 1). For Nietzsche on laughter, see Froese (2017, Chapter 3), Lippitt (1999), and Higgins (2000); Amir’s Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 128. See the forthcoming Philosophy of Humor Handbook I edit for Palgrave Macmillan, the new journal Philosophy of Humor Yearbook (2020) and

40

L. Amir

the list of books reviewed there, as well as the new book series, de Gruyter Studies in Philosophy of Humor (2021). 129. Since John Morreall has put laughter on the philosophical agenda through his multiple publications on the philosophy of laughter and humor and help founding the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS), the question of the relationship of philosophy with the comic has been formulated. Founded in 2014, the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor (IAPH) addresses this question directly, and I hope that my studies of modern philosophy’s relations with the comic have disclosed a few answers. Each book of the trilogy I penned includes the views of the comic and the tragic of three philosophers who have explicitly argued for a significant role of humor or laughter within the good life. See Humor and the Good Life: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard (Amir 2014a); Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press), and The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset (forthcoming). The question and its answers are extended to philosophy’s attitude toward the comic since its inception in Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism (work under contract for de Gruyter). For relevant publications, see also the note above and the list of references at the end of this study.

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

The human predicament has been described in the previous chapter as dissatisfaction with the human condition. The discrepancy between one’s desires on the instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual and spiritual levels and the impossibility of satisfying them in principle or in practice has been revealed as the source of discontent. In this chapter, this general characterization is strengthened by probing philosophical approaches to desire and reason, and various views of the possibility or impossibility of fulfilling the former. The formula proposed is further validated by its implicit intimations in the fundamentals of most religions and philosophies, both Eastern and Western. They are introduced here as attempts to relieve the previously defined human predicament through paths of liberation characterized as redemption or peace of mind. These theories are divided into three general types, according to the criticisms they occasion. Based on the epistemic costs involved in adhering to most theories, I recommend shunning the solutions they offer to the human predicament.

© The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_2

41

42

1

L. Amir

Desire

The notion of desire is central to the discipline of philosophy defined as the love of wisdom and to philosophic reflection in general. In Plato’s Symposium, Eros or desire is the chosen topic of discussion. The consciously ignorant arch-philosopher, Socrates, claims there to understand nothing but desire.1 When the good or the beautiful or even the true are questioned in Platonic philosophy, it is the nature of the desirable that is explored.2 Plato’s student, Aristotle, famously argues that all human beings desire to know.3 He accounts for the supremacy of desire in Western thought by designating its origin to Hesiod’s Theogony, following the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Empedocles who posited love or desire as the principle of beings.4 Plato continues the ontological lineage that Aristotle describes by allotting desire a central place in his philosophy.5 His thought is complex; not only is desire described as the many headed, “multiform beast,”6 it alternates between desire defined as lack and desire viewed as enjoyment without lack. Eros is judiciously identified as the son of poverty and resource in the Symposium. While in book IX of the Republic, Eros is described as a tyrant, the swarm of pleasures, Plato also maintains that there are as many sorts of desires as there are types of human beings. Thus, the view of desire as enjoyment without lack is also found in Plato’s writings.7 G. W. G. Hegel’s view of desire as lack in the Phenomenology of Spirit mediates between Plato’s throught and that of modernity. For Hegel, it is another’s desire that desire targets because what is at stake is domination. For French thinkers as varied as Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan, Aleksandre Kojève’s commentary on Hegel proves decisive.8 Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas follow the French interpretation of Hegel in viewing desire as appealing to another desire and as enacting power-relations between individuals. Desire is central to psychoanalysis and its critics. Most of Sigmund Freud’s texts address the topic of desire, in terms of libido and drives, as does the work of the French psychoanalyst Lacan who reinstates the dialogue on desire.9 Among many critics of desire as defined by psychoanalysis, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as Michel Foucault should be singled out.10

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

43

Various philosophers attempt to categorize desires into sorts or types. Apart from Plato’s characterization of desire as a “multiform beast,” the white and black horses that he alludes to in Phaedrus, and the earthly and divine Aphrodite of the Symposium (reprised by Neo-Platonic thought, among others), many examples come to mind. The Stoics’ twenty-seven types of desire as recounted by Andronicus of Rhodes, the bad/low versus the good/higher desires that Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and René Descartes discern, and the unnatural and natural desires that are deemed necessary or not by the Epicureans are some further instances. However long the list of philosophers analyzing the types of desire and varied the taxonomy, many first address the ethics of desire (can we master the uneasiness of desire to attain tranquility? Should we?), raising issues that lead to the ontological question of the nature of desire (what is desire?). As can be gathered from the few examples given above, the most common answer to the ontological question classifies desire as lack of being (Plato, Epicurus, Descartes, Nicholas Malebranche, G. W. von Leibniz, the Encyclopedists, Hegel, Sartre, Lacan, Bataille, among others). Few philosophers answer the question differently, seeing desire as power (Benedict Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, and in the wake of both Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze). Fewer still conceive it as both lack and power, either at the same time, as in Bataille’s notion of expenditure, or at different moments, as in the Platonic Eros: The son of poverty and resource, Eros begins as lack and ends as the power of procreation in beauty in Plato’s Symposium. The classification of passions found in most classical approaches to desire can be traced back to the second book of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. We can count among them the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, the latter ascribing to desire a most significant place.11 No less important are David Hume and Immanuel Kant’s accounts.12 In his useful anthology of classical texts on this topic, David Rabouin emphasizes the significance of the intersection of desire and value that Nietzsche, Freud and Marx disclose. The crossings of the two notions influence various human sciences leading to further studies that use economic, sociological and biological approaches to desire.13 Ethical reflection on desire originates in Greek philosophy. Plato proposes a tripartite division of the soul in which desire is guided by reason

44

L. Amir

yet doubts that many may reach the resulting ideal of harmony. Aristotle addresses the topic in various places.14 He does not recognize different parts of the soul and argues that all desires are of the same basic kind as they share movement and motivation. The ethics of desire is central to all Hellenistic philosophies as well as to Neo-Platonic thought.15 The question is formulated in terms of domination: Is desire our master, or can we control it? In the latter case, how should we proceed? Technologies of the self are advanced with the aim of offering a therapy of desire.16 The abstract discussion of desire as passion obscures its relation to sexuality17 and love,18 which may explain the difference between Christianity and the philosophical schools’ respective approaches to desire. St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas’s views lead to further Christian writings that denounce concupiscence and develop, using Foucault’s terms from The History of Sexuality, the ascetic “technologies of the flesh.”19 While for Aquinas concupiscence still means yearning for wisdom as love of God rather than the Aristotelian good, after the Reformation the Catholicism embraced by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and Blaise Pascal radicalizes its approach to desire. However, the intolerance these authors share is rooted in St. John’s Epistles and Augustine’s thought. Both denounce not only the flesh’s desires as corrupted but also the yearning for knowledge (curiosity) and the thirst for power (glory) because of the hubris they betray and the status of their objects as worldly goods tainted with sin. Nothing less than renuncing the world would suffice.20 The ethics rather than the ontology of desire is more pertinent to the account I give of the human predicament. Moreoever, ontological commitment may stand in the way of the argument I advance. Furthermore, while my proposal seems to square better with the view of desire as lack, the controversy over the ontological question is irrelevant to my argument. Desire can be power rather than lack, but as the philosophers that hold that view overstep reason’s limits by recommending desire (Nietzsche) or by mastering it through means that are not within our capacity to ascertain (Spinoza),21 they do not escape criticism, and that from another pole of tension between desires and reason that I introduce.

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

45

The ethical and ontological questions about desire are partly determined by the perspectives afforded by the more general issues of human finitude, liberty, human significance and the intimate sense of time. The many facets comprised in the notion of finitude have their counterparts in the desires to transcend our condition. We wish to transcend death by attaining immortality, ignorance by gaining certain knowledge, impotence by becoming omnipotent, futility, humiliation suffering and evil by finding objective meaning that would make sense of our condition.22 The possibility of fulfilling our desires, of getting lasting satisfaction out of them, the costs and efforts involved and their repetition have been associated with the issue of the meaning of life or lack thereof, the significance or futility of our actions and passions and that of our lives taken as a whole.23 Desires and their satisfaction touch the very issue of our liberty. Are we determined by them or can we control them? If we can’t, does not the unhappy consciousness’ unending ability to imagine possibilities constitute our very freedom? Desire addresses also the topic of time. As Aristotle noted, desire and time are intrinsically connected because desire sets time in motion by determining a future (hope) and a past (longing).24 It is at the root of what we call life. Desire takes many forms. The many headed, “multiform beast,” of Plato’s Republic may be as diverse as love and sex, thirst and appetite, cupidity and curiosity, wish and hope.25 We seem to get caught within the incessant flux desire itself is, which may also determine our knowledge of it. It comes as no surprise, then, that the terminology used in various discussions on desire is not fixed. Some scholars write of appetite (horne), others of desire (epithumia), some of wish (boulesis, Wunsch), others of concupiscence (concupiscentia), Freud of libido and instincts, Plato of Eros. This dialogue of the deaf, which Rabouin notes when assembling the classical texts on desire,26 led me in attempting a synthesis to use “desire” in the most encompassing way.27 Thus, to account for this variety while avoiding ontological determinations, I understand by desire all the efforts of human nature designed by such words as appetites, needs, drives, impulsions, wishes, hopes, etc. It follows that contradictions are intrinsic to desires. We may not be able to discern clearly the desires at work, but we still suffer the frustration that follows necessarily from the contradictions they naturally create. Our

46

L. Amir

lack of understanding complicates the problem, as we have no means of addressing it and even less of solving it. The experience of contradictory desires and the contradictions often experienced within one “desire” (aversion and attractiveness, love and hate, wanting and not wanting) makes the realization of all our desires impossible in principle. Moreover, desires span the entirety of our being, from the most basic and natural needs through our emotional demands till the higher yet no less tyrannical yearnings for knowledge and meaning.28 Even if we manage to answer natural needs and accept the ambivalence of our emotional desires, most wishes pertaining to the intellectual and spiritual levels are impossible to realize because they overstep our finitude.29 Such are the desires for immortality,30 for being God or a god (a desire that Hegel identifies and others address), for certain knowledge and for objective meaning, among others. Moreover, the tension among reason, various instincts, and emotions or passions have often been noticed. So has the incommensurability among values.31 Thus, moral conflicts seem to determine our condition damning the realization of our desire for goodness or justice, if such desire exists. Furthermore, the realization of all desires may be impaired for practical, rather than theoretical reasons. While some philosophers argue that the evidence of most persons’ experience is irrelevant to philosophic questions about desire as traditionally formulated, such as its ontology and ethics,32 I view common experience as relevant to the understanding of desire. Rabouin makes use of the above argument in order to counter the experience of desire as lack and advance his view of desire as enjoyment (jouissance). My own position may be considered as offering direction from the experience of desire as lack to the possibility of experiencing desire, even unfulfilled desire, as enjoyment or delight.33

2

Reason

The tension I set between reason and desires is not reducible to the strain between the rational and the irrational. Many desires are suffused by judgments whilst others are far too characteristic of our humanity to be deemed irrational. As Kant intimates, some desires stem directly from reason. Thus,

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

47

unless reason itself is just one more desire among others (for order, for clarity), in what follows I do not restrict reason to deliberation and decision. That which we refer to as non-rational facets of our nature are dependent on judgment in a way that is clearly different from animal sentimentality, and so may count as part of our rational selves. For example, pleasure responds to deliberation and decision.34 Reason is that part of us which Freud calls “the reality principle.” Philosophers use it to determine that which we can validate and know for certain. In that sense, reason may be regarded as opposing desires. Let me clarify that I do not know whether reason is the slave of the passions, as Hume believes,35 even less whether it is created by the passions to help them materialize, as Arthur Schopenhauer holds, and if indeed there is a reality principle, as Freud advances. However, we seem to have some capacity of judgment, of rational thought that can and should be practiced in order to develop. Elizabeth Anscombe argues that desires aim to get the world to fit them and beliefs aim to fit the world.36 Both are mental states but with different “direction of fit.” Beliefs can be true or false while desires aim to change the world rather than describe it. I have explained so far desire and reason, the main terms of the general formula I have proposed. I argue next that this formula is implicit in various religions and metaphysical theories, and that most philosophies and religions, either Eastern or Western, attempt to resolve the tension it describes. As these solutions come at a cost, I recommend not-solving the human predicament on the terms offered by these theories. I examine, first, how religions and philosophies approach the problem as defined, second, what makes the solutions they offer costly, and third, what is at stake when we disregard the costs involved in adhering to these solutions. I recommend in conclusion to avoid solving the human predicament lest we solve away our humanity.37

3

Resolutions of the Human Predicament: General Characteristics

Organized religions’ solutions to the human condition are often characterized as salvations or redemptions. In what follows, I use the terms

48

L. Amir

indiscriminately. Redemption is not a monolithic concept, as studies comparing various forms of redemption emphasize its diversity. First, the scope or target may differ: While redemption can be generally defined as a promise, it can be made to the individual, the community or the whole of humanity. Second, that promise may be realized in various ways: in the course of one’s life, in hope fulfilled on a level transcending one’s lifespan (e.g., by extending into the afterlife), within a general cosmic context or through the attainment of some messianic state.38 Finally, the sources of the need for redemption, such as death, evil, suffering and ignorance may be answered in both religious and non-religious terms.39 Thus, contrary to common opinion, no necessary relation holds between religion and redemption. Though we generally use the notion of redemption within a religious framework, thinkers without commitment to organized religion have endorsed this notion and have proposed new routes toward its attainment within one’s life. Paths of redemption have been offered to the individual, the community and humanity as a whole.40 Various modern philosophers, such as Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and George Santayana, replace the salvation offered by organized religions with proposals of their own, which they define as personal philosophic redemptions or salvations. Thus, both Schopenhauer and Spinoza explicitly assert that philosophy paves the path to salvation.41 Nietzsche also articulates this thread of thought though the fact that he does has attracted less attention.42 And philosophy for Santayana leads to the good life but is also the key to “inward” or “philosophic salvation.”43 We can understand both kinds of redemptions, those that are associated with organized religions and those that are not, as radical responses to the tension that is inherent in the human condition. The clash between human desires and the impossibility, either in principle or in practice, of satisfying most of them on instinctual, emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels raises a problem to which each redemption offers a specific solution. I extend this argument to additional philosophies, pre-Christian schools of thought, whose ideal is not presented in terms of “redemption.” Such is the case of the Hellenistic schools of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism. Rather than aiming at redemption, these schools’ goal is ataraxia, that is, tranquility or peace of mind. However, emphasizing a great divide between

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

49

ataraxic and redemptive philosophies may be unnecessary. To begin with, the legendary messianic zeal of the Epicureans and the religious features of Stoicism should make us rethink the boundaries between philosophic and religious ideals. Moreover, various philosophic personal redemptions count peace of mind as one of the blessings that redemption brings. This is so for the salvations Spinoza and Santayana offer, if not for the Nietzschean version, and Schopenhauer’s redemption would not deserve its name were it not for the peace it promises.44 Thus, the argument I advance targets both philosophy and religion. I suggest that most religious and philosophical solutions to the basic human predicament require us to renounce one or more aspects of humanity as we know it, and that these solutions should be evaluated accordingly, as they come at a cost. In order to understand what is at stake and better evaluate the solutions proposed, I divide the various theories of liberation, cast either in terms of redemption or peace of mind, whether religious or not, Eastern or Western, into three types. The first negates desire, the second sheds light on the limitations of reason, and the third denigrates both desire and reason. I exemplify each type of theories in the following sub-parts.

3.1

First Type of Theories: Renouncing Desires

The first type of theories solves the tension that defines the human condition by urging us to renounce our desires. Among other theories, this first group includes the Buddhist and Hindu doctrines of release, both of which influenced Schopenhauer’s view of redemption, the Hellenistic and Roman schools of Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism, as well as the outlook on emancipation by none other than the reasonable philosopher himself, Bertrand Russell. Several religions of Indian origin share the belief that freedom or release cannot be attained without the removal of worldly desires and passions. This is so because desire leads to delusion and suffering, to the cycle of births and deaths. However, as Hinduism is not a monolithic doctrine, it includes a variety of views on desire as well: The Vedas do not criticize desires and Indian tantrism uses worldly desire to reach release. Yet,

50

L. Amir

according to the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Sankara, probably the most dominant philosophical school in modern-day Hinduism, release lies in detaching oneself from the false self (one’s material self ) and uniting with a non-material self (pure consciousness), which is both the true self and brahman or the “Absolute.”45 Thus, although what goes by the name of “Hinduism” tolerates various lifestyles, the renunciation of desires is often required for accessing final liberation.46 In Buddhism, desire and ignorance are regarded as causes of suffering. Desire is comprised of the cravings for pleasure, material goods, and immortality, of wants that can never be satisfied; consequently, desiring them can only bring suffering. Ignorance refers to seeing the world differently from what it is. Liberation is reached through understanding, which enables the renunciation of desires, leading to the state of “nirvana” or extinction (of desires).47 Heir to both Hinduism and Buddhism, Schopenhauer’s philosophy intends to capture the essence of Eastern mysticism as well as its Western counterpart, as exemplified by early Christianity. Accordingly, it offers as the sole road to redemption the denial of the will to live or an ethic of total renouncement.48 The Hellenistic and Roman school of Epicureanism does not urge us to deny the will to live. On the contrary, it offers a road to happiness, whose content is peace of mind, a goal whose possibility Schopenhauer denies. Neither does Epicureanism urge us to renounce all desires. Artificial desires are defined as desires that cannot be satisfied, and those should be renounced. Desires for rich food, sex, status, power and the like are not “a bad thing in themselves.” However, the satisfaction of these desires does not liberate us from pain and terror. Instead, they “bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures” and should therefore be avoided or kept within severe limits.49 As the “goal of living” is “health of the body and the freedom of the soul from disturbance (ataraxía),” it allows for desires that are “natural and necessary.” Thus, far from being unruly hedonists, Epicureans tend to live as secular monks. Pyrrhonism, the skeptical Hellenistic and Roman school, requires suspending all judgments because of the doubts that undermine dogmatic claims to knowledge. We cannot satisfy our desire for knowledge in any area. This bears consequences for the most significant field, ethics, whose

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

51

object is the nature of the good. The competing schools at that time and those prior to it, in Ancient Greece, disagree about the ultimate good and derive it from divergent metaphysics. For the Pyrrhonists, no knowledge of the good or of the nature of reality is possible, as no argument is free from doubt. Thus, the outcome of the Pyrrhonian enquiry into philosophy is the suspension of judgment on all issues. However, tranquility follows the suspension of judgment—in technical terms ataraxía follows epoch¯e —like a “shadow following the body.”50 The suspension of judgment results in tranquility, the goal of all Hellenistic schools, yet Pyrrhonists note that this aftereffect is at first unintended.51 The Pyrrhonists explicitly require a radical alteration in our lifestyle. This point is emphasized by Martha Nussbaum in her classical study of Hellenistic Philosophies: Pyrrho recommends, “altogether divesting ourselves of the human being,” while Sextus Empiricus portrays the skeptic as a eunuch with respect to rational desires.52 Suspension of judgment liberates the burden of worrying about what is right and true. It also liberates us from belief in a definite understanding of the good—a belief that adds to the torment in the presence of the very thing deemed bad—as well as liberation from the evils associated with the intense pursuit of goals “with eager conviction.” These latter evils include emotions: Joy when the good is present, fear when it vanishes, desire for the good before it is present, grief in its absence and even fantasized guilt. As these emotions are based on ethical belief, Sextus suggests that only the complete extirpation of belief may get rid of them.53 My final example for this type of theories is the view of happiness advanced by a great near-contemporary philosopher. In “A Free Man’s Worship,” Russell writes, “To renounce the struggle for personal happiness, to reject any wish for temporal lust, this is emancipation.”54 Inspired by John Locke’s program as elaborated in Some Thoughts Concerning Education,55 Russell endorses in The Conquest of Happiness a less demanding way of living. Russell’s final position on this matter seems to be a variant of Spinoza’s ethics, as Kenneth Blackwell convincingly argues.56 While Blackwell emphasizes this ethics’ positive outcomes, such as nobility and impersonal love, I argue that these virtues also require the renouncement of personal desires enunciated in “A Free Man’s Worship.”57

52

L. Amir

Various additional theories of liberation are predicated on the renouncement of desires.58 Rather than providing an exhaustive list of theories, my intention in this sub-part is to exemplify one way in which the constitutive tension of the human condition is solved. I exemplify yet another way, another kind of solution, by introducing next the theories that recommend overstepping reason’s limits in order to accommodate desires.

3.2

Second Type of Theories: Overstepping Reason’s Limits

This part addresses theories that promise partial or complete satisfaction of desires while disparaging the limits of reason. They include all answers to metaphysical questions, religious theories, and various philosophies that encourage the satisfaction of our desires at the expense of others, whose similar right is brought to us by reason, as does for example the Nietzschean philosophy of the liberated individual. Most philosophies that consider desire a power rather than a lack belong here, as this power often oversteps the capacity of reason. For example, Nietzsche encourages self-affirmation with an ethic of power that emphasizes egoism and self-regard. He criticizes pity and altruism, and the strong individual is seen as he who enhances his instincts and follows a law of his own, unpredictable and unmanageable by any imposition. To be an individual is to be autonomous, to be supra-moral: “This is what I am; this is what I want —you can go to hell!”59 However, this individualism is not democratic, as Nietzsche assumes fundamental inequality among human beings. The heroic mission that few are capable of clearing is that of becoming a sovereign individual by legislating a superior morality that is immoral by current standards. Nobility is inborn and uses its environment to grow. The aristocratic individual serves as the measure for all men, and his instincts sublimated in a philosophy or a morality may swamp a multitude of followers, or “slaves.”60 Egoism, however, is defeated by the existence of others, whose similar right to the satisfaction of their desires is brought to us by reason, provided the inequality among human beings is seen as irrelevant.

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

53

German idealism, which recognizes but the reality of one’s will (Fichte nonewithstanding), oversteps not only reason’s, but all limits, by an excessive devotion to one’s desires. Santayana criticizes this movement as egotistic.61 This second type also holds religious and metaphysical theories, as both religion and metaphysics overstep reason’s capacity.62 Keith Ward characterizes religions as “belief-systems which articulate, with different degrees of systematization, competing theories about the meaning of human life.”63 That life is meaningful is religion’s foundational claim, Huston Smith explains, and the claim can be elucidated both subjectively and objectively, the difference being whether we are thinking primarily of life’s meaning for us or, alternatively, trying to determine its meaning in the total scheme of things.64 Smith explains that objectively there is no way to decide that question: There are things to be said in favor of life’s meaning, the chief being that it is the seasoned answer to the question, the one that has presided over every known human collectivity, but it is not enough to insure its truth. The hermeneutics of suspicion is always waiting in the wings, ready to challenge the existence of religion’s “other world” by claiming that it is only wishful thinking—a projection of the human mind to compensate for the world’s lack. “There is no other world,” Malinowski intoned, and neither reason nor experience can prove him wrong. (Smith 2001, 261–62)

Serious doubt rises on the validity of meaning that we ascribe to the irredeemably ambiguous nature of life and the world as we encounter them: They come to us untagged.65 At the beginning of The Wisdom to Doubt, John L. Schellenberg simply states, “Reason requires us to be religious skeptics.”66 Secular doubts call into question all religious views about the human condition that assume the existence of a supernatural realm. The arguments for and against belief in such a realm are familiar and endlessly debated.67 The significance of religion calls for a more elaborate analysis, with which I will conclude my argument in the last chapter. The place of religion in contemporary society as well as the intellectual and emotional appeal of skepticism are among the topics I address there.

54

L. Amir

Along with Plato, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Robert Burton, Kant maintains that unrequited love, religion and metaphysics are commonly suffused by enthusiasm. A powerful longing for an object that can never in principle be possessed characterize these three areas.68 The longing can be so intense and the frustration so painful, that the sufferer may delude himself into thinking his desire fulfilled.69 This is the essence of enthusiasm, a problem yet to be addressed today as evidenced by the contemporary appeal of religion, various forms of mysticism and uncritical theories of the New Age movement.70 Hegel’s philosophy is notable here, which identifies the desire to be God as constitutive of human consciousness and equates reason with reality, thereby conflating the tension between is and ought that Kant painfully safeguards. The skepticism Smith points to is also relevant for metaphysics’ objective to provide knowledge of the world’s constitution and our place in it. The long history of metaphysics is accompanied by its persistent criticism. Whether or not skepticism is based on Kant’s criticism of metaphysics or on other grounds, a skeptical attitude toward metaphysics undermines the possibility of adhering à la lettre to the otherwise inspiring ethical prescriptions that follow from the particular metaphysical assumptions most philosophies adopt.71

3.3

Third Type of Theories: Denigrating Both Desires and Reason

The third type of theories denigrates both desire and reason. Taoism and certain forms of mysticism exemplify this type, along with various philosophies, such as Stoicism and Kantian ethics, which overstep reason’s power whilst denouncing desires as well. The goal in life according to Taoism is the realization of oneness with the cosmos, the non-conceptualizable or ineffable realm that is “mysterious,” and prohibits discrimination or description as Chuang Tzu teaches. The adept approaches this goal in a purified state in which he is cleansed of emotions, desires, evaluations, and of all thought; a state attained after years of fasting and silent meditation.72

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

55

Diverse and conflicting definitions of mystical experience and accounts of its significance have been given. Ronald Hepburn’s definition is especially useful: Mystical experience is religious experience, in a broad but meaningful sense of religious. It is sensed as revealing something about the totality of things, something of immense human importance at all times and places and something upon which one’s ultimate well-being or salvation wholly depends…There must be a unifying vision, a sense that somehow all things are one and share a holy, divine and single life, or that one’s individual being merges into a “Universal Self,” to be identified with god or the mystical One. Mystical experience then typically involves the intense and joyous realization of oneness with, or in, the divine, the sense that this divine One is comprehensive, all-embracing, in its being. (Hepburn 1967, 429)

The language used to express and describe mystical experience is richly paradoxical, figurative and poetic. While ineffability is descriptive of many mystical traditions, asceticism is descriptive of some mystical experiences that occur only at the end of a lengthy, arduous religious discipline, an austere and abstinent path. Neo-Platonism and Catholicism in the West have developed mystical paths of this kind. Mystics to whom these double characterizations correspond are denigrators of both desire and reason.73 Stoicism offers the most extreme Western philosophic approach to desires and passions: One should not only renounce but eradicate them. Passions are illnesses in a universe that is rationally determined, whose extermination is imperative. This is the key to the apathy or tranquility which characterizes the sage, whose happiness cannot be compromised by external circumstances. However, Stoics’ arguments in favor of the rationality of the universe and of the necessary causal relation determining all events are unwarranted, and thus belief in them transcends the power of reason.74 Kantian ethics will be a final example of such theories. Kant demands that we renounce our inclinations and desires in order to act according to the categorical imperative. This is undoubtedly a worthy ideal. However, the liberty of the subject on which this morality is predicated cannot be established within reason’s limits.75

56

4

L. Amir

Solving Away Humanity or Not-Solving the Human Predicament

The clash between human desires and the impossibility in principle or in practice of satisfying them on instinctual, emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels has given rise to various types of solutions. I have exemplified the three types I have identified. The reader may find additional examples that would fit within the tripartite division. However, an exacting taxonomy of theories is less significant than the conclusion I draw from the examples it lists. We should pause before choosing any solution that disregards reason’s limits or denigrate both desires and reason, but we should also be wary of solutions that urge us to renounce our desires, lest we be dehumanized by a solution that purports to do away with that which makes us human. Desires define us no less than reason, some of them include rational judgment, and others, such as the desire to know or to find meaning, may be characteristic of human beings. Moreover, if the tension between desires and the possibility of fulfilling them is revealed as the common experience of human beings, resolving the tension by radically eliminating one of its poles solves away humanity. If all solutions to a given problem prove to be unacceptable, there remains the possibility of abstaining from resolving the problem. Since our humanity seems to depend on a precarious balance between our desires and our reason, leaving it unresolved may be the better course of action when solutions require negating one or the other, or both. This policy of sustained unresolved tension is not entirely negative; it has positive content as well.76 It encourages careful perception of human nature as an amalgam of rationality and irrationality, endorses a lucid awareness of human possibilities and limitations, and bestows value on life by prioritizing the everlasting struggle with the predicament that lies at the core of human existence.

Notes 1. Plato, Symposium, 177d. 2. Plato, Philebus, 58d.

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

57

3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 989a. 4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 984b20. The Western philosophic account is found in Aristotle, though another route of investigation is possible: In the East, ars erotica identifies desire as the seed of thought in the Kama Sutra, and in (certain forms of ) Taoism, it has a central place as well. See V¯atsy¯ayana’s Kama Sutra (1992) and Le Tao Sexuel (1980). 5. See Plato, Symposium; Phaedo, 66c–d, 80a–84b; Phaedrus, 237b–57b; Republic. 6. Plato, Republic, 588c. 7. Plato, Philebus, 34c–53d. 8. Kojève (1947). 9. See Freud (1953–1974); for Freud’s thought, see Jones (1955) and Wollheim (1971). See Lacan (1966, 1978, 1986, 1994). 10. See Deleuze and Guattari (1972, 1980); as these works are difficult to understand, it is better to begin with Deleuze and Parnet (1996, Section 2); see Foucault (1976). Lyotard (1974) offers an interesting view of libidinal economy and Marcuse’s political criticism of the Freudian view of desire is notable (1955). Feminine desire has attracted much attention. Freud’s view of women (e.g., 1932) has been criticized from many quarters. See, for example, Butler (1987), Irigaray (1977 [translated 1985], 1987); for Irigaray’s thought, see Chanter (1999). For another view of feminine desire, see de Beauvoir’s classic text, The Second Sex (1954). I cannot do justice here to the abundant literature on this topic; see, however, further references on sexuality and love in Notes 17 and 18 below, respectively. 11. Hobbes 1958, Leviathan, I, 6–11; Descartes (1997, 1989), Leibniz ([1765] 1996), Spinoza 1985b, Short Treatise, Part II, Chapters 17–18; 1951, Theologico-Political Treatise, Chapter XVI; 1985a, Ethics, Parts III and V; 1951, Political Treatise II, Section 5. 12. See Hume’s Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding (1975), notably section X on curiosity, Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and Critique of Pure Reason (Note 1 to the preface, Section 3, scholia 1–2.) 13. See Rabouin (1997, 244–45). 14. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III, 12; VI, 2 and passim; On the Soul, III, 7, 431–34a22; Rhetoric, I, 11. 15. Apart from the main texts of Stoicism and Pyrrhonism, in which desire is central, the materialistic perspective that Epicurus and Lucretius develop,

58

L. Amir

which leads to Marx through various paths, is clearly explained in ComteSponville (1984). See Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), III, 1095; IV, 1037–60 and passim. For Neo-Platonism, see Chrétien (1981) and Cooper (2012, Chapter 6). 16. The former expression is Foucault’s in The History of Sexuality, the latter comes from the title of Nussbaum (1994). 17. The topic of sexuality cannot be adequately addressed here. I refer the reader to Amir (2016, 2017a, 2018, Chapter 10). On lust, see Blackburn (2004). On sexual desire, see Scruton (1986), Shaffer (1997), and Stoddart (1989). On sexual perversion, see Nagel (1969) and Solomon (1975). For sex without love, see Goldman (1977) and Vannoy (1980). For the history of sexuality, see Nussbaum and Sihvola (2002), Bremmer (1991), and Foucault (1976). For human sexuality, see Soble (1996), and the anthologies edited by Primoratz (1997), Baker and Elliston (1984), and Soble (1980, 1997). For the enigma of sex, see Ricœur (2001) and Hadjadj (2008). For a merry view of sexuality, see Montaigne (1967); for bleak views, see Sartre (1943) and Bataille’s l’ Histoire de l’Erotisme in Bataille (1976). A good introduction to Bataille can be found in Warin (1994) and Amir’s forthcoming The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset. On the body, see Welton (1999); on seduction, see Baudrillard (1979). On women sexuality, see Note 10 above. 18. Sexuality is different from love. There are various traditions of love in the Western world. Irving Singer suggests that they include the Platonic, the Christian, the Romantic and the Realistic. Each tradition claims exclusive knowledge of what love at its best is…but they do not agree. The Platonic tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus) maintains that we love best when we love the Good, the Christian, when we love God, the Romantic, when we love another human being, and the Realistic (the Epicureans, Schopenhauer, Freud), when we recognize that love is nothing but sex (Singer 1984–1987). For the last tradition, love is reduced to sexuality, for the Romantic, sexuality and love are not in tension, but can harmonize, for the Christian tradition, sexuality is foreign to the ideal of love, and for the Platonic tradition, sexuality is a confusion. For love (and sexuality), see Singer (1984–1987), de Rougemont (1983), Comte-Sponville (2012), Lancelin and Lemonnier (2010), Merrien (2010), and Amir (2017a, 2018, Chapter 10).

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

59

19. Augustine (1956), Confessions (III, 1–5); Aquinas, 1945, Summa Theologica, articles 1 and 2. For the ascetic philosophy in the Middle Ages, see Davy (1990). 20. Bossuet, Traité de la concupiscence (1908); Pascal, Pensées (1976). 21. Spinoza presents us with an interesting case. Prima facie, Spinoza’s viewpoint resembles mine in that he recommends desire as formed by reason (firmness), that it, desire that does not overstep reason. However, the Spinozian view of reason oversteps that which can be known. The strict determinism of his rationalism as well as the metaphysics he enacts are beyond our capacity to ascertain. Thus, the therapeutic function of understanding, Spinoza’s key epistemological and ethical virtue, is compromised. 22. For the significance of meaning in our lives according to psychological and anthropological points of views, see Becker (1971); for a philosophical point of view, see Kant’s argument on purposive reason (1998), and more recently Metz’s analysis of the prevailing (analytic and recent) theories in the field (2013). For the contemporary significance of this topic and its prospects in the future, see Landau (1997). For the meaning and meaningfulness of life, see Benatar (2017, Chapters 2 and 3), Metz (2013), and the bibliography there; Young (2014), Leach and Tartaglia (2018), and Kekes (2016, Chapter 5: Fear of meaninglessness). 23. The issue of the meaning of life or lack thereof, the significance or futility of our actions and passions, and that of our lives taken as a whole has been closely associated with desires, the possibility of fulfilling them as well as with the futility of doing so given the repetition they involve and the vanity they exemplify. See, for example, Richard Taylor’s argument given in response to Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. Taylor argues at one point (1981), although later he changed his mind, that Sisyphus’s life won’t be absurd if he were also endowed with a desire to roll the stone up the hill. The active engagement our will has in our projects gives meaning to our lives. Joel Feinberg addresses Taylor’s view and maintains that if we are devoted to our own good, absurd as it may be, we fulfill our nature. Thus, because we have goals and purposes our lives are not absurd from the inside but may be so from the outside. On futility, see also Trisel (2002). See also Note 65 below for further references to contemporary debates about the meaning of life. The question of the meaning of life, of the possibility of leading a good life as well as the viability of happiness naturally accompany a study of the human condition. 24. Aristotle (2007). For desire as related to time, see Grimaldi (1971). 25. Plato, Republic, 588c.

60

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

L. Amir

Rabouin (1997, 77). As did Spinoza; see 1985a, Ethics, Part III, Definitions of the affections. For references, see Metz’s recent study of meaning 2013. For desire and the spiritual life, see Ellis (2017). For immortality, see Edwards (1992) and Benatar (2017, Chapter 6). For the former, see Ben-Ze’ev (2000), and for the latter, Nagel’s “The Fragmentation of Value” 1979, 128–41. On this topic, see Amir (2017, Chapter 7). See, for example, Rabouin (1997, 36). For recent defenses of desire, see Baas (1992) and Arpaly and Schroeder (2014). See Metz (2013, 223): “Whatever can be responsive to deliberation, that is a ‘judgement-sensitive attitude’ T. M. Scanlon (1998, 18–22) counts as rational: Insofar as conation, emotion, and even affection are under our (perhaps indirect) control and can track cognitive appraisals of value to a greater or lesser degree, I consider them to be part of our rational nature.” For a contemporary debate about the Humean Theory of motivation and Anti-Humean account of desires and reasons as motivations for action, see Tiberius (2015, Chapter 4). The Anti-Humean argues that we can also explain our actions by appeal to our belief and reasoning, without desires playing any role. The basic Humean picture is that “reasoning about the world can point our desires in different directions by informing us about how to satisfy them, but they do not generate motivations on their own” (Tiberius 2015, 47–48). For the role of desires in moral psychology, see Tiberius (2015, Chapters 3–5). Anscombe (1957). This part of the chapter is based on an argument that can be found in various of my previous publications, such as Amir (2017, Chapter 8) and Amir (2014b, 219–86). I hope I have strengthened it, however, by significantly extending the examples I give. Scholem (1970). Schär (1950). A good survey of Western civilization from this perspective is found in Passmore (1970). See Schopenhauer (1966, II, 638); Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 36; Prop. 42 Scholium. This topic is better represented in the secondary literature on Schopenhauer than on Spinoza. For Spinoza on salvation, see Smith (2003) and the references in Amir’s Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work under contract for de Gruyter).

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

61

42. See Nietzsche, 1979, Ecce Homo, III, “Why I Write Such Excellent Books,” Section 8; 1967, The Genealogy of Morals, II, Section 24; 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On redemption”; 1968, The Will to Power, Section 852; 1974, The Gay Science, Preface, Section 3. For Nietzsche and redemption, see the reference in the preceding note. 43. See Santayana (1944, 428; 1980, 21, 192, 213). For Santayana on philosophic salvation, see Brodrick (2015) and Woodward (1988); and Chapter 3 in Amir’s manuscript, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 44. For the similarities between the goal of the Hellenistic and Roman schools and the goal of (naturalistic) philosophic personal redemptions, see Nussbaum (1994). 45. Brahman may be inaccessible to conceptualization but can be accessed through contemplative vision. 46. See Clooney and Nicholson (2001) for an analysis of Hindu release. 47. See Eckel and Thatamanil (2001) for the Buddhist view of desires. “The Middle Way” with which Buddhism has become synonymous is misleading; though it may be the intermediate way between extreme Hindu asceticism and the pursuit of a dissolute life full of pleasures, its attitude toward desire is not a moderate or conciliatory one. On this point, see Marinoff (2007, Chapter 3). 48. See Berger (2004) for the Schopenhauerian negating of the will and its Eastern sources. However, Schopenhauer emphasizes the affinity between his philosophy and Christianity and deems his work “the only true Christian philosophy” (Schopenhauer 1893, 27). 49. Inwood and Gerson (1988, 24, 26ff ). 50. See Laertius (1925, 9.107) and Sextus Empiricus (2000, 1.29). 51. Sextus Empiricus (2000, 1.25–30). See Long (1986) for the Epicurean view of desire. 52. See Nussbaum (1994, 312). 53. See Nussbaum (1994) for desire in Pyrrhonism. 54. Russell (1917, 55). 55. Russell (1987, 440–41). 56. Blackwell (1985). See Russell, 1930, The Conquest of Happiness. 57. For further elaboration of Russell’s view of happiness and impersonal love, see Chapters 6 and 7 below, and Amir (2017, 227–29). 58. Many religions as well as philosophies encourage liberation through the renunciation of desires. 59. Nietzsche, 1968, The Will to Power, Section 349.

62

L. Amir

60. See Thiele (1990, Chapters 2 and 4). 61. Santayana (1916). 62. I believe the position I adopt toward metaphysics in this study is closest to the view referred to as “metaphysical quietism” (MacArthur 2017). Since various methodologies are competing in contemporary philosophy (see d’Oro and Overgaard 2017), some explaining of this position is required in order to understand my argument. Recall that Kant speaks of metaphysics as “the battlefield of these endless controversies” (Kant 1998, A vii). He sees it as an intellectual war which, despite his best efforts, his own critique is unable to quell. In his essay “On Metaphysical Quietism and Everyday Life” in The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (2017), David MacArthur argues that metaphysics is a commitment to dogma. It advances claims to reality whose truth is taken to be authoritatively established independently of the empirical. He calls dogmatism “the human tendency to hold fixed convictions about how things are whilst lacking proper sensitivity to the empirical” (MacArthur 2017, 263). The “dogmatic slumber” that Kant refers to is a disengagement from or a dream of reality (Kant 1950, 4: 260). Kant and MacArthur point to the appeal this slumber has for us, and Albert Einstein echoes their requirements for empirical foundations: “Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally by pure thought without empirical foundations––in short by metaphysics” (Einstein 1950, 13; quoted in MacArthur 2017, 264). However, Karl Popper suggests that the willingness to submit claims to empirical refutations is the mark of rationality or science, according to the Critical Rationalism thesis he advances. Thus, metaphysics may be a fruitful source for scientific knowledge, if put to the test, and should not be denounced on semantic grounds as unintelligible, as Rudolf Carnap and others in the Vienna circle have done. Some past metaphysics were necessarily dogmatic, and for the moment, we cannot refute the many metaphysics that still compete for our approval. Thus, my position is Popperian. Yet it can be seen also as a Neo-Kantian’s suspension of metaphysics, or preferably, because I do not adhere to Kant’s philosophy as a whole, as “metaphysical quietism.” This approach threatens the projects of contemporary metaphysics and has the advantage of including Kant’s attitude toward traditional metaphysics (MacArthur 2017, 249).

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

63

“At a minimum,” MacArthur explains, “quietism in philosophy refers to a non-doctrinal non-constructive mode of philosophizing. It is not a philosophical doctrine, as its name perhaps suggests, but a method of philosophizing that aims at ridding oneself of philosophical doctrine in one region or another” (MacArthur 2017, 250). However, my position does not fit easily within MacArthur’s typology, which divides metaphysical quietism into three sorts. Aporetic Pyrrhonian quietism (suspending judgment because of equipollence), semantic quietism (metaphysics is “nonsense,” a “conceptual puzzlement,” according to Ludwig Wittgenstein), and pragmatic quietism (metaphysics is “useless” and “unprofitable,” according to Richard Rorty). Within the semantic quietism, MacArthur includes David Hume, Carnap and Kant, the latter “at least in his attitude toward traditional or speculative metaphysics and the dialectical illusions to which it gives rise” (270n7). He mentions as additional quietists Hue Price and John McDowell, the latter addressing the Cartesian skeptical problematic of a metaphysical gap between mind (reason) and world (nature) (252). McDowell views his task as a “diagnosis, with a view to cure” (McDowell 1996, xvi) arguing that modern debates in epistemology translate a philosophical anxiety. However, my position is not semantic, or pragmatic, but rather practical: I think it is useful to know the true nature of the world, but it is for the moment an unachievable goal, in practice rather than in principle. So, by default, I choose Aporetic Pyrrhonism, but without committing to equipollence or to any others of that skeptical school’s assumptions. Finally, MacArthur also associates this kind of quietism with therapy. See Note 76 below for additional remarks about the methodology adopted in this study. Ward (2001, 11). Smith (2001, 255). For recent discussions of the meaning of life, see Solomon (1976), Taylor (1981), Wolf (1997a, 1997b, 2010), Landau (1997), Schmidtz (2001), Martin (2002), Trisel (2002), Eagleton (2007), Ford (2007), Metz (2013) and the bibliography there; Runzo (2000), Young (2014), and Tartaglia (2016). See also the essays in the anthologies edited by Hanfling (1987), Runzo and Martin (2000), and Leach and Tartaglia (2018). Schellenberg (2007, 1). Some recent works that advance good reasons for rejecting the existence of gods are Dennett (1993), Kekes (1995), Kitcher (2007), and Wielenberg (2005).

64

L. Amir

68. See Plato, Phaedrus, and Burton (1989, 867). Burton discusses enthusiasm in love, religion and philosophy in the Third Partition of his LoveMelancholy. See also Shaftesbury (Letter, 2; in Characteristics of Men, etc., I 15–16); Kant, “Sickness of the Head,” 1992– (Ak. 2: 267), 268; Johnson (2002, 79–80). 69. For the ways the yearning for meaning can go wrong, see Koestler (1967). Metz explains: “The most destructive projects undertaken in the 20th century… have been mainly done not out of a search of happiness, but rather a misdirected attempt to participate in something greater than oneself in the form of a Volk, Vaterland, God, political party, utopian society, or the like. It is impossible to grasp human nature to any comprehensive degree without invoking people’s drive to seek out ends beyond their own pleasure and to make their lives worthy of great esteem and admiration, so far as they can tell in what these consist” (Metz 2013, 249). 70. See the first chapter of Amir (2017b) for the New Age movement’s main theories and the intellectual and moral consequences of endorsing them uncritically. 71. There may be a difference between metaphysics and science regarding skepticism. See on this topic, the work of Popper (e.g., 1959, 1963, 1994) and its critics. 72. Kohn (2001, 27, 34, 38). 73. See Carmody (1996) and Borchert (1994) for the attitudes toward desire and reason in various mystical traditions. 74. See Inwood (1982) for the Stoics’ view of desires; Sorabji (2002, 181–210) for their eradication. 75. See Allison (1990) for criticism of the Kantian metaphysics of the categorical imperative. 76. In my attempts to fit within accepted methodologies (see Note 62 above), my position is close to the requirements for Rational Anthropology, as defined by Robert Hanna (2017, among other works), but sufficiently different to be independent of Kantian views. Hanna confronts “real metaphysics” (human-faced or anthropocentric metaphysics), which “starts with the primitive, irreducible fact of purposive, living, essentially embodied, conscious, intentional, caring, rational and moral human experience, and then reverses-engineers its basic metaphysical theses in order to conform strictly to all and only what is phenomenologically self-evident in human experience” (Hanna 2017, 189). According to Hanna, this is “authentic philosophy” in that it is “philosophically liberationist.” He argues that it is a reworking of Kant’s critical-theoretical and practical philosophy

2 To Solve or Not to Solve…

65

in a contemporary context, but I am not sure that indeed it is. I agree with some of the theses (1–3 and 5) he outlines in his essay, including the following: “There is no deep difference between philosophy and the history of philosophy,” and the “primary aim of authentic philosophy is to change one’s own life, with a further ultimate aim of changing the world through free, existentially authentic, morally principled action, hence all philosophy is liberationist, with radical ethical, religious, and political aims, or what I call, radical enlightenment ” (Hanna 2017, 188). However, I appeal in this study to human experience and to world literature in various fields, such as philosophy, religion, the human sciences and art, without insisting on referring to these experiences as phenomena because the very use of this notion involves me in metaphysics. I also avoid appealing to intuitions, in contradistinction to most analytic philosophers (see Halles 2000, 136), as I concur with Justin Sytsma and Jonathan Livengood that these are not evidence for or against a view: Many prominent philosophers over the past two decades have claimed that ordinary philosophical practice involves appeals to intuitions in one way or another. … many philosophers are upfront in admitting that their arguments are ultimately grounded in intuition and that philosophy essentially depends on it, even if they do not say why intuition should provide any justification at all, as if intuitions constitute evidence for or against a view. (Sytsma and Livengood 2016, 7–8) Thus, I attempt to think “honestly about my life and other people’s lives,” as Wittgenstein’s recommended in a letter to Norman Malcolm: What is the use of studying philosophy if all it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life…You see I know that it’s difficult to think well about “certainty,” “probability,” “perception,” etc. But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think, or try to think, really honestly about your life and other people’s lives. And the trouble is that thinking about these things is not thrilling, but often downright nasty. And when it is nasty it’s most important. (Malcolm 2001, 35; quoted in MacArthur 2017, 262)

66

L. Amir

I do think that we have more in common than not, and although I understand that contemporary Marxists, feminists and others object to such generalizations as blind to societal constructs, I still hold that notwithstanding social and political changes leading to new legislation, the liberationist role of philosophy should enable the self-change that it promises (see Amir 2017b; 2018). Like John Kekes, I am part of an old but continuing tradition that regards philosophy as a way of understanding and coping with human predicaments (see Kekes 2016, 236n4 for a list of dead and living philosophers who partake in this project; they all agree that “one essential task of philosophy is to seek reasonable answers to the question of how we, fallible human beings, should understand and cope with the particular forms in which we have to face problems of life” [Kekes 2016, 236; see also Amir 2015a, 2017b, 2018]). I am sympathetic to the view Kekes expresses, “The aim of the reflection is deeper understanding. It is in a broader sense, philosophical, but avoid the specialties into which most philosophers get lost breaking the human predicament into smaller problems” (Kekes 2016, xi). However, I would lengthen Kekes’s list of philosophers who answer this criteria (he mentions the Hellenistic schools of philosophy and Montaigne, Pascal, some of Hume’s essays, Nietzsche, and aspects of the later work on Wittgenstein) by adding Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Santayana and Russell, among others, as well as various contemporary philosophers writing in English and especially in French. While Kekes restricts or widens the scope of this work (“This is of concern to thoughtful people, not an academic discipline”), I do not: Provided that philosophic specialties are clearly explained I hope that my study would concern not only thoughtful people but also academic philosophers.

3 Handling Contradictions

This chapter proposes to construe tragic oppositions in terms of comical incongruities. Three kinds of considerations lend plausibility to this proposal. These are the relationships of tragedy and comedy, as informed by their history, humor theories, and the affinity between humor, sadness and suffering. A tragic state of mind is dominated by an either/or attitude, while the comical attitude is characterized by a both/and approach. The latter attitude is more appropriate for handling internal contradictions or intrapersonal conflicts without losing epistemological content. Additionally, as the humor that enables the transmutation from the tragic to the comic lessens the tension that the tragic generates, various ethical benefits ensue. This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of self-referential humor as a conceptual tool for handling contradictions and as an intrapersonal form of communication, which is conducive to the self-education that philosophy attempts to impart.

1

The Tragic and the Comic

Histories of dramatic genres and literature on the relationship between tragedy and comedy draw a connection between the two that has been © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_3

67

68

L. Amir

variously described.1 To take an example, Walter Kerr maintains, “the doorway to comedy is truly a back door through tragedy.”2 He holds, moreover, that comedy is an epiphenomenon of tragedy. In a chapter entitled, “the tragic source of comedy,” he further notes: Comedy, it seems, is never the gaiety of things; it is the groan made gay. Laughter is not man’s first impulse; he cries first. Comedy always comes second, late after the fact and in spite of it or because of it. Comedy is really the underside of things, after the rock of our hearts has been lifted, with effort and only temporarily. It appears in the absence of something and as the absence of something. Man’s primary concern is with the rock, with his heart, with tragedy. (Kerr 1967, 19)

Kerr believes that comedy at its most penetrating state derives its strength from what we typically regard as tragic. Comedy adds the last necessary ounce of truth to tragedy; it is not a relief, but the rest of the bitter truth. The forms of tragedy and comedy are inseparable for Kerr, one incomplete without the other. Tragedy is the forward, upward thrust; comedy is the drag or reminder. The two are balanced in this way in the early Greeks’ arrangement of plays, with the tragic mother giving birth to her satyr child. The medieval rediscovery of drama is also characterized by this complementary duality. Thus, “the first highly developed comic notes are developed not apart from, but out of, what has been presented as, most terrifying.”3 We have very good evidence, then, to show that comedy, in its entirety, comes after seriousness, after tragedy or its equivalent. And based on somewhat lesser but nonetheless extremely provocative evidence, it seems likely that comedy comes from tragedy. If this is so, the two faces the theater shows us are actually the same face “worn by the same man, reporting the same event.”4 In The Argument of Comedy, Northrop Frye voices similar ideas: “Tragedy is really implicit or uncompleted comedy,” he writes, and “comedy contains a potential tragedy within itself.”5 Dennis Schmidt rightly notes that we necessarily confront G. W. F. Hegel’s legacy when we take up the question of the tragic in the present age. Thus, it is difficult to keep the topic of tragedy from having a fundamentally Hegelian flavor.6 The same can be said for the relationships that tragedy entertains with comedy. Pointing to an affinity between them

3 Handling Contradictions

69

leads to Hegel, whose position is that comedy complements and completes tragedy. Thus, to avoid conflating all positions on the kinship of tragedy with comedy, a careful analysis of Hegel’s views on the matter is in order. Though Hegel’s thought on both tragedy and comedy evolves, that much remains constant: Tragedy never loses significance within his system, however variously defined, while comedy is never thoroughly explained.7 To understand the Hegelian position on the relationships that tragedy entertains with comedy, the role of the tragic in his thought introduced in the first chapter of this study should be further clarified: Though the vocabulary and context will change, Hegel’s conception of drama as fundamentally concerned with the role of divinity in human existence, and depicting a change in this role, will remain constant through the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on Aesthetics. The existence of the absolute in history for Hegel is tragic, but tragedy is understood, on the model of the Christian Passion, as the sacrifice of the divine that allows for the whole to “raises itself out of its ashes into glory.” (Hegel 1970, 2, 496; Billings 2014, 157)

What is the role of comedy, then? A detailed approach beginning with earlier texts and notes sheds light both on the complexity of the relationship the tragic entertains with the comic and on the relative neglect of comedy in Hegelian thought. In “The Spirit of Christianity,” tragedy and comedy are presented as inverses of one another. While tragedy is animated by recognition of necessity, comedy is driven by insubstantial drives. Thus, comedy instantiates fatelessness, which is a playful relation to all forms of absolute. Billings explains that this argument recurs in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where comedy appears as a destructive force in opposition to the theological seriousness of tragedy. Tragedy is enlisted as a model for interpreting ethical life in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It represents the crisis of individuality and is described as the most acute crisis that spirit must confront in the process of its selfeducation. Tragedy appears twice in the Phenomenology. First, Hegel first explains tragic conflict in terms of opposition between human and divine laws. Second, tragedy is associated with an antithesis within consciousness itself, between knowing and acting. As exemplified in Antigone, the chorus

70

L. Amir

confronts the action as a truth to be known, while the acting subjects of the drama confront the world as a reality to be negated. In the second appearance of tragedy, Hegel explains it as the aporia of individuality and essence, or of acting and knowing, which can never completely coincide. The drama attempts to conceal individuality by masking the actors, yet its action leads every form of individuality to ruin in order to show the higher order that individuality cannot grasp. At the end of the drama, the downfall of both powers shows their unity. However, the truth, “individuality that is only superficially attached to essence is unessential,” is visible all along to the chorus and to the spectators. The result is the dropping of the mask because the self aspires to be genuine.8 This is the final truth of tragedy but also the moment of comedy. In comedy, the individual dissolves and “preserves itself in this very nothingness.” This is possible because “what this self-consciousness sees is that whatever assumes the form of essentiality in opposition to it, is to be dissolved in itself—in its thinking, its existence and its action— and so is at its mercy…This self-certainty is a state of spiritual well-being and of repose in this well-being which is not to be found anywhere outside of this comedy.”9 Schmidt explains that now death, which in tragedy opened up the existence of mourning, is seen as ridiculous. And in this final dissolution of individuality, this exposure of the individual as a nothingness when it is outside of the essential, the riddle of individuality—which originally inaugurated and propelled the tragedy—is solved. The self-certainty of the individual is found in its preservation in this nothingness, which it now knows to be its sole actuality. In this moment, the individual knows itself to be nothing apart from this knowing. (Schmidt 2001, 108–9)

As Hegel does not address the question of the nature of comedy, he never clarifies why this is comedy. On the contrary, tragedy illustrates the necessity of the sacrifices that define the spirit’s advance, which clarifies the significance of the tragic for the Hegelian dialectic. From the outset, the movement of spirit is driven by self-sacrifice, whose repetition animates spirit. Thus, Hegel concludes the Phenomenology of Spirit by asserting, “to know one’s limits is to know

3 Handling Contradictions

71

how to sacrifice oneself.”10 In tragedy, this truth is voiced by the chorus, which represents the speculative point of view or the perspective of the reconciliation that is possible in the tragic work: “In the chorus we find the cancellation of the conflicts as conflicts.”11 This means that in the words of the chorus spirit finds the satisfaction of the needs which originally brought it to the work of art, and this reconciliation brings a subjective satisfaction: No final resolution of the conflict is presented, but there is harmony, a peace, restored in the subjective relation one has to this conflict. And this new affirmation of the subjective element of the work of art…leads Hegel to make the transition to the world of comedy, which as in the Phenomenology of Spirit complements and so completes the work of art. (Schmidt 2001, 110)

This leads Hegel to affirm in Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art that “comedy has for its basis and starting-point what tragedy may end with, namely an absolutely reconciled and cheerful heart.”12 Tragedy summons the possibility of comedy by repeating in the form of the drama the one-sidedness which is at the root of the tragic conflict, for example, by leaving undeveloped the individuality of the dramatis personae and the depths of their personal life.13 Whilst “comedy on its side brings into view a converse mode of plasticity…the subjective personality in the free expatiation of its absurdity and its absurdity dissolution.”14 Together comedy and tragedy tell the story of the truth of the life of spirit in its individuality which spirit desires to know. This is why the development of comedy signals the end of the philosophical investigation of the achievement of spirit in the forms of art—comedy marks the dissolution of art in general; it is spirit satisfied with itself, and by remaining with itself and the nothingness of its own particular subjectivity, spirit no longer finds it necessary to express itself in the sensuous world…it no longer finds art necessary for its education. It is not capable anymore to nourish the deepest desires of the spirit to know itself. It the dissolution of art, which comedy effectuates, art accomplishes its task, the “liberation of the spirit from the content and forms of finitude, with the presence and reconciliation of the absolute in what is apparent

72

L. Amir

and visible, with an unfolding of truth which is not exhausted in natural history but revealed in world history.”15 When spirit confronts its death and finds beauty in it, this is the final form in the natural life of spirit, or the truth of that natural life. Art is by nature a conflicted enterprise. Because it is born of conflict, it is destined to do the work of tragedy. Thus, when art expresses its own most nature, it expresses this conflict, and tragedy is the highest form of this expression. Thus, “tragedy represents the summit of the possibilities of the work of art, its genuine goal, but it is also a template of the general situation, and the logic, which is proper to spirit.”16 This makes it central to Hegelian thought. However, as Hegel’s intent is to offer a theodicy, comedy and the well-being it brings about is of no much interest to Hegel. Thus, although its role is crucial in complementing tragedy’s work and in terminating art’s role in the life of spirit, comedy remains understudied in Hegel’s thought, as Dmitri Nikulin and others note.17 We will have further opportunities to assess Hegel’s view and its compatibility with what is proposed in this study. However, we should note the pertinence of this discussion for the relations of the tragic with the comic, the topic this part addresses: For Hegel, comedy complements and completes tragedy. Already Plato notes the kinship between tragedy and comedy. At the end of the Symposium, Socrates tells his friends, Aristophanes, the playwright of comedy, and Agathon, who just won a prize for tragedy, that “the genius of comedy is the same as the genius of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also.”18 Socrates seems to have in mind, beyond the literal sense that every writer ought to be able to do both, the following undeniable truth: The highest comedy gains its power from its sense of tragic possibility; and the profoundest tragedy presents a full if fleeting vision through its temporary disorder of an ordered universe that comedy witnesses. Without a sense of the tragic, “comedy loses heart,” Richard Sewall maintains, “it becomes brittle, it has animation, but not life. Without a recognition of the truths of comedy, tragedy becomes bleak and intolerable.”19 Moreover, both the tragic and the comic involve opposition and conflict. We have seen the kind of oppositions on which the tragic sense of life broods, but scholars who study comedy also emphasize

3 Handling Contradictions

73

that the comic always involves an encounter of two different, often diametrically opposed, levels or experiences, such as: high-low, soulbody, mind-matter, artificial-natural, spirit-letter, human-animal, divinehuman, ideals-reality, spontaneity-habit, culture-vulgarity and high aimslow needs. Henri Bergson adds to the series above yet another opposition: the living-mechanical or life-automatism, which he attempts to establish as the core of all others.20 Thus, the possibility of transposing the tragic into the comical is first suggested by the history of the genres and by the constitutive part that oppositions play in both comedy and tragedy. Theories of humor are also helpful in lending support to this possibility.

1.1

Transforming Tragic Oppositions into Comical Incongruities

Theories of humor may shed light on the transformation of tragic oppositions into comical incongruities. The theory of the comical attaches two distinct meanings to the term “humor”: broad and narrow. “Humor” is understood broadly when it is used interchangeably with the term “comical.” Some theorists apply the term “humor” to all kinds of comical works.21 In this case, however, humor is often taken to mean the subjective aspect of the comical (both the capacity to experience the comical and the experience itself ), as exemplified by the following definition: Humor is “the capacity to perceive or express the amusing aspects of situations.”22 Similarly, in the expression “sense of humor,” “humor” is often semantically equivalent to “the comical.” What is meant by “sense of humor” is the aesthetic sensitivity to the stimuli that evoke the experience of the comical: It is the capacity to perceive the amusing aspects of a situation or to construe the situation as amusing. Humor, then, is the contemporary umbrella term we use to refer to the comic and its cognates. Many authors use the narrow meaning of the term “humor” to specify a particular form of the comical.23 Moreover, “humor” is associated with a particular axiological attitude and a view of the world together with a form of writing expressing them, whose important component is the comical. In these last two related meanings, humor, because of its permissiveness, its tolerant and reflective character, is contrasted with militant

74

L. Amir

and uncompromising satire, on the one hand, and the primitive forms of the comical associated with farce and vaudeville, on the other. Unless otherwise indicated, “humor” will be used here in its broad meaning, as interchangeable with the “comical.” The various theories that attempt to define “the comical” or “humor” as an umbrella term for the comic and its cognates are usually divided into superiority theories, incongruity theories (which include ambivalence theories) and release and relief theories, although a richer taxonomy exists. For example, Patricia KeithSpiegel offers an analysis of eight primary categories and Matthew Hurley et al. update the three categories of humor theories with an analysis of more recent work, adding biological theories, play theories, surprise theories and Bergson’s mechanical humor theory.24 The most widespread contemporary view of the comical (humor) is as incongruity alone, or together with its resolution. There are various theories of incongruity, but they all present cognitions involving disjointed ideas, ill-suited pairings of ideas or situations, and/or their presentations in ways that diverge from habitual or expected customs.25 The conflictresolution theory is a variant of the incongruity theory. Rod Martin reports on a long debate among cognitively oriented humor theorists on whether incongruity alone is necessary and sufficient for humor or whether it needs resolution as well. Some information-processing analysts, among other theorists, who have added to the incongruity theory a component of conflict-resolution, have a two-stage process in common: first, the perception of some complexity, incongruity, discrepancy, ambiguity or novelty in the humor stimulus, second, the resolution (i.e., cognitive integration or understanding) of the stimulus.26 Oscillation, conflict-mixture and simultaneously experienced incompatible emotions or feelings characterize the ambivalence theories of the comical (humor).27 The difference between the incongruity and the ambivalence theories of humor lies in their emphasis: The former emphasizes cognition and the latter emphasizes feelings. As the comic/humor has both cognitive and affective components, I use both theories as well as the release and relief theories. The common basis of the theories pertaining to the latter group is the view of humor as providing relief or release from high tension.28

3 Handling Contradictions

75

The notion of incongruity explains the relevance of humor to conflict. We can consider incongruity as a conflict or clash between ideas, emotions and desires, or among them. Conversely, we can also consider conflict as an incongruity, and by using the incongruity and ambivalence theories, we can construe this conflict as comical. Viewed in that way, humor enables us to tolerate the tension generated by this opposition. This last point is clarified by the third group of theories, which conceives of humor as a relief or release of excessive tension. Within the framework of these theories, it is possible to assume that some situations felt or construed as tragic may also be experienced as comical, thereby making them more bearable.

1.2

Tragic and Comical Incongruities

Some comical situations are independent of any underlying tragic incongruity. More importantly, not every tragic incongruity can be perceived as comical by the person who is in the midst of what she deems a tragic event. Our reaction to incongruity may include negative emotions, puzzlement or humorous amusement.29 However, according to sources as disparate as Bergson, Sigmund Freud and John Morreall as soon as a humorous reaction to incongruity is established, emotions cannot arise.30 Freud allows that humor may replace a nascent emotion. However, based on Freud’s view of pleasure as a by-product of humor, I would suggest that even at a later stage, especially when a more detached view of the current situation is required in order to act, humor, more than philosophical theory, has a better chance of resonating with the individual. As Freud explains, We can only say that if someone succeeds, for instance, in disregarding a painful affect by reflecting on the greatness of the interests of the world as compared with his own smallness, we do not regard this as an achievement of humour but of philosophical thought, and if we put ourselves into this train of thought, we obtain no yield of pleasure. (Freud [1905] 1960, 289)

Humor in Freudian terminology, or comic apprehension in mine, can be induced by the incongruity created by the following contrast: the discrepancy between the viability of an objective-reasonable view of the situation

76

L. Amir

and the subjective-emotional view that one is experiencing. This humorous and even slightly pleasurable incongruity helps get a more detached view of the situation at hand. “In the laughter with which we observe and greet the foibles of others,” Reinhold Niebuhr notes “a nice mixture of mercy and judgment, of censure and forbearance.”31 This is even more so in self-reflective laughter, as exemplified by the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who uses soliloquy as a means for self-correction.32 If Michael Gelven and Agnes Heller are right in holding, respectively, that “laughter is the most curious manifestation of reflexive reason” and that it is “the instinct of reason,”33 then it is reasoning through laughter that communicates with the emotions. Sooner or later, it is necessary to establish some distance from one’s emotions in order to continue living. Gentle laughter at the folly of believing that the heart will get its way, that desires will be fulfilled, that mortals will not die and that “this will not happen to me” is the first step toward bridging the gap between that which one desires and that which reason knows. Philosophers may not be of much help to themselves or to those who have lost a loved one, or an arm, or the ability to see. However, as Robert Solomon reminds us, we all meet or read about the rare sages who have suffered the most profound misfortunes and have still managed to retain a sense of acceptance, graciousness and even humor about their lives.34 Moreover, sadness, suffering and humor may be intimately connected. This can be inferred from theories of humor that emphasize humor’s ambiguous survival value,35 or the view that the comic discloses the vital rhythm of life, celebrating a fertility god that is the symbol of perpetual rebirth and eternal life.36 This connection has also been noted by suffering philosophers, such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kierkegaard maintains, “The melancholy have the best sense of humor.” Nietzsche asserts that as one has only what one needs, “The deeply wounded have Olympian laughter,” and “the most suffering animal on earth invented for itself—laughter.”37 If a tragic incongruity cannot always be perceived as comical by the person while she is experiencing it, I believe that most intrapersonal tragic conflicts have the potential to transform themselves into comical incongruities. I have based this argument on theories of humor, the history of the dramatic genres and the relations between the tragic and the comic,

3 Handling Contradictions

77

the association between sadness, suffering and humor, and on that which sheer survival recommends.

1.3

Social Conflicts

The significant role humor plays in alleviating social conflicts is substantiated by much scholarship. Humor is universal, a phenomenon known to every society, a staple of any cultural inventory: It is the social glue that keeps diverse and sometimes conflicting elements in societies, groups and associations together. It is one of the major means of achieving consensus because it signals common experiences, ideas, themes or values to individuals. Humor also functions as a mode of indirect communication that relieves stress and strain while enabling the discussion of serious matters in a nonthreatening way. As such, it is an effective expression of aggression and hostility, as well as an expression of its contrary, a form of self-devaluation or self-humiliation that replaces hostility and indignation directed toward others. It is never absent in the celebration of significant events in individual lives or social major events. Several other functions of humor include provoking thought, countering pain, correcting human errors, voicing social criticism and disclosing human shame or the posturing involved in deceit, pretense and trickery. Humor also reinforces and undermines stereotypes, exemplifying through these contrary aims its ambiguous workings. Sociologists have documented the presence of both conflict and control among human groups. Humor is operative in terms of these concerns: It can be a devastating weapon of attack and can also be used to manage group members by shoring up group morale.38 While humor plays a significant role in social conflicts, sociological theories of humor diverge in their emphasis within this role. The functionalist approach emphasizes humor’s ability to vent or expel hostility and thereby avoid or reduce social conflict. The conflict approach, by contrast, sees humor as a weapon, a form of attack, a means of defense and an expression or correlate of social conflict.39 Sociologist Giselinde Kuipers explains that conflict theories of humor have mainly been used in the analysis of ethnic and political

78

L. Amir

humor40 : They are exemplified in the case studies that Marjolein ‘t Hart and Dennis Bos present in Humor and Social Protest (2007).

1.4

Personal Conflicts

Humor need not be social, however: Kierkegaard considers the humorist a socially alienated isolato who takes an un-conciliatory stance toward the world, and who “like a beast of prey, always walks alone”; Arthur Schopenhauer emphasizes the individualistic stance of the humorist, as does Thomas Carlyle.41 Unlike a joke, Freud considers humor something that can be enjoyed by someone without the need to communicate it, and to which “another person’s participation adds nothing new.” Thus, “humour completes its course within a single person,” and this is why “humour is the most easily satisfied among the species of the comic.”42 More recently, Dineh Davis has argued that “humor begins within and may remain entirely within the individual (such as in self-talk or self-discovery), and as such can be dealt with within the disciplines of philosophy or psychology.”43 Willibald Ruch notes that in psychology and other disciplines the scope of most theories of humor is limited to an analysis of jokes and cartoons.44 This means that the analysis of individual, intrapersonal and uncommunicated self-referential humor that follows has been developed independently for the simple reason that research heretofore done in this area has seldom been conducted and that little or no data is available. Nevertheless, there is much information about the role humor can play to ease personal conflicts. Today, the physiological and psychological benefits of humor are numerous and well-documented, although the findings are less clear-cut than most people think. It remains, however, that a sense of humor and the ability to laugh have long been viewed as important sources of both physical and psychological health. Since medieval times, physicians and philosophers have suggested that laughter has important health benefits such as improving blood circulation, restoring energy, counteracting depression and enhancing the functioning of various organs of the body. William Fry and his colleagues are credited with several of the physical health claims that have been made for

3 Handling Contradictions

79

humor.45 In the past century, various psychologists and psychotherapists such as Freud, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May46 have also emphasized the contribution a benign sense of humor makes to mental health.47 Belief in the positive health benefits of humor and laughter has become increasingly popular in recent years. A burgeoning “humor and health movement” has developed as well as organizations such as the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH). In recent years, the growth of the “laughter club movement,” whose adherents promote laughter as a form of yogic exercise, has further added to the chorus of claims for the beneficial effects of even non-humorous laughter on physical, mental and spiritual health, as well as its potential for resolving conflicts at both the personal and international levels. Humor may influence psychological health through the positive emotion of mirth associated with it. Like other positive emotions, mirth may enhance feelings of well-being and counteract negative emotions such as depression and anxiety. Consequently, individuals who frequently engage in humor may be less prone to various forms of emotional disturbance. Like other emotions, mirth is associated with a variety of biochemical processes in the brain and other parts of the body.48 Such emotion-related biochemical changes may have beneficial effects on physical health—increasing pain tolerance, enhancing immunity or undoing the cardiovascular consequences of negative emotions. According to this model, overt laughter may not be necessary for health benefits because humor and amusement may induce the positive emotion of mirth without the need for laughter. A healthy sense of humor would involve a generally cheerful temperament characterized by mirth, happiness, joy, optimism and a playful approach to life.49 Humor may benefit psychological health through cognitive mechanisms as well. By shifting perspective and avoiding overly serious responses to situations, individuals who maintain a humorous outlook on life are less likely to become stuck in the cognitive distortion that gives rise to anxiety and depression. A large body of research points to the adverse effects that stressful life experiences can have on various aspects of physical and psychological well-being. Thus, a humorous outlook on life and the ability to see the funny side of one’s problems may enable individuals to cope more

80

L. Amir

effectively with pressure and anxiety by allowing them to gain perspective and to distance themselves from stressful situations, enhancing their feelings of mastery and well-being in the face of adversity.50 Finally, humor may benefit physical and psychological health through the social mechanism of increasing one’s level of support. Individuals who use humor more effectively to reduce interpersonal conflicts and tensions and to enhance positive feelings in others may consequently enjoy more numerous and satisfying social relationships. In return, the greater levels of social support resulting from these relationships may confer stressbuffering and health-enhancing benefits.51 However, a word of caution is in order. Martin argues that claims for the benefits of humor are often simplistic, exaggerated and unsubstantiated.52 Regarding physical health, he sums up the research by suggesting, “the strongest evidence supports the idea of humor-related increases in pain tolerance, although the mechanisms are still unclear, and there is evidence that similar effects can also be found with negative emotions.” Regarding psychological health, there is some evidence that a sense of humor can play a beneficial role in coping with stress, enhancing interpersonal relationships and contributing to general well-being, “although this research is also somewhat inconsistent.”53 Relationships between humor and laughter, on the one hand, and psychosocial and physiological health, on the other, are more complex than many people believe. Martin argues that more research is necessary in order to get sound results. Although there is little doubt that humor and laughter can enhance positive feelings of mirth, we have only an incomplete understanding of the ways in which different aspects of humor may contribute to broader dimensions of mental health and satisfying social relationships.54 Let me conclude the first part of the chapter that addresses personal conflicts by endorsing Gelven’s argument in Truth and the Comedic Art: The praise of the comedic may itself be trivialized by the over-ready: laughter makes us feel good…These psychological consequences are true benefits, and it would be churlish to deny them. To focus on them as the central explanation is rather like drinking a vintage Chateau Margaux merely to experience the gentle high that follows, and not to taste its wondrous,

3 Handling Contradictions

81

magnificent flavor…It is likewise not the mere psychological benefits that endorse comedic laughter. What would it be, then?The truth, perhaps? Even if it is truth it is only that peculiarly self-revealing truth about ourselves, which may be the most important kind, but it is also the most elusive. What enables us to praise comedic laughter apparently runs more deeply than obvious psychological benefits… (Gelven 2000, 6)

I suggest that what is true about “the comedic” may be valid for “humor” as well. The importance of humor is not restricted to its psychological and physiological benefits, its significance lies elsewhere: It can play a crucial role in attaining philosophic ideals as the following chapters clarify. A better understanding of the kind of humor required must come first.

2

Humor: A Conceptual Tool for Handling Contradictions

In restricting the following discussion to intrapersonal conflict, I do not address interpersonal conflict,55 although this study may bear on them insofar as they are amenable to intrapersonal conflicts. Intrapersonal conflict calls for self-directed or self-referential humor. I explain what this kind of humor involves and outline its cognitive, emotional and conative benefits as well as their immediate epistemological and ethical consequences. Self-referential humor is a moderator of extreme emotions, a proponent of sympathy or empathy, a conceptual tool for holding contradictions and a form of intrapersonal communication that is conducive to philosophic self-education.

2.1

Self-Referential Humor

Self-referential humor is humor directed at oneself. The opinions of philosophers on this kind of humor vary. Democritus, Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, Shaftesbury, Nietzsche, George Santayana, Daniel Dennett, Avital Ronell, John Lippitt, Robert C. Roberts, Sammy Basu, Morreall and Simon Critchley, among others, do recommend self-directed humor, others doubt that it is possible to laugh at oneself.

82

L. Amir

Positive accounts of self-referential humor can be found in antiquity. The laughing philosopher, Democritus, is reported to have said, “Why did you criticize my laughter, Hippocrates? You people do not laugh at your own stupidity but each laugh at another’s.”56 Seneca asserts, “no one becomes a laughingstock who laughs at himself.”57 Montaigne notes, “our own specific property is to be equally laughable and able to laugh” and exemplifies throughout the Essais the workings of self-referential humor.58 Thomas Hobbes touches on the subject of laughter at one’s past shortcomings, yet does not regard as an act of sympathy, but rather as an act of superiority that “put[s] the rest into jealousy and examination of themselves.”59 Referring to a laughter that hardly deserves its name, Shaftesbury endorses self-referential laughter as part of his sustained campaign for the assets of humor. He highlights its epistemological benefits and uses its sympathetic side as a tool to help materialize the ideals of the philosophic self in its battle with the societal self.60 Self-referential humor was much in vogue during the nineteenth century. The perceiving mind rather than the incongruity found in the laughable object is emphasized from Jean-Paul Richter on, a turn in laughter research that fosters inwardness in humor.61 This is not to say that all those who embrace humor also recommend its self-referential form, and among those who do, few can implement their own advice.62 Nietzsche makes this kind of laughter his hallmark, although his view of it is harsher than Shaftesbury’s and its goal more radical: The German philosopher advocates self-mockery as an efficient destructive device. He laments philosophers’ lack of self-deprecating laughter at the prejudices they baptize “truth,”63 eulogizes self-laughter in The Gay Science’s motto (1974) and in the rest of his works refers to it as the quality that defines an artist’s greatness, the highest virtue a person can have.64 In the twentieth-century opinions on self-laughter diverge, Roger Scruton asserts approvingly that “humor is not normally self-directed,” whereas Dennett sees self-directed humor as the paradigm of all humor, and Ronell, among others, considers it the mark of the philosopher.65 The occasional endorsement of self-referential humor by contemporary philosophers commends it as a means for correction, for improving morality, and for perfection and self-transcendence. In Inside Jokes: Using Humor

3 Handling Contradictions

83

to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett and Reginald Adams Jr. adopt “the twinge of ridiculousness that you feel when you’ve made a mental blunder” as “the core of basic humor.” Their model isolates the “first-person phenomenon” as the source of humor because “the (first) person both makes the mistake and discovers it. Laughing at others is a more sophisticated development of the funny bone…”66 Drawing on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Lippitt advocates existential laughter,67 suggesting that self-referential humor is a tool for self-perfection.68 Following Kierkegaard, Roberts suggests that humor about one’s foibles can be used for character-transcendence, which in turn is necessary for the very notion of a moral virtue.69 Other philosophers argue that humor and self-referential humor are to be conceived as virtues.70 Morreall, who has dedicated most of his academic career to boost philosophic interest in humor,71 considers self-referential humor the most basic and most significant kind of humor for its ability to promote both moral and intellectual virtues.72 Finally, Critchley describes the kind of humor that teaches us to laugh at ourselves and not at others as philosophy in action.73 Given these auspicious approaches to self-referential humor, its possible action in intrapersonal conflict requires further elaboration.

2.2

The Sense of Humor: A Conceptual Tool

I propose to view intrapersonal conflict as an incongruity, a discrepancy between one’s desires and their fulfillment. Once an intrapersonal conflict is construed as an incongruity, humor is able to bring about recognition of the conflict and knowledge of its components, which then allows an individual to either live consciously with unresolved conflict or facilitate its resolution. An elaboration of humor’s components is required for an understanding of how humor may accomplish this. Martin confirms that a standard concept on the construction of a sense of humor is yet to be established, and that there lacks an agreement between researchers on a general theoretical framework.74 He attempts to address this issue by proposing a three-dimensional model of humor based on Hans Eysenck’s tripartite framework.75 Though originally intended to categorize jokes and cartoons according to their themes, Eysenck’s model

84

L. Amir

may be helpful for understanding the dimensions composing a sense of humor. My proposal concurs with both models in conceptualizing humor as a multidimensional construct involving simultaneously cognitive, emotive, and conative or motivational components. However, I differ in the descriptions I give of the emotional and conative elements comprising the complex inner process I understand humor to be. From a cognitive point of view, humor enables the simultaneous perception of multiple points of view in any given situation through “rapid cognitive-perceptual shifts” between various conflicting perspectives.76 These points of view may contradict each other, but also contradict the somber or grave aspects of the situation. This view of the cognitive role of humor simply states that it enables the perception of the comical. From a conative point of view, humor is indifferent to motivation. Its function is “disabling,”77 reducing desire and impeding action. A sense of humor prevents impulsive behavior, which helps avoid the counterproductivity of hasty decision making and its consequences.78 This hypothesis may shed light on the main physiological and psychological manifestations of humor, according to Wallace Chafe.79 Thus, the pleasure humor triggers diverts attention away from decisive action on the psychological end, and the physiological incapacitation impedes it.80 From an emotional point of view, humor brings the following significant benefits. First, it reduces our intolerance of ambivalence, due to the conversion of the pain ambivalence creates into the pleasure humor brings, according to the ambivalence theory of humor. Second, humor moderates extreme emotions, such as fear, anger and sorrow.81 Unlike reason, emotion usually employs a limited and partial perspective—restricted to the reflection of an agent on its subjective interest.82 By contrast, humor associates unrelated events into a broader perspective, generating a disinterested account of one’s experience.83 This acts as a buffer between the individual and his intense emotions. The emotions’ practical orientation is balanced by humor, a more abstract and less purposeful activity. Humor’s survival value lies partly in its role as a counterweight to the influence of emotions. It allows us to adopt another perspective, sheltered from the often unstable and violent influence of unchecked feelings and moods. It draws attention away from the self ’s desires and interests and enables us

3 Handling Contradictions

85

to look at reality from a safer and different point of view than that of the often-self-centered emotional perspective.84 Third, thanks to humor, we are more at ease when dealing with reality. Martin identifies several mechanisms that humor uses to moderate stress,85 and this role that humor takes on relates closely to the third benefit, release from frustration caused by conflict. Fourth, humor reduces shame and disgust. It facilitates confronting undesirable features of our selves by encouraging more serene contemplation. According to Michael Lewis’s study of shame, our strategies in coping with shame may be by denying (attributing the failure to an external source), forgetting (reducing the weight of our flaw) or removing ourselves from the shaming situation either through confession or through the use of humor.86 Humor is helpful because it nudges us to adopt another perspective that transcends the current one in which we find ourselves uncomfortable. As the adoption of a comprehensive and disinterested perspective is contrary to the limited and personal nature of emotions, laughing at ourselves serves to distance us from the shaming situation. We join others in seeing the matter from a new vantage point that helps reduce its significance.87 Humor is also able to reduce disgust. In The Anatomy of Disgust, William Ian Miller argues that there is an intimate connection between certain styles of contempt, disgust and the comic.88 A sense of the comic relies on transgressive irreverence, a kind of unruliness in which the mockery or violation of norms is privileged. As soon as disgust is detected, its substance is turned into material for jokes. Miller explains that “there are ways within the rules of the repressive regime that disgust maintains to let the repressed return to see the sunlight. One way is via low comedies and dirty jokes, which allow some release but are not acceptable to people of taste.”89 Disgust may be perceived as more entertaining when it is regarding someone else’s shamelessness or ineptitude. Our own ineptitude may be harnessed as a source of pleasure when we use humor to distance ourselves. I suggest that if the comic and the disgusting do indeed share an intimate connection, the comic may be used actively in the form of self-referential humor in order to rid disgust. James Beattie has written on the association of laughter and distress,90 offering a view corroborated by contemporary research on Amerindian

86

L. Amir

clowns that in their brain activities, the stimuli of fear and disgust are often not distinguished. Laughter itself is marked by ambivalence as the negative distressing that neutralizes fear and disgust by their exalted places in the ritual. This profound identity on the metaphysical and symbolic levels is reflected clearly on the psychological level in the stereotyped intermingling of hilarious laughter and fear/disgust that betrays the presence of the ritual clown. Rather than as two interacting components, fear or disgust may be better considered as crucial elements of bisociative laughter. The question remains on how to determine the contributing factors to these comic figures’ positive affect as they generate laughter by performing neutralizations of fear and disgust. Howard Pollio and John Edgerly explain the clown-priest, whose simultaneous roles as both butt and aggressor suggest the use of bisociative perception. The operational role is bombarded by its counterpart, the aggressor role, as the comic jests.91 Fifth, humor encourages self-acceptance, tolerance “of self and others,” and “a sense of identification with humanity” through the gradual replacement of anger, fear, sorrow, shame and disgust with sympathy and compassion.92 Various dictionaries and encyclopedias that contrast humor with wit and irony allude to the sympathy that characterizes the former. Take, for instance, Webster ’s entry on wit which comments on humor as “often suggesting a generalness or greater kindliness or sympathy with human failings than does wit”.93 Another edition notes that “humor implies an ability to perceive the ludicrous, the comical, and the absurd in human life and to express these usually with keen insight and sympathetic understanding and without bitterness.”94 Elsewhere, “the humorous” and “humor” are defined as “a complex feeling composed of an element of the comic and an element of sympathy.”95 Finally, humor is also described as the “character of a complex situation exciting joyful, and in the main quiet, laughter, either directly, through sympathy, or (indirectly) through empathy.”96 Such characterization of humor concurs with studies of comedians, who are sympathetic to “our failings, our perceptions, and our emotions.”97 Comedians express a preoccupation with morality and an obligation to do good, both in their consciously enunciated values and in their fantasies. Thus, “when they encounter the tragic, comedians are highly motivated to negate it and transmute it into something pleasant and funny.”98 Their

3 Handling Contradictions

87

humor is a strategy whose purpose is to sooth through denial of the threats of life. Empathy and sympathy may be used synonymously. Studies on empathy inform us on humor as well, since both may be considered as elements of wisdom.99 Though it is difficult to explain empathy “any more than one can explain memory of imagination,”100 its parameters indicate that the integration of cognitive and affective components is essential to its construct.101 The self-rejection which we project onto others obstructs empathy.102 Freud addresses empathy in his works on humor (1960) and social psychology (1921); he uses it to mean in his early works that “we take the producing person’s psychical state into consideration, put ourselves into it and try to understand it by comparing it with our own.”103 His attitude to humor is sympathetic in his later work,104 in which he explains that that the super-ego uses humor to protect the ego, which is unusual, given their harsh relationship. Distancing ourselves from intense emotions, such as fear or anger, from trying feelings, like shame and disgust we experience them as if they are someone else’s yet with sympathy. Instead of extending self-rejection onto others and obstructing compassion, this sympathetic distancing from ourselves draws us closer to others. Along the same lines, Heller maintains, “comic works change my sense of distance and identification, or the relation between what is called rational thinking and emotional thinking, or egocentric thinking and other-oriented thinking.”105 The cognitive, emotive and motivational components within humor work together to enable conceiving intrapersonal tragic conflicts as comical incongruities.106 The next part explains how this goal is reached.

2.3

Intrapersonal Communication

Self-referential humor enacts a form of intrapersonal communication. It creates an internal division that constitutes a dialogical relationship, which may be described as a form of compassionate aggression. Reducing the tension between the factions of the self and pushing for further inner change, compassionate aggression is necessary for the development of

88

L. Amir

the modicum of self-acceptance required for self-change. In turn, inner change is necessary for a more wholesome self-acceptance, which is key to the attainment of further ethical and epistemological benefits.107 This intrapersonal communication is especially helpful for the (self-)education that is central to the practice of philosophical ideals. The internal division that self-referential humor creates may also be construed as a division into internal elements that entertain “joking relations.” Anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown coined this notion to refer to family relations, which harbor the potential for strife; “joking relations” communication vents embedded aggression within relationships.108 The division that humor enacts between a “better” and “worse” self differs from the traditional division between the “ideal” and the “real.” The latter is unable to minimize the gap between the two poles, which leads to the painful emphasis on the division that feeds on one’s impotence. The oppositions of “compassion” and “aggression,” union and separation, closeness and distance are examples of the contradictions that form the concept of humor. Humor helps cope with contradictions because it associates separate thoughts and opposite emotions and sustains ambiguous relationships with the truth.The contradictions humor manages reflect the opposed viewpoints that form ambivalence as universally experienced. Humor also mirrors the ambiguous position that the truth holds among cherished illusions and extreme perspectives that originate in a lack of proportion. A conceptual tool is needed to maintain the contradictions constituting the experience we have of ourselves, others and the world. And until we make use of this device, we cannot clearly discern and properly address these contradictions.109 Similarly, unless we have a way to handle the contradictions between reason and emotions, we are unable to fully embrace the personal, subjective perspective of emotions or the more objective point of view represented by reason, and we certainly cannot hold the two perspectives together. Finally, a mechanism is required to handle the experience of suffering and the tragic sense of life without giving up the zest for life which is necessary for our survival. Humor or self-referential laughter functions as a conceptual tool that answers those needs. We are accustomed to the experience of contradiction as conflictual and of conflict as painful and unfruitful. After the infuriating experience

3 Handling Contradictions

89

of our own impotence, we tend to shun conflict altogether or force inner change to avoid despising ourselves. However, internal conflicts cannot be “solved” without a loss, unlike external conflicts which may be forced into resolution by sheer power. Internal bullying or the oppression of one’s tendencies through willpower alone may be productive in isolated instances but is likely to prove counter-effective for sustainable change.110 We need a gradual path toward self-change that respects our character; humor can help us change more smoothly than any other device. If we were fully rational, capable of radical and instantaneous change, living without conflict with others, freed of the simultaneous need for others and for independence, we would not require humor. Because we are beset by contradictions, humor is a survival tool. This insight lies at the mistaken yet pregnant characterization of the human being as the sole animal that laughs, Homo ridens. Self-referential humor enacts an intrapersonal communication which is particularly apt for the internal dialogue philosophy presupposes. A critical yet compassionate intrapersonal communication helps self-knowledge and better deliberation, facilitates inward change and enables living with unresolved conflict, or alternatively, enables resolving conflict on a higher level of understanding. We turn now to those benefits.

Notes 1. See Cornford ([1914] 1961) and Gilhus (1997) for histories of tragedy, comedy and satyr plays that followed early tragedies. For the relation between comedy and tragedy, see Koestler (1949, 371–80), Langer (1953, 326–66), Kerr (1967), Davenport (1976), and Morreall (1997). 2. Kerr (1967, 17). 3. Kerr (1967, 26). 4. Kerr (1967, 31). 5. Frye (1964, 455). 6. Schmidt (2001, 83). 7. “Hegel never takes up the question of the nature of comedy” (Schmidt 2001, 108–9). I rely on Schmidt’s explanation of Hegel’s views of tragedy and comedy as I find them particularly enlightening. Another good yet

90

L. Amir

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

shorter account is Billings (2014, 156–57). For Schlegel’s views on comedy as a counterpart of comedy, see there 99, 223, 224–25. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Paragraph 744; translated by Schmidt (2001, 94). Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Paragraph 747; translated by Schmidt (2001, 94). Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Paragraph 807; translated by Schmidt (2001, 94). Schmidt (2001, 118). Hegel (1986, 1220); translated by Schmidt (2001, 110). Hegel (1986, 1222); translated by Schmidt (2001, 111). Hegel (1986, 1222); translated by Schmidt (2001, 112). Hegel (1986, 1236); translated by Schmidt (2001, 114). Schmidt (2001, 120). Nikulin (2014). See also the criticism of Roche (1997), and the attempts to make sense of Hegel’s brief comments on comedy by Huddleston (2014) and Moland (2016). Donougho (2016) helpfully compares Hegel and Bergson on the special place between art and life both thikers assign to comedy. Plato, Symposium, 223 c–d. See McCabe (2019) for further analysis. Sewall (1965, 34). Bergson (1999). See Zupanˇciˇc (2008, 111–12) for this thesis and for the view that most of Bergson’s book attempts to reduce other descriptions of the comical down to this single opposition. See Dziemidok (1993, 101n39). Corsini, The Dictionary of Psychology, 1999. See Dziemidok (1993, 101n41). Keith-Spiegel (1972) and Hurley et al. (2011), 37–55. Steven Gimbel has recently formulated yet another theory (Gimbel 2017). Flugel (1954, 722). Martin (1998, 26). For incongruity as the necessary and sufficient condition for humor, see Nerhardt (1976). For incongruity with the resolution necessary for humor, see Suls (1972). See Shultz (1972) and Suls (1983) for information-processing analysts adding to incongruity a component of conflict-resolution. For theorists who propose a two-stage process of humor, see, for example, Berlyne (1972) and Koestler (1964). Monro (1951).

3 Handling Contradictions

91

28. For incongruity theories, see Schopenhauer (1966), Kant (1911), Gerard ([1759] 1963), and Leacock (1935). For ambivalence theories, see Eastman ([1921] 1972), Lund (1930), Menon (1931), and Monro (1951). Finally, for release and relief theories, see Spencer (1860), Lipps (1898), Kline (1907), Freud ([1905] 1960), and Rapp (1947). 29. Morreall (1989b). 30. Freud ([1927] 1928), Bergson (1999), and Morreall (1983a, b). 31. Niebuhr (1969, 137). 32. See Amir (2014a, Chapter 1). 33. Gelven (2000, 1) and Heller (2005, 29). 34. Solomon (1999, 115). 35. Koller (1988, 26). 36. Langer (1964, 498, 502–3, 510). 37. Kierkegaard, Either Or I, 20, Journals and Papers I, 700; Nietzsche, 1968, The Will to Power, Section 1040, 990. For the relation between suffering and laughter in Nietzsche’s philosophy, see Nietzsche, 1966, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 270; 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, IV, Section 13, 15; 1982, Daybreak, Section 386; 1979, Ecce Homo, II, Section 4. 38. See Koller (1988, Chapter 2). 39. Speier (1998). 40. Kuipers (2008, 368). 41. Kierkegaard 1967–1978, Journals and Papers, II, 1719, 1838; Carlyle (1827, 14). 42. Freud (1960, 284). 43. Davis (2008, 549). 44. Ruch (2008, 28). 45. See Fry (1992b, 1994) and Fry and Salameh (1987, 1993). 46. See Freud ([1927] 1928), Maslow (1954), and May (1953). 47. For humor and psychological well-being, see Morreall (2008) and Martin (2008). For contemporary uses of humor in psychological therapy, see Ellis (1977), Grossman (1977), Grotjhan (1970), Ventis (1987), and Robinson (1977, 1983). For the use of irony, see Lear (2003, 2011). For a bibliography of therapy and humor, see Nilsen (1993, 11–15). 48. Ruch (1993). 49. Ruch and Köhler (1998). 50. Martin and Lefcourt (1983). 51. Cohen and Wills (1985). 52. Martin (2008). 53. Martin (2008, 509).

92

L. Amir

54. Martin (2008, 511). Philosophers have recently addressed the role humor may have in moral psychology (Olin’s forthcoming). They emphasize the relation of emotion and cognition to comic amusement and the service humor performs to vital human interests (Carroll 2014, Chapter 2), and explain the benefits of comedy for teaching philosophy (James 2005). 55. See McConnell (1988) for the differences between the two. Wong argues that morality should solve both interpersonal conflicts and intrapersonal conflicts (Wong 1984, 38). In this study, I am addressing intrapersonal conflicts; for other kinds of human conflicts, see, for example, Marinoff (2019). 56. Hippocrates (1990, Letter 17, line 5). This line of thought is ignored by scholars, as Democritus’s laughter has been interpreted as satirical rather than sympathetic throughout the history of philosophy. For the common interpretation of Democritus’s laughter, see Salem (1996); for an existential reading of this laughter as well as for the role of the comic in ancient philosophy, see Halliwell ([2008] 2018). For the latter topic, see also Rosen (2015); Destrée and Trivigno’s Introduction to the anthology they edited 2019; and Amir (2013b, 2014b) as well as Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism (work under contract for de Gruyter). 57. Seneca, 1995, On Firmness, 16.3–17.4. On Seneca’s laughter, see Nussbaum (2001c). 58. Montaigne ([1924] 1965, I, Chapter 50). 59. Hobbes (1840, IV, Chapter 8, Section 13). For Hobbes on laughter, see Skinner (2002); for a nuanced view of Hobbes’s superiority theory of humor, see Lintott (2016). 60. See Amir (2014a, Chapter 1). 61. On this topic, see Hokenson (2006). 62. I do not know if Schopenhauer, who proposed an influential version of the incongruity theory of humor, could laugh at himself, rather than mocking the human condition in general. For Schopenhauer, see Froese (2017, Chapter 2); the first chapters of Baiser’s study of pessimism 2016, and Safranski 1990. And, although Kierkegaard devised an elaborated philosophy of humor, I did not find a eulogy of self-referential laughter in his works; it is also notable that he was shocked at the humiliation he felt when mocked by the satirical journal, the Corsair. For Kierkegaard, see Froese (2017, Chapter 4) and Amir (2014a, Chapter 3); and still the best account of Kierkegaard’s thought on humor and irony, Lippitt (2000).

3 Handling Contradictions

93

63. Nietzsche, 1966, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 5. 64. Nietzsche, 1967, The Genealogy of Morals, III, Section 3; 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, IV, 12, 18, 20. For Nietzsche on laughter, see Higgins (2000), Ribeiro de Magalhães Leite (2017), and Chapter 2 of Amir’s Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press) and the bibliography there. 65. Scruton (1987, 169); for Dennett’s view, see Hurley et al. (2011, 131–33) and Ronell (2003, 298–99). 66. Hurley et al. (2011, 132–33). 67. Lippitt (1996). 68. Lippitt (1999, 2005). 69. Roberts (1988, 127). 70. Basu (1999) and Amir (2018, Chapter 8). 71. See, inter alia, Morreall (1983a, 1983b, 1987, 1989a, 1989b; 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2008, 2009, 2010). 72. Morreall (2009, 112–19; 2010, 20). 73. Critchley (2002; see 2003) and Morreall (1983a). 74. See Herzog and Bush (1994) and Herzog and Karafa (1998). 75. Eysenck (1942) and Martin (1998, 58–59). 76. The quote is from Yovetich et al. (1990). On humor’s ability to effectuate cognitive switches between conflicting points of views, see O’Connell (1976), Norrick (1986), and Minsky (1983). 77. Fry (1992a). 78. Fry (1987). 79. Chafe (1987, 2007, 23). 80. Roeckelein (2002, 271). 81. Morreall (1997, 1983a). 82. For recent reflection on the emotions, see the anthologies edited by Cohen and Stern (2017) and Goldie (2010); for earlier theories of the transformation of emotions, see Perler (2018). 83. Morreall (1983b), Fridja (1986, Section 2.5), and Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 364– 65). 84. Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 63–64). 85. Martin (2000). Vera Robinson explores the psychological and physiological functions effects of humor and evaluates the individual’s ability to cope with internal stress; humor serves as a moderator of stress for depressive (but not anxiety) symptomatology (Nezu et al. 1988); Rod Martin presents a theoretical model of stress and coping and discusses the way in which non-hostile, self-accepting, realistic humor and laughter

94

L. Amir

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

represent a healthy broad-spectrum coping strategy (Martin 1998). See Jon Roeckelein for numerous references on humor and stress (Roeckelein 2002, 268–69). Lewis (1992, 127–37). Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 515). Miller (1997, ix, 116). Miller (1997, 173–74). Beattie (1776). Pollio and Edgerly (1996, 222). The quotes come from Martin (1998, 99). For sympathy see Freud (1905, [1927] 1928); for compassion, see Eisenberg and Strayer (1987). “Wit,” in Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, 1993. “Wit,” in Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, 1992, 439. “Humor, the Humorous,” in The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, edited by J. M. Baldwin 1901–1905, 488. Drever ([1952] 1973), A Dictionary of Psychology. Barnett (1987, 155). Fisher and Fisher (1983). Orwoll and Perlmutter (1990). Wispé (1987, 34). Barnett (1987, 154). Kramer (1990, 292). Freud ([1905] 1960, 186). Freud ([1927] 1928). Heller (2005, 212). The arguments presented in this chapter are briefly broached in Amir (2014a). The arguments presented in this part are advanced in a rudimentary way in Amir (2012a). Radcliffe-Brown (1940, 90–116). The topic of contradiction has recently attracted attention. As is well known, Aristotle banishes contradiction from logical thought, Kant argues that antinomies arise when we attempt to overstep reason’s limits, such as in metaphysics, and Hegel sees the problem in terms of Kantian self-imposed limits that can be overcome by a reason or spirit that incorporates contradictions in order to unfold itself historically in reality. Whether the contradictions Hegel speaks about (between thesis and antithesis) are epistemological or ontological has attracted much debate (see Illetterati [2014]; Nuzzo [2014]). We have seen in the first chapter

3 Handling Contradictions

95

that when Julius Bahnsen offers a view of reality that is self-contradictory, Eduard von Hartmann rebukes him because reality cannot contradict itself. Developed in the wake of Hegel and Schopenhauer’s philosophies, Hartmann’s thought considers the contradictions in Hegel as solely epistemological rather than ontological. To understand what a contradiction is, see Grim (2004). For the history of this notion, see Ficara (2014). The view that contradictions are only semantic, never ontological, has been advanced by Mares (2004). The groundbreaking work of Graham Priest and Richard Routley on inconsistency or paraconsistent logic (1989; see also Priest 2014) attempt to take contradictions seriously. See also Vieweg (2014) and Welsh (2014) for interesting views on this topic: the latter argues that the human banishing of contradictions finds its origin in biological and psychological needs. The view advanced in this study does not commit to ontological contradictions, only to experiences of discrepancies, oppositions and contradictory feelings when ambivalence is made conscious. In the same way, the worldview Homo risibilis I introduce in Chapter 5 does not commit to ontological or any other metaphysical assumptions. However, the experience of these contradictions requires a conceptual tool to handle them, which this worldview provides, otherwise the tension these contrary ideas, feelings and experiences create is lost and with it the rich and ambiguous content the human condition brings along. Unless we know we can handle them, we will not fully experience these contradictions, and such impoverishment will necessarily impair us both ethically and epistemologically. 110. For examples and explanations of human irrationality and the breakdown of will, see Ainslie 2001. For the education of the will through humor, see Amir (2018, Chapter 9).

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

Tragic oppositions transformed into comical incongruities bring about a humorous state of mind or mood that retains both the tragic and comic elements of the human condition. This humorous mood brings valuable philosophic benefits. It may facilitate (1) self-knowledge by enabling recognition of conflict and familiarization with its components Self-knowledge comprises the (2) acceptance of ambivalence, and the (3) inclusion of all aspects of the self and of the situation in which one is involved while deliberating. Further, the humorous mood may provide (3) assistance to coping with unresolvable conflict, or alternatively, promote (4) conflict resolution through (5) successful personal transformation, which is at the root of both approaches to conflict. Conflict-resolution is explained in the next chapter, and the other benefits are clarified below.

1

Self-Knowledge

Self-knowledge is predicated on recognition of the internal discord and the conflicting factions that cause it. Living a good life is obstructed by shortcomings in one’s character, which self-knowledge can help perceive. Many philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_4

97

98

L. Amir

Aquinas, René Descartes, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume and Benedict Spinoza were interested in this topic as we are today.1 John Kekes suggests that self-knowledge is akin to a kind of reflection with the objective to make our character more deliberate and less fortuitous. The process mirrors the increase of control: Our character is moved in the desired direction by control in order to approximate more closely to the good life. The evaluation of our desires, capacities, opportunities, values and actions transforms us with the motivation to form of them the enduring patterns that we regard as conducive to living a good life.2 Likewise, self-knowledge as the recognition of one’s true desires is the first step toward “being yourself,” which is the content of the ideal of authenticity.3 Humor facilitates the kind of self-knowledge leading to moral improvement or to a more authentic self by allowing the distancing from one’s self.4 It has the serene quality of aesthetic contemplation with the additional component of amusement. As humor impedes action, hidden dimensions of the self are coaxed out by the impartial and safe grounds that suspend the judgment involved in moral emotions, such as anger, shame and disgust. Humor enables that much because the ambivalent attitude toward truth that constitutes it allows for “entertaining” these new dimensions of the self, previously unknown to me, as not necessarily true or mine. Being “entertained” by such a vision of myself, which does not necessarily define me and is certainly not definitive of the self I will be at the end of this process, enables to overcome the self-deception Jean-Paul Sartre proposes as an alternative to the unconscious censor Sigmund Freud offers.5 Although Freud does not recommend this use of humor when he deems it the only healthy defense mechanism, Jonathan Lear introduces irony as a means to treatment albeit within the setting of the therapeutic dialogue with a psychologist.6 Self-knowledge presupposes an inner dialogue whose form has been explored by philosophers, anthropologists and psychologists.7 Humor accommodates both reflexive and social models of inner dialogue. The reflexive model takes speech as the medium of self-reflection. I engage with abstraction when I decide to reflect on a level which differs from a “lived” and unexamined level of life which I generally occupy. For instance, I may live according to a moral intuition about what constitutes justice; but upon reflection, I may examine this content from some higher

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

99

or more abstract perspective. While the original level is merely “lived” and relatively unexamined, on the higher, more critical level of analysis, I talk to myself to engage critical thinking. I may compare the abstract perspective with the lived one, finding room for humor, according to Schopenhauer’s view of humor as originating from the discrepancy between concept and perception.8 This higher level of analysis is often found in characterbuilding as best exemplified by Spinoza’s advice in the Ethics: We evaluate ourselves based on a principle of living applied consistently to the cases we encounter in life.9 I believe humor is helpful for effectively spanning and then minimizing the gap between ideal and reality. To that purpose, we need to address the moral emotions, such as shame and disgust. A more dialogical structure is described in other models of inner speech, including one that suggests that inner conversation takes place among different personae. My self is to be taken largely as a set of roles, determined to a significant extent by my social relationships. Thus, I may adopt different roles corresponding to various social relationships, as a “child,” “parent,” or “victim” to respond to another role. The model is well-known to psychotherapists, and Freudian psychotherapy in particular has enlightened it: The rational ego grapples with impotence when confronting the emotional and unconscious id. Humor facilitates interaction between these internal components as it does to alleviate social conflicts, promoting tolerance and acceptance of these opposing tendencies. However, self-referential humor is also conducive to another form of self-knowledge, one emphasized by Hobbes in Leviathan. Hobbes takes seriously the injunction at Delphi “Know Thyself,” which means know your limitations as human beings. Hobbes interprets this self-knowledge as knowledge of the human condition in which one necessarily partakes, without necessarily acknowledging it. Rather than ascribing passions and additional shortcomings to others, he believes self-knowledge lies in the recognition of these same passions as determining one’s self. Thus, selfknowledge is transformative in Hobbes’ view, as it enables the individual to insert itself within the human condition. Similarly, Hegel emphasizes the difference between self-knowledge and knowledge, as self-knowledge is transformative. I would argue the same for self-referential humor. Its goal in aiming for self-knowledge resembles the purpose Hobbes has in mind more closely

100

L. Amir

than the more immediate goal of identifying one’s desires in order to live a contented life, as some recent theories of happiness lead us to believe. It is in recognizing ourselves as humans and in learning what this involves that self-knowledge brings forth all that can be expected from it. This is what makes the diagnostic prescriptive as well, as the prescription lies in the diagnosis. Self-awareness is self-transformation. The inner turn coincides with a process in which the infelicities found within are chiseled away. One important feature we will come across in that way is the extent of the ambivalence that plagues us and to which we usually do not pay enough attention.

2

Ambivalence

A significant step toward furthering self-knowledge is becoming aware of one’s internal conflict and its components. A notable outcome which is likely to follow from this search is the awareness of one’s ambivalence, as well as the essential role it plays in human relationships. Thus, grappling with ambivalence is a necessary step toward understanding the self in its relation to others and to the world at large. Ambivalence is the state of simultaneous feelings or ideas in conflict, having both positive and negative valence toward someone or something. The conflict between the positive and negative aspects of a situation makes ambivalence a psychologically taxing state which results in avoiding awareness of it. The antithesis of intolerance of paradox, nuance and ambiguity, ambivalence is commonly experienced in the feelings of love and hate for a person. The term also applies to “mixed feelings” of a more general sort, where there is uncertainty or indecision on a certain matter. Because both positive and negative aspects of a subject are present in a person’s mind at the same time, ambivalence is a psychologically unpleasant state that often disposes a person to avoidant behavior and procrastination, if not to attempts to resolve the situation. Ambivalence has remained a research topic of interest in psychology ever since the introduction of the term in the twentieth century by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler.10 Bleuler distinguishes three types, emotional ambivalence for which an object triggers both positive and negative

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

101

feelings, voluntary ambivalence in which competing desires hinder decision making, and intellectual ambivalence, caused by contradictory ideas. Thus, ambivalence can be affective, conative and cognitive. However, the experience of ambivalence had been a subject of study in philosophy before the term was coined. Michel de Montaigne, François de La Rochefoucauld, Jean de La Bruyère and Blaise Pascal described the effects of experiencing ambivalence in their maxims and pensées. Ambivalence is central to Spinoza’s analysis of emotions: He refers to it as fluctuation or vacillation and explains it as an outcome of imitation (immitatio), or an emotional transfer.11 The phenomena of mixed or contradictory feelings, beliefs and actions known as ambivalence is a prominent feature of human experience. It cannot be missed by an observer studying the human condition. Ambivalence has earned its widespread recognition through psychoanalysis’s complex and controversial claims. In years preceding Bleuler’s coinage, Freud takes note of conflicting love and hate for a person that generally results in repressed hate when the two sentiments are separated early on.12 He suggests in “The Rat Man” that this opposition may explain obsession that manifests in doubt and compulsion.13 He uses Bleuler’s term “ambivalence,” taking it to explain the presence of a pair of opposing impulses that rival in intensity, usually involving the tensions between love and hate as manifested in obsessive cases of neuroses and melancholy.14 He notes within his meta-psychological writings that the conflict of ambivalence emerges from the loss of the love object through regression.15 In 1920, Karl Abraham emphasizes the intensity of the sadistic fantasy associated with urinary and digestive functions, and four years later, extends and transforms the Freudian schema. He takes the Freudian evolution of the libido into a complete picture of the development of the subject’s relation to the object along two lines: the partial or total nature of the investment in the object, and ambivalence. The precocious oral stage of sucking is pre-ambivalent—neither love nor hate is felt toward the object. This is followed by four phases of ambivalence: the cannibalistic and object consuming late oral stage, analsadistic stage that craves destruction of the desired object, the late analsadistic stage characterized by a need for domination, and the precociousphallic genital stage, which is post-ambivalent toward the object.16

102

L. Amir

In his thirty-second lecture in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud incorporates Abraham’s view into his own.17 In the context of the oedipal conflict, ambivalence is resolved as a neurotic symptom, either through a reaction formation or through displacement.18 Reformulated in his second theory of instincts, ambivalence becomes part of the fundamental and instinctual dualism between life instinct and death instinct. Ambivalence has become the characteristic feature of Freudian psychoanalytic theory with its paradigms of transference, family romance and creation via catastrophe: they all involve the oppositions of repulsion and attraction or hate and love.19 Freudian psychoanalysis has associated ambivalence primarily with pathology, a line of thought continued in more recent psychoanalytic theories that highlight its role in various psychological disorders, particularly in depression.20 Freud’s first formulations on ambivalence and the oedipal complex have been further elaborated by contemporary therapists to account for the significance of ambivalence in all human relationships.21 Independently of the psychoanalytic interest in it, ambivalence is seen as accurately describing the normal state of our emotional composition, even as the seal of our emotions and attachments. Martha Nussbaum argues that emotions are characterized by ambivalence toward their objects. “In the very nature of our early object relations… there lurks a morally subversive combination of love and resentment, which springs directly from the thought that we need others to survive and flourish, but do not control their movements.”22 A typical trait of romantic love, ambivalence is constitutive of a range of emotions, such as pity and envy.23 Envy, for instance, arises from both a positive assessment on the achievement of others and a negative regard for others’ good fortune which results in ambivalence comprised of both admiration and detestation.24 Patricia Greenspan argues that more often than assumed, ambivalence as simultaneous contrary emotions (“mixed feelings”) rather than continuous changes of the mind is perfectly consistent with the “logic” of emotions.25 In “A Plea for Ambivalence,” Amélie Rorty has argued for the significance of ambivalence in everyday decisions and for the need to cultivate imagination as part of critical thinking in order to reap its fruitful outcomes, and Kekes is sensitive to the predicament of ambivalence in the human condition.26

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

103

Unsurprisingly, ambivalence plays an integral part in social dynamics. A major contributor to an individual’s ambivalence is the sociological ambivalence caused by social structure. In the broad sense, it refers to incompatible normative expectations of assigned behavior, which are deemed appropriate for a member of a particular class or socioeconomic position. In the most restricted sense, it refers to the expectations pertaining to a single social status. In both senses, ambivalence is at the heart of the definition of status. Robert Merton argues that individuals within a status that is defined by many incompatibilities are more likely to develop contradictory emotions, beliefs and behavior.27 As one of the defining characteristics of modern societies, internalized ambivalence has become a problematic threat to the sense of identity today. Zygmunt Bauman’s study suggests that ambivalence toward societal powers transform into fear of one’s inadequacy. The world today is one of conflict that exists not only externally but also internally, as personal and interiorized ambivalence and contingency.28 William Ian Miller articulates the outcome of this situation in Faking It (2005). He argues that problems of personal identity are the center of modern existence. These considerations indicate that recognizing ambivalence is imperative for strengthening one’s sense of identity. Coming to be receptive to one’s own feelings may seem like a simple task, but many either ignore, attempt to repress, or redirect emotions of anger, fear and sadness in order to avoid ambivalence, which is usually regarded as a threat. However, connectivity to these emotions and the tolerance of ambivalence is essential for dealing with the conflicts within and outside of ourselves. Paola Valerio remarks that true love requires the acknowledgment of hate in us and in others.29 Moreover, according to Hegel’s view, the tolerance of ambivalence is important if we are to reduce the violence imposed by a pigeonholed, one-sided perspective, often the root of tragic conflict.30 Anthropologists and sociologists with an interest in humor emphasize humor’s role in ambivalent situations. According to Mahadev L. Apte’s review of anthropological humor theories, expressions of humor are attempts to resolve ambivalence in social situations, ideologies, roles, statutes, cultural values and ideologies. For example, humor is used to relieve conflicts between social obligations and self-interest.31 Sociologist Christie Davies’ observations appear to confirm these conclusions, as he

104

L. Amir

writes that jokes draw upon the significant source of contradictory and ambiguous situations and values.32 The ambivalence theory of humor, today part of the incongruity theory, holds that humor is created by conflicts and the experience of simultaneous and incompatible emotions. On the assumption that that the ambivalence theory of humor is true, a potential consequence of this humorous process is the desensitization to ambivalence through the conversion of pain into pleasure. Ambivalence results from humor because unlike strictly rational thinking, something may simultaneously be X and not-X in the humorous frame of mind.33 Most humor theories today are grounded in a variation of Arthur Koestler’s argument that humor arises and operates on the engagement of two otherwise incompatible frames of thought.34 The original view identifies “bisociation” or constant incongruity as that which produces the humorous effect; this is contrary to the incongruity resolution theory that sees incongruity as requiring removal in order to be humorous. Michael Apter uses the notion of synergy to describe this cognitive process, in which two contradictory images or conceptions of the same object are held in one’s mind at the same time. This produces the pleasurable sensation of having one’s thoughts oscillate back and forth between two incompatible interpretations of a concept. Thus, in humor, we playfully manipulate ideas and activities so that they are simultaneously perceived in opposite ways, such as real and not real, important and trivial, threatening and safe.35 The pleasure experienced in humor entertaining ambivalence allows us to simultaneously examine contradictory emotions toward an object, a fundamental skill required to manage internal and interpersonal conflict. The alternative is found in violence most often, an outcome of singlemindedness that assumes incorrectly the necessity of eliminating one side of an argument for another to be true. Unfortunately, we tend to interpret conflict as traumatic and intolerable, as something that must be avoided rather than a challenge to be managed. Likewise, those contributing to conflict, even if non-violent, are traditionally perceived as villains deserving punishment or retaliation in extreme cases. However, the presence of ambiguity and ambivalence in every human affair is inevitable and undeniable, for we ourselves can hold contradictory, multiple views on any object of concern. The simplest way

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

105

of expressing it is that we can simultaneously do things, watch ourselves while executing them, comment upon what we are doing and even criticize it while at the same time imagining doing it in other ways. Complexity of perception defines our faculties and sensibilities, and ambivalence is the key skill necessary for the creative management of this remarkable gift of multilayered comprehension. Furthermore, the entertainment of ambivalence is required for ethical behavior, as it is through the recognition of conflict, and the conflicting needs of myself and others that we are able to control behavior.36 However, without enjoyment, ambivalence cannot be entertained. Thus, it is humor that enables a strong commitment to someone else’s interests without losing sight of my own.

3

Deliberation

Self-knowledge is a pre-requisite of effective deliberation, which, in turn, is imperative for deciding whether and how to solve a conflict. After acknowledging the existence of conflict and encouraging the emergence of the conflict’s components, humor may also help in deliberating a solution by siding with the intellect and mediating between the various components of the conflict. By keeping desire in check, and reducing sadness, fear, anger, shame and disgust, humor puts into effect “a momentarily anesthesia of the heart”37 that is conducive to calm deliberation. Humor induces pleasurable rapid cognitive-perceptual shifts between various conflicting points of views. As it is governed by an impartiality that is sympathetic to all points of view, it encourages diverse perspectives to engage in dialogue. This characteristic of humor is also helpful in the process of endorsing and rejecting of some throughts and desires, among the variety that occur to a person. By this process, one comes to identify with some desires and thoughts while rejecting others. Thus, through these acts of ordering and rejection, of integration and separation, one “create[s] a self out of the raw materials of life,” as Harry Frankfurt and Heinz Kohut suggest, or forms one’s character, to use Joel Kupperman’s formulation.38 Humor would be damaging to deliberation if it were opposed to interest and seriousness. Many have commented on humor’s gravity, including

106

L. Amir

Schopenhauer who argues: “Humor depends upon a subjective, yet serious and sublime mood. Behind [the intentionally ludicrous]…the deepest seriousness is concealed and shines through.”39 Along the same line of thought, Robert C. Roberts maintains that humor does distance us from ourselves but feeds on serious interest as much as he does on normal congruity: “An ultimate orienting seriousness about life gives one’s sense of humor a depth and integrity and scope that it will not otherwise have.”40 Thomas Veatch identifies the core of humor as lying in the violation of expectation, arguing that humor arises only from situations in which we have emotional investments.41 It is therefore not just the humor that pleasure brings which aids deliberation, but also the seriousness and interests it retains along with its seeming light-heartedness.

4

Living with Unresolvable Conflict

After deliberation, the reduction of tension that takes place in a humorous state of mind enables us to live with an unresolved and perhaps irresolvable conflict. Reduced tension as afforded by the humorous state of mind allows life in conflict, whether willingly unresolved or necessarily unresolvable. Joseph Agassi and Ian Jarvie refer to a similar effect that good jokes achieve, “Though unable to resolve the conflict, it makes life a jot less unbearable.”42 The reduction of tension may also empower us with the ease to leave, deliberately, conflict unresolved, a desirable choice when the price of seeking a resolution involves renouncing either our rational powers or our desires once they are identified as self-defining. Deliberately leaving conflict unresolved is a less viable option for those who do not use humor to relieve the tension conflict creates. The further and more radical option of the fifth benefit broached above, resolving the conflict, is brought forth through a higher form of the comic than a humorous mood, through the acceptance of ridicule, which will be introduced in the next chapter.

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

5

107

Self-Change

Far from acting like a deus ex-machina as far as the human condition is concerned, humor seems constitutive of philosophical consciousness. The intra-personal communication required by the inward practice of philosophy divides the self into alazon and eiron, or ideal and real, philosophical self and societal being. Philosophy taken seriously is a practice of self-education. All successful self-education requires a dialectic of selfacceptance and modification, or of compassion and aggression that humor successfully combines. The first step toward self-transformation is self-knowledge, as we obviously cannot change that which we do not acknowledge. Humor is an ambiguous attitude, which combines opposite views, such as true and false, serious and farcical, compassionate and critical. Its nature thus allows consciousness to entertain previously unwelcome thoughts, feelings or desires. In providing release from the tension between conflicting aspects of the self, humor enables reflection to hold together contradictions, which reason alone cannot, and to playfully modify the conflict’s constituents. The new view of rationality proposed here is larger than reason yet truer to the self. When put into practice, it enables the transformation of the self through the inner plurilogue among reason, emotions and desires, which constitutes self-referential humor. The most significant aspects of our being are those we hardly accept. We necessarily reject vulnerability, fallibility and finitude because of the anguish that they bring along. Societal competition forces us to concentrate on our tiny differences instead of our common lot. Thus, we project our dimly perceived unwelcome features onto others, which are translated into fear and hatred of those we deem vulnerable and fallible. The emotions of shame that arises from perceiving our finitude and disgust from intuiting our mortal and decaying body result in rejecting those who seem to embody those unappealing aspects of our existence. Self-acceptance is predicated on change, which in turn is founded on initial self-acceptance. Sometimes, self-change seems necessary yet unatanable through rational understanding alone. That which reason when narrowly conceived cannot accomplish by itself, humor helps realize by transforming our emotions and desires. The more adequate vision of oneself

108

L. Amir

one obtains results in a more coherent behavior. The proposed revision of the viability of philosophic ideals may be a life-long process, but its benefits are proportional to the efforts invested. Let me exemplify it with some aspects of the condition of women that are relevant to men and women alike.

6

Example: Humor’s Approach to the Woman Condition—Disengaging from Shame and Disgust

The preceding chapters have elaborated on the uneasy tension that human beings suffer which originates from their perceived dual nature.43 Variously defined as spirit and matter, soul/mind and body, infinite and finite, angels and animals, I now advance that this duality is far from neutral: We reject the body because we consider it as animal or material. Our negative attitudes toward our bodily functions and toward animals as well as the behavior toward a group of people against which we unite out of the desire to disengage ourselves from animality can all be explained in this way. We project disgust as a group toward the female body.44 Male loathing of the physical and the potentially decaying find expression in disgust of women as receivers of semen and as closely linked with the mortality of the body through the process of birth. In most societies, taboos surrounding menstruation, sex and birth are decreed in order to ward off physicality and the secretions of the body. Miller views these attitudes toward women as inevitable: They are aspects of the male’s sexuality, which express the desire to cordon himself from his sticky mortal part.45 Ambivalence about bodily products and their association with death and vulnerability are at the root of misogynistic and homophobic disgust. Disgust usually focuses on reminders of our mortality, and embodiment is considered as the source of contamination of the self. Distancing us from what we are, disgust is inherently self-deceptive: Its function is to continuously conceal facts about ourselves which we do not want to face. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes notes primitive shame at one’s humanity as the feeling of being nonwhole, which underlies more specific types of

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

109

shame.46 The disgust with one’s softness and mortality that characterizes human society thus finds its early expression in Western philosophy. Shame is a painful awareness of inadequacy that focuses on the sexual as symbol of our animality and mortality.47 It is a painful emotion responding to a sense of failure in attaining some ideal state. It can also arise out of feelings of neediness. Studies of boy-culture indicate that young people hide their need for others. Their inner world remains an uncharted territory as they look away from it. Unstudied and underdeveloped emotions remain at an infantile level and are therefore felt to be even more shameful. All aspects of personality that are viewed as female, such as emotions, need, sadness and compassion are denigrated. The shame that marks boys’ lives may be channeled into hostility toward both women and their own vulnerability. “Primitive shame,” the demand for perfection and the constant inability to tolerate any lack of control or imperfection, is a specific type of shame, which is closely connected to narcissism or infantile omnipotence.48 This paralyzing shame of all that is human in oneself acts as a barrier to compassion. While pathological narcissism can affect both males and females, Nussbaum notes its association with common patterns of male development as she emphasizes possible differences in sexual development between the sexes. Recent studies have traced the need for control to the origin of misogyny. It is a narcissistic refusal to tolerate the reality of something different from oneself, especially if it is at the same time a reminder of one’s bodily vulnerability. Similarly, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl points to narcissism as the psychological origin of sexism. Narcissism is the inability to tolerate the existence of the mother as a separate entity; the child desires his mother to be subjected to his control.49 “Normal” people have these features to a lesser degree, however, which still leads to the rejection of one’s vulnerability. Narcissism relates to the female body because the fluid and soft aspects of the child are rejected as signs of weakness and mortality, which must be violently rejected through differentiation and subordination.50 Women often internalize these views of themselves and of their bodies and translate them into low self-esteem, which creates further difficulties in exploring their sexual and emotional needs. Thinness as a key to desirability—the ideal of female beauty—is related to the eating disorders in

110

L. Amir

young girls that can be traced to infantile shame further feeding the tendency to a destructive type of narcissism.51 The destructive behaviors that may evolve out of the hypertrophy of shame exemplify the seriousness of the problem at hand.52 Yet another problem may follow giving birth and motherhood. Some women may find their body less appealing than before. Later, the natural aging process may inhibit voicing sexual needs and emotional desires. Moreover, women may not dare to ask to be taken care of, as they often were educated by their mothers to care for others.53 Women’s veiled emotional and sexual neediness, the rejection of their “little’s girl needs,” elaborate shame and internalized disgust. The societal ideal of self-reliability and invulnerability can make us ashamed of our emotional and physical needs. Thus, women’s potential shame and disgust at themselves appears to be a consequence of socialization. Feminists disregard the similar capacities of human beings for feeling and reject the idea of a common social and cultural world. Rather, they believe that significant differences of status, power, recognition and responsibility in the social world induce individuals into learning patterns and expressions of feeling that make sense to those individuals and to their social positions in the world.54 As emotions both within and between persons share in synergy, feminists prefer social theories of emotions. For example, Margaret Walker maintains, We need to ask whose gazes we have learned to live under and what we have come to expect, fear, or need flows back toward us in the emotional responses of particular others to our displays of feeling. Some emotional synergies between people will have destructive consequences, as in interpersonal spirals of shame and contempt. (Walker 2007, 112)

Liberation must begin somewhere, however. Personal transformation must be fought for, as much as societal changes should be demanded. The example I have chosen should clarify how imperative it is to encounter in oneself, and, if possible, to distance oneself from socially induced emotions, such as shame, and debilitating physiological reactions, such as disgust. One’s attitudes toward one’s body and inner vulnerability should be chosen more freely than society allows.

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

111

Liberation from socially induced opinions and feelings has always been at the core of the philosophical agenda. The difficulty lies in our unwillingness or inability to recognize them, because the products of good socialization are assimilated within the self. As in most cases of self-deception (if we follow Sartre’s analysis) or unconscious feelings and drives (to use Freud’s terminology), I believe that indirect ways of approach may prove helpful. This is even more so when these problems are addressed in intrapersonal dialogue through the solitary quest for self-knowledge which many thinkers deem almost impossible. A theory of change for those who are not wholly rational—all of us—and who therefore need more than a rational explanation in order to relinquish some of our limitations has been lacking in philosophy. These considerations seem to digress from the chapter’s main argument only at first glance. They are relevant for the current study as they exemplify the significance of the problems that self-referential humor can helpfully address. This form of humor may help both women and men handle disgust, an emotion deemed almost unamenable to reason’s control,55 as well as shame and humiliation. This is possible because these emotions have an intimate association with humor. If humor is introjected, as is the case with self-referential humor, these emotions can be first discovered in oneself, and then hopefully transformed. First, then, shame and disgust should be acknowledged despite our reluctance to trace them. Humor enables the reach of the more profound aspects of the conflicted self. It has been used repeatedly to that effect in the practice of philosophy, beginning with Socrates, if not in theory then at least in action.56 In contradistinction to guilt, which is related to an action and whose antidote is forgiveness, shame is related to the whole personality and consequently tends to seek healing in the acceptance of the self despite weaknesses, defects and failures.57 Nussbaum joins Andrew P. Morrison in describing a movement toward health through which the self is increasingly understood and accepted as human, incomplete, and partial, leaving behind claims of grandiosity and demands of completeness.58 Although the goal I propose has been shared by others, such as philosophers Morrison and Nussbaum, and various psychologists, a way to achieving it through the use of philosophic means has been missing. This is what the

112

L. Amir

humorous mood construct supplies. Applied to the present case, the possibility of fostering self-knowledge, acknowledging ambivalence, reducing the painful emotions of shame and disgust, and accepting self and others which leads to others’ acceptance of self and others, is crucial to the well-being and sometimes to the very survival of some women.59 The explanations proposed above and in the preceding chapter should lend plausibility to the systematic practice of self-referential humor as a philosophical tool, which draws one closer to oneself and away from societal values. Though this process may lead to living better with irresolvable conflict, it may also provide conflict-resolution through adhering to a worldview that considers conflict as characterizing the human condition. Let’s consider the former option first. As explained by the incongruity theory of humor, the contradictions and incongruities that self-referential humor brings forth can help living with conflict. In the case discussed above, this conflict may be between reflection or self-acceptance that denounces shame as unhealthy, and shameful feelings that remain unconvinced. This conflict may also be between one’s disgust while still feeling disgust. As humor feeds agreeably on conflict, however, it gradually replaces discomfort with pleasure: Pleasurable shame or disgust are very different from the initial feelings we have. This may be all that we can achieve if it is true that we, men and women alike, cannot fully accept our humanity. This restriction has been made by various authors, such as Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche, and more recently by Nussbaum. She notes that in the final poem of Leaves of Grass, the poet of democracy Walt Whitman requests us to have a simple relationship with our own mortality and its bodily realization (Whitman 1973). He argues that this would free us to truly pursue liberty and equality. While Whitman recommends embracing the decay and brevity of our lives without fear or loathing, Nussbaum objects to this ideal: But to ask of humans that they not have any shrinking from decay or any loathing of death is to ask them to be other than, possibly even less than, human. Human life is a strange mystery, a combination of aspiration with limitation, of strength with terrible frailty. To become a being who didn’t find that mysterious or weird or terrifying would be to overcome some kind of subhuman or inhuman being, and it would also be to forfeit, very likely,

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

113

some of the value and beauty of human life. At least we don’t see clearly that it would not have this effect. If, however, the complex struggle we currently wage with mortality has disgust as its corollary, we should not expect to dismiss disgust utterly from our lives. (Nussbaum 2004, 121–22)

Nussbaum considers the idea that most people may come to accept their incompleteness, powerlessness and mortality as far too optimistic.60 Considering her reservations, I argue that if keeping shame and disgust at bay through internal self-referential humor is all that most of us can achieve, this lesser goal is worth pursuing. I have argued that this option is viable, for we may use humor to recognize and accept our in internal conflict. Allow me to add here that contrary to common belief, humor may be taught and learned. The goal I propose is desirable, as no happiness is possible with internalized disgust, and a significant impediment to self-satisfaction is shame. False views of the self, built on dissociating its desirable from its less desirable aspects cannot be realistically maintained. In order to be stable, well-being needs to be based on the truth. The goal of developing a taste for reality, even if it involves staring at our mortality and familiarizing ourselves with the instinctive or social emotions of disgust and shame, is worth attempting. Keeping shame and disgust at bay through a systematic use of self-referential humor along the lines shown above is not only a viable goal, but also a goal that is worthy both intrinsically and for its beneficial outcomes.61 Still, I wish to argue that a systematic use of humor can lead us further, eventually resulting in a redemptive acceptance of our humanity. I call the new worldview that explains such an embrace, “Homo risibilis,” or the ridiculous human being. This theory may initially appear to be viable only to a few, but because humor makes self-knowledge intrinsically pleasurable, I believe that its chances of successful implementation are higher than those of most other philosophical theories. This prospective may also answer Nussbaum’s qualms and various doubts rising from other quarters. The next chapter introduces this more ambitious proposal, which provides conflict-resolution through a worldview that considers conflict as characterizing the human condition. This paradoxically leads to inward

114

L. Amir

harmonization and fuller acceptance of the unsettling aspects of the human condition.

Notes 1. For a helpful introduction to philosophers’ views of self-knowledge, see the anthology edited by Renz (2017). See also Gertler (2011). 2. Kekes (1995, 127–28). Kekes defends the view that self-knowledge is necessary for moral wisdom (1995, Chapters 7–8). See the first chapter of Kupperman (1991) for a discussion of how character involves selfknowledge. Among others, Joplin (2000) presents skeptical arguments about our capacity of attaining self-knowledge on our own rather than with dialogue with others. 3. Guignon (2005, 14). For a criticism of self-knowledge as exemplifying the value of authenticity and more generally a strong case against the various ways in which the ideal of authenticity pervades our lives, see Feldman (2015, 40–49, 150–52). 4. In “the tragedy of the human condition,” the conclusion to the third chapter of The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy, Matthew Altman and Cynthia Coe explain how Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Sigmund Freud challenge the transparency of the mind. They argue that according to these thinkers our self-understanding is not as transparent as Plato, Aquinas, and Descartes would make us believe in affirming the power of reason to check the influence of the body (Altman and Coe 2013, 77). While Schelling holds that the dark ground of reason is open to nondiscursive intuition, Freud maintains that our lives are beset by meanings we cannot comprehend, and which remain dark. Thus, “the Freudian subject faces a life of doubt…Anything we do… may be governed by what resists conscious understanding. There is no positive philosophy that reveals us to ourselves” (Altman and Coe 2013, 78). I explain below how humor may break through the mind’s opacity. 5. For the controversy between Sartre and Freud about the existence of the unconscious, see Amir (2018, Chapter 11). Both views are problematic; however, the shortcomings of Freud’s are more commonly known than those of Sartre. Yet I argue that the use of self-referential humor is helpful even if the unconscious exists, and even more so if it does not and humor

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

115

is used as a remedy for self-deception. For self-deception in modern moral philosophy, see Garrett (2017). Freud ([1927] 1928) and Lear (2003). In a more recent study, Lear (2011) generalizes this claim, arguing that irony is one of the tools we use in becoming human. Many thinkers from various disciplines have explored inner dialogue. Among them, philosophers such as Plato (Theaetetus 189e–190a; Sophist 263a; Philebus 38c–d); Augustine (1956, bk. 8); Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy” in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc. ([1900] 1963), and “Philosophical Regimen” in The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (1992); Arendt (1978), Ryle (1979), Gadamer (1989), Bakhtin (1984), and Hurley et al. (2011); anthropologists such as Mead (1934); and psychologists such as Piaget (1959), Vygotsky (1962), and Sokolov (1972). For the variety of opinions about inner dialogue, see Blachowicz (1998, 1999). See also Amir (2018, Chapter 12); Rowan and Cooper’s The Plural Self (1999); and for a dialogical view of the self, see Hermans and Hermans-Konopka (2010). Schopenhauer (1966, I, 59). Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part IV, Prop. 10 Scholium. Bleuler ([1911] 1952, 1). Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part III, Props. 17 and 27; for self-knowledge is early modern philosophy, see Renz (2017). Jones (1955, II, 47); see Winnicott (1949). Freud (1909). Freud, in Totem and Taboo (1912–1913). Freud (1915). Abraham ([1924] 1927). Freud (1933). Freud ([1925] 1926). Bloom (1983, 57–58). Klein (1975) and Racamier (1976). Mann (2002, 169) and Valerio (2002, 264); see Winnicott (1949). For ambivalence, see also Rycroft’s Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (1995); Pinkus (2009). Nussbaum (2001a, 13). Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 439, 441, 449). Smith (2008, 133–34). Greenspan (1980, 225).

116

L. Amir

26. See Rorty (2010) and Kekes (2016). For a defense of ambivalence against the value of wholeheartedness, see Feldman (2015, 33–40). For a eulogy of ambiguity, see Ottospeer (2018). 27. Merton (1976, 7). Merton outlines a taxonomy of social ambivalence in 1976, 6–12. 28. Bauman (1991, 176). 29. Valerio (2002, 264). 30. Hegel (1975, II, 1196). 31. Apte (1983, 194). 32. Davies (1990, 307–8). 33. Mulkay (1988). 34. Koestler (1964) and Martin (2007, 72). 35. Apter (1982). 36. I have alluded above to Rorty’s proposal to use imagination in order to encourage appropriate ambivalence (2010). I believe imagination falls short of the success humor can guarantee on various counts. First, at least in its conscious form rather than in dreams, imagination cannot simultaneous hold contradictory ideas or feelings as can humor. Second, the example Rorty gives (hiring a new lecturer) does not consider thoughts or feelings that are not as benign, and thus not as amenable to consideration, as those she outlines. In hiring a colleague, it is not rare that fear of competition, looking for a political ally or feeling an un-avowed attraction are hidden aspects of the decision. These will hardly come to mind through the sole use of imagination. They have more chances to take part in the deliberative process if self-referential humor is used. This is so because the playful mood of humor has affinities with taboo topics and with an ambiguous attitude toward the truth; thus, it enables more easily an entertainment of forbidden emotions and thoughts than imagination. Moreover, I take issue with the very idea of appropriate in contrast to inappropriate ambivalence that Rorty advances. As far as selfknowledge is involved, all forms of ambivalence are significant, thus a plea for awareness of all forms of ambivalence should be made. If ambivalence exists, whether in its appropriate or inappropriate form, the quality of one’s behavior is impaired. As I have attempted to show, ambivalence is much more prevalent than usually thought, not only in human psychology but also in social roles and messages. A first step toward legitimizing it as constitutive of the human being is to acknowledge all the forms it takes, whether we like it or not. 37. Bergson (1999, 11).

4 Revisiting Philosophic Ideals

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

117

Frankfurt (1987, 38), Kohut (1977, 177), and Kupperman (1991, 51). Schopenhauer (1966, II, 100). Roberts (1987, 169–70). Veatch (1998). Agassi and Jarvie (2008, 57). This section is indebted to Amir (2017b, Chapter 6). Nussbaum (2004, 107). Miller (1997). Plato, Symposium, 189c–193e. Scheler (1957, 55–148). Nussbaum (2001a, 196–200, 342–47). Young-Bruehl (1996, 132). Nussbaum (2001a, 346). Nussbaum further notes that in Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies, the Freikorps officers loathe “mire,” “slime,” “swamps,” “floods,” “stench,” which are “metaphors for the female body, and ultimately for the vulnerable aspects of their own” (Theweleit 1987– 1989; Nussbaum 2001a, 346). Morrison (1986, 19, 86–89). Morison further explains that shame at imagined bodily imperfections is a frequent vehicle for earlier and more general feelings of infantile shame. The eating disorder, initially aimed at restoring control over the body and achieving the desired perfection, becomes a new source of shame. Eichenbaum and Orbach (1983). Walker (2007, 103–4). For research showing that disgust not mastered by reason, see Prinz (2010). See Amir (2013b, 2014b) for the elaborate relationships philosophy, mainly in its exoteric form, has historically entertained with the comical. Morrison (1986, 370). Nussbaum (2004, 188). See also Calhoun (1989, 389–406). Nussbaum (2004, 188). To the best of my knowledge, apart from Hélène Cixous (1976, 1978, 2003; Cixous and Clément 1975), who recommend humorous writing as a means to women’s liberation, feminists have not engaged in humor. Traditionally, moreover, the relationship of women with humor has been deemed negative. This makes my proposal original on both counts. For Cixous, see Parkin (1997) and Salesne (1988). For further elaboration on these issues, see Amir (2017b, Chapter 6).

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

I introduce in this chapter the worldview I call Homo risibilis or the ridiculous human being. I argue that the very repetition that a humorous mood requires in order to reduce the tension defining the human condition is itself a higher form of the comical. I maintain that the constant incongruity created by repeatedly opposing tragic and comical viewpoints can evolve into a new vision of oneself, the other and the world that eventually acquiesces in the conflict that defines our humanity. The encompassing vision attained cannot be described as tragic because it does not fit the narrow either/or tragic defining feature. Once the tragic characteristic of the human condition dissolves, its comical epiphenomenon disappears as well, and the humorous mood that sustains both visions is no longer needed. Homo risibilis, the worldview one reaches through such the humorous pitting of opposites, is compatible with accepted accounts of creative thought, common explanations of the basic plot of comedy in which resolution is reached through the revelation of the hero’s identity and the incongruity theory of humor that requires conflict-resolution. In this chapter, I explain how Homo risibilis evolves out of the humorous mood outlined in previous chapters. I distinguish between the new worldview I propose and Homo ridens, the view of the laughing human © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_5

119

120

L. Amir

being, and I defend Homo risibilis’ originality by comparing it with intimations of various philosophic, religious and literary approaches to humor. I explain how Homo risibilis resolves the tension inherent in the human predicament, and I indicate its place among philosophical theories.

1

Taking Ridicule Seriously

The previous chapters indicated the benefits a humorous mood brings about. While I defended innovative uses of self-referential laughter, especially regarding self-knowledge, ambivalence and deliberation, the originality of a “humorous mood” rather than my arguments in its favor may be contested. To take some examples of previous similar ideas, Søren Kierkegaard repeatedly insists on the necessity of keeping the tragic and the comic in balance, and many of his German contemporaries revered humor.1 It is in this chapter that I defend an original worldview, whose further development out of the former “humorous mood” I owe to a practical observation: The outcomes of self-referential laughter as defined until now do not last.2 Repetition involves the incessant shift from perceptions of tragic oppositions into those of comical incongruities with no stable result. This forces us to confront our inherent ridicule, our inanity and immaturity, which is revealed by our inability to overcome tragic reactions to every personal matter rather than notice the comical incongruities it expresses. However, repetition itself is comical. Thus, I deem ridiculous the seriousness to which our attempt at “getting it right”3 condemns us when combined with the seeming futility of it all. What we gain in becoming aware of our ridiculousness is an encompassing vision, a higher form than the common comical, yet still comical because what is both tragic and comical cannot be merely tragic. As the tragic is exclusive in nature (either/or), this higher level of understanding obtained through repeatedly pitting together the tragic against the comic of our condition must necessarily be distinguished as yet another form of the comical, for only the comical is inclusive enough (both/and). This thesis contradicts the

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

121

propositions put forth by playwrights of the absurd and is also at odds with philosophies of the absurd, which are notoriously lacking in humor. However, Homo risibilis’ originality does not lie in proclaiming the ridicule of our position. This has been done by others. It further argues that once accepted, our ridiculousness dissolves. As all self-awareness ennobles, we regain our dignity. With Homo risibilis’ liberating effects as described in the following chapters we can make our desires smile, closing thus the inner gap between desires and reason, leaving the comic and the tragic behind us, finally freed from internal conflicts to act on others’ behalf. Let me elaborate on these introductory remarks. We can evaluate the human condition with contradictory views, both comic and tragic, if we accept that we are fated to the never-ending clash between desires and the lack of their satisfaction. However, an additional argument is required in order to justify a preference for the comic interpretation over the tragic: I suggest that something that is both tragic and comical cannot be merely tragic. The tragic view lacks “comic inclusivism,” the juxtaposition of contradictions enabled by the comic view, which contrasts with the “exclusivism” of the tragic.4 As John Dominic Crossan puts it, “tragedy is swallowed up in comedy” because that “the same world can be interpreted in these opposite ways is itself comical.”5 Thus, we need a vision that steadily incorporates both the comic and the tragic views of our predicament. It is a higher sort of comical vision that would enable us to grasp the whole of the human condition as simultaneously comic and tragic. If Walter Kerr’s claim, “There is no act in life that is not, when seen as a whole, both tragic and comic at once”6 is justified, the perspective obtained through the integration of both comic and tragic aspects of life is desirable because it is not only richer and deeper but also truer to life’s manifold facets. How do we get there? The humorous mood obtained through transposing tragic oppositions into comical incongruities is transitory. When that mood dissipates, we are bound to feel humiliated and simultaneously amused by our newly attained awareness of having to repeat this action. We seem to be doomed to the repetitive transmutation of tragic oppositions into comical incongruities, with an ever-new capacity for suffering the former without steady results from the latter.

122

L. Amir

However, repetition remains the bread of comedy. I suggest that the cause for amusement, is due to the emergence of a higher level of comic awareness, to which I refer as “ridiculousness” or Homo risibilis, the ridiculous human being.7 I use the terms “ridicule” or “ridiculousness,” though they have a harsher connotation in English than in French, that may even be offensive. However, the terms appear in French philosophy and in the works of contemporary continental philosophers to which I refer. Thus, I retain “ridicule” and “ridiculousness.” The remainder of the chapter presents this new worldview, while the following chapters deepen its understanding by explicating its benefits. The eleventh-century monk, Notker Labeo, intimated it first, followed by Michel de Montaigne,8 Helmuth Plessner and Georges Bataille. G. W. F. Hegel and George Santayana alluded to it in a few unpacked remarks. However, a full-bodied theory of Homo risibilis was never developed. In what follows, I first defend the originality of the worldview I propose by highlighting its difference from various traditions: the laughing animal (Homo ridens), the fool for Christ or philosophy’s sake and the tragicomic theories of the absurd. I then advance three explanations for a humorous outlook’s transformation into the Homo risibilis awareness: the thinking in oppositions that renders humor the paradigm of creativity, the new identity resolution that explains the plot of comedies and the cognitive integration resolution that explains humorous incongruities.

2

Homo risibilis

The view that the human being is inherently ridiculous (Homo risibilis) originates in an eleventh-century monk’s commentary on Aristotle’s Categories.9 However, Aristotle does not hold that view, but notes instead that the human being is the only animal that laughs. Moreover, he makes this observation in relation to tickling, not humor.10 Unaware of the context, many follow Aristotle in characterizing humans as Homo ridens or the laughing species. Few have further characterized us as Homo risibilis or the laughable species. I first elaborate on the scope of the Homo ridens tradition in philosophy, in light of which we may appreciate the relative paucity of the Homo risibilis tradition.

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

2.1

123

Homo ridens

The Homo ridens tradition regards laughter as the defining feature of our species. This tradition originates in Aristotle’s observation that “man is the sole animal that laughs.”11 As few know its context, the human physiological reaction to tickling, rather than associating laughter with a bodily reaction Aristotelian laughter is connected with another defining feature of the human being: logos, the capacity to speak or to think rationally.12 Julius Pollux, whose Onomasticon is famous,13 and Galen of Pergamum, the prominent Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin whose theories dominate Western medical science for over a millennium, also endorse the characterization of the human being as the laughing animal (animal ridens). Aristotle does not associate laughter with speech or rational thought, nor does he mention laughter in Categories and Topics, where he discusses the properties constituting the human being. Subsequent philosophers do, however, influencing later generations. Following Quintilian’s association of laughter with speech and Lucian’s association of laughter with the human capacity to calculate,14 Porphyry of Tyre deems laughter a feature possessed by all humans and by humans alone. He mistakenly attributes this view to Aristotle,15 an error perpetuated for at least a thousand years after Porphyry’s death because the latter’s commentary on the Categories is the standard medieval textbook for Aristotelian logic. Nonetheless, Porphyry maintains the Aristotelian differentiation between property and essence and between potentiality and actuality. He argues that only lunatics or enlightened beings laugh all the time. Thus, out of loyalty to Aristotle, Porphyry still allocates a humble place to laughter. Martianus Capella in the fifth century also subscribes to the view of the human being as the only animal that laughs,16 but it is not until the next century, in Boethius’s commentary on Porphyry’s book, that emphasis is made on laughter as the privilege of human rationality and the capacity to laugh as a proprium of humanity. In the seventh century, Alcuin proposes a similar though more elaborate formula: “Homo est substancia animate, rationalis, mortalis, risus capax ” (the human being is a substance that is animate, rational, mortal and capable of laughter).17 In the eleventh century, the Benedictine monk Labeo propagates Boethius’s view as if it

124

L. Amir

were the Aristotelian view. Laughter attains a rank similar to that of reason as the proprium differentiating humans from animals, and this theory participates in the consideration Aristotle’s philosophy enjoys. The Homo ridens tradition reaches its apogee in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Medieval scholars identify rationality with the capacity to laugh.18 In the Renaissance, laughter is considered fit for a world that is a valley of tears and for a being made of contradictions.19 This tradition emphasizes philosophy’s special interest in laughter inasmuch as laughter reveals the human being’s essence through its affinity with the rational. Some notable followers of the scholars I mentioned (Pollux, Galen, Porphyry, Capella, Boethius, Alcuin and Labeo) are Montaigne, Laurent Joubert and François Rabelais, and later Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire, Henri Bergson and Jean-Paul Sartre. Although we now know that humans are not the only animals that laugh,20 contemporary philosophers revive this view by replacing laughter with humor—a change due to the zeitgeist.The question of the relationship between rationality and certain forms of laughter, such as humor, remains a subject of interest.21 The Homo ridens tradition that considers the human being as the only animal that laughs should be now complemented by Homo risibilis, the view of the human being as the laughable animal. Though many subscribe to the former, few hold the latter.

2.2

Intimations of Homo risibilis

Though a characterization of the human being as laughable is part of Plato’s discussion in Philebus, Plato limits its application to those who are lacking in both self-knowledge and power.22 Thus, Labeo innovates by asserting that the human being is the sole creature capable of laughter and the sole laughable creature. Quia quidquid risibile est, homo est: We only laugh at what is either human or reminiscent of the human.23 Montaigne advances this view of humanity as both Homo ridens and Homo risibilis because “our own specific property is to be equally laughable and able to laugh.”24 His Essais exemplify human inanity and inability to

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

125

rid it, lest one gets rid of oneself, which makes of foolishness an intrinsic part of consciousness. At the very beginning of his book on laughter, Bergson notes that many philosophers have defined the human being as “an animal which laughs.” They might equally well have defined him as “an animal which is laughed at.”25 Simon Critchley has reformulated both characterizations: Homo sapiens is therefore not so much homo ludens as Johan Huizinga famously argued, where humanity would be identified with the capacity to play. Rather, we are homo ridens, laughing beings, or indeed, homo risibilis, which suggests both “the risible or ridiculous being,” and “the being gifted with laughter.” (Critchley 2002, 41)

Maurice Charney’s observation that “to be human is to be inherently comic” echoes Bergson’s consideration of humans as laughable.26 Bergson wonders why such a significant and simple fact has not attracted the attention of philosophers,27 yet he does not recommend self-referential laughter. Thus, it is noteworthy that characterizing humans as laughable does not necessarily lead to self-laughter. Bergson may be compared with Sigmund Freud and Critchley on this point. Bergson focuses on laughter targeting others rather than oneself, as he considers laughter a social corrective; following Freud’s analysis in “Der Humor,”28 however, Critchley sees humor as self-mocking ridicule.29 Plessner characterizes human beings as eccentric animals, regarding laughter as proof of humanity’s uniqueness within nature.30 Whereas the lives of animals are centered, that is, while they simply live, human beings harbor a reflective attitude toward their experiences and their selves. Plessner explains human eccentricity in this way: Human beings live beyond the limitations set by nature by keeping distance from their experiences; laughter is the mark of human eccentricity. Pace Labeo, Montaigne, Bergson, Plessner and Critchley, the view that humans are ridiculous has rarely been advanced, and hardly to promote self-mocking ridicule. However, other terms have been used. For instance, Santayana substitutes “absurd” for the “ridiculous” and “despise” for “selfmocking ridicule.” In a letter, he makes use of these terms to suggest that

126

L. Amir

“perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.” However, he adds elsewhere everybody is a coward about his own humanity. We do not consent to be absurd, though absurd we are. We have no fundamental humility…For that reason we don’t like Dickens, and don’t like comedy, and don’t like the truth. (Santayana 1920, 230; 1922, 68–9)

Santayana sees nature as laughing at us all. He ascribes this view to Democritus, who considered his fate, and “by knowing it, raised himself in a measure above it.”31 Laughter is necessary for self-transcendence because “those who will not laugh with nature in her mockery and playfulness, turn her sport first into delusion and then into anguish.”32 Laughing first at what “the stars and the birds” say of us, we see our image in the mirror of infinity and laugh at ourselves.33 “To be ridiculous is part of the fun,” he argues, but only a part of human reality: “Facts, however serious inwardly, are always absurd outwardly; and the just critic of life sees both truths at once, as Cervantes did in Don Quixote.”34

2.3

Fools for Christ or Philosophy’s Sake

The view of human ridicule may also be associated with religious interpretations of human foolishness, which later are incorporated in philosophy. Traced back to St. Paul’s doctrine of the foolishness of Christianity, as well as credo quia absurdum est, Tertullian’s maxim,35 the wisdom of the fool takes on a philosophy of its own in Nicholas of Cusa’s Learned Ignorance, Desiderius Erasmus’s classic formulation in Praise of Folly and Montaigne’s Christian Pyrrhonism.36 Montaigne reprises Seneca’s view, “If I have a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far; I can laugh at myself.” He notes that “a hundred times a day we make fun of ourselves in the person of our neighbor.”37 His view of inanity as intrinsic to consciousness, and of folly or human vanity as necessary to wisdom follows from the understanding that “absurdity is an evenly distributed property.”38 Humean laughter, another variation within this tradition, is the true philosopher’s self-directed laughter. It originates in the highly reflective

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

127

yet ridiculous position he finds himself: believing without possible justification. The true philosopher comes to see the moment of philosophical reflection as a joke at his own expense. David Hume refers to the “whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though they are not able, by their most diligent inquiry to satisfy themselves concerning the foundations of these operations, or to remove the objections which may be raised against them.”39 In his Treatise on Human Nature, he continues to describe the true philosopher’s post-theoretic position as that of the fool: “If I must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe anything certainly are, my follies shall at least be natural and agreeable.”40 Through philosophical contemplation, the Humean philosopher is able to embrace the fool’s wisdom. Philosophical folly as opposed to ordinary folly arises from genuine philosophical understanding of one’s self. It is a joyful affirmation of life in the face of contingency and despair that follows the failure of the philosophical act in its heroic forms. Hume calls it “the gaiety of MONTAIGNE.”41

2.4

Theorists of the Absurd

Modern thinkers advancing the view that human beings are ridiculous usually consider our ridicule tragic. Critchley, for instance, suggests that “the pretended tragical sublimity of the human collapses into a comic ridiculousness which is perhaps even more tragic.”42 This echoes the view of Arthur Schopenhauer, who is deemed the philosopher of the absurd by Clément Rosset,43 and playwrights the likes of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, who represent the best of the theater of the absurd. Schopenhauer writes, “Thus, as if fate wished to add mockery to the misery of our existence, our life must contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we cannot even assert the dignity of tragic characters, but, in the broad detail of life, are inevitably the foolish characters of a comedy.”44 Commenting on the ambiguity found in Samuel Beckett’s plays, Alfred Simon notes, “Not only are human misery and comicality inseparable, they also are each other’s paroxysm.”45 Similarly, Eugène Ionesco deems his play The Chairs a “tragic farce,” and adds,

128

L. Amir

The human drama is as absurd as it is painful. It all comes to the same thing, anyway; comic and tragic are merely two aspects of the same situation…There are no alternatives; if man is not tragic, he is ridiculous and painful, “comic” in fact, and by revealing his absurdity one can achieve a sort of tragedy.46

Agnes Heller notes that although terming existential comedies “tragicomedies” is a misnomer, it still points to the specificity of existential comedy: Whereas paradoxes are dissolved in a joke, and this is why it is a joke, they remain unresolved in the existential comic novel or drama. Whatever is ridiculed is also mourned; the thing which has been lost is mocked, but the loss still hurts. (Heller 2005, 97)

The lack of humor characterizing philosophers closely associated with the absurd confirms this observation: Sartre has been deemed “among contemporary philosophers the most obvious candidate for the title ‘Least Humorous’.”47 He takes both the serious man and the ironist as figures of his analysis of bad faith48 ; The Flies depicts the ironic temper as a flimsy, escapist disposition while exalting its natural antagonist’s passionate, existential commitment.49 About laughter, Sartre has but one comment, that “Laughter is proper to man because man is the only animal that takes itself seriously: hilarity denounces false seriousness in the name of trueseriousness.”50 The non-coincident self that Sartre advances and Simone de Beauvoir embraces recalls the view I propose. However, the former does not resolve the ambiguity; the latter, whilst emphasizing the significance of ambiguity for ethics, does resolve it but with the help of unwarranted means.51 Rosset relays a conversation in which Albert Camus, who reasserts the significance of irony in State of Siege,52 reportedly complains that his sense of humor has gone unnoticed by both readers and critics.53 In Camus’s view of the absurd looms large an unacknowledged yearning for spirituality, which is accounted for by his intellectual background as disclosed by his biography.54 There are hardly any existential philosophers known to address humor in their works. Even the thought of Heidegger and Jaspers, who consider themselves Nietzsche’s followers, lean closer to tragedy than

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

129

they do to comedy,55 and within the varieties of tragic thought, theirs is distant from the Nietzschean association of tragedy with laughter.56 If ridicule is considered as that which exposes human tragedy, it is so because we take ourselves much too seriously even when we acknowledge our ridicule. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the visitor in Ivan’s nightmare insists: “Yet men, with all their indisputable intelligence, do take the farce of existence as something serious, and this is their tragedy.”57 Along the same lines, the contemporary American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, notes, What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. We are rather insignificant little bundles of energy and vitality in a vast organization of life. But we pretend that we are the very center of this organization. This pretension is ludicrous; and its absurdity increases with our lack of awareness of it. The less we are able to laugh at ourselves the more it becomes necessary and inevitable that others laugh at us. (Niebuhr 1969, 140–41)

We see life as tragic because we take ourselves too seriously, and we are ridiculous for the same reason. This is even more so when we consider our ridicule tragic. It is often said that the works of existential comedy have extended their treatment of the comic to areas where they had been long excluded because “they sharpened our perception for a broader sense of the comic.”58 This expansion does not suffice. My view differs from the tragicomic view, including those of the playwrights of the absurd. I suggest that comedy ends the moment we acknowledge the ridiculousness of our situation. Upon recognition, the comedy ends along with the tragic sense of our condition: We are beyond the two.

3

Appropriating Homo risibilis

Homo risibilis may be classified as a significant variant of the traditions outlined above. Homo risibilis or the view of our fundamental ridiculousness seems an apt description of humankind because of the seriousness our life

130

L. Amir

requires and the suffering that ensues along with the faint but ever present inkling that ultimately, as far as we know, we and our endeavors are altogether futile.59 This view is true to our experience of reality as both tragic, that is serious and full of suffering, and comical, that is insignificant or futile. However, the both/and intimated here can be associated only with a comic of sorts. The tragic disjoints that which the comic unites. The love of truth, however unpleasant truth may be, may induce us into accepting ridicule. André Comte-Sponville, the contemporary French philosopher, continues the long tradition that has consolidated the love for truth as the philosopher’s signature. Being human, the philosopher may hope for truth and happiness to accord, but given a choice, she chooses truth over happiness.60 The view of human ridicule is worthless unless one recognizes it a fitting description of oneself—until one appropriates it. Genuine understanding of the ridiculousness of the human condition should lead to the acceptance of one’s own ridiculousness, to attaining comfort or inner acquiescence. Acquiescence, because of the truthful nature of my thoughts: I know myself out of an understanding of the human condition and how it is exemplified in others and myself.61 Comfort, because the more ridiculous I am the more closely I embody the naturally ridiculous human condition. As my ridicule defines my humanity, when I exemplify the former instead of either hiding it in ignorance of its universality or ignoring it through self-deception or misplaced feelings of superiority, I am a better human being. Let me exemplify this attitude with a few quotes that gesture toward it. In The Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno shares a thought inspired by Don Quixote: “One must know how to make oneself appear ridiculous, and not only in the eyes of others but also in one’s own eyes.” Kierkegaard observes, “humor wants to be a fool in the world,” and Bataille maintains that it is necessary for the human being “to want to be comical, for he is so, to the extent that he is a man…—without a way out.”62 Avital Ronell holds that the decisive characteristic of a philosopher is the capacity to regard one’s self as ridiculous. Let me quote at length this significant argument: Knowing one is being ridiculous nails you as a philosopher or at least targets the philosophical component of your Dasein. Being ridiculous already

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

131

involves a philosophical insert, because it implies the act of laughing at oneself. In “l’Essence du rire” Baudelaire defines this ability to laugh at oneself falling (on one’s ass, back into childhood, forward into old age) as the moment constitutive of philosophical consciousness. What de Man interprets as irony—the philosopher splits in two, accelerating time while collapsing on the self—is set up by the fall designating a split between the dumb buddy, on the one hand, and the one who ridiculizes the faltered ego, on the other hand. When the philosopher falls, prompting the opening act in the ur-scene of philosophical consciousness, this produces the double effects of ironic consciousness…The subject laughs at himself falling; indeed, the fall announces the moment the subject becomes a philosopher by means, precisely, of laughing at himself, making himself ridiculous, sich lacherlich machen, thus in falling making himself performatively. Affected by the laughter of the other, as this other, the philosophical consciousness makes itself happen by passing through the constituting moment of making itself ridiculous. The laugh-along distinguishes the philosopher from the non-philosopher to the extent that a position is taken outside the self, beyond which the self, detached, can be observed. The moment savagely accelerates the history of the self and its fall: to laugh at oneself is to laugh at oneself dying from an improbable position beyond or on the other side of a life that has disjoined by dint of the sudden slip into consciousness. (Ronell 2003, 298–99)

The philosopher realizes that the subject to be laughed at is none other than himself. This becomes the reason for his laughter, contrary to the laughter of unphilosophical natures, which is directed at others. Philosophical reflection requires self-distancing, which divides the philosopher’s consciousness into the laughing and the laughable, the laughter and the butt. I would go further with Ronell’s argument: As comedy draws from immaturity, the philosopher’s sobriety finds itself constantly amused by its non-philosophical, emotional, societal and otherwise adulterated counterpart.

132

4

L. Amir

Explaining Resolution

The acknowledgment of ridicule and how it resolves the tension the human predicament presents may be further explained in three ways. The explanations I give of the resolution rely on theories of humor or comedy. I believe this indicates that in humor, if understood as an umbrella term for comical phenomena, lies an undisclosed recipe that has not been systematically worked out. I begin by explaining the resolution obtained, first, by using humor as a paradigm of the creative process; second, by likening it to a plot development that characterizes most comedies, the acknowledgment of the hero’s new identity; and finally, by using the cognitive resolution that some incongruity theories of humor require.

4.1

Humor as the Paradigm of Creative Processes

In the first chapter of The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler makes humor the paradigm of creative thought. Instead of association, which defines the regular way of thinking, bisociative thinking associates (two) ideas that were not previously joined. Koestler maintains that this process which explains how humor works lies also at the basis of artistic and scientific creativity. Edward de Bono, the famous contemporary creativity expert, follows by underlining humor in the first paragraph of his book, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, as tightly associated with creative processes.63 Various scientists notice that bisociation is especially helpful when thinking in opposites. The mathematician Henri Poincaré gives a precious testimony of his experiences with creative thinking. He witnesses how the opposition of ideas of disparate origins, some arising out of a subliminal ego and some out of the normal ego, dissolve under his gaze.64 Along the same lines, Niels Bohr maintains that holding opposites together suspends thought, allowing the mind to advance to a new level. This whirling of opposites enables the emergence of a new point of view, such as the discovery of the principle of complementarity, which is considered his main innovation. He recalls that he got the idea for it by noticing how he cannot look at a friend simultaneously under the guise of love and that of justice.

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

133

Impressed by Poincaré and Bohrs’s accounts, Albert Rothenberg endeavors to study the processes of thought used by renowned geniuses. He finds ample evidence for the fertility of thinking in opposites and coins the term “Janusian thinking” for this practice.65 While Friedrich Nietzsche makes frequent use of this kind of thought,66 Koestler enlightens this process by recalling the etymology of “cogito” as “moving together.” Rothenberg further explains how Janusian thinking or pitting opposites together to create something new is predicated on conflict yet should be carefully differentiated from the phenomenon of ambivalence and from Hegel’s dialectical thinking. Ambivalence is rarely conscious enough to enable actual opposition, and Hegelian dialectic is historical, which means that concepts are not simultaneously opposed to each other. These qualifications are significant on two counts: They explain the role I initially assign to humor in making ambivalence conscious, as clarified in the last chapter, and they help differentiate Homo risibilis from Hegelian dialectics. Based on these remarks, if the tragic is “impossible yet necessary,” some thinking out of the box is required, to make either the impossible possible or the necessary less so. By repeatedly transforming the tragic into the comic, we necessarily oppose the tragic and the comic views of the same event, as recommended in previous chapters. Moreover, the phenomenon they cover makes us experts in contradictions, oppositions and conflicting beliefs, emotions and attitudes. The humorous mood thus yields to the idea of one’s ridiculousness, a form of tedious Sisyphean attitude toward the comic, by noticing how ungraceful and unspontaneous the comical perspective gained out of the tragic experience is. This is yet another contradiction: The humorous or comical should be light, spontaneously funny and cheerful. By pitting this idea against our awkward ridicule, we accept the former even if out of fear of becoming more ridiculous. Once our human condition has been accepted, everything follows, as we shall see below as well as in the remaining chapters. But before spelling out the outcomes of the resolution that embracing one’s ridiculousness yield, let us turn to additional explanations of how the situation defined by the human predicament may be resolved through other uses of comical devices.

134

4.2

L. Amir

The Basic Plot of Comedy

Christopher Booker argues that the basic plot of comedy resolves by revealing the identity of the hero.67 The resolution can be found in Aristophanes’s comedy, which revolves around a conflict (agon) between characters or entities. The sides manifest a life-denying, unyielding and dark obsession pitted against an embrace of life, truth and liberation. The lifeaffirming side triumphs after a critical inflection point: The disruptive and dark side that was once consumed by belligerence, rigid judgment and murderous desires arrives suddenly at a significant self-knowledge forced upon it. This leads to a radical change in attitude that brings reconciliation and celebration. Aristotle refers to this as anagnorisis or “recognition,” meaning “the change from ignorance to knowledge.” Booker points out that recognition remains a defining feature in comic plots. Two additional features develop in the New Comedy. First, while retaining anagnorisis, comedy turns into a story of romance ending happily ever after. This symbolizes the renewal of life, completion instead of division. Secondly, the ignorance and confusion resulting from the oblivion of the characters’ true identities are the main sources of tension in the plot. Thus, the exposure of false identities revealing incorrect wrong assumptions drives the resolution: Knowledge reveals genuine identity. There may be up to four elements working in conjunction to achieve recognition in a fully developed comedy as Shakespeare’s.The first and only one pertaining to our purposes is the deadlock of hardship burdening the characters, including emotions of self-righteousness, jealousy and anger that must be dispelled through self-recognition followed by change of heart. Only by coming to themselves, by becoming “new” persons can they escape punishment or avoid disabling general derision. Molière stages resolution through the “inferior” characters in his plays. Much like Aristophanes’s setup, the characters are divided by an invisible line that sorts the higher authoritative and social level, elevating men and seniority over women, the youth and lower class. The former upper level constitutes the dark and oppressive side threatening the latter inferior level that champions liberation. The examples that Booker cites demonstrate that “the essence of Comedy is always that some redeeming truth has to be brought out of the shadows into the light.”68

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

135

This observation also applies to a person’s realization of her innate ridiculousness as that which characterizes humanity, and which once embraced leads to a transformative new identity. I argue that the very acknowledgment of our own ridiculousness as part of our identity is a redemptive truth. We are ridiculous to the extent to which we are oblivious to our true selves. Plato identifies the cause of ridicule as “know[ing] not thyself,” followed by Baudelaire and Bergson. This view draws additional support from the following observation about the presupposition of comical situations: The butt’s ignorance makes him inadvertently comical; the comical dissolves the moment the butt apprehends his own ridiculousness.69 Nietzsche and Carl Jung both conceive the self as the merging of polarities.70 The two describe the transformation into being individuated (übermenschlich) in terms of a sudden conversion or “redemption” of the personality, now able to embrace the opposing elements and endure the dangerous effects that follow the experience of wholeness. The tension that opposites create has been conceived as the primal life force both in the West, by Heraclitus and Anaximander, and in ancient Chinese philosophy. However, the attempt to integrate opposites, which gets rid of their tension, should be carefully differentiated from the coincidence of opposites. The latter is a Neo-Platonic notion, attributed to the work of the fifteenthcentury German thinker, de Cusa’s Learned Ignorance.71 It is championed by Hegel and other dialecticians and used in various mystical traditions.72 The transcendence implied by the notion, which describes the revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different, is not what is meant by the both/and way of thinking that I am advocating, which works toward integration of opposites rather than slipping them off into antagonistic parts. Plato addresses the significance of opposites in Laws arguing that although human affairs are not significant, they must nonetheless be taken seriously.73 Thomas Nagel’s recent perspective on the absurd treats us as necessarily serious with our pursuits but ironic upon the realization of our sub species aeternitatis futility. The resulting tension is considered an opportunity for the birth of something new, which Nagel nonetheless does not offer.74 Montaigne’s Essais emphasize the significance of foolishness

136

L. Amir

for wisdom, without explaining how these antagonistic aspects of the self are to be resolved into the affirmative stance that he advances.75 The perspective that comes from the acceptance of one’s ridiculousness stands in stark contrast to whatever was previously experienced, as it leads to complete liberation from ridicule altogether. The person who laughs transcends his ridiculous humanity with dignity,76 as the acceptance of contradiction rids any need for interpretation that either alleviates or attempts to interpret the pain of conflicting desires and the impossibility of fulfillment. To use the language of redemption, we redeem ourselves by embracing our defining ridiculousness, in accordance with Nietzsche’s insightful appeal: “Love yourself as an act of clemency—then you will no longer have any need of your god, and the whole drama of Fall and Redemption will be played out to the end in you yourselves!”77 By fully accepting ourselves as ridiculous, we transcend ridicule: We cease being comical.78 Finita la comedia, however, does not leave us in the grip of the initial tragic sense of life, I argue, because at this stage the tragic and the comic are inextricably linked. By transcending ridicule, we also transcend the tragic because the comical interpretation of our predicament removes the agony associated with it. Moreover, after acknowledging ridicule, the tragic that remains is not only inseparable from the comic but determined by it. Now that our comicality as ridicule defines us, our comical features account for the tragic elements that remain in us. To understand this point, consider the following: An individual becomes truly tragicomic in literature as well as in life when his tragic destiny is affected by the comicality of circumstance, perspective, action or personality. “If Don Quixote lost his comical features, he would no longer be tragic,” Isaac Passy notes.79 Don Quixote can be taken as representative of humanity because, as David Miller maintains, “the don exhibits all the absurdities of the human situation…He is a fool, to be sure, but in being a fool, he is Everyman, and by being himself he is everybody.”80 This accurately describes our situation after the comic modulates the tragic and we are led to the awareness of ridicule that allows us to see the situation through inclusive, comical eyes. Let me repeat this point: Having transcended the comic (we stop being comical at the moment in which we acknowledge ourselves as such, and by

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

137

gaining lucidity we sober up), we transcend the tragic inherent in ridiculousness (it is tragic to be ridiculous, but we have ceased to be ridiculous; therefore, we are tragic no more). Interestingly, this innovative claim finds support in philosophers whose work addresses comedy’s potential to transcend tragedy, such as Hegel and Friedrich Schiller. According to Hegel, comedy is the form that supersedes tragedy in developing a more profound formulation of circumstance, mocking itself as obsolete after dispensing tragic drama.81 Schiller asserts that the end of comedy is superior to tragedy’s, as it liberates the spirit from the chains of passion, allowing it to see the significance of chance over destiny and to laugh at the futile and mercurial aspects of life rather than rage or weep at its wickedness: Comedy aims at a more important end [than tragedy]; and if this end could be actually attained it would make all tragedy not only unnecessary, but impossible. The aim that comedy has in view is the same as that of the highest destiny of man, and this consists in liberating himself from the influence of violent passions, and taking a calm and lucid survey of all that surrounds him, and also of his own being, and of seeing everywhere occurrence rather than fate or hazard, and ultimately rather smiling at the absurdities than shedding tears and feeling anger at the sight of the wickedness of man. (Schiller 1964, 311)

Following Schiller, for whom “tragedy was the human condition; comedy, man’s self-liberation from this condition,” Horace Kallen maintains, “Such seeing is man’s supreme goal,” and “the authentic happy ending.”82 However, Kerr remains skeptical about comedy’s capacity to transcend ridicule: But the pain of comedy is possibly more protracted and more frustrating than that of tragedy, because it does not know how to expel itself. Tragedy’s pain is productive; it comes of the abrasiveness of moving forward toward transformation. Comedy, making capital of the absurdity of seeking transformation, must forever contain its pain. By denying freedom it denies release. Tragedy uses suffering; comedy can only live with it. Comedy can only live with it, that is to say, against the possible day when tragedy, in an ultimate successful transformation, frees them both. Comedy, hugging

138

L. Amir

the fox to its breast, stays close to tragedy against that possible, eternally doubted, day. Only the tragic absurdity is capable of transcending itself. What a good man the clown is, to endure so much, to survive so relentlessly, to keep us company in all weathers, to provide us with a way of looking at the worst that enables us to take a temporary joy in the worst! For that is what he does: he stands horror on its head to keep us tolerably happy against the day when tragedy will look horror straight in the eye and stare it down. (Kerr 1967, 340; emphasis added)

Kerr suggests that tragedy alone can transcend itself by overcoming its horror. His argument may be valid in the light of the tragic and comic perspectives presented earlier in this chapter or according to the limitations of comedy and tragedy as literary genres. With regards to the view of human ridiculousness, I suggest otherwise. If embraced, this higher-level comic can transcend both itself and the tragic. A complete acknowledgment of the comic that lies in the tragic liberates us from the tragic, but also enables us to transcend the comic. Like the Buddhist’s raft used to pass the river, or Wittgenstein’s ladder, or again the Taoist’s fish trap dispensed when unnecessary, the comic disappears as soon as the tragic does.83 This does not necessarily mean that humor disappears altogether: There are other forms of humor apart from the comic that evolves out of the tragic. Provided that humanity is defined by its ridiculousness, acknowledging it at the core of our identity resolves the tensions from which we suffer. This parallels the development of narrative typical of comedies when the hero’s revelation of his own identity marks a turning point. Ridiculousness is sustained only by ignorance. Replacing ignorance with self-awareness, we not only transcend the tragic sense of life, but also transcend ourselves by achieving what is so foreign to our nature as explained by Nietzsche and Freud: self-acceptance.84 Humor used initially in this study as a device to dispel the need for redemption becomes redemptive itself in encouraging self-acceptance to a degree that surpasses the limitations set by humanity, when defined only by tragedy and confusion. The liberation humor brings forth rivals the highest ideals of religion and philosophy.

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

4.3

139

Incongruity Theories of Humor

There is yet another way of explaining the resolution that I propose. Though part of the tension created by the human predicament may be resolved through humor, the mood is momentary. When the humorous mood dissolves, the basic tension that characterizes the human condition may be resolved differently, on a “higher” level.85 According to the theory of conflict-resolution, which I mentioned in previous chapters as part of the incongruity theory of humor, that which may seem incompatible now will seem compatible to another way of thinking.86 Such cognitive humor has a two-stage process, first, the perception of a complexity, incongruity, discrepancy, ambiguity or novelty in the humor stimulus and second, the resolution, that is, the cognitive integration or understanding, of the stimulus. However, notwithstanding the humiliation involved in the human predicament and the profound relationship that humor entertains with humiliation, common theories of humor, such as the superiority, release and incongruity theories, including the conflict-resolution variant of the latter, cannot deal with the human condition as a whole.87 This is so, I argue, because all of these theories require a superior, more general or external vantage point. However, we do not have access to such a vantage point as being a part of the world and partaking of the human condition within it. Unless we attain to such as vantage point, humor won’t be able to provide a solution to the awareness of ridicule. I now introduce various views of conflicts and the vision of humanity that is required as a vantage point to resolve incongruity at a higher stage of cognitive humor. An epistemic conflict or a conflict between beliefs may be addressed in the following ways. If unresolved, we store both pieces of information, note the conflict between them and remain confused. Alternatively, we may resolve the conflict in uncooperative or cooperative manners. The former destroys one of the beliefs, and the latter manages to accept the truth of both beliefs through a creative insight dissolving the apparent contradiction for compatibility. As we have seen in the precedent chapters, the humorous mood helps us to sort unresolved conflicts and avoid the uncooperative resolution

140

L. Amir

of the conflict that defines human beings. The second stage of cognitive humor enables us to reach a cooperative resolution in the following way: an internal conflict is incongruous only on the assumption that human beings are congruous, that is, that I am a congruous being. If I realize that both conflicting points of view are valid, I also realize that giving up either one would reduce the complex being that I am to what I am not—I understand that the opposing view is not incongruous. Both views are necessary for a faithful depiction of the being that I am, in order to do justice to the complexity of the situation I partake in. The repeated experience of this conflicting situation would encourage me to adjust my conception of self to accommodate this view. The view that the higher level obtains sees conflicts as normal because they are constitutive of the complex being that I am and the complicated relationships that I entertain with and in a world that I do not fully understand. The incongruity that gives rise to the tragic and the comic is not perceived as an incongruity anymore. Rather, this view echoes Heraclitus’s phrase: “They do not understand that in being at variance with itself that it coheres with itself: a backward stretching harmony, as of a bow or a lyre.”88 It also amounts to a harmonious congruence with myself, others and the world, a state that all philosophies seek to establish.

5

Homo risibilis’ Place Within Philosophy

David Cooper argues in the introduction to his impressive World Philosophies: Hegel, and following him, Marx saw philosophy as the endeavor to overcome what they called the problem of “alienation” or “estrangement.” By these terms, they meant the sense which many human beings—all of them, perhaps, at times—have of being “strangers,” of not being “at home,” in the world. Reading philosophers from all times and climes, I am struck by the accuracy of this perception of the central inspiration behind philosophical speculation, by the constant recurrence—from the earliest Indian thinkers recorded to twentieth-century existentialists—of the theme of alienation. (Cooper 1996, 5)

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

141

Cooper cites Wordsworth’s poignant description of the tension latent in conflicting emotions which spurs philosophical thought: “The groundwork of all true philosophy is the difference between…that intuition…of ourselves, as one with the whole… and that [of ] ourselves as separated beings, [which] places nature in antithesis to us.”89 At any rate, many of the world philosophies, Cooper argues, may be regarded as attempts to resolve this difference or tension by offering accounts of human beings that do justice to the uniqueness of the species without rendering its members freaks, outsiders, or strangers in the world. “What hardly any philosopher of the first rank has done is to ignore, or remain sanguine about the tension,” he adds. Moreover, Those, like Kant, who confessed to their failure to resolve it, did so with palpable disappointment, even despair. After all, if the German poet Hölderlin was right and it is both “divine and good” to be “at one” with the world, then the failure to resolve the tension is not simply an intellectual débâcle, but a human tragedy. (Cooper 1996, 6)

If Cooper is right about the initial philosophical spur, the view proposed here inserts itself in the history of philosophical attempts to overcome alienation. It also explains why tragic philosophers are rare, as we saw in Chapter 1. That which Cooper extolls, however, Gianni Vattimo bemoans.90 Though the main gist of the latter’s argument is political, it is worth repeating in this context. Vattimo argues that all philosophies attempt to reconcile contradictions that cannot nor should be reconciled. The worldview I propose manages to receive Cooper’s compliment (overcoming alienation) and avoid Vattimo’s criticism (reconciling that which should not be reconciled). The contradictions within myself, with others and with the world that constitute the human condition are neither solved, sublated, discarded nor ignored. They are accepted. As we acquiesce in ourselves, we acquire a taste for the world and reduce alienation from self and others. But Homo risibilis does more than indicate a theoretical way out of the conundrum. It carries within it the possibility of its action: It is transformative. The cognitive aspect of the resolution—acknowledging our ridicule—would be impotent in real-life situations if I could not withstand

142

L. Amir

its contents emotionally, that is, if I could not appropriate or embrace it. It is significant to realize the following: that which enables the emotional acceptance of my ridiculousness is no foreign element, but the emotional component of humor itself. This emotional content is the sympathetic and benevolent way in which one treats oneself in humor that Freud’s latter work acknowledges.91 Bohdan Dziemidok’s reflection on comedians may further enlighten our capacity to embrace ridicule. He argues that various comic theorists maintain that one and the same object may evoke both the experience of the comical and the feelings of friendship and sympathy. However, we should differentiate between comical protagonists whom we like even though we laugh at them and those whom we like because they are laughable.92 I argue that we should become those of the latter kind in order to embrace our own ridicule: Being laughable should increase self-love rather than decrease it. Thus, accepting one’s humanity is a complex mechanism that draws its support from the view of humankind as ridiculous. It is facilitated by humor. Both the view of humankind as ridiculous and the process of its acceptance are not alien to humor; rather they are suggested to the individual through the enticing pleasure that humor generates from the ridiculous being one happens to be. We can now outline the benefits that such a worldview provides. The personal advantages Homo risibilis brings are the topic of next chapter, while the last chapter focuses on the social and political significance of its consequences in a global world.

Notes 1. For Kierkegaard, see Amir (2014a, Chapter 1) and Lippitt (2000). For nineteenth-century German philosophy’s attitude toward humor, see Moland (2018), the chapter on Julius Bahnsen in Beiser (2016, 2018) and Amir (2014a, 209–17). 2. See MacHovec (1988, 8) for the transience of the humorous mood. 3. “Taking Ourselves Seriously: Getting it Right” is the title of Harry Frankfurt’s book (2006). 4. Hyers (1996, 40). 5. Crossan (1976, 21). 6. Kerr (1967, 28).

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

143

7. The Webster New World Dictionary entry on “Ridicule” (514) notes, “from the Latin ridiere, to laugh. As a un, it is (1) The act of making one the object of scornful laughter; or (2) Words or actions intended to produce such laughter. As a verb: to make fun of; deride; mock.” And, “Ridiculous: deserving ridicule; absurd” (515). 8. Montaigne repeatedly comments on humanity’s inanity yet voices an affirmative view of life akin to a theodicy. The absence of any explanation of how he reaches the final affirmative stage has bemused commentators. I can enlighten this significant issue with the argument that Montaigne anticipates part of the Homo risibilis worldview I present here, though I cannot be certain that I am not projecting my thesis onto his work. For further information, see Chapter 1 of Amir’s, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 9. Aristotle (1963). 10. Aristotle 2001, On the Parts of Animals, III.10, 673a, III.8, 28. 11. See the previous note. 12. Aristotle (1988, 1253a; 2000, 1178a5). 13. Pollux (1900). 14. Quintilian (2001); Lucian 1913–1967, Sale of Creeds, 26; Demonax, 21. 15. Porphyry’s third century A.D. Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories or Isagoge, 1975, IV.4, 14. 16. Capella (2007). 17. Minois (2000, 125). 18. Dante (1965, 54) and Verdon (2001). 19. Ménager (1995). 20. Panksepp (2007). 21. Morreall (1983, 100), Gelven (2000, 1), and Heller (2005, 29). 22. Plato, Philebus 48–50. 23. Labeo (1972–1996). 24. Montaigne ([1924] 1965), Essais, bk. I, Chapter 50. 25. Bergson (1999, 9). 26. Quoted in Gutwirth (1993, 116). 27. Bergson (1999, 9). 28. Freud ([1927] 1928). 29. “In humor I find myself ridiculous and I acknowledge this in laughter or simply in a smile” (Critchley 2002, 94). 30. Plessner (1970, 1982). 31. Santayana (1910, 33). For Santayana on this point, see Amir (2019).

144

L. Amir

32. Santayana (1948, 45). 33. Santayana (1922, 261). 34. Santayana (1922, 141; 70). The latter passage continues thus: “A pompous idealist who does not see the ridiculous in all things is the dupe of his sympathy and abstraction; and a clown, who does not see that these ridiculous creatures are living quite in earnest, is the dupe of his egotism.” For the purpose of understanding Homo risibilis’ antecedents, it is noteworthy that Santayana advocates this humorous, at once satirical and friendly, attitude toward oneself as a counterweight to his youthful “compulsive and self-tormenting creature called ‘Me’ [which] was more odious and cruel to the ‘I’ within than were the sea and the sky, the woods and the mountains, or the very cities and crowds of people this animal ‘Me’ moved among” (Santayana 1953, 134–35). The same initial attitude is found in Nietzsche (Shaw 2015). Pascal notably sees the self as despicable, while Montaigne’s early thoughts on humanity lean toward the despising laughter of Democritus [([1924] 1965), Essais, bk. I, Chapter 50] but later turn into a categorical rejection of self-hatred (see the last page of the Essais). 35. I owe the association between the religious view and my own to Jessica Davis; see Davis (2011). 36. De Cusa ([1440] 1961), Erasmus (1971), and Montaigne (1967). 37. Montaigne 1967, Essays, bk. II, Chapter 25, 522; bk. III, Chapter 8, 709. 38. Basu (2012, 10). 39. Hume (1975, 160). 40. Hume (1978, 270). 41. Hume (1986, 179n); see Livingston (1998, 39–40). 42. Critchley (2002, 43). 43. Rosset (1967). 44. Schopenhauer (1966, I, 322). 45. Simon, Le Monde, 27 décembre 1989; my translation. 46. Ionesco, The New York Times, June 1, 1958, Section II, 3; quoted in Esslin (1961, 101). 47. Davenport (1976, 170). 48. Sartre (1957, 580; 1965, 154). 49. Sartre (1955). 50. Sartre (1971, 821; my translation). 51. Sartre never wrote a book on ethics though he intended to, which leaves us with his commentary in Being and Nothingness on the misery of consciousness ([1943] 1957). De Beauvoir builds on his thesis of non-coincidence between the in-itself and the for-itself, the discrepancy between the past

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

145

and the future and between the material and the spiritual to develop an ethics of ambiguity ([1947] 1949). However, she does not suggest that humor has any role to play within ambiguity or otherwise. Rather than striving to maintain the ambiguity in the human condition, she founds an ethics of freedom and responsibility which heavily relies on Kantian ethics and which cannot be grounded without further premises in her worldview. See Webber (2018) for the difficulties in de Beauvoir’s ethics. Camus (1958, 171). Polac and Rosset (2003, 80). For Camus, see McBride (2018). Heller (2005, 3). Schmidt notes that the notion of the comic is absent from Heidegger work as it is from all theorists of tragedy from Schelling on, except for Hegel and Nietzsche (Schmidt 2001, xiii). Quoted in Kallen (1968, 379–80). Heller (2005, 95–96). Nagel argues that the view from nowhere ought to be taken seriously (Nagel 1986, 1987). Benatar agrees and follows the argument to its bitter end (Benatar 2006, 2017). Other scholars who adhere to this standpoint still reach different conclusions from those drawn by Benatar and Nagel. Some see us as children of a caring God (Quinn 2000, 65–66), as beings whose sufferings count equally (Singer 1993, 333–34; 1995, 222–35) or as people capable of realizing goods that others can appreciate (Wolf 1997b, 19–21). Kekes (1995, 175–78; 2010, 232–45) and Solomon (1976, Chapter 1; 1993, 12–52) refute this argument because it renders human preoccupations futile. Additional thinkers object to it for various reasons, e.g., Metz (2013, 246), Schmidtz (2001, 174–79) and Prichard (2010). See Metz for a helpful discussion of this point (2013, 246n7). Comte-Sponville (1993, 199). This recalls Hegel’s comments on comedy, on which he did not elaborate. In The Phenomenology of Spirit, the result of tragedy is the dropping of the mask because the self aspires to be genuine. The individual dissolves in comedy and preserves itself in this very nothingness. Whatever assumes the form of essentiality in opposition to one’s self-consciousness is to be dissolved in itself, in its thinking, its existence and its action, and so is at one’s mercy. The self-certainty one obtains is a state of spiritual well-being and of repose in this well-being which is not to be found anywhere outside of this comedy. As Schmidt explains, “The self-certainty of the individual

146

62. 63. 64. 65.

L. Amir

is found in its preservation in this nothingness, which it now knows to be its sole actuality. In this moment, the individual knows itself to be nothing apart from this knowing” (Schmidt 2001, 108–9).That which Hegel says of tragedy seems to hold for Homo risibilis: The speculative point of view or the perspective of the reconciliation that is possible in the tragic work is voiced by the chorus; thus, “in the chorus we find the cancellation of the conflicts as conflicts” (Schmidt 2001, 118). This reconciliation brings a subjective satisfaction, although “no final resolution of the conflict is presented.” Still, “there is harmony, a peace, restored in the subjective relation one has to this conflict” (Schmidt 2001, 110). This leads Hegel to affirm in Lectures of Aesthetics that comedy has for basis and startingpoint that which tragedy may end with, namely an absolutely reconciled and cheerful heart. However, there are differences between Homo risibilis and Hegelian utterances, be it on tragedy or comedy. Hegel may be right in pointing to comedy’s absolutely reconciled and cheerful heart, yet this is the end product of comedy, or here, of Homo risibilis, rather than the initial state of comedy. “The subjective personality in the free expatiation of its absurdity and its absurdity dissolution” which comedy brings recall Homo risibilis, which may now shed light on these otherwise obscure Hegelian remarks. Finally, the remarks that in comedy “it is spirit satisfied with itself…remaining with itself and the nothingness of its own particular subjectivity,” corresponds to Homo risibilis’ self-acquiescence. The role of the Hegelian self ’s quest for genuineness as the defining move from tragedy to comedy is interesting insofar as accepting one’s ridicule is based on yearning for truthfulness, as I advance. For Hegel, this leads to the dropping of the mask, and for Homo risibilis, to embracing ridicule because the transition from the tragic to the comic is not a natural progression of spirit or self-consciousness, as Hegel has it, by is rather achieved with much effort with Homo risibilis by converting tragic oppositions into comical incongruities which are not immediately funny to us. The point forcefully made by Steven Gimbel, in his remarkable study of laughter (2017), is helpful for understanding some philosophers’ cryptic remarks on humor or comedy: humor need not be funny. Unamuno (1972, 322) and Kierkegaard (1967–1978), Journals and Papers II, 1690; Bataille (1988, 169). See Koestler (1964) and de Bono (1990, 1993). For de Bono’s thought, see Dingli (2008). Poincaré (1904). Rothenberg (1971).

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

147

66. In addition to multiple references in Nietzsche’s writings to the Janus god, looking simultaneously at opposite directions, see Hollingdale (2001, 120). 67. Booker (2004, 107–52). 68. Booker (2004, 123). 69. Plato, Philebus 48; Baudelaire (1968, 378) and Bergson (1999, 9). 70. See Nietzsche (1979), Ecce Homo, and 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Jung (1951, Paragraph 53); for both thinkers, see Huskinson (2004, 165). 71. De Cusa ([1440] 1961), De docta ignorantia. 72. Buddhism, German mysticism, Tantric Hinduism, Taoism, Sufism, and Zen Buddhism, among others. 73. Plato, Laws 816d–e. 74. Nagel (1987, 58–59; 1986, 4). 75. Montaigne ([1924] 1965). 76. By dignity, I mean the existential dignity Karl Jaspers defines (1957), which is said to have impressed Hannah Arendt and her husband, Heinrich Blücher, whose notion of human honor comes close to Jaspers (Macready 2018, 80–84). In Man in the Modern Age, Jaspers advances the idea of human dignity as existential nobility. He means by that “the best in the sense of the nobility of human existence…are persons who are themselves, in contradistinction to those who feel themselves a mere vacancy, who recognize no cause for which to fight, who are in flight from themselves.” He adds, “the question whether human worth (menschliche Würde) is still possible is identical with the question whether human nobility (Adel ) is still possible” ([1933] 1957, 221, 206). However, existential nobility is further characterized by Jaspers as involving a meaningful solidarity with others: “True nobility is not found in an isolated being. It exists in the interlinkage of independent human beings.” As John Douglas Macready notes, Arendt lectured on that text and adapted the solidarity required to her view, which emphasizes that “human beings should be given the necessary political space to enact their natality (a general condition of human existence) and choose to act in collaboration with others” (Macready 2018, 80–81). Following Jaspers, Blücher reconceives human dignity as human honor believing it reaches further than human dignity. Parallel to Jaspers’s existential nobility human honor indicates the ontological constitution of human freedom with human solidarity (Macready 2018, 84). My use of the term follows Jaspers’s definition without adhering to Arendt’s political usage of it. My approach to dignity does not associate it with the discussion about human rights theory and practice. It assumes equality within

148

77.

78.

79. 80.

L. Amir

the human species as natural beings without bothering about the species’ uniqueness. In the history of the notion of “dignity,” my view is more related to “stature” than to “status.” For the notion of dignity, its history and shortcomings, see Waldron (2009), Kateb (2011), and Rosen (2012). For skepticism about its validity, see Schopenhauer (1965, 100), Pinker (2008), and Spiegelberg (1971). For the rejection of human equality that lies at its base, see Hume (1998), Schopenhauer (2009), and Nietzsche (1967). Nietzsche 1982, Daybreak, I, Section 79. I recommend Liebman (1946, Chapter 2) as an exemplary work among the vast literature on the benefits of self-love. Ridicule transformed by embracing it reminds me of “the grandeur and the misery of the human condition,” which Hannah Arendt just mentions (2005, 38–39), but which Pascal, to whom we owe this observation, further develops: “Il est vrai que c’est être misérable, que de se connaître misérable; mais c’est aussi être grand, que de connaître qu’on est misérable. Ainsi toutes ses misères prouvent sa grandeur. Ce sont misères de grand Seigneur, misères d’un Roi dépossédé” (Pascal 1976, 23). While knowing ourselves as miserable makes us miserable, it also makes us great. Thus, all our miseries prove our greatness, the greatness of a great lord, of a dethroned king. Passy (1963, 71; quoted in Dziemidok 1993, 132–33). Miller (1969, 91–92). Don Quixote leads the way for many figures, including the majority of Chaplin’s Charlies of his mature period and the main protagonist of Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere. Conrad Hyers notes, “If ever there was a comic figure that approached universality it was Chaplin’s Tramp…he was the arch-typical comic hero, grappling with universal human problems…In Charlie the whole of the human condition was represented symbolically…He touched the heart of the human predicament in a way that was as profoundly wise as it was delightfully humorous” (Hyers 1996, 4–6). Peter Berger also identifies Charlie Chaplin as the paradigm of the tragicomic in cinematic history, but the tragicomedy of daily life is best demonstrated in prose literature. Berger identifies Cervantes’s Don Quixote as “the paradigmatic embodiment of the tragicomic hero” within the European literary tradition (Berger 1997, 119). Additional examples should include tragicomic heroes that can be found in the work of Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer. See also the Schlemiel and Schlimazel tradition in Judaic culture. See Wisse (1971)

5 Homo risibilis: The Ridiculous Human Being

81. 82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

149

The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, and Arendt (1944) “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition.” Hegel (1975, II, 1199); see Chapter 1 above. Kallen (1968, 347, 361). See the Buddha 1995, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Majjhima Nik¯aya of the P¯ali Canon, The Discourse on the Parable of the Water Snake (Alagadd¯upama Sutta) for the raft parable; Wieger (1984) and Chuang Tzu (1968), Section 19: “Mastering Life,” for the fisherman parable; Wittgenstein 1963 for the parable of the ladder. Nietzsche 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Freud ([1925] 1926). See Basu (1999). Roeckelein (2002, 172–74) and Mulkay (1988, 22–23). See Amir (2017b, Chapter 8). Diels and Kranz (1972); Heraclitus, B51, 80. For Heraclitus’s notorious obscurity, see Jeannière (1959). Cooper (1996, 5). See Vattimo (2014). Freud ([1927] 1928). Dziemidok (1993, 99–101).

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

This chapter discloses the radicality of Homo risibilis, the liberation it brings about and the personal benefits that ensue. It compares this worldview with contemporary theories of laughter, philosophies of tragic joy and views of happiness. It evaluates the paths to harmony open to a conflictual being in a world of discordance and the viability of the kind of joy tragic philosophies propose. It criticizes contemporary theories that define well-being without drawing from a lucid and sobering view of the human condition. The chapter concludes with the argument that Homo risibilis changes our relation to time through the feeling of timelessness that accompanies the happiness it enables, thus rivaling the promises given by redemptive philosophies and religions.

1

Homo risibilis Among Contemporary Theories

The alchemy of humor transmutes suffering into joy. Humor brings about a harmonious state and a serene joy that rivals the highest philosophic and religious ideals, revealing itself as redemptive.1 I begin this chapter © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_6

151

152

L. Amir

by evaluating various contemporary views that habilitate laughter and comedy in view of establishing Homo risibilis’ radicality. Contemporary philosophers have recognized the possibility of accepting the world through laughter, not tragedy. For example, Ted Cohen elaborates on the laughter of acceptance in Jokes, we may dwell with the incomprehensible without dying from fear or going mad. That may be a religious thought, but I found it in thinking about the human response to jokes, in the laughter that is absolutely, characteristically, essentially human. …a human response to absurdity is laughter. It is not just jokes, but indeed it is also the world itself and its various inhabitants that are sometimes absurd to human contemplation. When we laugh at a true absurdity, we simultaneously confess that we cannot make sense of it and that we accept it. Thus, this laughter is an expression of our humanity, our finite capacity, our ability to live with what we cannot understand or subdue (Cohen 1999, 41).

Simon Critchley accepts laughter as an indicator of our ability to grapple with our finitude by acknowledging our limitations and weaknesses rather than tragically attempting to affirm them.2 John Marmysz’s definition of nihilism as thwarted idealism presents it as a response to the basic incongruity that I address: “The full impact of the problem of nihilism strikes only when an individual passionately desires ultimate meaning, value and purpose, but believes those things to be out of reach.” The nihilistic worldview combines an idealized desire for better circumstances and a belief that this can and will never be satisfied: “The real world is denigrated in comparison to the ideal, and the ideal is believed to be hopelessly out of reach.”3 Not only does Marmysz point to the “nihilistic incongruity” as a major philosophical concern, he also finds the solution to it in humor as I do. It consists in learning to laugh at nihilism, as “Humor allows us to confront incongruities and, instead of being overwhelmed by them, to understand them in an unusual and original fashion.”4 It creates “the capacity to make incongruities unthreatening and to interpret them in a manner that produces amusement.”5 Homo risibilis is more radical than the views that Cohen, Critchley and Marmysz advance. Once endorsed, this worldview celebrates humanity,

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

153

by enabling the acceptance of finitude and the gracing of human folly. It exorcises the hubris and egotism in which the tragic view of life thrives. Michael Gelven helpfully explains how comedy graces human folly: The existential coherence of being comedic judges of our own comedic folly enables a truth that is so fundamental to what and who we are as foolish and hence rational persons, that, in its absence we cannot be complete, much less think about being complete. Fun enables us to be complete. This completeness has already been identified as the joyous recognition of our own self-reflective judging of our graced foolishness. (Gelven 2000, 149)

Fun enables us to be complete, yet Gelven restricts its salvific quality to comedy: Unless we are able to participate in the comedic celebration we cannot, in any other way, reflect on our folly with fondness to the extent that it discloses fundamental truth. The rare, existential coherence of being comedic judges of our own comedic folly—which is being fun at its highest level—exists nowhere outside of art. (Gelven 2000, 148)

In contradistinction to Gelven’s view, I argue that reflection on and recognition of one’s own ridiculousness suffices for qualifying an individual as a comedic judge. Self-laughter is not limited to the confines of a theater or comedy. I can laugh at myself outside of a comedic play as well, once I realize that laughter in every scenario is self-laughter. When I laugh at others, I laugh at myself. If I do not realize it I am even more ridiculous, which feeds into yet another reason to laugh. In the same way that Democritus, the laughing philosopher, deems ridiculous that our laughter is directed at others rather than at ourselves, treating one’s self as different from others by laughing at another indicates that one misunderstands the human condition. Along the same lines, Critchley argues that every laughter is self-laughter, insofar as “the object of laughter is the subject who laughs.”6 Laughter that arises from reflecting on the past should translate into laughter in the present, in media res. The nature of humor is to view “life, even life now, in as soft a light as we view the past.”7 That is, humor means

154

L. Amir

looking at the present with the (kind) eyes of the future as if the present were already past. However, it is frequently objected that it is impossible to use humor in the present as one would in the future, after gaining distance afforded by passed time. There are difficult events that may seem funny in retrospect,8 though not in the thick of circumstance and consequence. Many thinkers note this fact. Karl Marx begins The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon with the comment that though “Hegel notes somewhere, that all great world-historical facts and personages, so to say, repeat themselves, he forgot to add: first as tragedy, then as farce.”9 Marcella Goldsmith generalizes this statement to cover psychological phenomena, for “with time the subject detaches himself from whatever event may have caused his suffering and is able to view that event with serenity.”10 Indeed, G. W. F. Hegel notes that our appreciation for the comic is only ever retrospective, an idea that Søren Kierkegaard endorses to explain the comic. The latter sees the comic as requiring a real, lived rather than imagined, way out of contradiction in order to gain legitimacy.11 While considering oneself ridiculous when engaged in action seems impossible to Kierkegaard’s contemporary, Jean-Paul Richter, time and delayed reflection may offer a way out.12 Where spontaneous laughter is involved, I can see that explanations of why ridicule applies to others and how the comic applies to the past may hold. However, acknowledging ridiculousness doesn’t necessarily involve spontaneous laughter. It is not imperative that one finds it funny or enjoyable.13 Recognizing one’s ridiculousness and acknowledging it are enough: If the other is ridiculous, so am I, and if I will acknowledge it in the future, I should recognize it now. Otherwise, I am being ridiculous in my insistence that only others are ridiculous, never myself, and that only in the future I can laugh about myself. As Kierkegaard and Nietzsche suggest, laughter can and ought to be learned because it facilitates adopting new norms and changing one’s attitudes toward the self, the others and the world.

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

2

155

Joy

At the end of the previous chapter, we have seen how an inner conflict is incongruous only under the assumption of a primary congruity. Once I realize that both parties of the conflict are right, the opposition is no longer be regarded as incongruous. It is clear that giving one of them up unnecessarily simplifes the complex being that I am. As both parties are necessary to my being, repeated experience of conflict encourages me to adjust my self-perception to accommodate this view. The accommodation results in a more encompassing perspective that sees conflicts as normal because they are constitutive of the complex being that I am and the complicated relations I entertain with and in a world I do not fully understand. I am necessarily ridiculous. The incongruity that gives rise to the tragic and the comic will not be perceived as incongruous anymore. Rather, this view will resonate with Heraclitus’s phrase: “They do not understand that in being at variance with itself that it coheres with itself: a backward stretching harmony, as of a bow or a lyre.”14 Accepting one’s ridicule amounts to a harmonious congruence with oneself, others and the world, a condition that all philosophies seek to establish. Joy results from the acceptance of one’s ridicule, as it is the sign of newfound harmony with oneself, others and the world. Even tragic philosophers such as Nietzsche and Clément Rosset appreciate this accord with a disharonious world, enabled by acceptance. Nietzsche explains, “The fatality of essence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be… One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole…that alone is the great liberation.”15 Rosset describes a similar kind of liberation that the performance of tragedy brings: What can we do with the world…if it does not know the tragic? Alone with our tragic, in an anti-tragic world…It is from this anxiety that the tragic drunkenness delivers us forever in affirming without hope of contestation: the world is tragic, the world is the tragic … That is, destiny is at the measure of our destiny, the latter’s value is not exceptional, but to the contrary a “sign” of the tragic reality. We are tragic in a tragic world: doesn’t one see what marvelous accord fills us with joy?…We discover, in reality, a world

156

L. Amir

with which we can establish a contact: it knows us, we know it, we agree with it on a fundamental point: nothing exists, nothing—except the tragic. (Rosset 1991, 90; my translation)

To be tragic in a tragic world is still a marvelous accord which fills us with joy. In The Story of Joy, Adam Potkay describes joy as “the mind’s delight.” It is the experience of reunion or fulfillment, of desire at least temporarily laid to rest. Joy is what we feel, and as self-reflective beings know we feel, in situation, real or imaginary, in which what was lost is found; what was missed restored; want constrained is lifted; what we desire arrives; or what arrives satisfies a desire we hadn’t know we’d had. (Potkay 2007, vii)

The paradox of joy operates through the interplay between loss, restoration and self-dispersion. A passion for primacy and recurrence, it is accompanied by a sense of rejuvenation and is proof of an insertion into a unified order of nature.16 Beginning with Benedict Spinoza and the third Earl of Shaftesbury in modern philosophy, joy arises from recognizing the self as part of God, Nature, or the rational structure of the universe.17 Several philosophers have commented on joy’s relationship with desires. Martha Nussbaum writes, “Joy may inspire no desire, or simply the desire to act in some way expressive of joy…”18 Robert Solomon agrees with her on the point that joy has no desire, only perhaps the desire to share the feeling while it lasts. He sees joy as taking everything as its object without emphasis on any particular one. He observes that when in joy, the concern about status, strategy and power that come with emotions “doesn’t even arise”19 : Joy is that happy passion that renders our world not only satisfactory but “wonderful.” Like contentment, it formulates its values and expectations to conform with the world. As such, it has no ideology (except the laissez faire of the status quo or utter indifference to change), no concrete ideals or values…And because it is so ethereal, joy is extremely difficult to describe or to talk about without slipping into the mush that such moods freely supply. (Solomon 1976, 275)

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

157

Other observations on joy include Heinz Kohut’s, that “joy relates to experiences of the total self.” It is part of the process that makes a person whole, manifesting as both the “cause” and “effect” of development.20 Spinoza coins hilaritas to define the joy emanating from the whole self, a term that has been translated into “cheerfulness,” or gaiety.21 It is “constant” because it springs organically from the self. Spinoza follows the Stoics’ distinction in identifying hilaritas as an active joy, which differs from passive joys. Stoic joy can be either a passion that should be eradicated or a rational joy that is the outcome of successful living.22 Roman Stoics reserve gaudium for the latter, to designate an equable state of mind, and laetitia to label either irrational joy or, less negatively, the physical aspect of gaudium.23 The joy that follows from embracing one’s ridicule is a serene joy, heir to the Stoic and Spinozistic joy. Once joy is attained as a permanent state, one’s relation to life changes, for joy enables the affirmation of everything—an attitude recommended by proponents of tragic philosophies such as Nietzsche and Rosset. However, neither can indicate a warranted way of getting there. Nietzsche combines his own keen sense of the tragic life with an uncontained joy although, as Solomon rightly points out, “he is not always convincing.”24 Nietzsche opens the fourth book of The Gay Science with a resolution for the New Year: “Some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer,” and urges us in Twilight of the Idols as well as in other writings “to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming—that joy which also encompasses joy in destruction.”25 The joyful Dionysian affirmation is reached through selfovercoming, Nietzsche maintains, yet there is a sizable gap between the destructive-lionesque stage and the creative and affirming-childlike state described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and as exemplified in other Nietzschean works.26 Nietzsche asserts the inter-dependence of joy and woe, in which the acceptance of one joy is the acceptance of all woes.27 Nietzsche’s suggested relationship between joy and woe may be true, but the experience of joy is not readily accompanied by the acceptance of woes, though in the presence of joy, woes may be taken with some levity. It is doubtful that tragic joy exists at all. Tragic joy makes its appearance in Richard Wagner’s Art and Revolution 28 and Tristan and Isolde, in Nietzsche’s writings and in William Butler Yeats’ late poems, but it is not mentioned in earlier theories of the

158

L. Amir

tragic, such as Aristotle’s.29 Even if we were to grant the possibility of such a joy, its desirability is doubtful. Tragic joy derives pleasure from cruelty toward, even the destruction of, others or oneself: “What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty,” or “to see the failure of tragic natures and to laugh, that is divine.”30 Nietzsche’s only faithful disciple carrying on the legacy of tragic philosophy acknowledges the questionable origins of tragic joy. Rosset considers the love for life a graced joy, a Pascalian gift, which cannot be attained by a set path although it is required to affirm life; finding satisfaction in the perishable world, accepting the real, is our highest and most difficult challenge.31 The capacity to accept reality is predicated on a strong consciousness that is fit enough to know the worst without being affected by this very knowledge. Rosset admits that admitting such knowledge without mortal damage is an ability that transcends our limits: This insight is far from obvious; in order to work it presupposes the additional help of an extraordinary, not to say supernatural, force which I call the joy of living, the only resource that enables us to fulfill the wish expressed by Rimbaud in the last line of Season in Hell : “To possess truth in soul and body.” In other words: to finally attune the faculty of knowing to the faculty of living. (Rosset 2001, 85; my translation)

Joy is a necessary condition of life, of consciously lived life at the very least. Discouragement comes easily from reflection on reality. Much like the Pascalian God, who in extremis comes to the aid and triumph of the weakest, joy comes to aid low spirits, encouraging life. Pascal deems this role of sustenance an “extraordinary intervention,” which remains mysterious even to those who benefit from it32 : In the final analysis, nothing has changed for them, and they understand no more than before. They have no new argument to invoke in favor of existence and they are still perfectly incapable of saying why or for what they are living. And yet from this moment forth they value life as indisputable and eternally desirable. This is the mystery inherent in the jest for life. (Pascal 1941, 19)

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

159

Though this extraordinary intervention called “grace” by Pascal and “joy” by Rosset is a necessity for life, there isn’t a set path that guarantees its attainment.33 I concur with Rosset and Nietzsche that we affirm life because we are joyful. Yet the paradox of tragic philosophies remains that joy is beyond what we can willfully attain (Rosset), or alternatively, that while anything can be attained through willpower (Nietzsche), there isn’t a guaranteed route for the attainment of joy. In order to find a viable path to joy, two significant yet non-tragic additional views should be examined, those of Spinoza and Henri Bergson. Spinoza does propose a gradual way to replace sadness with joy and hatred with love. Although his philosophy is offered in principle to all, he acknowledges that few can follow it. Spinoza’s attitude toward emotions is not that of a strict rationalist: It is the struggle of the emotions amongst them that determines which emotion prevails. The liberation offered is predicated on a gradual widening of one’s interests, in finding one’s true interest in reason. And, Spinoza insists that this process cannot take place if it is not pleasurable. The problem with the otherwise appealing Spinozistic program is that it works under two assumptions: a strict determinism and an original view of the mind–body relation. While I believe that Spinoza is right about the mind–body relation—he sees it as two languages expressing the same process—I do not believe that strict determinism can be established with certainty. However, without certain knowledge of the inevitability of all things, not all sadness or all hatred can be eradicated. Attempts to salvage the Spinozistic “means against the affections” without endorsing determinism unfortunately do not yield the benefits his ethics promises.34 Finally, Henri Bergson also states that joy indicates that our destination has been reached. Though he believes he has found a verifiable method for philosophical inquiry, his philosophy builds on far too many metaphysical assumptions, like the very notion of intuition,35 which we cannot endorse without paying a high epistemological price. Homo risibilis thus leads without mystery or epistemological toll to a stable and serene joy. Additional questions should be asked, however: What is the relation that holds between stable joy and happiness? Can Homo risibilis grant happiness or contribute in any way to other views of

160

L. Amir

happiness? These questions are significant because the recent attacks on happiness’s desirability and feasibility have contributed to put meaning to the fore. The possible contribution of Homo risibilis to this discussion is the topic of the next part, where happiness’s desirability and feasibility are being examined and an argument in favor of happiness is being advanced.

3

Happiness

Bertrand Russell memorably notes in Portraits from Memory, “It would now be technically possible to unify the world and abolish war altogether. It would also be technically possible to abolish poverty completely. These things would be done if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.” In that quote, we seem to better understand what the misery of our enemies means than what our happiness may mean. Happiness is generally understood as a desirable state rather than as a means for something else. Its desirability notwithstanding, happiness has been deemed egoistical, and the question then rises, for whom is it desirable? I suggest that it is desirable not just for the beneficiary, but also for those around him and by extension, for all of society. If true, the point presses on the viability of the very idea of happiness. Examining philosophical views of happiness and the idea of well-being as put forth by positive psychology, I argue in favor of both the desirability and feasibility of happiness. Homo risibilis’ place in this discussion concludes this part.

3.1

The Desirability of Happiness

Happiness is generally regarded as an intrinsically desirable state, rather than as an instrumental one leading to some other end. This makes of happiness the final aim of our desires. That happiness is the state that we desire for itself is where consensus ends, and disagreement begins. We do not know what happiness refers to because we do not know what is it that we desire.36

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

161

Happiness undoubtedly has had a history leading up to the eighteenth century, but it is during the Enlightenment that the desirability of happiness becomes apparent. The expectation from institutions to promote happiness and the ensuing sense of entitlement grow out of the happinessdriven-century, Darrin McMahon explains. This involved “nothing less than a revolution in human expectations, while raising, in turn, delicate questions: Just who, precisely, was worthy of happiness? Was it for all? Was happiness a right or a reward?”37 On one view, happiness is not a right, but an achievement following work and discipline.38 Though we can commend efforts to achieve happiness, the view that we ought to desire it is open to criticism. In what follows, I evaluate several of the arguments against happiness and consider various ethical theories which either argue for the morality of happiness or are immune to criticisms of happiness’s immorality. I rely also on empirical evidence to substantiate my argument and conclude this subsection with two telling references to Arthur Schopenhauer and Sigmund Freud’s thoughts about happiness. The way modern philosophers modify the notion of happiness as defined by the ancients discredits happiness. Greek and Hellenistic philosophies consider virtue as both pleasurable and desirable, one’s attitude toward others being an extension of how one treats oneself. Epicurus’ first point in the Principal Doctrines is that “The blessed and immortal nature knows no trouble itself nor causes trouble to any other.”39 In his view, one’s happiness is never at odds with one’s attitude toward others. Kant’s emphasis on the tension between happiness and moral duty40 marks Modern philosophy’s charges of egoism and cynicism against happiness. Bernard Berenson’s reflection upon meeting George Santayana in Europe in 1939 testifies to this change. Though the philosopher embodied his own precepts, Berenson recalls his disappointment: All in all he left me with the impression of a very self-satisfied, rather maliciously cynical, sniggering, sneering old man. He has no wife nor child, nor friend nor foe, no needs except the elementary ones, and yet is happy, consciously happy. (Berenson 1964, 170–72)

162

L. Amir

Gore Vidal was also under the same impression after his encounter with Santayana near the end of World War II. He recounts being “sickened and revolted by his sang-froid, his cynicism,” which another visitor nonetheless perceived as fulfillment and serenity.41 Santayana himself acknowledges that his philosophical disposition was not well received: “That I was a philosopher, that I could willingly align myself only with intelligence and the truth, offended my friends,” he notes.42 Is happiness egoistical, then? Julia Annas suggests that ancient philosophies of happiness can refute charges of egoism: The ancient theories, by allotting the interests of others space in the framework of the agent’s happiness, do not allow a structural gap to open up within the theory between morality and self-interest. Questions about the importance of the interests of others are posed right from the start in terms of the amount and degree of importance that the interests of others will have within my own conception of happiness….Modern moral theories, however, even where they differ greatly in form, often share the assumption that my own happiness, and the happiness and interest of others, can be worked out in quite distinct spheres of my practical reasoning. (Since we tend to associate morality with the interests of others rather than our own interests, this is an obvious source of the common misunderstanding of ancient theories as egoistic.) …. Eudaimonistic theories do not permit this kind of split to develop. Reasoning about my own interest differs neither in kind nor in its sphere from reasoning about the interests of others …. Moral reasoning is not opposed to prudential reasoning. (Annas 1993, 322–23)

Ancient ethics does not concern itself with the tension between egoism and altruism because these philosophies (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, but also Epicureanism) consider virtue as necessary for happiness. What are we to make of theories not built on virtue? Spinoza and Nietzsche, for instance, reverse the causal relationship: For them, virtue is grounded in happiness. Contemporary research on the causes of benevolence and generosity seems to corroborate their views. The French philosopher Alain went so far as to hold that happiness is a duty not only toward ourselves but also toward others. Since in modern ethics the charge of egoisim against which personal happiness has to defend itself cannot be easily dismissed,

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

163

I would like to pursue the line of thought that makes happiness benefical also for others, and use it in arguing for the instrumentality of happiness. The argument in favor of happiness that I advance can be summed up as follows: If you are unconvinced that you desire happiness because you find it egoistical or too burdensome to take on the effort it requires, it is a good that is worth striving for, for your sake as well as for others’. I develop this argument building on the views of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Alain on the impact a person’s happiness or unhappiness has on others. I draw from empirical evidence intimated in Michel de Montaigne’s work. I conclude this section with commentaries on Schopenhauer and Freud’s pessimism toward happiness. Spinoza’s view of happiness is highly original. Against prevalent opinion, Spinoza treats happiness as the precondition of morality. He ends the Ethics with the remark that we do not “delight in blessedness because we restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we restrain our lusts.”43 A brief review of Spinoza’s ethics is in order to explain his view on happiness. His ethics may be considered as a version of “consequentialism” because he regards the evaluation of actions based on consequences as the most important. Within this framework, virtue is instrumentally desirable insofar as it leads to self-preservation, that is, to joy and blessedness. At the same time, Spinoza appears to subscribe to “virtue ethics,” that the most meaningful and important evaluations are those of a person’s virtue. He appears to deny the instrumental value of virtue, asserting “that we ought to want virtue for its own sake, that there is not anything preferable to it, or more useful to us, for the sake of which we ought to want it.”44 Thus, Don Garrett argues that “Spinoza is both a consequentalist and a virtue ethicist.”45 Although self-preservation first appears in the Ethics as a tendency toward temporal duration rather than eternity, the achievement of adequate understanding—which is the highest virtue—leads to participation in the eternal that is itself a kind of perseverance in one’s being. Accordingly, the highest virtue is not merely a means toward selfpreservation but is itself a kind of self-preservation. This means that the outcome of Spinoza’s ethics in its most important manifestation is also a state of character. The value of joy, in contrast, is instrumental in Spinoza’s

164

L. Amir

ethics, for it is merely an indication of a transition to a greater state of perfection, a greater capacity for action. It is a state of greater perfection and capacity that Spinoza values for its own sake, as that which each person’s conatus is necessarily seeking to attain.46 This duality in Spinoza’s view of ethics leads Garrett to conclude that Spinoza is both a virtue ethicist and a consequentalist. Any state of greater perfection (than the preceding state) is virtue; but it is also the affective state of blessedness. For Spinoza, blessedness, as an affective state of mind, is not merely a consequence—even an inevitable consequence—of a virtuous character. Spinoza identifies affects with ideas: Because the highest virtue is the continued possession of adequate ideas with blessedness as its accompanying affective state, it follows that the pursuit of blessedness is the pursuit of virtue. Virtue and blessedness are equally valuable and fundamental—for they prove in the end to be identical. Thus, Spinoza maintains, “Virtue itself [is] happiness itself, and the greatest freedom.”47 As emphasized at the beginning of this explanation, however, he adds in the last proposition of the Ethics: Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in blessedness because we restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we restrain our lusts. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 42)

The proposition that concludes his most important work reveals the radicalism of Spinoza’s revolutionary ethical thought. Blessedness is not the prize of self-control, as most moralists and religious thinkers lead us to believe. On the contrary, we can be virtuous because we are happy: Happiness itself is virtue.48 Nietzsche, whose kinship to Spinoza has been established, follows along these lines.49 Nietzsche maintains that only the powerful can afford to be happy and virtuous; happiness produces virtue; and conversely, vice emerges from unhappiness. This is contrary to religious teachings which preach that “good” behavior leads to happiness. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, power and happiness are synonymous; power is the essence of happiness. “Good” to him is “everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself,” and “bad” is “everything that

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

165

is born of weakness.”50 The phenomenology of power is important for self-reverence, whose absence leads to toxic resentment. This point is made throughout Nietzsche’s work, including The Gay Science where he notes, “One thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself …. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge.”51 Weakness is unproductive and incapable of yielding “good,” given that the will to power of the weak is thwarted. Thus, a “slave”-type may have more efficient power of whatever kind than a “master”-type; but if he feels powerless he will be prey to the envy and anger that are embodied in the reactive manner of valuing and the particular values of traditional morality. Thus, only the powerful can be “good,” and only the happy can be virtuous. Gilles Deleuze, contemporary research and the French philosopher Alain shed additional light on the complex issue of happiness and virtue. Deleuze targets the Nietzschean notion of resentment and Spinoza’s view of hatred and self-hated, which we call guilt52 as emotions to be avoided, given their destructive potential in the lives that harbor them. Evidence that even the smallest joy leads to more generous behavior shows in contemporary research that joy motivates morality.53 This means that joy is a sound basis for morality, if joy can be sustained. This is yet another argument that counters the argument asserting the undesirability of happiness, of those who prefer instead the sad Spinozistic passions. Montaigne’s hatred for sadness and, following Seneca, his affirmation of constant cheerfulness as the surest sign of wisdom are exemplary here.54 The French philosopher Alain argues that we ought to swear to be happy as a denial of despair. Happiness is a duty to others, for it is the best that we can offer.55 Does this mean that we owe it to others to be happy? However dramatic and seemingly altruistic the suggestion, we should not take on happiness as a moral duty that we owe others. Contra Albert Camus’s declaration in The Myth of Sisyphus (1959), we should not imagine Sisyphus happy, as there isn’t a necessity of being happy. If anything, we may be wary of our contribution to the happiness of others by being happy ourselves. Although there is certainly no moral or other necessity to be happy, we “should” nevertheless consider that our happiness contributes to others’ as well. Thus, contrary to common opinion, happiness is far from being

166

L. Amir

egoistical. It is not offensive on other counts, nor it is shallow or willingly ignorant of the world’s misery.56 A short commentary on two thinkers skeptical of happiness will help bring this discussion to a close. Schopenhauer argues notoriously against the very possibility of happiness in The World as Will and Representation.57 It is interesting to note that the philosopher’s notoriety came not from the pessimism now attributed to him but from his aphorisms on the happy life.58 Freud, Schopenhauer’s follower, echoes his signature pessimism in Civilization and Its Discontents where he writes that happiness is impossible: There is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regulations of the universe run counter it; one feels inclined to say that the intention that one should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.” (Freud 1961, 23)

Freud develops his thesis further,59 emphasizing that “The program of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled.” However, “we must not—indeed, we cannot—give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfillment by some means or other.”60 These stances against happiness are good preambles to the next topic which addresses, the feasibility of happiness.

3.2

The Feasibility of Happiness

André Comte-Sponville, the influential contemporary French philosopher, notes that happiness “has almost been completely ignored by contemporary philosophers, at least by those who have dominated the second half of the twentieth century.”61 This is a valid observation, as happiness has been mostly a subject of interest for the social sciences as well as psychology since the late development of positive psychology as a field. The assumption, however, is mistaken. Social scientists are primarily concerned with (subjective) well-being,62 a notion to be distinguished from happiness and another trendy field, positive thinking.63 Simply put, happiness does not merely consist in contentment; it constitutes an optimal,

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

167

objective state of human existence. Michael Bishop describes the main theories of happiness in contemporary philosophy: Three theories of well-being dominate the philosophical landscape: hedonism, Aristotelianism, and the informed desired theory. The basic idea behind hedonism is that your well-being is a function of the balance of your pleasure over pain ….The gist of Aristotle’s view is that well-being involves having a virtuous character that promotes your flourishing—an active, healthy engagement with the world …. And the informed desire theory holds that well-being involves getting what you want, usually on the assumption that you’re properly rational and informed. (Bishop 2015, 2–3)

The first kind of theories may be categorized as modern Epicureanism, optimistic about the triumph of pleasure over pain. The second kind is the amended revival of the Greek concept of Eudaimonia, and the third kind of theory may be best conveyed by Santayana’s view of happiness. I briefly present each group of theories and point to its weaknesses, beginning with the second and third groups and closing with the first. No longer a fashionable view of happiness, Eudaimonia is predicated on a Greek view of the mind which accounts for the ideal’s attraction and the apparent difficulty of implementing it. Its name discloses the divine attribute of the human mind. Anthony A. Long offers a clear explanation of the origin of Eudaimonia in Greek Models of Mind and Self (2015): Most literally Eudaimonia means a divinely favored dispensation. The daimon constituent of the word combines a generic sense of divinity with the notion of fate or fortune. By prefixing to daimon the adverb eu, which qualifies an activity or condition as excellent, the Greek language had a composite term for expressing the idea of the best possible human life, a condition of flourishing, prospering, doing extremely well. (Long 2015, 166)

This ideal is derived from Homer’s view of the discrepancy between immortals and human beings. “Whether by beauty, knowledge, strength, or happiness,” humans can “at best emulate and approximate” the ideals that Homeric gods represent. As “likeness to a god” is Homer’s highest

168

L. Amir

praise,64 the ideal of Eudaimonia is developed to reconcile and reduce the gaping difference between mortals and the divine: By invoking divinity in their ethics and psychology, the Greek philosophers proposed that there is an essential connection between the best life that exists in the universe—namely, the divine life—and the best life that human beings can achieve or aspire to achieve. The attribution of divinity to the mind means that human beings are naturally, not super-naturally as we moderns might think, endowed with the capacity to live a life of unqualified excellence, happiness, and contentment. (Long 2015, 168–69)

The ideal of Eudaimonia is best embodied in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle’s teachings. Take, for instance, Plato’s argument, “There is such a thing as objective moral health, and that is a necessary accompaniment of genuine mental health.” This makes the health of the soul “both an intellectual achievement and a virtue of character.”65 However, mental health is not considered through this lens anymore. Nor do we subscribe to Aristotle’s perspective that we may attain immortality through contemplation.66 Also seemingly outdated is the point that “living well requires constant practice, self-examination, and selfdiscipline,” that is, “systematic exercise (askesis).”67 Simply put: Happiness, as so construed, is an intensely demanding state of affairs because it requires human beings not only to cultivate their rationality but also to prioritize it above everything else, especially one’s instinctual wants and short-term bodily satisfactions. (Long 2015, 168–69)

Long’s observation is even truer when applied to the ideal that replaces Eudaimonia. Ataraxia, or peace of mind is an outgrowth of sociopolitical changes that occur as states are unified into an empire under Alexander the Great’s reign, challenging the viability of national identification and personal belonging. The King’s early death and the absence of an heir led to the chaotic aftermath that set the stage for the emergence of Hellenistic schools of thought including Stoicism, Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism. These philosophies are characterized by upholding peace of mind as constituting true happiness, marking a departure from what was understood by Eudaimonia.

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

169

The ancient ideals that consider the human mind as naturally divine are contested with the domination of Christianity during the Middle Ages. Happiness and peace of mind are replaced by God’s grace and the possibility of salvation through religious faith. The Hellenistic and Roman ideals are revived during the Renaissance with a religious touch of medieval Christianity. Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Santayana take on the philosophies of Epicureanism, Stoicism and Pyrrhonism incorporating the JudeoChristian notion of redemption, which result in philosophic redemptions in the here and now. Eudaimonism, especially in its Aristotelian form, is being revived today, but in a revised form68 that leaves out the notions of essence, quasidivine rationality and human telos. Stripped from these assumptions and of its objective element, little remains of Eudaimonia. As Alan Waterman observes,69 psychologists, and I believe those whom they counsel alike, have no use of an ideal of objective happiness. Both Montaigne and Santayana revise the ancient ideals to fit the modern temper. Their tolerance of various personal goals and the minimization of virtue’s role in the good life modernize these ideals.70 Montaigne’s writings are an example of philosophy in practice: We share Montaigne’s experience of life through reading, reflecting and imagining with the help of the concrete examples and metaphors that his humor supplies. There is no recipe to adopt, except following his example and crafting for ourselves a path to wisdom and happiness. Santayana’s writings offer the reader “sustained wisdom about the ideal good that could promise happiness and meaning in his life.”71 James Gouinlock further explains that, “Greek in inspiration,” Santayana’s is an ideal of the fulfillment and unification of human nature. Indeed, it aims at a harmony within the soul and with all the conditions upon which the life of the soul depends …. For any individual there is a highest good—the ideal activity that most fulfills his inmost love—and other goods are ordered in relation to this utmost good. (Gouinlock 2015, xxiii)

Santayana notes, “Happiness is something men ought to pursue, although they seldom do so.” He argues that a person may be happy “not merely

170

L. Amir

in the sense of having now and then an ecstatic moment, but happy in having light and resource enough within him to cope steadily with real things and to leave upon them the vestige of his mind.”72 He explains how this may be done, while formulating an “informed desire theory”: One effect of growing experience is to render what is unreal uninteresting …. The conditions of existence, after they are known and accepted, become conditions for the only pertinent beauty. In each place, for each situation, the plastic mind finds an appropriate ideal …. It rather breeds out of the given problem a new and singular solution thereby exercising greater invention than would be requisite for framing an arbitrary ideal and imposing it at all costs on every occasion. In other words, a happy result can be secured in art, as in life, only by intelligence. Intelligence consists in having read the heart and deciphered the promptings latent there, and then in reading the world and deciphering its law and constitution, to see how and where the heart’s ideal may be embodied.73

Santayana further maintains, “A free mind, like a creative imagination, rejoices in the harmonies it can find or make between man and nature; and, when it finds none it solves the conflict so far as it may and then notes and endures it with a shudder.”74 This leaves the problem we tackle unresolved because Santayana does not address the question of how what he proposes can be done. Though Santayana explains that we must learn to spontaneously love that which is right, he does not offer a theory of education, nor is it clear how one comes to accept “the conditions of existence,” or “solve the conflict” between man and nature, or, alternatively, “endure it with a shudder.” He does state explicitly the need for experience and intelligence, which raise the questions whether these can be learned or are innate, and if intelligence cannot be taught, whether his philosophy applies only to the few. The naturalistic views of happiness that Spinoza, Nietzsche, Montaigne and Santayana’s philosophies form seem more accessible than the Greek philosophies they draw from, as they exclude the ancient belief in the divinity of human reason. However, upon closer examination the modern views are more demanding in some regards than their Greek counterparts. For instance, Spinoza asserts at the end of the Ethics, “If the way I have shown

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

171

to lead to these things now seems very hard, still, it can be found.”75 Yet his philosophy requires adhering not only to determinism and pantheism, as Stoicism does, but also depends on accepting additional metaphysical assumptions, such as the relationship between body and mind. Nietzsche’s prescription of joy hardly follows from the presuppositions of his worldview.76 Santayana does not explain how we are to accept reality or cope with conflicts, and Montaigne, though helpful, leaves us alone to craft our happiness. Hedonism is the third and final theory of happiness we will address in this chapter. Hedonism’s claim that all and only pleasure is intrinsically valuable is outmoded, yet it has several variations. It regularly refined to capture our intuition that the gain of pleasure and especially the avoidance of pain accurately describe our normal behavior. The most basic form as developed by the Cyrenaics emphasizes momentary pleasures, while the most refined form is found in Epicureanism, whose recommended ascetic way of life has little contemporary appeal. Contrary to the Epicurean promise of peace of mind, Schopenhauer and Freud take hedonism as cause for skepticism about the viability of happiness. When comparing the amount of suffering in the world to the pleasure in it, we may find the balance wanting. And, it seems that we have a propensity to notice suffering rather than pleasure and to be bored of pleasure rather quickly, yet another form of suffering. Thus, the constant increase of pleasure required is not compatible with a stable and peaceful equilibrium. For Schopenhauer, “All satisfaction, or what is commonly called ‘happiness’ is really and essentially … always the satisfaction of a wish.”77 As satisfaction has no positive value in being just a deliverance from pain, Schopenhauer further deduces the negative nature of “all pleasure and happiness.”78 Desiring is suffering, but because desire cannot be fully satisfied and we cannot but desire, Schopenhauer concludes that happiness is unattainable. Ivan Soll notes that Schopenhauer allows for several degrees of unhappiness. Some may afford to be less miserable through “practical reason,” or the “wisdom of life.”79 Schopenhauer also offers strategies for finding solace in accepting unhappiness and its inevitability, pacing the cycle of desire, satisfaction and renewed desire.

172

L. Amir

Freud enumerates various techniques for fending off suffering, but further indicates that they either rest on illusions, provide only a mild satisfaction when compared to unbridled instinct or fail to shield us completely from suffering. He then addresses sexual love, which he considers as the model for all happiness, but argues that because our unhappiness is intrinsic to sexuality, sex cannot resolve it. As the remarks at the end of the fourth chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents make clear, something inherent in the sexual function itself thwarts complete sexual happiness: It is the aggression built in it. Indeed, an aggressive destructiveness, described by Freud as a libidinal destructive fury, is at the basis of human love. This leads to a heightened sense of guilt, which brings about the loss of happiness. Even if the guilt we feel about it is somehow taken away, that aggression cannot be quenched. If it would, it would represent the ego’s successful breaking down of the resistance of the world, or more fundamentally, of the difference between the world and the ego. Leo Bersani explains how for Freud, “we can adapt to that which makes us incapable of adaptation,” however, “to go any further would be to cure ourselves of being human.”80 Summing up the shortcomings of the various forms of happiness presented so far, we may note that Eudaimonism is viewed as unattractive nowadays for the following reasons: It emphasizes rationality, prioritizes long-term interests, ascribes essence to human nature, designates a universal goal for all and an objective measure of happiness. Santayana’s philosophy of happiness, taken here as an example of the informed desire theory, does not elucidate the means for accepting reality, solving conflicts or enduring them. The Hedonists, Schopenhauer and Freud urge us to minimize suffering in our lives—a worthy goal—though they are satisfied with a gradual minimization of unhappiness, rather than the lasting peace of mind that the Epicureans promise. The latter state is certainly attainable though at the cost of an ascetic life lived at a distance from the influence of societal values.81 In order to resolve our conflicts and endure what we cannot solve, we should effectively strive to minimize suffering, albeit gradually, while being fully aware of the failings of our rationality. Homo risibilis’ view of happiness seeks to incorporate motivations inspired by the theories of happiness presented above and overcome some of their shortcomings.

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

3.3

173

A New View of Happiness

The philosophical view of happiness I propose is neutral to whatever metaphysical or religious assumption anyone holds. It does not require commitment to assumptions about the universe or the kind of skepticism upon which the Pyrrhonist peace of mind is founded, regardless of any common ground that this theory may share with it. Along with its neutrality, the pleasure by which the premises generate beneficial outcomes makes the prospect desirable. We need only to remember that progress is gradual and proportionate to the amount of suffering that we are willing and able to convert into joy. It may be helpful to review the similarities that Homo risibilis’ view of happiness shares with former theories. First, while acknowledging the difficulty of being happy, I consider reducing suffering a worthy goal, however gradual the process, and thus I concur with Schopenhauer and Freud.82 Second, lasting happiness requires it to be predicated on reality. As our reality is composed of conflictual relations of various kinds, between the self and nature, among various persons and within the self, we tend to avoid conflicts unless we have a way that helps us withstand them. The consequence of avoidance is the failure to acknowledge and understand our desires, which can only lead to their repression. This pattern of behavior decreases our chances of getting at the lasting peace that we yearn for. Thus, only when we are convinced that there is a way out can we get into a conflictual relationship, or any relationship, be it with ourselves, others, or the world at large. To avoid conflict is evading ourselves, genuine encounter with others and true knowledge of the world because conflict is inherent to us through unfulfilled desires. The outcome of facing conflict may be harmonious, but many times it cannot be immediately harmonious, so some internal labor has to be done. The work of inner dialogue addresses unsatisfied desires and may eventually lead to accepting reality, which sometimes involves accepting ongoing conflict as well. This dialogue is a work of intelligence in relation to drives and emotions, which, if unaided by a mediator, may result in no communication and eventually in internal strife. My proposal thus complements the views of happiness proposed by the ancient Greeks and Santayana in enabling their valid offers to be

174

L. Amir

available to many. Recall the three theories of well-being that dominate the philosophical landscape. Whether one chooses to adhere to hedonism, Eudaimonism or the informed desired theory, the use of humor helps one reach the coveted goal. The basic idea behind hedonism is that your well-being is a function of the balance of your pleasure over pain: Homo risibilis transmutes tragic pain into comic pleasure, suffering into joy. The gist of Aristotle’s view is that well-being involves having a virtuous character that promotes your flourishing—an active, healthy engagement with the world only benefits from being freed from internal conflicts. Let me add that the Platonic version of Eudaimonism, which views in the harmony of the factions of the self the ideal state, benefits from the Homo risibilis’ approach: the tension between reason, emotions and desires may not be completely resolved to yield the static harmonious soul Plato reserves for philosophers; however, these tensions can be harmoniously held together by a humorous selfacquiescence that recognizes the place of folly within wisdom and graces one’s ridicule in masquerading as a fully harmonious being. How difficult it is to act as one person! Seneca used to say… Now humor enables the inner suppleness required for acting justly and unambiguously, albeit not rigidly, in relation to others. It may be the necessary ingredient the Platonic harmony needs to make it true to human nature and thus available to all. Finally, the informed desire theory holds that well-being involves getting what you want, usually on the assumption that you’re properly rational and informed. The inner work of humor that enables the plurilogue among the variety of our incompatible desires and between desires and reason helps deliberation by making some desires smile at their own immaturity and selfishness. All views of happiness can gain from incorporating the benefits humor brings. It enables self-knowledge and deliberation and mediates between reason and emotions. Humor’s inbuilt ambivalence as compassionate aggression, as truth and untruth, makes it uniquely fit for seizing the ambiguity of human life, especially in the process of change which lies at the core of philosophic self-education. Humor’s intrinsic relations with fear, guilt, shame and anger, together with its characteristic distancing

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

175

from them all, make it a conceptual tool appropriate for handling complexity. It thus fulfills a democratic value in making happiness a goal that many can approach. Considered in this light, humor enables the gradual exchange of tragic oppositions into comical incongruities. Comical incongruities help endure conflict and, eventually, dissolve it by yielding. The embrace of inevitable conflict, whether internal or external, dissolves the tension it generates. Accepting ourselves without shame, guilt, fear or anger liberates us from the ridicule of resisting the necessities of our nature. We exchange false dignity, which feeds on hiding our common defects, with genuine dignity that liberates us from the tragic feeling of life while retaining the tragic knowledge of reality. The conversion of suffering into joy through humor leads to emancipation. The steady joy that accompanies it deserves to be called happiness. As I opened this section quoting Bertrand Russell, I conclude it with another quote taken from the first chapter of The Conquest of Happiness: “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.” Though there certainly are some thinkers who are keen to defend the soul’s misery, such as William James, Russell adds that “very few men…will deliberately choose unhappiness if they see a way of being happy.”83 Russell is right. Humor has been presented here as a tool to bridge the discrepancies between philosophy and life, reasons and emotions, thoughts and actions. The systematic exercise of humor leads to the eventual acceptance of the human condition including the incongruities that define it. It empowers us to find success in embracing our failures, to make enchantment through disenchantment possible.84 These are the foundations for lasting happiness. The pleasurable ambience generated by humor makes its lessons instructive, if not memorable. This advantage is characteristic of Homo risibilis.

4

Time

We noted at the beginning of this study that desire is associated with time; we saw that Joshua Foa Dienstag ties the modern conception of time with pessimism85 ; and we know that religious redemptions tamper with

176

L. Amir

time. Does the view of humor as introduced here also imply an altered relationship with time? Do the three phases of one’s attitude toward the human predicament described in former chapters (the tragic, the comic and the resolution beyond the tragic and the comic) bring along interesting counterparts in terms of one’s perception of time?86 A pervasive feature of life that may create the need for redemption is the fear of death. Death and the derivative belief in the immortality of the soul are inherently associated with the notion of time. Frightened of time as he is of death, the human being either contemplates time or denies it entirely. Far from being an immutable constant, the sense of time is distorted by chemical substances, naturally altered states of consciousness, including dreaming and religious conversion, and by psychiatric disorders. The human being is inclined to change the rhythm of his temporal experience or escape from it altogether by making use of time’s relativity, perhaps out of the desire to escape violence, mainly his own, and the threat of helplessness and death which Schiffer has labeled “the trauma of time.”87 Peter Hartocollis explains how there is a universal need to escape from the boundaries of time, to exchange one’s sense of time with that of timelessness, to transcend from temporal existence into eternity. Such is religion’s main attraction, the promise of land there, as the Angel in St. John’s revelation puts it, “There shall be time no longer.” (Hartocollis 1983, 210–11)

Most theories of redemption, philosophic or otherwise, address the problem of time by offering their respective formulations of eternity or timelessness as alternatives to the Christian doctrine of eternal life. For example, Spinoza proposes to apprehend reality and oneself under the species of eternity, while Nietzsche offers the doctrine of eternal return.88 Santayana’s proposal to live in the eternal and Schopenhauer’s redemption through the negation of Will, which is a deliverance from time, are also good examples of such alternatives.89 In order to offer redemption as these philosophies do, humor must establish relationships with time, transcendence and eternity. It may be helpful to clarify what is meant by time and differentiate between psychological or lived time, as subjectively experienced, and

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

177

mathematical time, as objective time that is measurable by clock or calendar.90 I am referring here only to the former, to experiential time, which according to Bergson is not even-handed as it varies in depth and width.91 Various factors influence the subjective experience of time that passes: What we are doing,92 the amount of information processed, our mental content,93 mostly our desires and our normal or abnormal ways of handling inward conflicts.94 In what follows, I describe three relations to time: the tragic construction of our predicament, the intervention of humor as a comic construction of the predicament, and the resolution obtained through accepting human ridicule, respectively. The first is the rejection of time, change and flow. When passions rule and conflict is experienced as tragic, time seems to stand still and stagnates. The second sets time in motion through humor. The third is the timelessness that defines joy and happiness in resolving tensions between the comic and tragic.

4.1

Tragic Time

Time stands still in the grip of passions or psychological disorders: We are “stuck” in time when caught in a tragic mood or a difficult situation. A passionate person would seem to choose the present over the future. However, this is not the case. Though she may appear to be exercising autonomy over the present, that person is blinded by the passion that has long consumed her. Passion itself is an intemporal being, for Ferdinand Alquié it is the unconscious,95 while consciousness presupposes a doubling, a separation from the object of consciousness: Because passion denies time it cannot be clear or reflected. Through passion I conform, I muddle and coincide, I return to that which I have been, I twist upon myself rather than explicate myself and recede to primeval union. Through passion I tumble again into unconsciousness. (Alquié 1972, 59; my translation)

Passion’s denial of time causes error and generates fantasies. In failure, defeat and depression, in any preoccupation with the past, we feel as if time has stopped:

178

L. Amir

This is the eternity of pain or anguish, the eternal present, when neither future nor past make any sense…unable to relieve the pain and the anguish of the present that feels like eternity.…Pain is a human reality measured in time—slow or arrested time—the only reality that lasts. Fast time is in one’s consciousness selectively, off and on…when fear of death becomes intense, time defensively slows down or stops. (Hartocollis 1983, 211–12)

The experience of slow or arrested time usually indicates internal conflicts, an intra-systemic struggle that pitches the ego against the id or the superego.96 Not only do unresolved conflicts block time, but all personality disorders are related to troubles with temporality, to some interior dyschronia or achronia. Studies on the psychology of time indicate that “all psychotherapy is always more or less a chronotherapy.”97 The state of arrested time is characteristic of the tragic hero, who is “stuck in a state of incompleteness or immaturity,” held back by a fatal flaw or weakness.98 It corresponds to the first move we make when confronted with an instance of the human predicament. We tend to construe our condition as tragic, prioritizing personal needs, wishes and desires against the world and against the other, against our reason that frustrates us.

4.2

Setting Time in Motion

Self-consciousness requires treating oneself objectively. This involves critical assessment of what one has been and assumes that one does not coincide with oneself. This is a constant source of anxiety to a person’s consciousness, which controls all of his actions and evaluates all the progress he has made. Human capacity to sustain the doubling necessary for self-criticism replaces spontaneous affirmations, which can be mistaken as truth, with reflective judgments pruned by doubt. All reflection, doubt and negation presuppose time and are carried in it; thus, consciousness is temporal. Aristotle points to the necessary relation between self-consciousness and time consciousness in Memory and Recollection,99 and it is indeed in time that we liberate ourselves from that which is given, by evaluating it and assigning it to its proper place. Anxiety may employ humor as a defense mechanism to relieve itself. Humor’s mechanism is usually expressed in spatial metaphors:

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

179

Another way of approaching the connection between humor and freedom is the notion of distance…he has stepped back from what he has done to enjoy its bumbling absurdity.…Humor is valuable in giving us distance and perspective not only in situations where we are failing, but also in situations where we are succeeding. (Morreall 1983, 103, 105)

Alternatively, the workings of humor are explained in terms of playing with proportions, that humor is “keeping us larger than we do, and greater than what can happen to us.”100 But spatial metaphors about humor usually involve the removal of the agent from a situation, so that something is taken as happening to someone else, not to “me.” This device may be effective, yet should be avoided if possible, as it involves the unnecessary illusion that “this is not me!” It may also be morally objectionable as it implicitly suggests that some misfortune is inconsequential if it happens to another person (“It is a tragedy when it’s happening to me, but a comedy when it’s happening to others”). We seem to derive our notion of time from notions of space. This is especially true of time as perspective, that is, as past and future.101 The spatial distancing effect described above can also be obtained through an imaginary traveling in time, moving forward and backward, close and far from the present in the spatial paradigm. Distance by humor allows for changes in perception of life as it is. This means looking at the present as if it were the past, yet with the (kind) eyes of the future. Stephen Leacock’s observation that humor “views life, even life now, in as soft a light as we view the past,”102 seems to hold true. Humor’s relationship with time has not gone unnoticed. As noticed above, John Morreall maintains that in order to find a situation funny, we must be able to enjoy the incongruity in it. Enjoying the incongruity assumes that we are free from urgent practical concerns; we need to be practically disengaged from what is taking place. If the situation is incongruous but also dangerous, we are not amused, and some situations are too loaded with practical consequences for most people to find humor in them immediately, though “in retrospect they may seem funny.”103 Using again Marx’s statement that “Hegel notes somewhere, that all great world-historical facts and personages, so to say, repeat themselves, he forgot to add: first as tragedy, then as farce”,104 we recall that Goldsmith

180

L. Amir

proposes to extend this statement to include psychological phenomena. This is possible, she argues, because with time the subject detaches himself from whatever event may have caused his suffering and is able to view that event with serenity.105 Distancing oneself through time-imaginative traveling is the sole distancing possible in self-referential humor. Instead of thinking, “this is not happening to me,” in order to be spatially removed from the situation, we may think, “it did happen to me…once.” We do evoke, sometimes with pleasure, the dramas of the past—holidays ruined by rain, cars missing on a busy day, misfortunes amid an important endeavor. We can safely smile at misfortunes from the vantage-point of the present because being in the present implies having overcome the past. The scheme of the future-looking-at-the-past is better for various reasons than the device of substituting another person for myself. The time-traveling that humor affords is more effective as it is less avoidant of reality, more truthful to the facts and morally commendable as it does not involve belittling another’s misfortune. Humor, then, sets time in motion. This is how it liberates us from the tyranny of emotions, as both Morreall and Aaron Ben-Ze’ev note. Morreall maintains, “The person who can appreciate the humor in his own situation is liberated from the dominance of his emotions, and so he has a more objective view of himself.”106 For Ben-Ze’ev, humor’s survival value consists mainly in its functioning as a counterweight to the strong influence exerted by emotions and moods on our behavior.107 The perspective referred to in humor and emotions differs. Emotions represent the personal perspective of an interested agent—usually a limited and partial perspective. Humor, on the other hand, seems to be more related to intelligence than to emotions and “links different, apparently unrelated items within a more general perspective, generating a disinterested experience.”108 Humor enables us to take on a new perspective that is incongruent to the present one. The capacity to take another perspective opposes the partial nature of emotions, which makes humor incompatible with an intense emotional state.109 This is especially significant when the situation is perceived as potentially shaming or otherwise damaging to one’s selfesteem, as we have seen in the previous chapter: “Laughing at ourselves serves to distance us from the shaming situation as we join others in taking

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

181

a fresh perspective on the situation. The new humorous perspective also helps to reduce the significance of the shaming situation.”110 Thus, Viktor Frankl rightly maintains that “Humor more than anything else in the human make-up can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, if only for a few seconds.”111 I have proposed to see humorous distancing as setting time in motion, rising above to transcend the present by looking at it as if it were the past seen through the eyes of the future.

4.3

Transcending Time

The comic’s relationship with time is richer than what is at stake when humor sets time in motion. Susan Langer reminds us of comedy’s beginning as a celebration of eternity through Comus, a fertility rite, and how the god it celebrates symbolizes perpetual rebirth and eternal life.112 Robert Polhemus lists in Comic Faith the connections that transcend the historical genesis of the comic mood and religious consciousness. He argues that the exercise of the comic sense is a mode of religious consciousness. Miraculous transformations and the instantaneous casting-off of burdens and sufferings fill the comic imagination. The comic purges enmity and releases floods of emotions through play. The comic sense can cause a sensation of wholeness and integrity of being,113 yet Polhemus emphasizes that it is almost always brief and passing. When we are in a festive mood or are laughing, we go out of our anxious and reflective selves into a different state of being. The comic flow within us dissolves our sense of limitation. Time stands still, and we feel as if we are at the center of life. Mirth intensifies the moment, sanctifying life with the unselfconscious vitality it stimulates within us. No wonder, then, that “the act of laughter and the surge of the comic joy in a death-haunted, misery-prone creature could be, and sometimes has been, seen and felt as a natural intrusion of the miraculous into the self—that is, as religious experience.”114 Basic comedic plot grew out of the process of, and hope for, regeneration. However, Polhemus argues that Christianity has spiritualized the process for over two millennia by taking hold of the comic vision’s powers of consolation. At the same time, it suppresses or drastically minimizes the

182

L. Amir

cultural importance of other variations on comic plot and form. Having officially monopolized the narrative content and structure of human comedy, Christianity offers a comedy of the afterlife. Out of deep faith in it, we search for ways to supplement the divine comic vision, attempting to relate to the entire regenerative process of life. As the purpose of comedy is to strengthen our hold on life, Potentially the greatest effects available in comic art would seem to be attainable by combining the intensity of the comic moment—the mood of laughter and release—with the promise of some form of enduring life in which we have a part, and that is what the best modern comic fiction achieves. It asserts the power of the mind and body over the universe of death. (Polhemus 1980, 18–19)

What is the relationship with time that Homo risibilis establishes? Accepting oneself as ridiculous through the worldview I propose has been deemed redemptive in bringing stable joy and happiness to one’s life. An adage of the French poet and novelist Paul-Jean Toulet comes to mind: “Happy people do not have a (hi)story.”115 Since the present is good, longing for the past or yearning for the future make no sense—happiness remains constant. Not having a history or a story is to be oblivious of change and thereby of time. The Neo-Platonic view of happiness concerns itself directly with such a commitment to the present,116 and more generally, isn’t it what philosophers mean when maintaining that the good life is not necessarily the long life?117 In the psychological literature, the capacity to live in the present is identified as joy: When in appreciating its successes, one’s ego focuses its perception onto the present instead of orienting itself into the future or the past, a pleasurable affect may be identified, and indeed has been described in the literature as joy. (Bull 1951; Hartocollis 1983, 76)

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have associated such joy with transcendence and eternity. For the young Kierkegaard, “Humor is the joy that has overcome the world,” while for Nietzsche the decisive characteristic of joy is the eternity it aims at: “All joy wants—eternity.”118

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

183

Eternity as the everlasting present is defined by transcendence of time that characterizes some states of consciousness.119 According to the medieval mystics, it is the now as a smaller portion of time without an extension which may become everlasting so that time can come to a standstill. Contemporary psychologists maintain that we may speak of timelessness, as described by the mystics and other who claim to have experienced it, if we overcome all desires and wishes, including the expectations and demands of the superego. It is only then, they argue, that time as an experience will cease to exist.120 Is this the experience that the Greek philosophers refer to, of the sage living as a god among men? Along the same lines, techniques for meditation allude to eternity as “living in the present.”121 Finally, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the founder of positive psychology, retains a secular, modern and democratic version of this experience in the notion of “flow.”122 The form of eternity that the now affords differs from the refusal of time. According to Hartocollis, eternity can be timeless or timeful. The timeless sort of eternity is a condition characterized by intoxication: It is euphoria or oblivion, the blissful and ecstatic mystical experience or the state of consciousness that prevails when one is in love and in complete possession of the object of one’s love. It is the abiding now, the present that knows no temporal articulation that philosophers and theologians have spoken of. In this nunc stans, distinctions between the concepts of the now, earlier and later either fall away or are absent, not yet established.123 Timeful eternity, on the other hand, is that of pain and anguish, with time standing still as described above. Christianity represents hell as the timeful eternity of pain and anguish and paradise as the timeless eternity of euphoria. Hellenistic philosophers view mental suffering as hell as well. Humor may be the transition from one form of eternity to another, the only transition from hell to heaven available to us on earth. To conclude, among the conscious creatures that we know of, human beings may be the only species which can determine how to use the allotted lifespan. Freedom is essentially the freedom to dispose of our time, to order and determine its content.124 Thus, time can be “manipulated, annihilated in its forward progression, recaptured, relieved, undone, killed.”125 By selectively adopting temporal orientation,126 the human being can create

184

L. Amir

through the means of time or, alternatively, let himself be destroyed by it.127 It is often said that the individual is a history, and history a construction. Thomas Mann views time as “the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life.”128 Using humor to construct one’s history promises a rich account of both comic and tragic aspects of life, as well as the potential to overcome them to attain timeless and steady joy.

Notes 1. I do not refer to the higher state that Homo risibilis brings about as irony, contrary to various scholars who by this term designate a higher stage of the comic—“irony” (Morreall 1997), “comical irony” (Goldsmith 1991), “Pyrrhonist irony” (Gurewitch 1994) or “humorous irony” (Jankélévitch 1964). Moreover, the ironic smile Nagel (1971, 1987) and Feinberg (1980) recommend in addressing the human condition is alien to me. I use “humor” even in relation to human ridicule because the higher comical stage is characterized by sympathy and compassion. Foreign to irony, they are part of humor. This is no semantic divergence, however, as without sympathy and compassion the resolution of ridicule would not be possible (for irony, see Muecke (1966), Booth (1974), Attardo (2000a, b), and Giora (1998). 2. Critchley (1999, 222; see 2002, 119n12). 3. Marmysz (2003, 84–85). 4. Marmysz (2003, 152). 5. Marmysz (2003, 153). 6. Critchley (2002, 14). 7. Leacock (1938, 216). 8. Morreall (1983a, 105–6, 109–10). 9. Marx, 1852, Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon. 10. Goldsmith (1991, 118). 11. For Kierkegaard’s ethics of the comic, see Amir (2013a). 12. Richter (1964, 317–18). 13. That humor need not be intentionally funny is a significant point made by Steven Gimbel in his remarkable book, Isn’t It Cleaver: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy (Gimbel 2017, 39). 14. Diels and Kranz (1972) and Heraclitus, B51, 80.

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

185

15. Nietzsche (1954b, VI, Section 8). 16. Potkay (2007, 16, 96, 235). 17. Potkay (2007, 171). For an enlightening account of philosophers’ views of joy, see Lenoir (2015). 18. Nussbaum (2001a, 135). 19. Solomon (1976, 276). 20. Kohut (1977, 45). 21. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part III, Prop. 11 Scholium. 22. Nussbaum (1994, 399–400). 23. Cicero (1945, 4.6.12–13; 340–41). 24. Solomon (1999, 144). 25. Nietzsche (1974, Section 276; 1954b, X, Section 5). 26. Nietzsche, 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “On the Three Metamorphoses.” The tension between Nietzsche’s critical and positive philosophy is common knowledge in the literature. It is sometimes solved by dividing Nietzsche’s thought into periods, as Magnus and Higgins do (1996). For further discussion, see Amir’s Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 27. Nietzsche, 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, IV, “The Drunken Song.” 28. Wagner (1896, 40). 29. See Potkay (2007, Chapter 8). 30. Nietzsche, 1966, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 229; 1938, La volonté de puissance, II, 380. 31. Rosset, 1993, “The Cruelty Principle,” 83. 32. In the final apology which concludes the second letter, see Pascal, 1941, Provincial Letters. 33. For the difficulties inherent in Rosset’s view of joy, see Tellez (2009, 135–48). 34. I have nevertheless defended Spinoza’s ethics. See Amir (2010, 2012b); reprinted, respectively, in Amir (2017b, Chapter 4, 2018, Chapter 7). 35. Hales 2000. 36. For philosophical views of happiness, see McGill (1967), Quennell (1988), and Bok (2010). See also the anthology edited by Mulnix and Mulnix (2015). Valuable recent philosophical work has been conducted in other languages than English; see, in French, Comte-Sponville (2000), Lenoir (2013), and Bruckner (2000), among others. For further bibliography on happiness, see McMahon (2006, 471–72). 37. McMahon (2004, 22). 38. I have advanced this view in Amir (2015b).

186

L. Amir

39. Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, in Pojman and Vaughn, 2011, 345. 40. See Bok (2010, 49–51). 41. Vidal, originally in The New York Review of Books, May 12, 1983; quoted in Woodward 1988, 116. For the impression of serenity, see Wilson (1947, 50–51). 42. Santayana (1944, 157). 43. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 42. 44. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part IV, Prop. 18 Scholium. 45. Garrett (1996, 297). 46. The conatus is the tendency of a thing to persist in its own being. 47. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part II, Prop. 49 Scholium. 48. See Amir (2010, 2017b, Chapter 4). 49. See the bibliography in Amir, Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work under contract for de Gruyter). 50. Nietzsche, 1954b, Twilight of the Idols, Section 2; see also Section 57. 51. Nietzsche, 1974, The Gay Science, Section 290. 52. For Nietzsche, see Deleuze (1983, Chapter 4); for Spinoza, see Deleuze (1988, 25). 53. Finding a penny in the street, receiving a small gift makes people behave more generously. On that point, see Argyle (1987, 216–17). 54. Montaigne (1924) 1965, bk. III, 5; bk. II, 26. Although it is difficult to find proof of Spinoza’s debt to the Renaissance French philosopher, in Nietzsche’s case it is obvious enough. See Amir’s, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 55. “Il faut jurer d’être heureux”; “C’est un devoir aussi envers les autres que d’être heureux.” See Alain (1928, Chapter 92). 56. “How can you be happy in such a world?” Or to use Schopenhauer’s description of optimism, rather than happiness, it is “not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind” (Schopenhauer 1966, I, 326). 57. Schopenhauer (1966, I, 408–9; II, 164, 573; see 1974, II, 291ff, 416). On that topic, see Soll (2012). 58. Schopenhauer (1974; see also 2004). 59. Freud (1961, 23–30). 60. Freud (1961, 30). 61. Comte-Sponville (2000, 10).

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

187

62. See Eid and Larsen (2008), Huppert et al. (2003), Diener and BiswasDiener (2008) for scientific research of subjective well-being and wellbeing in general. Another version of happiness, which translates Eudaimonia as personal expressiveness, has been recently proposed by positive psychologists such as Alen S. Waterman (1993). Richard Kraut maintains that Eudaimonia indeed captures the sense of “happiness,” and should thus compete with happiness as personal well-being. However, to see Eudaimonia as (relative) personal expressiveness is a mistranslation into psychological terms for the purpose of assessing or measuring it through empirical research (Kraut 1979). 63. For positive thinking, see Peale (1952), and Fletcher (1897) which anticipates Peale. See also Ehrenreich (2009) for criticism. 64. Long (2015, 51–52). 65. Long (2015, 109). Aristotle’s view of ethics for the many as strictly political and depending upon right practice has been occluded by the emphasis on the Christian Aristotle––the contemplative Aristotle of the tenth chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics––in contradistinction to the Islamic Aristotle, followed by the Jewish Aristotle as preserved in the Middle Ages (Dobbs-Weinstein 2015, 195–96). 66. Long (2015, 25). 67. Long (2015, 110). 68. For example, Russell (2012) and Kraut (2007). 69. Waterman (1993). 70. This strategy may be an epicureanized Eudaimonia, although the idea that virtue is pleasurable is already found in Aristotle. 71. Gouinlock (2015, lii). 72. Santayana (2015, 134). 73. Santayana (2015, 134; see also Santayana 1906). 74. Santayana (2015, 135). 75. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 42 Scholium. 76. Richard White concludes his criticism of Nietzsche as follows: “And in spite of what Nietzsche says, joy cannot be achieved through an act of will, even by affirming the eternal recurrence of all things” (White 2013, 126). On this matter, see Amir (2014a, Chapter 3 and my additional manuscripts on Nietzsche). 77. Schopenhauer (1966, I, 319). 78. Schopenhauer (1966, II, 575). 79. Books 3 and 4 of The World as Will and Representation (1966) as well as a large part of Parerga and Paralipomena (1974) address the topic

188

L. Amir

of happiness. For strategies to reduce unhappiness, see Schopenhauer (1966, I, 315–19) and Soll (2012). 80. Bersani (2009, 132). 81. The relationships between happiness and meaning or value, and between meaning and joy should be addressed at this point to better understand what happiness is and what Homo risibilis offers. I engage with a recent extensive study of the meaning of life in order to address these topics (Metz 2013). Thaddeus Metz differentiates between happiness and meaning and argues that both are forms of well-being, yet in a different way. I believe he reaches this conclusion because he conflates happiness with pleasure of sorts. This restrictive idea of happiness recurs in his otherwise excellent account of the question of the meaning of the life and the original answer he offers to it. To take an example, he argues that philosophers “tend to hold either hedonism or desire satisfaction theory. Hedonism is the view that happiness is constituted by pleasure, while the desire satisfaction theory is the view that happiness is a matter of obtaining whatever one wants” (Metz 2013, 73). This twofold division does not do justice to the history of the two subjects: The majority of the philosophers who have traditionally addressed these issues won’t recognize themselves in this division. The ethical ideals of eudaemonia (flourishing), ataraxia (peace of mind), salus (salvation) and (personal) redemption here and now (Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Santayana) provide meaning as well as happiness: Peace of mind is considered the highest happiness, and salvation, either in the afterlife or in this life is termed blessedness. Once the telos is taken out of the picture, life may lose purpose, but not meaning. The pursuit of a lucid life lived according to a pruned perception of reality as advocated among others by Epicurus or Spinoza, or lived in accordance with what we can know about it, as endorsed by Pyrrhonism, gives life meaning. The essays in Leach and Tartaglia’s The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers attempt to show exactly that (2018). It is only when one disengages of all publication prior to 2013, as Metz does (Metz 2013, 2), that one can reach a restrictive view of happiness, which also disconnects it from the meaning or the value of life. But Metz seems also to will such an outcome. To my surprise, after undertaking an outstanding research on the meaning of life, Metz misses the opportunity, by his own account, to “become all that much happier or better off by undertaking such research.” Despite his success, which

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

189

he tells us made him feel great about “his apparent discovery,” he nevertheless writes: “Those feelings are butterflies, beautiful creatures that quickly fly away, abandoning one to the unattractive, heavier feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, and worry” (Metz 2013, 2). And about what? “… that one is not writing enough, or that one is not writing well enough, or that editors will not accept for publication what one has written well enough, or that people will not read what one has written well enough and published, or that they will read what one has written well enough and published, but not recognized that it is written well enough to critically discuss. The spiral continued for a while” (Metz 2013, 2). Nor is the notion of joy present in Metz’s account; at least, it is not indexed. I take note of this because while joy is differentiated from pleasure by various philosophers, joy can be associated with meaning even if pleasure is rejected. For example, Bergson argues in L’Energie spirituelle (Spiritual Energy) that philosophers who speculate on the meaning of life and human destiny (or destination) often do not notice that nature has bothered to enlighten us on this. Joy is the precise sign nature gives us to indicate that we have reached our destination. Joy, rather than pleasure, because the latter is an artificial device imagined by nature to ensure that a living being conserves life. Pleasure does not indicate the direction in which life is going. However, joy always announces that life has triumphed; the greatest joy comes from creating, and the greater the creation the greater the joy (Bergson 1919). I quote at length in the original this remarkable text, which enlightens us on the possible relation between joy and meaning. It may also explain how the creative enterprise that Homo risibilis is brings joy and how it may fulfill the requirements of a meaningful life by the immanent self-transcendence it enables: Les philosophes qui ont spéculé sur la signification de la vie et sur la destinée de l’homme n’ont pas assez remarqué que la nature a pris la peine de nous renseigner là-dessus elle-même. Elle nous avertit par un signe précis que notre destination est atteinte. Ce signe est la joie. Je dis la joie, je ne dis pas le plaisir. Le plaisir n’est qu’un artifice imaginé par la nature pour obtenir de l’être vivant la conservation de la vie; il n’indique pas la direction où la vie est lancée. Mais la joie annonce toujours que la vie a réussi, qu’elle a gagné du terrain, qu’elle a remporté une victoire: toute grande joie a un accent triomphal. Or, si nous tenons compte de cette indication et si nous suivons cette nouvelle ligne de faits, nous trouvons que

190

L. Amir

partout où il y a joie, il y a création: plus riche est la création, plus profonde est la joie. La mère qui regarde son enfant est joyeuse, parce qu’elle a conscience de l’avoir créé, physiquement et moralement […] celui qui est sûr, absolument sûr, d’avoir produit une oeuvre viable et durable, celui-là n’a plus que faire de l’éloge et se sent au-dessus de la gloire, parce qu’il est créateur, parce qu’il le sait, et parce que la joie qu’il éprouve est une joie divine (Bergson 1919). 82. Homo risibilis would have pleased Freud because it systematically uses humor, the sole defense mechanism he deems healthy [1927] 1928. However, he would have objected to the radical liberation this worldview, or any other, purports to offer. 83. For James’s defense of the sick soul, see Chapter 1 above. See Russell (1930, Chapter 1). 84. If I may borrow Herman de Dijn’s apt description of Spinoza’s philosophy: “Enchantment is possible through disenchantment” (de Dijn 1996, 261). While it is certainly true of Spinoza’s philosophy, this achievement comes at the price of accepting various metaphysical assumptions, as explained above. 85. See the introduction in Dienstag (2006). 86. I rely on previously published work on time and humor, in the proceedings of the “Time, Performance, Transcendence” conference (Amir 2010). 87. Schiffer (1978). 88. See Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics; Savan (1994). See Nietzsche, 1974, The Gay Science; 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Amir’s Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work in process for de Gruyter’s Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung). 89. See Amir’s manuscript, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). 90. On human time, see Gale (1967, 293–386). For an excellent introduction to the philosophy of time, see Bardon (2016). 91. Bergson ([1907] 1911). 92. Axel (1925). 93. Sherover (1975, 553). 94. Hartocollis (1983). On time and well-being, see Velleman (1991). 95. Alquié (1972, 26). 96. Hartocollis (1983, 11, 79).

6 The Good Life I: Joy, Happiness, Timelessness

97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

116. 117.

118.

119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

191

Levy-Valensi (1965, 100, 120). Booker (2004, 330). Aristotle (2007). Penjon (1893; quoted in Eastman [1921] 1972, 188). Such as view has been defended already in the nineteenth century. See Guyau (1890, 29) and Hartocollis (1983, 13). Leacock (1938, 216). Morreall (1983b, 105–6, 109–10). See the opening image of Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon), 1852. Goldsmith (1991, 118). Morreall (1983a, 105). Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 64). Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 364–65). See Amir (2014a). Lewis (1992, 515). Quoted in Kallen (1968, 365). Langer (1960, 82). Gelven (2000). Polhemus (1980, 7–8). “Les gens heureux n’ont pas d’histoire.” This is a shortened version of “if happy people don’t have a (hi)story, they’d better not tell it” (“Si les gens heureux n’ont pas d’ histoire, ils feront bien de ne pas nous la raconter). See Plotinus, 2018, Enneads, I, 5; Chrétien (1981). There are many accounts of what a good life requires. I present some elements of it in this chapter and the next one. In addition to the philosophers I directly engage with, see the valuable accounts given by Frankfurt (2006, 2014), Gibbard (2003, 2008), Hurka (1993, 2011), Kekes (1995), Osborn (2017), and Singer (1993, 1995). Kierkegaard, 1967–1978, Journals and Papers, II, 262 [1716]; Nietzsche, 1954b, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part IV, “The Drunken Song,” Section 10. On this topic, see, for example, Guitton (1966, 9). Hartocollis (1983, 169). Chopra (1998). Csíkszentmihályi (1990). Loewald (1978, 211). On this point, see Kümmel (1966, 32). Hartocollis (1983, 210).

192

L. Amir

126. Brumbaugh (1984, 2). 127. Levy-Valensi (1965, 123). 128. Mann (1947, 541).

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

The final chapter spells out Homo risibilis’ ethical and epistemological benefits as a contemporary philosophy within a global world. It introduces the social and political assets that complements the personal gain this worldview secures. The needs for a common ethical practice, for an openended worldview that accords with various beliefs, and for a shared ideal of wisdom in the current global world should be addressed by philosophers. Based on an explicitation of contemporary demands and an assessment of the viability of relevant answers, this chapter establishes Homo risibilis’ capacity to address them more effectively than other approaches. The worldview proposed founds an ethics of compassion without metaphysical requirements, makes skepticism emotionally palatable and turns a lucid approach to the human condition into a pleasurable state.

1

Compassion: A Shared Ethics

Serene joy or happiness are valuable states, first intrinsically but also instrumentally as they yield ethical benefits. Benedict Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche argue this point and contemporary research on the effects of © The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5_7

193

194

L. Amir

joy on beneficence corroborate it: Finding a penny in the street or receiving a small gift at the workplace makes us more generous and, at least momentarily, more inclined toward kindness and fellow feeling.1 Spinoza asserts that virtue follows happiness, which he defines as constant joy or blessedness: “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in blessedness because we restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we restrain our lusts.”2 Equally valuable and fundamental, virtue and blessedness prove to be identical: “Virtue itself [is] happiness itself, and the greatest freedom.”3 Contrary to what most moralists and religious thinkers hold, Spinoza emphasizes that because we are happy we can be virtuous: Happiness itself is virtue. Nietzsche affirms a similar thesis: We can be generous because we are joyful. He argues that neighbor benefits from a happy person with strong and healthy instincts because self-love leads to an affirmative attitude toward the world. Freedom and power allow magnanimity toward others. Conversely, a person in inner disharmony is dangerous; being vicious is nothing else than expressing self-discontent and spite leads to the condemnation of life. Nietzsche makes of beneficence to one’s neighbor an outcome of happiness. Virtue is the by-product of a wholesome life, a view he attributes to Goethe, who says that “joyfulness is the mother of all virtue.”4 The joy that Homo risibilis affords may lead to virtue in the manner indicated by Spinoza or Nietzsche. But the worldview I recommend has an additional asset that these philosophies lack: The egalitarianism that follows from the awareness of our ridicule annuls the differences between individuals implied in Spinoza and Nietzsche’s philosophies. To understand this point, we need to clarify the place that comparison holds in emotions. It is common knowledge that many emotions are self-centered. However, emotional self-centeredness is related to others: Central studies point to the comparison that lies at the basis of emotions. For example, Robert Solomon asserts that “every emotion is a subjective strategy for the maximization of personal dignity and self-esteem,” more concerned with our own security and esteem than it is with accuracy or fairness.5 And Aaron Ben-Ze’ev conjectures that all emotions are somehow founded on comparison to others.6 If these scholars are right, the ridiculous human being

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

195

(the outcome of the homo risibilis worldview) is unaffected by, or unrelated, even, to the comparative emotions of envy, jealousy or anger. This is because the awareness of shared ridicule equalizes everyone onto an even playing field, eliminating anything that may serve as an object of comparison. Dignity and self-esteem are not built on comparison, according to Homo risibilis: The only kind of self-esteem available now that our ridicule has been embraced originates in our sense of truthfulness. If made our supreme maxim, following Immanuel Kant, it is “the maximum of inner worth (of human dignity).”7 This means that Homo risibilis does not assume that competition is inbuilt in human relations, as Hegel maintains. Nor does one rejoice in the other’s nothingness because he represents no threat, as Hegel’s analysis of comedy intimates.8 Alain Badiou has already argued the former point: We can grant Hegel that self-consciousness is imbued with the existence of others, but there is no proof of the necessary deadly antagonism that Hegel assumes as the outcome of the meeting of two self-consciousnesses.9 There seem to be no impediment inherent to human nature to endorsing an egalitarian creed, based on our common ridicule, which can serve as a basis for an ethics of compassion. Society pits each of us against the other, using the fear of ridicule to keep us at bay through shame or guilt. Recall the examples of the move from laughing at others to laughing at ourselves given in Chapter 3: Already Democritus reportedly say, “You people laugh at one another instead of laughing at yourself,” Seneca refuses to laugh at his wife’s fool, because he sees himself as no lesser a fool and more available if one feels like laughing, a lesson Michel de Montaigne incorporates by endorsing the project of reforming himself through humor rather than educating others through ridicule. To these examples, we may add George Santayana’s view that subjectivity is normal madness, and recalling that we are all mad here, attain to the vision where differences subside and common ridicule emerges even more so when we attempt, as we all do, to hide it.

196

L. Amir

The ethics of compassion we reach through Homo risibilis is akin to that recommended by Christianity, Buddhism and by Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which attempts to synthesize both religions. However, the compassion offered relies neither on the metaphysical presuppositions required by religious ethics nor on those implied by Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The independence from metaphysical prerequisites that Homo risibilis affords in founding compassion on a leveling vision of humanity is a remarkable asset in the modern, global world in which none of the religions and no philosophy dominates. I what follows, I explain the reasons for preferring compassion as the content of an efficient ethics among the neighboring alternatives of sympathy, empathy or pity and the various ideals of indiscriminate love of humanity conceived by philosophies and religions from both the East and the West. I first differentiate between sympathy, pity, empathy and compassion; I then single out compassion also in relation to various views of indiscriminate love of humanity while taking into account the criticisms voiced against these visions of egalitarian love by Sigmund Freud and Karl Popper; finally, I explain why Homo risibilis is to be preferred to competing visions, both religious and philosophical, that establish an ethics of compassion.10

1.1

Sympathy

I begin by differentiating sympathy from empathy, using Lauren Wispé helpful distinction. Sympathy “refers to the process whereby the pain of the sufferer is brought home to the observer, leading to an unselfish concern for the other person. Empathy refers to the process whereby one person tries to understand correctly the subjectivity of another person, without prejudice.”11 For instance, though it may be difficult to sympathize with a murderer, we may reject wrongful actions while empathizing with the person. The term “sympathy” can be found in frequent use in eighteenthcentury British texts referring to the emotional state of pity, but in contemporary use, it has taken on a more intense connotation, hinting at a higher level of suffering in both the person experiencing the emotion and the relating person. People who are more sensitive to their emotions are

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

197

said to be more likely to admit to “sympathy” than to “pity.” The notion of sympathy as commonly used today, contrary to Adam Smith’s use,12 for example, differs from the notion of empathy; a malicious person who delights in the consideration of another person’s distress can be seen as empathetic, though not as sympathetic. Much like pity, sympathy is associated with judgment of another person’s situation and concerned with a person’s best interests. Etymology offers some insight here. The English word pity, the French pitié, the Italian pietà, and the German Mitleid or Mitgefruhl have common roots. They originate in eleos and oiktos, Greek words for the Roman pietatem (nominative pietas) or misericordia, translated from the Hebrew word hesed. The Latin word caritas led the evolution of compassion, often used interchangeably with pity.13

1.2

Pity

Pity is criticized often in the history of philosophy. Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Locke, Kant and Nietzsche, among others, reject it for various reasons.14 The second tradition following Aristotle, notably advocated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, choses pity as an ideal.15 Aristotle argues that pity is a painful emotion directed at another person’s misfortune or suffering.16 Martha Nussbaum outlines three cognitive conditions that are necessary and sufficient for pity. First, the suffering is serious, it is not trivial. Second, the person is undeserving of suffering. Third, the person feeling pity has possibilities in life just as the suffering person does. Nussbaum herself replaces the third requirement, as other proponents of pity do, with the following suggestion: The emotion of pity itself implies an interest in well-being and a person’s good life, which reflects the observer’s ethics.17 Pity with regard with a stranger or a person of distant relation may be problematic for three reasons. First, distance weakens and reduces the potential for action. Second, pity may be faulty of paternalism because it originates in a subjective definition of well-being or flourishing that may contradict the values and norms of another society. Third and most importantly, the judgment involved may interfere with aiding the pitied

198

L. Amir

person. Judgment of this nature tends to see others’ suffering as justified or otherwise deserved. I believe that a less judgmental and more compassionate vision is needed, one that aids regardless of whether the suffering is deserved. Many formulations of an indiscriminate love for humanity, of philanthropy or compassion are found in Eastern and Western thought. I address first Western then Eastern views, and I follow with criticism of the viability and desirability of the various ideals of indiscriminate love for humanity described.

1.3

Eastern and Western Indiscriminate Loves of Humanity

The Stoics lead the history of Western ideals about the love for humanity. Their kosmou politès, the view that holds that each individual is a citizen of the universe, goes hand in hand with the kind of philanthropy that they promote, though they reject pity because it disrupts peace of mind. Such lack of compassion has often been criticized by philosophers. Nussbaum draws a connection between the Stoics’ eradication of emotions and their failure of initiating social and political reforms. She writes, “To respect a slave as a human being is, as Stoic texts make clear, perfectly compatible with perpetuating and endorsing the political institution of slavery.” Compassion, “which makes the slave’s pain real for oneself and acknowledges its significance, would naturally lead in the direction of material and institutional change.”18 In emphasizing virtue as the only value of significance, the Stoics do not acknowledge pain; it is this rejection that is responsible for the lack of Stoicism’s revolutionary influence. Nonetheless, the Stoics introduce the notion of love for humanity to the West.19 Stoicism has been anti-nationalist and anti-sectarian as early as the third century BC, championing rational consideration for the good of all involved. The Stoic preoccupation with collective well-being and rationality, also promoted by the Cynics, may be better appreciated in light of Judaic ideas. Though loving “one’s neighbor” is one of Judaism’s most important principles, the differentiation between Jews and Gentiles is overcome only

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

199

in the mystical tradition, the Kabbalah. It is the Kabbalah’s central text, the Zohar, which posits love for the neighbor as a foundational principle.20 Christianity has a prominent role in promoting compassion with an emphasis on love for one’s enemies, extending far beyond the traditional Jewish teachings. However revolutionary the notion, St. Augustine already qualifies this precept as he deems it an impossible task. He argues that the moral universe we occupy must come from relationships with other people. As it is not possible to have contact with every single member of humanity, love is best directed to the people that are nearby, to groups where we belong. While love for the whole of humanity is inherently commendable, practice is modulated to this extent of proximity: All … men are to be loved equally; but since you cannot be of assistance to everyone, those especially are to be cared for who are most closely bound to you by place, time, or opportunity, as if by chance. (Augustine 1958, 126)

Some Christian thinkers deny natural human love. Inherently flawed, according to Martin Luther, we are only able to act as vehicles for God’s love. Alternatively, some believe that God’s grace gives humanity the capacity to love.21 Still, Irving Singer rightly notes, “in either event, Christianity, which calls itself the religion of love, must face the anomaly of believing that its own practitioners, however devout, cannot love anything except in a secondary manner.”22 Christian love for humanity has been contradicted by the wars against heretics, both confirmed and suspected, which are part of this religion’s history, and by the other values it upholds which undermine love as the critical value at the heart of Christianity.23 A more reliable and consistent conception of indiscriminate love for humanity may be found in Eastern traditions. Confucius diverges radically from traditional Chinese ideology by creating the concept of the superior one, the wise, sympathetic and valiant. This is a person who “studies the way [Tao] and loves man,” concerned with morality, not profit. Though he argues that “by nature men are alike but through practice they have become far apart,” Confucius does not provide an explanation of how one may become this ideal version of man. One of his notable disciples, Mencius, offers to explain how we may be certain of the human being’s ability to be good. He identifies the “Four

200

L. Amir

Beginnings” of humanity (jen), righteousness (i), propriety (li) and wisdom (chih) that people possess. Drawing on the observations of children and their ability to love their parents as well as the seemingly universal intuition to save a child if she is in a dangerous situation, he concludes that human nature is inherently good. Scholars of the Classical Age concern themselves with the question of how order may arise from chaos. Mo Tzu argues that “partiality should be replaced by universality,” for egotism and partiality cause chaos. This reflects his deep dissatisfaction with Confucianism and the “partial love (pieh ai)” it advances, which prompts him to propose an ideal of universal (or undifferentiated) love (chien ai). Mo Tzu’s teachings encourage the consideration of the well-being and welfare of others as much as that of one’s own, resisting Mencius’s and the Confucian concentrated attention to one’s own parents at the expense of others. Mo Tzu makes great effort to illustrate universal love as practical in life and as a divine sanction from Heaven. Unlike most Chinese philosophers, Mo Tzu’s characterization of Heaven is similar to the Western notion of God. It is portrayed as loving all of humanity and as the origin of the doctrine according to which people ought to love one another. Chuang Tzu deems Mo Tzu’s notion of love too narrow; to the Taoist, the sole and proper “object” of love is defined as the totality of all processes and things. He teaches that one should harbor love not only for life but also for death, injustice, war and all oppositions, for both good and bad.24 Buddhism sees sympathy for others as insufficient, as without any specification of our personal relationship to others, of any obligation or responsibility to help another, it is emotionally and morally shallow. The love from compassion, it argues, makes our attitude and behavior toward others more consistent than the indeterminate sense of camaraderie with others that sympathy affords. Imagination is used to identify ourselves in and with others, reflecting the suffering that we are prepared to help alleviate or share, even when avoidance is an available option. Buddhism best understands the employment of the imagination in the functioning of compassion, among all other world religions that do. Its aim is to awaken loving-kindness felt equally for all.25 Before the Buddha became a divine entity, he was Gautama who refused to accept his earned

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

201

Nirvana, refusing to go to paradise until the remaining suffering in all of life is addressed. His perfection rests in infinite compassion: As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving kindness. (Monroe 1995, 143)

This universal love is also attainable by men and women who strive toward salvation through diligence.26 It remains true, however, that this kind of love and adherence to other moral principles are instrumental to salvation and are of no use after Enlightenment is achieved. Of the remaining Eastern religions, the Iranian schools are the most significant.Though there are no extant communities inspired by Zarathustra’s Mazdeism and by the Sufi mystics, both theories advance ideas equivalent to the Christian concepts of love: to love your neighbor as you would any human being.27 David Cooper notes in his helpful study of world philosophies that “Many Sufis—at least until they fell afoul of Islamic Orthodoxy—liked to stress the affinity between their doctrines and those of Christian anchorites, or even Buddhists.”28 Western modern philosophers, including Henri Bergson, Arthur Schopenhauer and George Santayana, offer variations of the Christian notion of indiscriminate love. Bergson differentiates between the “closed morality” that comes from a person’s instinctual sense of obligation, and the “open morality” that emerges from identifying with people’s unique individualities. He hopes for an open, utopian society in which everyone loves one another, doing good not due to a voice of conscience but out of a spiritual impulse to shape the world and contribute to its goodness. This is the impulse of saints and heroes, those who transcend the limited morality of confined groups and are drawn naturally by love and compassion. Bergson argues that a superior, moral impulse may utopianly replace close societies with open ones.29 Bergson’s controversy with David Hume about the differentiation of loves is worth relating. Bergson distinguishes the love for humanity from love on other levels, for one’s family or one’s country. Hume makes a

202

L. Amir

similar remark, noting that our emotions for those close to us are significantly different from the emotions we have for those that are distant. Nonetheless, he sees humanitarian love as possible, which allows us to extend sympathetic concerns for others based on our own experiences of life. Given sympathy’s limitation in scope, Hume argues that we generalize our sentiments toward others through our thoughts. We treat everyone with similar regard out of the judgment that we are all the same, while the people with whom we sympathize are limited to those that we encounter.30 Bergson disputes this point, establishing a different mode of emotions in order to distinguish love for humanity from other loves. Another ideal worthy of attention is the universal compassion Arthur Schopenhauer formulates. The kind of love that Schopenhauer recommends involves caring enough about others to treat them as joint manifestations of life while also recognizing that they are different. Personal love or romantic relationships between people manifest the kind of love recommended, but only sympathy and compassion can be focused on co-existence in the hostile world and through the pains of life. One does not have to agree with Schopenhauer when he claims that existence itself causes suffering, out of want and need and the denial of their satisfaction.31 Still, he may be right in thinking that sympathy and compassion, or Mankelieb, can be directed toward suffering of any kind and that these responses unite us most effectively with all living things. Schopenhauer deems his proposal the most religious or truly metaphysical of all theories of love. He sees his philosophy as a systematic account of the intuition that the Western and Eastern mystics manifest by denying the metaphysical Will and develops his ethics as a corrective of the Kantian view that excludes all kinds of fellow feeling. Although he does not explain how we may attain to the compassion that he so greatly admires, we can infer the requirements for compassion from the conditions for the salvific negation of Will that he provides: The ethical change of heart may take place through personal tragedy or conceptual understanding as brought about by his philosophy, although he often writes of the knowledge required as a sort of grace. However, these views come at a price. Schopenhauer’s philosophy demands admitting the illusory nature of individuality. Bergson’s thought is grounded in the mysticism of intuitionism. Judaism, Christianity and

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

203

Mazdeism are religions, Mo Tzu’s love is predicated on his vision of Heaven, and Sufism is a mystical view. Buddhism requires a few metaphysical assumptions which are difficult to accept, nonetheless. The objective to detach compassion from the presuppositions that metaphysics and religion impose seems a valuable one, as it makes compassion equally available to all. Homo risibilis accomplishes this objective and establishes an ethics of compassion on a common philosophy of vulnerability and fallibility which is independent from metaphysical or religious assumptions. It is for this reason that I add this worldview to the list of respectable philosophies and religions that advocate an ethics of compassion. In attempting to assess the viability of a common ethics in a global world, the final view of love I address is Santayana’s original theory, which draws an explicit line between love for humanity attained through reason and that attained through spirituality. A “Catholic atheist,”32 and a follower of Schopenhauer, Santayana seeks to unite materialism and Platonism.33 He dedicates a chapter of his Dialogues in Limbo to the topic of love, in which a Stranger and Socrates compare two ways in which one can love humanity. One represents the life of reason and the other the life of pure spirituality. Socrates proposes “philanthropy,” “the love of an idea, and not of actual men and women.” Philanthropy strives for the well-being of all people, the fulfillment of desires and a “perfect humanity.” The Stranger, on the other hand, argues that “any adoration of mankind is mere sentimentality, killed by contact with actual men and women. Toward actual people a doting love signifies silliness in the lover and injury to the beloved, until that love is chastened into charity.” By the “charity” that the Stranger proposes, Santayana appeals to the medieval interpretation, caritas, as somewhat godlike: “A sober and profound compassion … succoring distress everywhere and helping all to endure their humanity and to renounce it.”34 Spiritual life, according to Santayana, is a life committed to charity, transcending the search for perfection and aspiring emancipation from the world. As the Stranger claims, it “is less than philanthropy in that it expects the defeat of man’s natural desires and accepts that defeat; and it is more than philanthropy in that, in the face of defeat, it brings consolation.”35 This debate may be summarized by Socrates’s remark that “philanthropy

204

L. Amir

is a sentiment proper to man in view of his desired perfection, and charity a sentiment proper to a god, or to a man inspired by a god, in view of the necessary imperfection of all living creatures.”36 Santayana closes the dialogue by merging the Greek and Indian ideals. The Greek looks to harmonize interests and the Indian argues for self-interested pursuit. Santayana’s philosophy of love is described more clearly in his essay, “Friendship,” which responds to the accusation that his later philosophy considers all relationships as means to the attainment of spiritual purity. He explains that charity “not being intrinsic either to love or to friendship requires the intervention of imaginative reason, by which we detach ourselves from our accidental persons and circumstances and feel the equal reality of all other persons in all other plights.”37 He does not limit his appreciation for charity, but extends it to love and philanthropy as well. The varieties of indiscriminate love for humanity, both Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, seem to be a good source of action in a global world. Why not choose one of them and endorse it as our ethics?38 An initial problem is that the very ideal embodied by these views has attracted heavy criticism. Thus, the viability and desirability of an ethics embodying the ideal of indiscriminate love for humanity needs evaluation.

1.4

Criticism of Indiscriminate Love

Out of many criticisms of the ideal of indiscriminate love, I elaborate on the views of Freud and Popper, due to the psychoanalyst’s popularity and the political implications the thought of the famous philosopher of science generates. Freud concedes that civilization develops due to a love crucial to its existence, which brings together people with common interests. It consists of sublimations that have turned into religious or humanitarian love—the love of God as well as attempts to love one’s neighbor and even one’s enemy. He considers these as objective-inhibited love because of his conviction that all love is reducible to the urge for libidinal satisfaction. While recognizing their necessary roles in checking human aggression for the development of civilization, Freud renders humanitarian and religious

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

205

love unrealistic and morally questionable.39 Freud speaks against the possibility and desirability of the Judeo-Christian precepts of universal love because he sees them as irrational demands which deny human nature as disclosed by psychoanalysis.40 Popper also rejects the concept of universal love for humanity yet for different reasons. He argues for the impossibility to love mankind because we are unable to harbor identical emotions toward everyone. He notes that we divide people into subgroups of those close and distant from us: “The division of mankind into friend and foe is a most obvious emotional division; and this division is even recognized in the Christian commandment, ‘Love thy enemies!’”41 He suggests that we are only capable of loving those we know. As it is the case that we are emotionally partial even in the best of our emotions, such as love and compassion, Popper argues that it is true with respect to lesser passions. Thus, political perils accompany the rule of love because it paves the way for rule by hate. Socrates comments on this matter, explaining that hatred of argument is related to misanthropy.42 Love as rule is inconsistent with impartiality and is unable to resolve conflict, according to Popper. If all were capable of loving others, there would undoubtably be a heaven on earth, but any attempt to force heaven would only produce hell. Popper concludes: “Thus, we might say, help your enemies; assist those in distress, even if they hate you; but love only your friends.”43 However, Popper readily admits that Christian love is not merely emotional: I admit that the emotions of love and compassion may sometimes lead to a similar effort [of our imagination]. But I hold that it is humanly impossible for us to love, or to suffer with, a great number of people; nor does it appear to me very desirable that it should, since it would ultimately destroy either our ability to help or the intensity of these very emotions… A direct emotional attitude towards the abstract whole of mankind seems to me hardly possible. We can love mankind only in certain concrete individuals. But by the use of thought and imagination, we may become ready to help all who need our help. (Popper 1962, 240; emphasis added)

206

L. Amir

As Popper’s opinions accord with contemporary views of empathy, I elucidate this notion first before concluding this discussion with the notion of compassion.

1.5

Empathy

Empathy employs the imagination to reconstruct another person’s experience without judgment. This underlines its difference from pity and compassion, showing how empathy is not sufficient, and perhaps even unnecessary, for the other two. Consider the following example: Mother Theresa acted on her compassion regardless of how the Indians she treated interpreted their suffering: they may have been influenced by the Hindu view of suffering as deserved. However, the term “empathy” is used by psychologists and psychoanalysts to refer to imaginative reconstruction paired with the judgment of distress experienced as either negative or harmful. In this context, empathy is characterized as something closer to pity, though not identical to it. Though it is morally neutral and fallible, empathy as an ability is important in recognizing the humanity of others; we consider a person lacking empathy as also lacking the faculties to recognize and appreciate humanity. Empathy is disturbed by the rejection of parts of the self that are perceived as unacceptable, such as vulnerability and its exposure to others. Accepting one’s unappealing features may lead to greater empathy. This is most effectively done by gradual self-acceptance. The compassionate criticism that intrapersonal and self-directed humor channels can help form such self-acceptance, as we have seen in Chapter 4 above.44 However, empathy does not suffice as the content of one’s ethics. The best candidate for a global ethics is compassion supported by an egalitarian worldview, which is freed from religious or metaphysical assumptions in which not all of us can share.

1.6

Compassion

An egalitarian worldview supported by the indiscriminate, nonjudgmental love for humanity must be applied consistently when facing

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

207

others both close and distant to us. Empathy does not suffice for this objective. Examples of such love for humanity applicable on this scale include caritas, the Christian concept that we are all sinners and therefore suffering all the same, Mo Tzu’s teachings of love as universal without gradation, karuna, the Buddhist principle that our ignorance is cause of suffering, Schopenhauer’s compassion based on shared suffering caused by an irrational Will and my own view of compassion based on Homo risibilis, that humanity is inherently and equally ridiculous in its refusal to recognize its fallibility and vulnerability. It must be noted, however, that the conceptions of love outlined above run the risk of being extreme: too mystical (Bergson, Schopenhauer, Chuang Tzu), too spiritual (Santayana), too religious (Christianity, Mo Tzu) and too metaphysical (Buddhism). Alternatively, we may adhere to some version of cosmopolitanism if the treatment of others is to be applied consistently, as compassion requires. However, the foundations of cosmopolitanism are problematic, especially since they oppose the nationalistic tendencies ever present in the world today as much as they have been in the past. Considering these factors, the worldview I propose may be more suitable as offering a global ethics with no epistemic toll, which makes it suitable for various civilizations and communities who have their own beliefs and customs. It enables a common understanding without adhering to yet another doctrine. Homo risibilis founds an ethics of compassion based on an egalitarian view of humanity, without subscribing to Schopenhauer’s metaphysical assumptions, or any kind of mysticism, religion or spirituality. The theory’s apparent spiritual insensitivity is, on the contrary, a boon in our contemporary, global world in which a variety of beliefs must coexist peacefully. Homo risibilis allows the consideration of all contrasting beliefs as solutions to a shared conundrum through an approach that calls for something beyond mere tolerance.45 The predicament is the tension between our desires and the possibility of fulfilling them, a situation we all experience regularly, which discloses the ridiculous situation that we must embrace to live lucidly. The predicament is described in various terms in the literature, and is targeted by most religions and philosophies whose solutions come at a price. Our shared ridicule, which is the content of the

208

L. Amir

human condition, variously solved by philosophies and religions and by Homo risibilis itself, is sufficient for establishing an ethics of compassion. The minimal worldview I propose promotes an ethics of compassion without metaphysical commitments. As the previous chapter makes clear, it further affords emotional benefits rivaling those promised by established religions and the highest philosophic ideals. Homo risibilis’ theoretical achievement may be better understood after further examination of religion’s tenacity in the world today, along with an evaluation of skepticism’s relative weakness despite its intellectual value. The variety of views about human nature46 along with the difficulty of giving “a precise account of what you and I are, and of what is required for us to persist”47 yield the conclusion that “as things stand, it is best to withhold judgement.”48 Why, then, are we so repelled by skepticism?

2

Skepticism: An Open-ended Epistemology

In the second part of the chapter, I consider skepticism’s place as a minority view in the contemporary world. First, I associate skepticism with contemporary concerns by introducing a critical approach to religion and identifying the sense in which our age is secular despite the contemporary vigor of religion. Second, given my interest in skepticism’s intellectual appeal, I suggest that the emotional effect that skepticism produces explains its relative unpopularity. I develop this argument through the consideration of previous philosophical responses to skepticism, those of the Pyrrhonists, St. Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Hume, Comte, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. After criticizing these approaches, I elaborate on the secular and skeptical features of Homo risibilis. I open the discussion with an assessment of humanism’s place in the contemporary world.49

2.1

Humanism in the Global World

Humanism may be the intellectual movement of modern times, yet it draws its emphasis on human ethics from the roots of Marxism as well as

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

209

from earlier sources both Eastern and Western. Its origin lies in ancient China and India, and in classical Greece and Rome, later to be developed by the European Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. Signed by thousands of intellectuals, The Humanist Manifesto (1973) reads: We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from rectifying social injustices. … Critical intelligence, infused by a sense of human caring, is the best method that humanity has for resolving problems. (Beversluis 1995, 49)

Many have supposed that rationality, the foundation of modernity, will depose religion. Mao Zedong believes that modernization will eventually render old religious ideas obsolete, leading to a natural transition into atheism. He thinks that religion will perish only if humanity is able to secure a stronger hold over the natural world, eliminating social class. Marx argues that religion as an artificial creation is merely a fantasy designed to keep people content despite the societal oppression and injustice that they are exposed to. Comte predicts science’s eclipse of religion, while Nietzsche denounces institutionalized religion, a “curse” that claims to protect people from the fear of the unknown. Freud a diagnoses religion as an illusion marking humanity’s infancy that is likely to disappear once humanity matures.50 This coming of age has not taken place, not even through the works of those regarded as voicing the West’s nihilistic crisis, the post-modern Nietzscheans. Religion is friendly with post-modernism and is triumphing internationally regardless of philosophical camps.51 Mary Pat Fisher, among other thinkers, takes notice of this phenomenon, writing in Religion in the Twenty-First Century, “at the turn of the century, new religions as well as old are showing considerable vigor.”52 Misunderstandings, intolerance and competition among the various religions, even between denominations of the same religion, have historically been significant sources of conflict.53 Now that cultures are mixing to an unprecedented extent, the potential for conflictual relationships has

210

L. Amir

increased.54 Globalization adds a layer of complexity and tension to the modern crisis. Alain de Benoist notes that in the contemporary world, Individuals feel uprooted by globalization. Feeling powerless, they erect walls, even if fragile and laughable. On the psychological level, individuals now feel dispossessed by overwhelming mechanisms, an increasingly fast pace and even heavier constraints—variables so numerous that they are no longer able to grasp where they stand. That this happens at a time when individuals are lonelier than ever, abandoned to themselves, when all great world-views have caved in, only intensifies the feeling of a nothingness. … Accordingly, globalization resembles a puzzle of splintered images. It provides no vision of the world. (de Benoist 1996, 133)

New uncertainties and speed of change generate reactions that range from exclusiveness and absolutism to a new openness in religious expression. Along with escalating tensions between religious pluralism and exclusivism, Fisher argues that the questioning or rejection of religion is yet another global process: At the turn of the century, an estimated twenty percent of the world’s people do not identify themselves with any religion. Some are involved in material pursuits, more interested in the here and now rather than in promises of eternity. Some have become disillusioned with what they see as the hypocrisy, self-interest, and lack of spirituality in religious institutions. Others have wondered about the nature of reality and the meaning of existence but have come to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence of any transcendent power behind the scenes shaping human events. Even religious followers have been challenged to develop new understandings of their faith in the light of modern research into the human and cultural dimensions of their prophets and scriptures. (Fisher 1999, 24)

In religious matters, skeptics are regarded as spiritually deficient, or as the “enemy.” Their perspective is also taken lightly in other matters because skeptics are seen as playing the devil’s advocate, engaged in the exercise of questioning “our” sound opinions.55 However, I accept skepticism as a significant worldview, an oft-misunderstood line of thought that promotes a rational, tolerant and peaceful consideration of oneself and the world.

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

211

By addressing the attitudes toward skepticism in the contemporary world, I hope to lift the confusion it may bring and make its argument more appealing.

2.2

Religion, Secularism and Skepticism

How is religion defined? Among the many definitions available, the definition that associates religion with meaning as introduced in Chapter 2 is worth recalling.56 Keith Ward defines religions as “belief-systems which articulate, with different degrees of systematization, competing theories about the meaning of human life.”57 Along the same lines, Huston Smith maintains that religion’s basic postulate is that life is meaningful. This claim, he furthers holds, can be elucidated subjectively, by thinking primarily of life’s meaning for us, or objectively, by trying to determine its meaning in the total scheme of things.58 In order to carry the discussion, I repeat his argument as presented in Chapter 2. Smith maintains that we do not have the capacity to consider the matter of life’s meaning objectively: There are things to be said in favor of life’s meaning, the chief being that it is the seasoned answer to the question, the one that has presided over every known human collectivity, but it is not enough to insure its truth. The hermeneutics of suspicion is always waiting in the wings, ready to challenge the existence of religion’s “other world” by claiming that it is only wishful thinking—a projection of the human mind to compensate for the world’s lack. “There is no other world,” Malinowski intoned, and neither reason nor experience can prove him wrong. (Smith 2001, 261–62)

Our life and the world come to us untagged. Their inescapable ambiguity justifies doubts about the validity of the meaning that we ascribe to them. Recall also from Chapter 2 John Schellenberg’s apt remark that “reason requires us to be religious skeptics.”59 Indeed, reason questions all religious views and their metaphysical commitments to a supernatural realm. As arguments for and against such views have been debated at length, I have omitted their discussion from this study.60 At this point, we may be justified in asking, why aren’t all philosophers skeptical if reason recommends religious skepticism? Can’t we bear the indefinite yearning deemed

212

L. Amir

by Kant and others as “enthusiasm”?61 Does the New Age steal minds with the facile spirituality it offers?62 Is skepticism too painful? There is a widespread belief in, and some literature on, the emotional tension involved in skepticism that portrays it as almost unbearable. As skepticism is rarely viewed as unharmful, I introduce and evaluate the most notorious emotional responses to skepticism before presenting the pleasurable form of skepticism that I advocate. The relationship between skepticism and secularism, a term often used to define contemporary culture, should be clarified first to better seize the significance of inquiring into skepticism’s place in the modern world. While the social process called “secularization” retains its meaning throughout its use in the relevant literature, the meaning of “secularism” or “secularity” varies.63 The religious philosopher Charles Taylor advances a view called “secularity 3” that may help sort the distinctions. This type of secularity is introduced as “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.” Secularity is not merely characterized as the reduction of religious belief, a rejection of the “epistemological” approach of it all, but it is also the establishment of new conditions for belief. Taylor further maintains, “Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.”64 Such a description of our cultural and spiritual environment creates the impression of an abundance of options. It is important to find out whether skepticism can be as competitive emotionally in this market as I believe it is intellectually.

2.3

Emotional Responses to Skepticism

Throughout its history, skepticism has triggered a variety of emotional responses. I first address some of the negative reactions gathered in Frédéric Brahami’s study of various forms of skepticism.65 St. Augustine sees skepticism as a spiritual crisis, while Comte regards it as a cognitive or social

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

213

disease; Descartes considers skepticism an experience that leads to certainty, whereas Kierkegaard treats it as a ridiculous point of view. I follow with the emotional reactions of philosophers, such as the Pyrrhonists, Hume, Montaigne and Nietzsche, who consider skepticism as a source of peace of mind, a curse with benefits, a route to physical health and a restorative for life, respectively. Brahami suggests that St. Augustine may have been the first to deem doubt a crisis. Rather than an epistemological process, it is viewed as a sign of psychic anxiety.66 If this view is true, Augustine marks the first attempt to incorporate philosophy into religion, sacrificing reason for faith. Indeed, Augustine regards skepticism as a natural result of developed reason, for when left alone, reason extinguishes itself and escalates one’s mortal anxiety. As skepticism embodies overexerted reason, the philosopher refers to doubt as a “crisis” and to faith as “healing” in the Confessions. Though Academic skepticism liberated him from Manichaeism, Augustine does not accept doubt as part of the human predicament, nor does he trust philosophers to cure him.67 Doubt that is Godless and destructive is seen as a cure for the soul, its cruelty as redemptive. By engaging with skepticism, Augustine adopts the most effective philosophic attitude and undergoes insufferable pain. The ambiguity that skepticism harbors points to doubt’s value and to the Augustinian argument that it must be displaced.68 Skepticism is significant, according to Augustine, because it marks an inflection point; philosophy reaches the limit of its explanative capacity, directing men to seek answers and salvation elsewhere, in religion. The philosopher assigns skepticism an existential, religious value, dramatizing it for the purposes of his argument. Centuries later, Comte comes to share Augustine’s view of skepticism as a crisis. According to the French philosopher, doubt’s only use is in enabling the transition from one form of dogmatism to another.69 The metaphysical mind mirroring the theological mind is necessarily skeptical as it advances only through infinite doubt. Theologism and positivism are disposed to synthesize theory, but the metaphysical mind may be characterized as critical, and according to Comte, as skeptical as well. Referred interchangeably by the terms “critical spirit” or the “metaphysical mind,” skepticism is best embodied by Voltaire. It is a threatening, yet necessary developmental stage for the evolution of the psychosocial organism.70

214

L. Amir

Skepticism may be considered good insofar as it is restricted to liberating the mind from the firm grip of dogmas. In progressive development, it is a significant contributor to spiritual health. Skepticism transforms, however, into the definitive Western malady the moment it shifts its focus into positive construction, solidifying a vision of its own. The mind is unable to yield to any authority, including the authority that science imposes because modernity is only able to confer doubts on its liberating power by treating it as an absolute.71 Doubt obstructs progress by rejecting order, which leads to the dissolution of both the individual’s mind and society at large. This poses a threat to humanity, whose sanity is preserved only by the world’s hierarchical infrastructure.72 The metaphysical mind, at the height of its power, is dangerously skeptical. Modern consciousness striving for liberty demands skepticism. However, it lacks an objective foundation to resist the delirious state that the mind creates in the absence of discipline by external law. This tragic progression ends with “alienation,” understood in psychiatric terms. Thus, Comte argues that “a cognitive analysis indicates that the Western disease is effectively a chronic alienation that is essentially intellectual.”73 Comte seems to take skepticism as a useful and perhaps even necessary pathology of the mind whose cognitive demands are impossible to yield to. Negativity weights more than positivity according to Comte because skepticism’s emancipatory role is a transitory one. Brahami makes the keen observation that Augustine and Comte offer similar diagnoses to the contradictions in skepticism’s epistemology. He notes that both philosophers identify skepticism as a symptom of despair, an irremediable melancholy or an instance of acute crisis on an individual, cognitive or societal level. Skepticism is a sign of spiritual resignation or weakened, submissive intellect. In Nietzschean terms, it is nihilism in disguise.74 Critics of skepticism regard it as a disease or a crisis because it expresses an individual or societal cognitive breaking point. Before evaluating Augustine and Comte’s views, we should note that both thinkers offer dogmatic perspectives. To Comte, natural intelligence is dogmatic; he sees our natural impulses as geared toward several forms of dogmatism by default, even though it may not appear to be the case.75 Augustine argues

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

215

that God’s presence in an individual’s inner self directs it toward salvation from the start. If skepticism is seen through dogmatic eyes, the attitude toward it can be understandably negative. However, the dogmatic person is in no position to evaluate skepticism, I believe, because from the outset he considers it to be a breach in dogmatism, a momentary crisis to be superseded. I suggest that the fact that dogmatic persons cannot abide by skepticism reveals more about dogmatism than it does about skepticism. Two additional emotional reactions to skepticism merit brief attention here, before addressing at length the views of Hume, Montaigne and the Pyrrhonists. Descartes opens his Meditations on First Philosophy with the topic of skeptical despair.76 Through skepticism, he discovers foundational knowledge or the cogito. As a result of his discovery, doubt’s negativity is accepted as a positive source of rational development. In Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard pokes fun at Descartes and his attempt at absolute skepticism. Thus, he considers it an impossible state that must be laughed at rather than seriously refuted.77 In the definition of despair formulated in Sickness unto Death, he extends the emotion beyond skepticism: Despair emerges from the struggle to reconcile with the finitude of life, while the true self is in fact a composite of both the infinite and finite that can be completed only by God.78 Hume and Montaigne’s approaches to skepticism are noteworthy. The former argues that neither metaphysical and theological claims nor those of science and common sense may be justified. Among his rejection of the evidence for God’s existence, his disregard for inductive arguments and metaphysical conjectures and the additional reasons he gives for his skeptical position, the most interesting is the philosopher’s emotional reaction: The wretched condition, weakness and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my enquiries, increase my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties reduces me almost to despair and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock, on which I am at present, rather than venture myself upon that boundless ocean, which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy and as it is usual for that passion, above all others, to indulge itself; I cannot

216

L. Amir

forbear feeding my despair, with all those desponding reflections, which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance. I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled from all human commerce and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity.

Hume’s confession in A Treatise of Human Nature is confirmed in a letter testifying to the suffering in his youth.79 Hume experienced a severe moral crisis in his adolescent years that brought about somatic effects, described as a keenness for learning, speculation, and the discovery of truth shadowed by clinical depression. Skepticism to Hume is a natural disease of the mind and the senses, which afflicts the philosopher as well.80 As skeptical doubt naturally results from thorough and intense reflection on the justification of our knowledge claims, it increases with sustained thought. Thus, skepticism is inherent to thought; it is regarded as a destructive disease because it obliterates reason, the foundation of our existence. As nothing can resist the destructive criticism of reason, the profound despair and the somber melancholy that Hume describes in the conclusion of book I of A Treatise of Human Nature are understandable. Life in such misery is hardly desirable, nor is it commendable. It would be best to abandon Humean skepticism given the emotional reaction it triggers. Hume himself renounces the very idea, calling the philosophical melancholy and delirium that once plagued him a “chimera,” a state of existence that nature itself cures. He cites small distractions such as conversations and dining as effective means to combat the negative emotional effects that philosophy brings about.81 Skepticism reveals that life is not grounded in reason. When left to select between life and reason, Hume chooses the former, surrendering reason to his positive, life-affirming interests. Descartes emerges from despair and doubt with the knowledge of the cogito that serves as a foundation of his philosophy. Hume, on the contrary, begins with a solid foundation,82 yet finds himself disheveled and confounded, disoriented by the truth. For

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

217

both thinkers, doubt eventually serves a positive purpose and fulfills a role in the development of their respective philosophies. Hume confides in the letter that he had never fully recovered from his ill health. He felt better, however, once he limited the value in speculation to life-affirming outcomes. This idea is reiterated in A Treatise of Human Nature, at the end of the first book. There he explains that philosophical labor ought to be a pleasure rather than construed as a duty. Seen as untenable, doubt should be overcome. Therein lies the difference between Hume’s position and ancient skepticism. Hume does not consider Pyrrhonism a viable philosophy; he does not see how a pure Pyrrhonist can exist. While Augustine and Comte renounce skepticism for the sake of a new dogmatism, Hume transforms one form of skepticism into another. The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding combines two sorts of skepticism because the mitigated ancient Academic skepticism naturally results from Pyrrhonian doubts. At the end of doubt, the Pyrrhonian recognizes the insufficiency of his position, and awakening from his dream, he joins in the laughter that he provokes.83 Thus, Hume argues that the articulation of that which skepticism secures gives it a positive constructive power. Before Hume, Montaigne has associated skepticism with health, more specifically with physical health. The topic is personally significant to Montaigne because of his long battle against illness; however, health is also deemed the sovereign good in his philosophy.84 Montaigne adopts a skeptical attitude toward the rising dogmatism of medicine during his lifetime which allows him to look past doctors and their pretensions; the vacuity of Renaissance medicine motivates his critical philosophy of health.85 Montaigne rigorously practices the most orthodox Pyrrhonian exercise, the equilibrium of arguments, when he writes about medicine.86 In this exercise, any proposition or argument is contradicted by a contrary proposition or argument of similar strength. This isosthenia or balancing of opposite opinions instructs the sick person about the ignorance that plagues medical doctors, leaving the patient with his affects’ immanent evaluations. Montaigne follows the information consistent with the teachings of the Pyrrhonist doctor, Sextus Empiricus, about physical phenomena and the emotions associated with them, so that he may arrive at

218

L. Amir

the right diagnosis and prognosis. In this way, Montaigne uses skepticism to promote the use of natural medicine.87 Discussion on Montaigne and his skeptical philosophy of health may be pursued elsewhere. The conclusion to be drawn for now is that Montaigne is neither a Pyrrhonist or another kind of skeptic.88 Montaigne’s restricted application of Pyrrhonian skepticism in his philosophy of health and the characterization of his philosophy as non-skeptical eliminates him as providing a desirable version of skepticism. Nietzsche takes a route similar to Humean skepticism, rejecting metaphysics, theology, science and common sense altogether, but diverges from it by discarding the idea that we are more familiar with our inner selves than we are with the external world. Though his argument echoes points made by Hume and the Pyrrhonists, Nietzsche’s primary argument is an original one. It concerns the conceptual-linguistic apparatus that we use to describe internal and external worlds and its ineffectiveness, as we cannot comprehend their nature. From an emotional point of view, Nietzsche’s perspectivism is designed to be restorative, offering solace only to those strong at heart. It is a tonic to life instead of a despairing view because life gives its best to those who live most dangerously. However, such a view of skepticism is prone to the criticism that it is unviable. Nietzsche attempts to combine the tragic sense of life with uncontainable joy, a combination that according to Robert Solomon, “is not always convincing.”89 Nietzsche voices in The Gay Science his “wish to be only a Yes-sayer” and strives to realize “in oneself the eternal joy of becoming—that joy which also encompasses joy in destruction.”90 Though he argues that one can reach this joyous, Dionysian state by selfovercoming, I have commented above on the sizable gap between the lionesque destructive state and the childlike, creative state of mind as outlined in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and other Nietzschean writings.91 As we have seen in previous chapters, joy and woe are intrinsically related for Nietzsche. He thus argues that an affirmation of a single joy is equivalent to the affirmation of all woes.92 However, though there may be a connection between the two emotions, one does not intend to embrace woe when affirming joy. Nietzsche does not explain how tragic joy that affirms everything may be attained, and we may doubt that such a joy even exists. Recall that tragic joy is found exclusively in Richard Wagner’s

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

219

Tristan and Isolde and Art and Revolution,93 Nietzsche’s own works and William Butler Yeats’ later poems and is nowhere to be found in earlier studies of the tragic, such as Aristotle’s.94 Though we may assume the possibility of such a joy, its desirability should be questioned. “Joy in destruction” implies joy derived from cruelty toward self and others, and Nietzsche notes on several occasions that “what constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty” and that “to see the failure of tragic natures and to laugh, that is divine.”95 Finally, Pyrrhonian skeptics from both Hellenistic and Roman times suspend all judgments because of the doubt that undermines all dogmatic claims to knowledge. This comes with remarkable and unintended emotional repercussions that afford us peace of mind,96 as serenity (ataraxia) is an inadvertent result of suspended judgment (epoch¯e ).97 The impossibility of judging does not anguish the thinker who becomes a skeptic without willing to; to the contrary, it heals him. Epoch¯e reduces the trouble we experience to the sole affects that are sensed. It purges the mind of anxiety about the objective reality of pains and goods because it enables the skeptic to abide by that which he feels. Suspension of judgment thus spontaneously moderates the passions.98 It is this kind of reflective thought that brings about the therapeutic benefits of philosophizing. The skeptic sees health exactly where the dogmatic sees disease, in a reflection emptied of all content which “lives in its own movement.”99 The skeptics endorse a radical lifestyle that Pyrrho describes as “altogether divesting ourselves of the human being” and Sextus portrays as being a eunuch, freed from desires.100 Suspension of judgment delivers us from the burden of worrying about what is true and right as well of believing in the good and rejecting accordingly the bad. It releases us from all evils that come from the intense pursuits of any practical goal “with eager conviction.” These evils include the emotions of joy when the good is present, fear lest it vanishes, desire for the good before it is present, grief if it is absent and fantasized guilt—being punished for something we have done. As these emotions are based on ethical belief, Sextus suggests that only the complete extirpation of belief can dispel these emotions as they spring out of ethical belief.101 Following Brahami’s observations, I have thus far examined the negative positions as assumed by St. Augustine, Comte, Descartes and Kierkegaard.

220

L. Amir

I have argued that a dogmatic consideration of skepticism may yield either an ambivalent attitude toward it at best, or at worst, a negative one. Further, I have maintained that dogmatism either religious or intellectual is not qualified to evaluate skepticism as it is inimical by its very nature to skepticism. Dogmatism presupposes that skepticism is an untenable temporary crisis. Thus, the inability of dogmatic people to live according to skepticism does not inform us about its nature. I have also explained Hume, Montaigne, Nietzsche and the Pyrrhonists’ approaches to skepticism as a curse, a physical remedy, a restorative for life and a purging therapy, respectively. I have criticized the viability of the Nietzschean argument, the radicality of the Pyrrhonist argument, objected to Humean skepticism because of the strong negative emotional impact it has and identified the shortcomings of Montaigne’s position. In response to the criticism that various forms of skepticism draw, I highlight the features of Homo risibilis, “the laughable or ridiculous human being,” which tend to these concerns.

2.4

Homo risibilis

Homo risibilis is a skeptical and secular worldview. It offers many of the benefits of established religions without requiring religious or metaphysical commitments. Is it therefore unrelated to Descartes, Augustine and Kierkegaard, not subject to the criticisms directed at Nietzsche’s thought and more comprehensive than Montaigne’s consideration of skepticism as bodily health. It endorses a pleasurable route to self-acquiescence, the opposite of Humean despair, and does not need the radical change that Pyrrhonism requires. The way in which it answers to contemporary concerns is commendable, as it does not emerge from the mere rejection of Eastern and Western philosophies and religions that promise serenity or redemption. Its contribution lies in the egalitarian vision that bases an ethics of compassion, reminiscent of Buddhist and Christian ethics as well as their Schopenhauerian counterpart, yet free from metaphysical assumptions, as well as in the personal well-being it grants and the positive impact on one’s surroundings it brings along.

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

221

If reason tells us to be religious skeptics, skepticism should not be superseded. How religious thinkers regard skepticism does not invalidate the very idea. Comte characterizes the human species as dogmatic; dogmatism does not suitably define the entirety of humanity, however. Thus, dogmatism can and should be criticized. We may improve rationality by taking seriously Popper’s injunction to equate it with criticism.102 We may also benefit greatly from a skeptical worldview that equips us emotionally to withstand the tensions inherent in our “human-all-too-human” nature so that we may acquire the taste for reality that Nietzsche yearns for without the radical revolution his thought leads to.103 I believe that Homo risibilis achieves this objective. At the very least, it makes us reconsider the necessity of an open-ended worldview in a global world and revise pre-conceived notions of skepticism. The latter now appears as “a profound art of simplifying life,”104 with the aim of living it to the fullest. By leaving out difficulties that serve as reason for anxiety, the skeptic embodies liberty, tolerance and peace, living without judgment as he pleases and following happiness wherever it may lead.

3

Lucidity: Ridiculing Wisdom or Embracing Ridicule?

The third and final part of the chapter introduces lucidity as the content of wisdom. A contemporary philosophy should not only propose a viable worldview but also an ideal of wisdom to live by. The kind of wisdom proposed here is predicated on an appropriate attitude toward the human condition. Lucidity is as difficult as it is needed because the neglect of this sober virtue may ensue in catastrophes. The joy that Homo risibilis affords helps us endure the reality of the human predicament and enables a lucid attitude toward it, which is difficult to achieve and maintain through other means. Wisdom is a forgotten topic in philosophy. If philosophy is the desire to be wise, wisdom is too wide a topic. For the contemporary analytical philosopher, who hands the research on wisdom to the psychologist, the topic may be too narrow to arise interest. These considerations may explain why contemporary philosophic studies of wisdom are rare. In probing the

222

L. Amir

meager literature I have found, I shift the emphasis from defining wisdom to clarifying unwisdom; and, associating wisdom with humor, self-love and necessary ridicule, I gesture toward transcending it through Homo risibilis.

3.1

From Wisdom to Unwisdom

Harold Bloom has written a touching book, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found (2004). He explains that it “rises out of personal need, reflecting a quest for sagacity that might solace and clarify the traumas of aging, of recovery from grave illness, and of grief for the loss of beloved friends.”105 Stephen Hall generalizes this need in Wisdom (2010), where he notes that “just as we literally hunger for food and water to forestall physiological death, we figuratively hunger for wisdom to forestall spiritual and existential death.”106 This is why the role of philosophy as defined by its etymology, the love of wisdom, was to prepare us to die.107 If Bloom is right in asserting “whether pious or not, we all of us learn to crave wisdom, wherever it can be found,”108 we may ask, what is wisdom, when related to life, rather than death? Many of the philosophers who do address the issue of wisdom are reluctant to commit to one view of it: Lisa Osbeck and Daniel Robinson are hesitant to draw general conclusions from the varieties of philosophical theories of wisdom they introduce; Bloom surveys wisdom literature that “teaches us to accept natural limits,” and Joel Kupperman spans both Chinese and Western views in Morality, Ethics and Wisdom (2005), to reflect on the relation of wisdom to morality and ethics.109 Kupperman argues that wisdom is about knowing how to live, more a know-how than a know-what. Depth of personal experience and the ability to have appropriate perspective are important elements in what we normally think of as wisdom.110 It also implies a general concern, such as explained by psychologist Robert Steinberg’s Balance Theory, and a sense of what is truly important and what is not.111 William James observes that wisdom is learning what to overlook. From a pragmatic point of view, that becomes James’s insight that wisdom has become the capacity to overlook what cannot be surmounted.112 Thus,

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

223

skepticism about the viability of wisdom abounds: Montaigne doubts that the ancients are earnest when recommending their respective recipes for wisdom, each more unattainable than the other for Montaigne. Hall dedicates an entire chapter to skeptical concerns about wisdom and Bloom exclaims, “What is the use of wisdom, if it can be reached only in solitude, reflecting on our reading? We most of us know that wisdom immediately goes out of the door when we are in a crisis.”113 If wisdom is such an elusive notion and skepticism about its viability is current, maybe approaching it negatively may prove more fruitful. Where lies our unwisdom, then? For Bloom, Nemesis is our mortality, our ill fortune, our self-punishment, our universal inability to forgive ourselves everything. All our unwisdom is centered in her. […] Freud…equates her with our unconscious sense of guilt. She is the goddess of retribution, Homeric and Freudian, not Christian or Platonic. (Bloom 2004, 283–84)

Unwisdom is an inappropriate attitude toward the human condition, including ourselves, who inhabit this condition. John Kekes correctly identifies among the great variety of inappropriate attitudes four typical ones he calls disengagement, denial, romanticism and resignation. All of them may be avoided if one adopts a realistic stance toward reality.114 Acknowledging the pervasive presence of conflict, contingency and evil, the recommended attitude encourages action against the damage that these forces are capable of inflicting, pushing an individual to dare to fail. The desired realism may be achieved only by rejecting the temptations to submit to facile solace. This kind of realism does not deny reality, romanticize the self, or glorify weariness, nor does it resign; it achieves a life of neither bitterness nor hope for cosmic justice in an inhospitable world. Lasting happiness requires it to be predicated on reality. If reality is composed of conflicting relationships between oneself and nature, among people, and within oneself, a systematized and effective mechanism is required in order to prevent lapse into avoidance of these conflicts. These in turn would lead to problems such as the repression of desires, which can only make peace of mind unattainable. Shunning conflict amounts

224

L. Amir

to avoiding ourselves and others. Confronting conflict may yield harmony, though this process requires internal labor, effort and discipline. The acknowledgment of desires and of reality involves delicate engagement, which may backfire and worsen internal strife if not carried out with a mediator. It can benefit from a distancing tool that makes this internal critique or evaluation more effective.

3.2

Humor, Self-love and Ridicule

“What Montaigne gives you goes beyond wisdom, if so secular a transcendence is acceptable to you,” Bloom argues.115 I believe that it is because Montaigne uses Homo risibilis to reach a conciliation that is otherwise unexplained. Many commentators have mentioned the tone of peaceful affirmation he reaches without noticeable traces, except the humor and concreteness of the examples he gives in exercising his judgment. With no positive philosophy of his own, explicitly rejecting all ideals of wisdom, yet without a strictly Pyrrhonian method, Montaigne has been compared to Taoist sages. His resolution to reject sadness and adopt a joyous cheerfulness as the content of wisdom is exemplary. Foolishness is part of human consciousness, as inanity cannot be fully reformed. We condemn in others what we should combat in ourselves. As illusion is as necessary to life as truth is supposed to be, vanity should be accepted and enjoyed, rather than lamented, as well as the variety of views and customs that make up the world. Santayana, whose thought comes close to Montaigne at times, considers subjectivity a normal madness. Rather than despise it, we should enjoy it while trying to transcend it, as the view that others exist is as sobering as amusing. Fun is part of human experience, and accepting our absurdity, we accept the truth about ourselves. The self-transcendence that laughter affords is a spiritual excise which liberates us from the prison of our limited vision. And wisdom is to take everything with a grain of salt. Along the same lines, we may ask, can we even imagine a sage without a sense of humor? Democritus, called wisdom in antiquity, represents the laughing philosopher for the Western philosophic tradition. His counterpart in the Eastern tradition is the Taoist laughing sage. Through his

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

225

influence on Buddhism in China, he brings about the laughing Buddhas of Chan Buddhism, better known today as Zen Buddhism. Humor is associated with wisdom because it is the only systematical tool that we know of that can teach us proportion. And what is wisdom if not the art of human proportion? Spinoza calls laughter a pure joy, which delights the person who finds something good in itself. Cheerfulness is always good, sadness always bad. All passive emotions make us suffer, all authentic actions augment our joy. When we are the causes of our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, we augment our joy and by loving the right object, God or nature, of which we are modes, we love ourselves. Nietzsche urges us to develop a taste for reality. But how can we do that given our human-all-too-human limitations? The amount of cruelty and self-cruelty a taste for reality requires is enough to madden any sensitive soul. Nietzsche calls for laughing philosophers, whose homeric laughter he could not sincerely emulate. His models Spinoza and Montaigne reach their affirmative goals, yet he fails. But he did say, love yourself as an act of clemency and the whole drama of fall and redemption will be enacted in you. That which Hegel thought that tragedy effected, the serene joy of reconciliation, comedy enacts. Comedy graces our folly and grants us joy, which tragic sources cannot provide. While it is assumed that we can grace the folly of others through a comedic performance, the philosophic act enables to direct that gracing to oneself. As consciousness divides into eiron and alazon, the dialogue of compassionate aggression that ensues makes self-education possible because pleasurable. That which Homo risibilis gives us is within the limits of wisdom literature: It confines us to our limits. But it is much more than an ideal of wisdom, if we make it ours. Bloom’s evaluation of Montaigne is applicable here as well. What Homo risibilis “gives you goes beyond wisdom, if so secular a transcendence is acceptable to you.” This is the ideal of realism that blesses us in unforeseen ways: When we embrace ourselves, we embrace the contradiction that we are and let reality, which is unknown to us, go about its business without asking it questions it cannot answer. We acknowledge our desires and make them smile as we choose to abide by our reason’s wishes in order to respect the tension that defines us. A

226

L. Amir

tension accepted is no mere tension, a gap embraced minimizes the distance between its inimical poles, our ridicule clearly grasped dignifies us by delivering us from ignorance. I am the ridiculous animal, my dignity lies in acknowledging that. But you are too, if you wish to see it. We are similar, and contrary to Hegel’s view, one of us is not inferior to the other when our consciousnesses meet. Societal devices that pit us one against the other won’t succeed, as we sense our similarities. In accepting myself, I accept you and our shared battle against the indifference or the cruelty of forces that do not yield to human desires. Unwisdom lies in arrogance or irreverence, according to Paul B. Woodruff’s “Human wisdom and the ridiculous.” It is in relation to ridicule that wisdom can be enlightened: “Ridicule keeps Socrates close to human wisdom, but only because he practices it on himself…. That strong sense of lacking something just is wisdom, and this is the ground for such virtue as human beings can achieve.”116 Woodruff argues that Socrates’s questioning purports to show that “we human beings are in a ridiculous state, unable to know the things it is imperative for us to know.”117 We use concepts we cannot explain, and “This is nonsense at the human level…. We are all ridiculous” as Socrates’s questions are “a device for showing himself and others as being ridiculous.”118 Socrates is “stuck with the global absurdity of being human.”119 And so are we.

4

Concluding Remarks

To sum up this chapter, let me conclude it by recalling the steps that led to it. Eastern philosophies and religions (Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism), as well as various Western views (all Hellenistic schools, Neo-Platonism, the philosophies of Spinoza and Santayana) aim at serenity or tranquility. Religions that aim at redemption also aim at serenity,120 and though I have taken issue with the means introduced to reach the desired state, I do believe that it is a valuable and attainable goal. Joyful serenity is within reach because the way leading up to it involves a kind of humor that may be developed without any comedic skills.121 Its benefits are proportional to its use, and the serenity it offers is gradual.

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

227

The tragic sense of life that it presupposes is common enough to make this path serviceable to all. Pyrrhonists declare that peace of mind follows the suspension of judgment, like a shadow following the body, without deliberate intention.122 The worldview I propose does not endorse the skepticism of the Pyrrhonists for its radicality. It does, however, share both Pyrrhonism’s dislike of unwarranted assumptions and its ideal of tranquility. Apart from this school of thought, the proposal I advance is the only skeptical worldview that aims at such an ideal and to my knowledge the sole that employs humor to it.123 I have described in seven chapters the successive stages attained through a systematic exercise of self-referential humor, which aims at disciplining our taste to find pleasure in incongruities that are not immediately funny. This process has been traced from the tragic view of life to the joy of liberation, its stages being a comic view of life, which together with the tragic sense of life is experienced first as a humorous mood, yielding to an awareness of ridicule and eventually to a final acceptance of ridicule that culminates in a happy deliverance from the tragic and the comic. Dignity, happiness and timelessness ensue followed by compassion as shared ethics, open-endedness as shared epistemology and lucidity as a sobering approach to the human condition. The worldview I call Homo risibilis is reached through a gradual process that seeks to promote change in perceptions of oneself, of others and the world by converting suffering into joy through humor. Both timely and untimely, this worldview takes no epistemic toll and yields many blessings. Like the Buddhist’s raft, the Taoist’s net and Wittenstein’s ladder, once its epistemological, ethical and social benefits are reaped Homo risibilis can be discarded without residue, leaving no indices as to the path that led to its success.

Notes 1. See Argyle (1987, 216–17). 2. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 42. 3. Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part II, Prop. 49 Scholium.

228

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

L. Amir

Thiele (1990, 75n). Solomon (1976, 222, 209). Ben-Ze’ev (2000, 18). Kant (2006, 195). For Hegel’s view of comedy, see Chapter 3 above. See Badiou (2017). In this section, I rely on Amir (2017b, Chapter 5). Wispé (1987, 320). Smith (1976). Such as in the sixth chapter of Hobbes’s Leviathan, 1958. Nussbaum explains, “The Stoic position on compassion and value is taken over with little change by Spinoza, and seriously influences the accounts in Descartes, Smith and Kant. It is given an especially complex and vivid development in the thought of Nietzsche” (Nussbaum 2001a, 358). See Spinoza, 1985a, Ethics, Part IV, Prop. 50; Kant (1956, 123; 1996, 205), Smith (1976), and Portmann’s analysis of Nietzsche on pity (2000, 111–15). For compassion and pity, see also Ben-Ze’ev (2000, Chapter 3), Callan (1988), Cartwright (1984), and Nussbaum (2001a, Chapters 6–8). Rousseau (1979). Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1385b13ff. Nussbaum (2001a, 300n6, 310). Nussbaum (1994, 503). Cicero reports, “The mere fact of their common humanity requires that one man should feel another man akin to him” (von Arnim 1905–1924, vol. 3, 126, 340; see also 125, 333). See Epstein (1959). Moreover, within the Musar (self-perfection) school, founded by Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810–1883), the premise is that as we grow in our relationship to God, we grow in our ability to relate in a positive way to our fellow human beings (Kaplan 1985, 161–65; see also Neusner and Avery-Peck, 2005, “Altruism in Classical Judaism.” Aquinas (1945, 1960). The theological debate between Catholicism and Protestantism about the nature of love is clearly explained in Nygren (1982). For further discussion of Nygren’s views of Christian love in general, see Outka (1972). For an elaborate account of the variety of interpretations of Christian love, see the first volume of Singer’s trilogy on love (1984–1987). Singer (1994, 117).

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

229

23. See also the views of charity or love of one’s neighbor as a supernatural love in Weil (1949), Lewis (1985), and Kierkegaard (1962); as well as Buber’s criticism of them all (Buber 1967, 51–52). For Buber’s own views, see Buber (1958). 24. Chuang Tzu (1968). 25. Kindness is Karuna; love is Metta in Pali, Maitri in Sanskrit; love applied equally for all is Upekha in Pali and Upeksa in Sanskrit. 26. Cooper (1996). 27. De Rougemont (1996, 228–32). 28. Cooper (1996, 186). See also Monroe (1995, 226–28). My analysis so far has focused on Eastern and Western ideals of indiscriminate love of humanity. For a slightly different account, one that emphasizes altruism in the East and the West, see Kupperman (1995). 29. Bergson (1977). 30. Hume (1978). 31. Schopenhauer (1965, 1966). 32. Santayana has been thus characterized by Donald C. Williams. See Singer (1987, 271). 33. For Santayana on charity, see also Santayana (1954, 366–70) and Singer (1984, 1, 334–35, 358–59). 34. Santayana (1925, 155). 35. Santayana (1925, 139). 36. Santayana (1925, 156–57). 37. Santayana (1968, 88). 38. Love can be impersonal rather than indiscriminate. Like the latter, the former does not take as its object a particular human being, yet its object is not restricted to humanity at large. This is the kind of love philosophers have preferred. It ranges from Plato’s love of wisdom, to Spinoza’s love of God or nature, Rousseau’s collective love, Hegel’s spiritual love, Nietzsche’s love of fate, Emerson’s impersonal and impartial feeling and Russell’s impersonal feeling. See Amir (2017b, Chapter 10) for further explanations and references. 39. Freud (1949a, 1949b, 1961). 40. Freud (1961, 56–59). 41. Popper (1962, 235). 42. Misology is distrust of rational argument and misanthropy is hatred of men; Socrates formulates this relation in Plato, Phaedo, 89d. 43. Popper (1962, 237).

230

L. Amir

44. On humor’s role in fighting disgust and shame and furthering empathy, see Chapter 4 above. 45. See Chapter 2 above. In Ordinary Vices (1984), Judith Shklar argues that the tolerance on which liberalism is predicated necessarily involves hypocrisy. This is just one example of how limited tolerance is both emotionally and intellectually. 46. As exemplified by any anthology on human nature, i.e., Kupperman (2012). 47. Luper (2009, 5). This is Luper’s conclusion after attempting to explain what life is in his study of death (Luper 2009, Chapter 1). 48. Luper (2009, 38). 49. In this section, I rely on arguments I use in Amir (2017b, Chapter 12). 50. For Mao Zedong’s thoughts on religion, see Fowler and Fowler (2008, 251–53). See also Comte 1929 (1851–1854); Nietzsche,1954c, The Antichrist; and Freud, 1990, The Future of an Illusion. 51. See Griffin (1988). 52. Fisher (1999, 98). For the evolution of religion in history, see the study of sociologist Bellah (2011). 53. The Christian Church, for instance, has split over time into 21,000 different denominations, some of them quite antagonistic toward each other, despite their founder’s teachings to love one’s neighbor. 54. Commendable efforts to enhance harmony between people on different religious paths are made by relatively new religions, such as Sikhism and Baha’i, and by the interfaith movement. For the former, see Fisher (1999, Chapter 4); for the latter, see Braybrooke (1988). 55. For skepticism as the enemy, see the introduction in Agassi and Meidan (2008; see also Taylor 2007). For the history of skepticism, see Popkin (1996). 56. Charles Taylor is critical of the view that the “essence of religion” is found in religion’s answer to the question of meaning (Taylor 2007, 717–18). He objects to this suggestion on the grounds that it absolutizes “the modern predicament.” Even if we grant Taylor that religion entails some sort of “transcendence,” especially in “the sense that there is some good higher than, beyond human flourishing” (Taylor 2007, 20), I believe that transcendence is far from being inimical to the question of meaning Huston Smith and others associate with religion. Thus, the argument that religion provides meaning is strengthened by Taylor’s view, which assumes there is a higher good even if it does not specify what this good may be. For the idea that meaning of life can be found in transcending

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

57. 58. 59. 60.

61.

62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

231

our limits, that is, that asking for the meaning of life is a matter of asking how it “connects up to what is outside it,” see Nozick (1981, 601). Similar ideas can be found in Wolf (1997a, 222), Ruzzo (2000, 188), and Ford (2007, 254). Ward (2001, 11). Smith (2001, 255). Schellenberg (2007, 1). I have mentioned in previous chapters four recent works that address this question: Dennett (1993), Kekes (1995), Kitcher (2007), and Wielenberg (2005). See Plato, 1966, Phaedrus and Burton (1989, 867). Burton discusses enthusiasm in love, religion and philosophy in the Third Partition (“Love-Melancholy”) of his book. See also Shaftesbury’s A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm to My Lord ***** in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc. (1900) 1963, I, 15–16; Kant, 1992—“Sickness of the Head” (Ak. II, 267), 268. The New Age is a millenarian movement that anticipates the coming of a Golden Age. Through thoughts and prayers, a new positive spiritual atmosphere surrounding the planet is being created that will make things better. This amorphous spiritual trend, whose roots include Western metaphysical traditions and various Eastern religions, has developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. It encompasses people around the world with no particular theology, founder or institutionalized religion. Instead, the emphasis of the New Age movement is on direct mystical experience, faith, inner transformation, surrender to the divine and spiritual healing. For a short introduction, see Fisher (1999, 79–80), and for the criticism of its main tenets from epistemological, emotional and spiritual points of view, see Amir (2018, Chapter 1). For a good summery of the literature on secularization and secularism, see the “Editors’ Introduction” in Warner et al. (2010). Taylor (2007, 3; quoted in Warner et al. 2010, 9). See Brahami,, “La santé du sceptique: Hume, Montaigne,” 2008. Brahami (2008, n1). Augustine (1956, V, 14, 25). Augustine (1956, V, 10, 16). Comte (1929, IV, 203, general appendix). Comte (1929, III, 596). Comte (1929, IV, 180, general appendix). Comte (1929, IV, 47).

232

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

L. Amir

Comte (1929, II, 458; my translation). See Brahami (2008). Comte (1929, IV, 203, general appendix). Descartes ([1766] 1996). Kierkegaard (1985). Kierkegaard (1980). Hume 1978, A Treatise of Human Nature, bk. I, Section 7. The letter is the last to appear in Hume’s life and is appended by David Fate Norton to the Cambridge Companion to Hume 1993. Hume (1995, I, 303). Hume (1995, I, 362). Hume (1995, I, 34). Hume ([1748] 1999, II, 282). Montaigne (1998, II, 242). On this point, see Sève (2007). Montaigne (1998, Essais, bk. II, Chapter 37). Montaigne (1998, Essais, bk. II, 310). Although Montaigne says that he was “born with a mind made for doubt,” Brahami argues that Christ is “Truth himself ” for Montaigne, a statement confirmed by his declared submission to the Church (Screech 2000, 18, 29; Brahami 2008). I think otherwise, but the discussion exceeds this study. I refer the reader to the first chapter of my manuscript, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (Bergson) (work under contract for SUNY Press). Solomon (1999, 144). Nietzsche, 1974, The Gay Science, Section 276; 1954b, Twilight of the Idols, 10, Section 5. The tension between Nietzsche’s critical and positive philosophy is common knowledge in the secondary literature and is sometimes solved by dividing Nietzsche’s thought into periods. Magnus and Higgins (1996) are a good example of such approach. Nietzsche, 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, IV, “The Drunken Song.” Wagner (1896, 40). See Potkay (2007, Chapter 8). Nietzsche, 1966, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 229; 1938, La volonté de puissance, II, 380. Sextus (2000, 1.25–30). Laertius (1925, 9, 107; see Sextus 2000, 1.29). Sextus (2000, 1.12).

7 The Good Life II: Compassion, Skepticism, Lucidity

233

99. Brahami (2008). 100. Nussbaum (1994, 312). 101. For Pyrrhonian skepticism, see Sinnott-Armstrong (2004); for its practice, see Nussbaum (1994, 280–315). 102. See Popper (1962). 103. Nietzsche, 1954a, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 104. Conche (1995, 9–10). 105. Bloom (2004, 1). 106. Hall (2010, 267). 107. Montaigne’s Essais enact the modern debate about death (1924) 1965. For death, see Benatar (2017, Chapter 5; for the way it has been approached within the history of philosophy, see Malpas and Solomon (1998). 108. Bloom (2004, 2). 109. Osbeck and Robinson (2005), Bloom (2004, 4), and Kupperman (2005). For definitions of wisdom, see Hall (2010, Chapter 1). 110. Kupperman (2005, 268). 111. Sternberg and Jordan (2005) and Kupperman (2005, 269). 112. Bloom (2004, 282, 284). 113. See Montaigne’s Essais ((1924) 1965); Hall (2010, Chapter 15) and Bloom (2004, 2, 3). 114. Kekes (1995, 176, 180–81). 115. Yet Bloom argues: “What Montaigne gives you goes beyond wisdom, if so secular a transcendence is acceptable to you” (Bloom 2004, 120). 116. Woodruff (2019, 169). 117. Woodruff (2019, 174). 118. Woodruff (2019, 177). 119. The global absurdity lies in the tension between our ambition to knowledge (expressed by Socrates’s questions) and our ability to answer them (sadly limited by Socrates’s refutations). Woodruff (2019, 177). 120. See Sorabji (2002), Ballesteros (2000), and Liebman (1946) for serenity in the West. For Eastern views of serenity, see for Taoism Wieger (1984), for Buddhism Emmanuel (2018), and for Zen Buddhism Park (2008). 121. See Ruch (2008, 69–71) and Amir (2018, Chapter 15). 122. Sextus (2000, 1.25–30). 123. This is the conclusion I reach in Amir (2014b, 286). There are many forms of skepticism, however. Because the view presented here considers certainty unattainable, it is skeptical about the claims of metaphysics

234

L. Amir

and religion insofar as they are considered certain. Moreover, it considers unnecessary relinquishing one’s desires or one’s reason, or both, for unwarranted claims. Pyrrhonism is a much more radical and pervasive form of skepticism, as explained in Long (1986), Sinnott-Armstrong (2004), and Nussbaum (1994, 280–315); for other forms of skepticism, see Popkin (1996); for philosophy from a skeptical perspective that considers certainty unattainable, see Agassi and Meidan (2008).

Conclusion

A contemporary philosophy should address current as well as perennial human needs that can be best answered by philosophers. It should be global, open-ended in order to accommodate advances in science and technology, and agnostic in order to be compatible with various religious beliefs. It should be lucid in its depiction of the human condition, comprehensive enough to enact shared values, sufficiently practical to offer an ideal of wisdom and capable of establishing a shared ethics of compassion unburdened by metaphysical or religious assumptions. In the chapters comprising this study, I have introduced Homo risibilis, the worldview that tends to these requirements. Like the Taoist fisherman’s net, the Buddhist’s raft and Wittgenstein’s ladder, which can be discarded when no longer needed, the worldview proposed here can be forgotten, even more easily than those mighty philosophies, after its benefits have been reaped. One of philosophers’ tasks is to answer their contemporaries’ needs for meaningful worldviews, values and ideals of wisdom. No other discipline except philosophy can fulfill this requirement without overstepping rational boundaries. Since various fields depend on such a comprehensive vision of the good life, this task remains nowadays, as much as it has been © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5

235

236

Conclusion

in the past, the responsibility of philosophers. The alternative spirituality that philosophical worldviews convey has inspired individuals who resist organized religions. Today, it is important to present alternatives not only to religions, but also to the type of lax mysticism the New Age movement has brought to the West. Contrary to the widespread belief that is popular even among philosophers, we do not necessarily have to turn to Eastern philosophies for practical ideals of wisdom. Part of philosophers’ task is to offer new worldviews that help make sense of the human condition, as we currently understand it, while also considering modern scientific knowledge. Such a worldview must necessarily be skeptical. Its open-endedness makes it compatible with various forms of belief, rather than knowledge, while remaining faithful to the rationality to which philosophers are committed. It supports an egalitarian vision and an ethics of compassion without the metaphysical assumptions that Christian, Buddhist or Schopenhauerian ethics require. Inner transformation is inherent in the pleasure it provides as humor bridges the gap between thought and life. It grants joy and happiness by showing the way to self-acceptance, and thus answers contemporary needs as well as perennial ones. It fits within previous philosophical attempts to address the human condition by indicating a resting place to the human being within the universe in accordance with our current state of knowledge. It can be described as follows: The human condition is characterized by a tension between our desires on the instinctual, emotional, moral, intellectual and spiritual levels, and our awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling them in principle or in practice brought by reason. This tension is noticed in the relations we entertain with the world, others and ourselves. Various thinkers, philosophers and writers have described this basic tension as a tragic human predicament feeding on unresolvable conflicts, a discussion that has been rekindled by recent studies of evil, pessimism and the meaning of life. The tragic paradigm is a view of life that sees existence individually or collectively as structured in terms of polarities, oppositions, contradictions and their collisions. The tragic opposition may be seen within the individual, between persons or groups, in the very nature of things, or all three. The intra-psychic aspect of the conflicts within myself, between myself and

Conclusion

237

another, and between myself and the world that constitute my everyday experience need not always be construed as tragic. With self-referential humor, intra-psychic conflicts can also be considered as comical incongruities, which though I do not need to enjoy spontaneously, I may learn to accept as constitutive of the contradictory being that I am. Repeatedly transmuting the tragic into the comical enables me to notice and eventually accept, first with ambivalence, and gradually with joy the inevitable aspects of the human condition. Joy enables us to withstand the inner conflicts that are constitutive of the human being. It does not solve the problem the human being’s conflictual existence poses by rejecting part of his constitution, as most religions and philosophies have done until now. We may want to leave the basic conflict that constitutes the human condition unresolved when the price of resolving it requires relinquishing either our reason, that is, our cognitive power, or renouncing the desires we identify as characterizing us no less than reason. Most religious and philosophical solutions to the basic human predicament require renouncing one or more aspects of our humanity as we know it. Theories of redemption or peace of mind, either Eastern or Western, religious or non-religious, can be divided into general types, the first type negating desire, the second type making light of reason’s limitations and the third type denigrating both desire and reason. Thus, according to most religions and philosophies, desires or reason (which informs us of the price we must pay to satisfy our desires) or both must be discarded. The systematic use of self-referential humor as compassionate aggression enacting an inner plurilogue within the self enables the confrontation of the tragic and its transformation into joyful and peaceful living. The resulting epistemological benefits are significant for a philosopher: As I discard what I cannot withstand, I necessarily sabotage self-knowledge as well as knowledge of others and reality. Ethical benefits follow from a truer vision of the ambivalent self I am, especially in my relationships with others. It enables me to embrace harmoniously the tension between self-recognition and other recognition, which many thinkers posit as necessarily conflictual. The need to accept myself as necessarily conflictual within myself, in my relationships with others and with the world, together with my incapacity

238

Conclusion

for self-acceptance leads to the general realization that I am doomed to fight against the rules of the game: We are the butt of an anonymous joke. As the vision proposed here is egalitarian, it reveals the superfluity of all self-centered, comparative and competitive emotions. Its egalitarianism, and its vision of the human being as fallible and vulnerable establishes an ethic of compassion, rivaling philosophical as well as religious theories that advance such as an ethic at the price of unwarranted metaphysical assumptions. Newfound harmony based on this lucid self-knowledge answers one’s thirst for peace and fulfills the ambitious goal of philosophy itself: resolving alienation by finding a place within the universe for the human being, which answers his need for unique identity. We are ridiculous human beings, homorisibilis, the being who cannot accept the simultaneous levity and seriousness which is constitutive of his life along with the manifold contradictions that plague his existence. This accounts for the necessary yet impossible task, which is the human condition in the tragic vision. Unless we make this task possible by acknowledging its conditions, we are doomed to suffer and consequently make others suffer much more than necessary. Freedom predicated on self-knowledge and self-acceptance is recognizable by its joyful peace, which frees us to act, once liberated from preoccupation with internal conflicts, on others’ behalf. The worldview I propose here amounts to a harmonious congruence with myself, others and the world, a situation that all philosophies seek to establish in their attempts to overcome alienation. By considering conflicts as normal because they are constitutive of the complex being that I am and of the complicated relations I entertain with a world I do not fully understand, Homo risibilis echoes Heraclitus’s quote: They do not understand that it is by being at variance with itself that it coheres with itself: a backward stretching harmony, as of a bow or a lyre. (Diels and Kranz 1972, Heraclitus, B51, 80)

In World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction, David Cooper cites the poet Wordsworth’s poignant description of the tension latent in conflicting emotions, which spurs philosophical thought:

Conclusion

239

The groundwork of all true philosophy is the difference between … that intuition … of ourselves, as one with the whole … and that [of ] ourselves as separated beings, [which] places nature in antithesis to us. (Cooper 1996, 5)

Many of the world philosophies attempt to resolve this tension by offering accounts of human beings that do justice to the uniqueness of the species, yet without rendering its members absurd or alien to the world. Hardly any philosopher of the first rank has ignored the tension. If Cooper is right about the initial philosophical spur, the view proposed here inserts itself in the history of philosophical attempts to overcome alienation, and does it successfully, I believe, without unwarranted assumptions or other unnecessary difficulties. This is also what makes Homorisibilis especially fit to answer contemporary needs. The shared ethics of compassion this worldview establishes without metaphysical or religious assumptions, the open-endedness it recommends while solving the emotional discontents that other forms of skepticism often bring along, and the lucidity with which it approaches the human condition are necessary for the minimal consensus required for living in a global world. Those ethical and epistemological benefits, both personal and social, follow from adhering for a while to a worldview, which is founded solely on a reflection of our shared experience also as recorded in the world philosophies, religions and literature. Homorisibilis serves practical goals without unwarranted and burdensome claims to knowledge. Both timely and untimely, it is a vision to live by until new findings challenge us again.

References

Abel, Lionel. 1967. “Is There a Tragic Sense of Life?” In Moderns on Tragedy, edited with an introduction by Lionel Abel, 175–86. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. Abraham, Karl. (1924) 1927. “A Short History of the Development of the Libido.” In Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Agassi, Joseph, and Abraham Meidan. 2008. Philosophy from a Skeptical Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ———, and Ian Jarvie. 2008. A Critical Rationalist Aesthetics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Ainslie, George. 2001. Breakdown of Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alain. 1928. Propos sur le bonheur. Paris: Gallimard. Allison, Henri E. 1990. Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alquié, Ferdinand. 1972. Le Désir d’éternité. Paris: PUF. Altman, Matthew C., and Cynthia D. Coe. 2013. The Fractured Self: In Freud and German Philosophy. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Amir, Lydia. 2010. “The Value of Spinoza’s Ethics in a Changing World.” Axiology and Ethics, 1: 301–20.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5

241

242

References

———. 2012a. “Humor in Philosophy—Theory and Practice.” Philosophical Practice, 7(3): 1015–29. ———. 2012b. “Spinoza’s Ethics in a Global World.” The Journal of Global Studies, 4(1): 123–38. Reprinted in The Organizational and Business Ethics Imperative, edited by J. H. Westover. Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 35–54, 2015. Reprinted in Globalization and Responsibility: Challenges and Opportunities, edited by S. Litz. Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 168–187, 2015. Reprinted as Chapter 4 in Amir, Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017b. ———. 2013a. “Kierkegaard and the Traditions of the Comic in Philosophy.” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2013 (1): 377–401. ———. 2013b. “Philosophy’s Attitude Towards the Comic: A Reevaluation.” European Journal of Humor Research, 1(1): 6–21. ———. 2014a. Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2014b. “Taking the History of Philosophy on Humor and Laughter Seriously.” The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal, 5: 43–87. ———. 2015a. “A Contemporary Philosophy of Vulnerability, Fallibility, and Finitude.” In Practicing Philosophy, edited by Aleksandar Fatic and Lydia Amir, 57–64. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. ———. 2015b. “Shaftesbury as a Practical Philosopher.” Haser, 6: 81–102. ———. 2016. “What Philosophical Practice Has to Do with It?” Philosophical Practice, 11(3): 1809–13. ———. 2017a. “A New Field in the Practice of Philosophy.” In Practicing Philosophy: New Frontiers, Expanding Boundaries, edited by Lydia Amir, 118–43. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2017b. Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2018. Taking Philosophy Seriously. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2019. “I Stand in Philosophy Exactly Where I Stand in Daily Life: The Special Case of Laughter.” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the George Santayana Society, 37. ———. Forthcoming. The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset. New York, NY: Routledge. ———. Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson). Work under contract for SUNY Press.

References

243

———. Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza Versus Nietzsche. Work under contract for de Gruyter’s Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung. ———. Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Work under contract for de Gruyter. ———. The Philosophy of Humor Handbook. Work under contract for Palgrave Macmillan. Annas, Julia. 1993. The Morality of Happiness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Anonymous. 1980. Le Tao Sexuel: Un manuel chinois d’éducation sexuelle. Montréal: Basile. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret. 1957. “Intention.” Philosophy, 33(124): 1–19. Apte, Mahadev L. 1983. “Humor Research, Methodology, and Theory in Anthropology.” In Handbook of Humor Research, vol. 1: Basic Issues, edited by P. E. Mc Ghee and J. H. Goldstein, 183–212. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag. Apter, Michael. 1982. The Experience of Motivation: The Theory of Psychological Reversals. London: Academic Press. Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Summa Theologica, BasicWritings of St. Thomas Aquinas. New York, NY: Random House. ———. 1960. On Charity (De Caritate), translated by Lottie H. Kendzierski. Milwaukee, WI: Maquette University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1944. “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition.” Jewish Social Studies, 6(2): 99–122. ———. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ———. (1963) 1992. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin. ———. 1978. The Life of the Mind, vol I. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ———. 2005. The Promise of Politics, edited by Jerome Kohn. New York, NY: Schoken Books. Argyle, Michael. 1987. The Psychology of Happiness. London: Mathuen. Aristotle. 1963. Categories and De Interpretatione, translated by John Ackrill. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. ———. 1970. The Rhetoric of Aristotle, edited by John Edwin Sandys, with a commentary by Edward Meredith Cope. Hildesheim: G. Olms. ———. 1987. On the Soul, translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.

244

References

———. 1999. The Metaphysics, translated and with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. New York, NY: Penguin Random House. ———. 1988. The Politics, translated by Stephen Everson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Nicomachean Ethics, translated and edited by Roger Crisp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001. On the Parts of Animals I –IV, translated and with an introduction and commentary by James G. Lennox. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Arnim, Hans von. 1905–1924. Stoicurum Veterum Fragments, 4 vols. Tuebner: Leipzig. Arpaly, Nomy, and Timothy Schroeder. 2014. In Praise of Desire. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Attardo, Salvatore. 2000a. “Irony as Relevant Inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics, 32: 793–826. ———. 2000b. “Irony Markers and Functions: Towards a Goal-Oriented Theory of Irony and Its Processing.” Rask, 12: 3–20. Augustine of Hippo. (1397) 1956. Les Confessions, translated into French by Pierre de Labriolle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ———. 1958. On Christian Doctrine, translated by Durant W. Roberston, Jr. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merill. ———. 1993. On Free Choice of the Will, translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Axel, Robert. 1925. “Estimation of Time.” Archiv für Psychologie, 12: 5–77. Baas, Bernard. 1992. Le désir pur. Louvain: Peeters. Badiou, Alain. 2017. “Hegel’s Master and Slave.” Crisis and Critique 4(1): 35–47. Bahnsen, Julius. 1872. Zur Philosophie der Geschichte: Eine kritische Besprechung des Hegel-Harmann’schen Evolutionismus aus Schopenhauer’schen Prinzipien. Berlin: Duncker. ———. 1877. Das Tragische als Weltgesetz und der Humor als ästhetische Gestalt des Metaphysichen. Lauenburg: Verlag von F. Ferley. ———. 1879. Pessimisten-Brevier: Von einem Geweihten. Berlin: Theobald Grieben. ———. 1880–1882. Der Widerspruch im Wissen und Wesen der Welt. 2 vols. Berlin: Theobald Grieben. Baker, Robert, and Frederick Elliston (eds.). 1984. Philosophy and Sex, new revised edition. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

References

245

Baldwin, James M. (ed.). 1901–1905. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 4 vols. New York, NY: Macmillan. Ballesteros, Antonio. 2000. Historia de la Serenidad: Un Recorrido PoéticoFilosófico a Través del Concepto de la Serenidad en Occidente. Madrid: Oberon. Bardon, Adrian. 2016. A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Barnett, Mark A. 1987. “Empathy and Related Responses in Children.” In Empathy and Its Development, edited by N. Eisenberg and J. Strayer, 146–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Basu, Sammy. 1999. “Dialogic Ethics and the Virtue of Humor.” Journal of Political Philosophy, 7: 378–403. ———. 2012. “‘But What’s the Use? They Don’t Wear Breeches!’: Montaigne and the Pedagogy of Humor.” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46(2): 187– 99. Bataille, Georges. 1988. Inner Experience, translated and with an introduction by Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. (1943) 1976. Oeuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard. Baudelaire, Charles. 1968. “De l’essence du rire, et géneralement du comique dans les arts plastiques.” In Oeuvres Completes. Paris: Seuil. Baudrillard, Jean. 1979. De la séduction. Paris: Denoël. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Beattie, James. 1776. “On Laughter and Ludicrous Composition.” In Essays, 583–706. Edinburgh: William Greech. Beauvoir, Simone de. (1947) 1949. The Ethics of Ambiguity, translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York, NY: Citadel Press. ———. 1954. The Second Sex, translated by H. M. Parsley. New York, NY: Knopf. Becker, Ernest. (1962) 1971. The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man. Second edition. New York, NY: The Free Press. Beiser, Frederick C. 2014. After Hegel: German Philosophy 1840 –1900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2016. Weltschmertz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860 –1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. “Humor as Redemption in the Pessimistic Philosophy of Julius Bahnsen.” In All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, edited by Lydia Moland. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol. 7, 105–114. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

246

References

Beistegui, Miguel de, and Simon Sparks (eds.). 2000. Philosophy and Tragedy. London and New York: Routledge. Bellah, Robert N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Benatar, David. 2006. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. The Human Predicament: The Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions. New York, NY. Oxford University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1980. “Dialogue uber die Religiosität der Gegenwart.” In Gesammelte Schriften, Sieben Bände (in 14 Teilbänden), Band II. Berlin: Suherkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft. Benoist, Alain de. 1996. “Confronting Globalization.” Telos, 108: 117–38. Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron. 2000. The Subtlety of Emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Berenson, Bernard. 1964. The Selected Letters of Bernard Berenson. Edited by A.K. McComb. London: Hutchinson. Berger, Arthur A. 1993. An Anatomy of Humor. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Berger, Douglas L. 2004. “The Veil of M¯ay¯a”: Schopenhauer’s System and Early Modern Thought. Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publishing. Berger, Peter L. 1997. Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ———, and Thomas Luckman. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. New York, NY: Doubleday. Bergson, Henri. (1907) 1911. Creative Evolution, translated by A. Mitchell. London: Macmillan. ———. 1919. L’energie spirituelle. Paris: Felix Lacan. ———. 1977. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1999. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by C. Bereton and F. Rothwell. Kobenhavn and Los Angeles: Green Interger. Berlin, Isaiah. (1983) 1991. “Giambattista Vico and Cultural History.” In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, edited by H. Hardy, 49–69. London: Fontana Press. Berlyne, Daniel E. 1972. “Humor and Its Kin.” In The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, edited by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 43–60. New York, NY: Academic Press. Bernstein, Richard. 2002. Radical Evil. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2005. The Abuse of Evil. Cambridge: Polity Press.

References

247

Bersani, Leo. 2009. Is the Rectum a Grave and Other Essays. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Beversluis, Joel (ed.). 1995. “Humanistic Manifesto II.” In A Sourcebook for Earth’s Community of Religions. Grand Rapids, MI: Co Nexus Press. Billings, Joshua. 2014. Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy. Princeton, NJ and Oxfordshire, UK: Princeton University Press. Bishop, Michael. 2015. The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blachowicz, James. 1998. Of Two Minds: The Nature of Inquiry. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 1999. “The Dialogue of the Soul with Itself.” In Models of the Self, edited by Shaun Gallagher and Jonathan Shear, 176–200. Thoverton, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Blackburn, Simon. 2004. Lust. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blackwell, Kenneth. 1985. The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand Russell. London and Boston: George Allen & Unwin. Bleuler, Eugen. (1911) 1952. Dementia Praecox, translated by Joseph Zinkin. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Bloom, Harold. 1983. The Breaking of the Vessels. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2004. Where Shall Wisdom Be Found. New York, NY: Riverhead Books. Bok, Sissela. 2010. Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bono, Edward de. (1970) 1990. Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step. London: Penguin. ———. 1993. Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas. New York: Harper Business. Booker, Christopher. 2004. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum. Booth, Wayne C. 1974. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Borchert, Bruno. 1994. Mysticism: Its History and Challenge. York Beach, ME: S. Weiser. Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. 1908. Traité de la concupiscence. Paris: Librairie Bloud et Cie. Botting, Fred, and Scott Wilson (eds.). 1998. Bataille: A Critical Reader. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Brahami, Frédéric. 2008. “La santé du sceptique: Hume, Montaigne.” Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (2): 177–92. https://philosophiascientiae.revues.org/123.

248

References

Braybrooke, Marcus. 1988. Faith and Interfaith in a Global Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Co Nexus Press. Bremmer, Jan (ed.). 1991. From Sappho to De Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge. Brodrick, Michael. 2015. The Ethics of Detachment in Santayana’s Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bruckner, Pascal. 2000. L’Euphorie perpetuelle: Essai sur le devoir du bonheur. Paris: Bernard Grasset. Brumbaugh, Robert S. 1984. Unreality and Time. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Buber, Martin. 1958. I and Thou. New York, NY: Scribner. ———. 1967. Between Man and Man. New York, NY: Macmillan. Buddha. 1995. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, translated by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Bull, Nina. 1961. The Attitude Theory of Emotion. New York, NY: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs. Burton, Robert. 1989.The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair and introduction by J. B. Bamborough. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Butler, Judith. 1987. Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France, foreword by Philippe Sabot and translated by Damon Young. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Calhoun, Cheshire. 1989. “Responsibility and Reproach.” Ethics, 99: 389–406. Callan, Eamonn. 1988. “The Moral Status of Pity.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 18: 1–12. Camus, Albert. 1958. State of Siege, in Caligula and Three Other Plays, translated by Stuart Gilbert. New York, NY: Knopf. ———. (1942) 1959. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated by Justin O’Brian. New York, NY: Vintage Book. Capella, Martianus. 2007. Les noces de Philologie et de Mercure, edited by Michel Ferré. Collection des Universités de France. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Carlyle, Thomas. 1827. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. London: Frazer. ———. (1833–1834) 2000. Sartor Resartus, edited by M. Engel and R. Tarr. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Carmody, Denise Lardner, and John Tully Carmody. 1996. Mysticism: Holiness East and West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Caro, Elme-Marie. 1878. Le pessimisme au XIXe siècle: Leopardi—Schopenhauer— Hartmann. Paris: Hachette.

References

249

Carroll, Noël. 2014. Humour: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cartwright, David E. 1984. “Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on the Morality of Pity.” Journal History of Ideas, 45: 83–98. Cavell, Stanley. 1987. Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, Wallace. 1987. “Humor as a Disabling Mechanism.” American Behavioral Scientist, 30: 16–26. ———. 2007. The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chanter, Tina. 1999. “Beyond Sex and Gender: On Luce Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is Not One.” In The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited and introduced by Donn Welton, 361–75. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Chirpaz, François. 1998. Le Tragique. Paris: PUF. Que sais-je? Chopra, Deepak. 1998. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. Chrétien, Jean-Louis. 1981. “Bonheur et temporalité.” Revue de l’enseignement philosophique, décembre 1980–Janvier 1981. Chuang Tzu. 1968. The Complete Work of Chuang Tzu, translated by Burton Watson. New York and London: Columbia University Press. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. 1945. Tusculan Disputations, translated by J. E. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library). Cioran. 1973. De l’inconvénient d’être né. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1990. Sur les cimes du désespoir, translated by André Vornic. Paris: L’Herne. Cixous, Hélène. 1976. “The Laugh of the Medusa,” translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1(4): 875–93. Originally published as “Le rire de la Méduse.” L’Arc, 61: 39–54, 1975. ———. 1978. Préparatifs de noces au delà de l’abîme. Paris: Des femmes. ———. 2003. “The Laughter of the Medusa.” In The Continental Ethics Reader, edited by Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, 276–84. New York, NY: Routledge. ———, and Catherine Clément. 1975. Jeune née. Paris: 10/18. Clooney, Francis X. S. J., and Hugh Nicholson. 2001. “To Be Heard and Done, But Never Quite Seen: The Human Condition According to the Vivekac¯ud¯amani.” In The Human Condition: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, edited by Robert C. Neville, 73–99. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

250

References

Clowes, Edith W. 2007. “Groundlessness: Nietzsche and Russian Concepts of Tragic Philosophy.” In Nietzsche and the Rebirth of the Tragic, edited by Mary Ann Frese Witt, 126–37. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press. Cohen, Alix, and Robert Stern (eds.). 2017. Thinking About the Emotions. A Philosophical History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, Ted. 1999. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cohen, Sheldon, and Thomas A. Wills. 1985. “Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis.” Psychological Bulletin, 98(2): 310–57. Comte, Auguste. (1851–1854) 1929. Système de politique positive. 4 vols. Paris: Mathias. Comte-Sponville, André. 1984. Le mythe d’Icare: Traité du désespoir et de la béatitude. Paris: PUF. ———. 1993. Valeur et vérité. Paris: PUF. ———. 2000. Le bonheur, désespérément. Paris: Pleins Feux. ———. 2012. Le sexe ni la mort: Trois essais sur l’amour et la sexualité. Paris: Albin Michel. Conche, Marcel. 1995. “Préface.” In Montaigne: Le badin de la farce: de la joie tragique à la gaie sagesse, by Pierre Leschemelle. Paris: Imago. Cooper, David E. 1996. World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Cooper, John M. 2012. Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cornford, Francis Macdonald. (1914) 1961. The Origin of Attic Comedy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Corrigan, Robert W. 1965. “Aristophanic Comedy: The Conscience of a Conservative.” In Comedy: Meaning and Form, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 353–62. San Francisco, CA: Chandler Publishing Company. Corsini, Raymond J. 1999. The Dictionary of Psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel. Critchley, Simon. 1999. “Comedy and Finitude: Displacing the Tragic-Heroic Paradigm in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.” Constellations, 6(1): 108–22. ———. 2002. On Humour. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2003. “Is Humor Human?” In Becoming Human: New Perspectives on the Inhuman Condition, edited by Paul Sheehan, 43–52. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger. ———. 2007. Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitments, Politics of Resistance. London: Verso.

References

251

Crossan, John Dominic. 1976. Raid on the Inarticulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row. d’Oro, Giuseppina, and Søren Overgaard (eds.). 2017. The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahlkvist, Tobias. 2007. Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism. A Study of Nietzsche’s Relation to the Pessimistic Tradition: Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Leopardi. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University Press. Dante, Alighieri. 1965. Œuvres complètes, translated by A. Pezard. Paris: Gallimard, “La Pléiade.” Davenport, Manuel M. 1976. “Existential Philosophy of Humor.” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 7: 169–76. Davies, Christie. 1990. Ethnic Humor Around the World. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Davis, Dineh. 2008. “Communication and Humor.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 543–69. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Davis, Jessica Milner. 2011. “The Fool and the Path to Spiritual Insight.” In Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, edited by Hans Geybels and Walter van Herck, 218–47. London: Continuum. Davy, Marie-Madeleine. 1990. “La philosophie ascétique.” In Initiation médiévale. Paris: Albin Michel. De Cusa, Nicolas. (1440) 1961. De docta ignorantia (Learned Ignorance). 2nd edition. Madrid: Aguilar. Debes, Remy. 2017. Dignity: A History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson. London: The Athlone Press. ———. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco, CA: City Light Books. ———. 1972. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Vol. I: L’Anti-Œdipe. Paris: Minuit. ———, and Felix Guattari. 1980. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Vol. II: MillePlateaux. Paris: Minuit. ———, and Claire Parnet. 1996. Dialogues. Paris: Champs-Flammarion. Dennett, Daniel C. 1993. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York, NY: Viking Press. Descartes, René. 1989. Correspondance avec Elisabeth. Paris: GF-Flammarion. ———. (1766) 1996. Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

252

References

———. 1997. Les Passions de l’âme. Paris: GF-Flammarion. Desmond, William. 1993. “Being at Loss: Reflections on Philosophy and the Tragic.” In Tragedy and Philosophy, edited by N. Georgopoulos, 154–86. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Destrée, Pierre, and Franco V. Trivigno. 2019. “Introduction.” In Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno, 1–10. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dews, Peter. 2005. “Disenchantment and the Persistence of Evil: Habermas, Jonas, Badiou.” In Modernity and the Problem of Evil, edited by A. D. Schrift. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz. 1972. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 16th edition. Dublin and Zurich: Weidman. Diener, Ed, and Robert Biswas-Diener. 2008. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. New York, NY: Blackwell. Dienstag, Joshua Foa. 2006. Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dijn, Herman de. 1996. Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Dingli, Sandra. 2008. Thinking Outside the Box: Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking. In The Routledge Companion to Creativity, edited by Mark A. Runco, Susan Moger, and Tudor Rickards, 338–50. London and New York: Routledge. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 2015. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and Its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, Adorno. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Donougho, Martin. 2016. “Hegelian Comedy.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 49(2): 196–220. Drever, James. (1952) 1973. A Dictionary of Psychology. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Durkheim, Emile. (1914) 1964. “The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions.” In Essays on Sociology and Philosophy, 325–50. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Dziemidok, Bohdan. 1993. The Comical: A Philosophical Analysis, translated by Marek Janiak. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Eagleton, Terry. 2003. Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2007. The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eastman, Max. (1921) 1972. The Sense of Humor. New York, NY: Octagon Books. Eckel, Malcolm D., and John J. Thatamanil. 2001. “Beginningless Ignorance: A Buddhist View of the Human Condition.” In The Human Condition: A

References

253

Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, edited by Robert C. Neville, 49–71. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Edwards, Paul (ed.). 1992. Immortality. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing. Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2009. Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America. New York, NY: Picador. Eichenbaum, Louise, and Susie Orbach. 1983. UnderstandingWomen: A Feminine Psychoanalytic Approach. New York, NY: Basic Books. Eid, Michael, and Randy J. Larsen (eds.). 2008. The Science of Subjective WellBeing. London: Guilford Press. Einstein, Albert. 1950. “On the Generalized Theory of Relativity.” Scientific American, 182(4): 13–17. Eisenberg, Nancy, and Janet Strayer (eds.). 1987. Empathy and Its Development. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, Albert. 1977. “Fun as Psychotherapy.” Rational Living, 12: 2–6. Ellis, Fiona. 2017. “Desire and the Spiritual Life.” In Spirituality and the Good Life: Philosophical Approaches, edited by David McPherson, 84–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emmanuel, Steven M. (ed.). 2018. Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach. Malden, MA: Wiley. Empiricus, Sextus. 2000. Outline of Scepticism, edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Epicurus. 2011. “Letter to Menoeceus.” “Principal Doctrines.” In Classics of Philosophy, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn. 3rd edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Epstein, Isidore. 1959. Judaism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1971. Praise of Folly (1509) and Letter to Martin Dorp (1515), translated by Betty Radice, with introduction and notes by A. H. T. Levi. London: Penguin Books. Esslin, Martin. 1961. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Eysenck, Hans. J. 1942. “The Appreciation of Humour: An Experimental and Theoretical Study.” British Journal of Psychology, 32: 295–309. Feinberg, Joel. 1980. “Absurd Self-Fulfillment.” In Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays, edited by Joel Feinberg, 297–330. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Feldman, Simon. 2015. Against Authenticity: Why You Shouldn’t Be Yourself. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books. Ficara, Elena. 2014. “Introduction.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 1–12. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

254

References

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. (1800) 1987. The Vocation of Man, translated by P. Preuss. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Fisher, Mary Pat. 1999. Religion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge. Fisher, Seymour, and Rhoda L. Fisher. 1983. “Personality and Psychopathology in the Comic.” In Handbook of Humor Research, edited by Paul E. McGhee and Jeffrey H. Goldstein, vol. 1, 41–60. New York, NY: Springer. Fletcher, Horace. 1897. Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought. London: Stone. Flugel, John. C. 1954. “Humor and Laughter.” In Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by G. Lindsey, vol. 2, 709–34. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Ford, Dennis. 2007. The Search for Meaning: A Short History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Foucault, Michel. 1976. Histoire de la Sexualité, I. La Volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Fowler, Jeaneane D., and Merv Fowler. 2008. Chinese Religions: Beliefs and Practices. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press. Frankfurt, Harry G. 1987. “Identification and Wholeheartedness.” In Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, edited by Ferdinand Shoeman, 34–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Taking Ourselves Seriously: Getting It Right, edited by Debra Satz, with comments by Christine M. Korsgaard, Michael E. Bratman, and Meir Dan-Cohen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2014. The Reasons of Love. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1953–1974. The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 volumes, edited by James Strachey et al. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis [SE ]. ———. 1909. “Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.” SE, 10: 151–318. ———. 1912–1913. “Totem and Taboo.” SE, 13: 1–161. ———. 1915. “The Unconscious.” SE, 14: 166–204. ———. 1921. “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” SE, 18: 67–143. ———. (1925) 1926 “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.” SE, 20: 75–172. ———. (1927) 1928. “Humor.” SE, 21: 159–66. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9: 1–6. ———. 1932. “Femininity.” SE, 12: 112–35. ———. (1932) 1933. “New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis.” SE, 22: 1–182. ———. 1949a. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, translated by James Strachey. London: The Alcuin Press.

References

255

———. 1949b. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, translated by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press. ———. (1905) 1960. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, translated by James Strachey. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. SE, 8: 8–236. ———. 1961. Civilization and Its Discontents, translated and edited by James Strachey. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ———. 1990. The Future of an Illusion, translated and edited by James Strachey. New York, NY: Norton. Fridja, Nico H. 1986. The Emotions. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. “The Psychologists’ Point of View.” In Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd edition, 68–87. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Froese, Katrin. 2017. Why Can’t Philosophers Laugh? London: Palgrave Macmillan. Fry, William F. 1987. “Humor and Paradox.” American Behavioral Scientist, 30: 42–71. ———. 1992a. “Humor and Chaos.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 5(3): 219–32. ———. 1992b. “The Physiological Effects of Humor, Mirth, and Laughter.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 267: 1857–58. ———. 1994. “The Biology of Humor.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 7(2): 111–26. ———, and Waleed Salameh (eds.). 1987. Handbook of Humor and Psychotherapy. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange. ———. 1993. Advances in Humor and Psychotherapy. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange. Frye, Northrop. 1964. “The Argument of Comedy.” In Theories of Comedy, edited with an introduction by Paul Lauter, 450–60. New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. Truth and Method, translation revised by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. 2nd revised edition. New York, NY: Continuum. Gale, Richard M. (ed.). 1967. The Philosophy of Time. Garden City, New York, NY: Anchor Books. Galle, Rolland. 1993. “The Disjunction of the Tragic: Hegel and Nietzsche.” In Tragedy and Philosophy, edited by N. Georgopoulos, 39–56. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

256

References

Garrett, Aaron. 2017. “Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception in Modern Moral Philosophy.” In Self-Knowledge: A History, edited by Ursula Renz, 164–82. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Garrett, Don. 1996. “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garett, 267–314. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Gelven, Michael. 2000. Truth and the Comedic Art. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Georgopoulos, Nenos (ed.). 1993. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Gerard, Alexander. (1759) 1963. An Essay on Taste: Together with Observations Concerning the Imitative Nature of Poetry, 3rd edition. With an introduction by Walter J. Hipple, Jr. Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints. Gertler, Brie. 2011. Self-Knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge. Gibbard, Allan. 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, MA, London UK: Harvard University Press. ———. 2008. Reconciling Our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics, edited by Barry Stroud, with comments by Michael Bratman, John Broom, and F. M. Kamm. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid. 1997. Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion. London: Routledge. Gimbel, Steven. 2017. Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. New York, NY: Routledge. Giora, Rachel. 1998. “Irony.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, edited by J. Verschueren, J.-O. Ostman, J. Blommaert, and C. Bulcaen, 1–21. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Benjamins. Goldhill, Simon. 2012. Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Goldie, Peter (ed.). 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alan H. 1977. “Plain Sex.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6 (3): 267– 87. Goldsmith, Marcella Tarozzi, 1991. Nonrepresentational Forms of the Comic: Humor, Irony, and Jokes. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Gordon, Paul. 2001. Tragedy after Nietzsche: Rapturous Superabundance. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Gouinlock, James. 2015. “Introduction: George Santayana: The Life of Reason.” In Reason in Art, by George Santayana, xiv–lii. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

References

257

Greenspan, Patricia S. 1980. “A Case of Mixed Feelings: Ambivalence and the Logic of Emotion.” In Explaining Emotions, edited by Amélie Rorty, 223–50. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Griffin, David Ray. 1988. “Introduction: Postmodern Spirituality and Society.” In Spirituality and Society, edited by David Ray Griffin. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Grim, Patrick. 2004. “What is Contradiction?” In The Law of Non-Contradiction, edited by Graham Priest, J. C. Beall, and Bradley Armour-Garb, 49–72. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grimaldi, Nicolas. 1971. Le Désir et le temps. Paris: PUF. Grossman, Saul A. 1977. “The Use of Jokes in Psychotherapy.” In It’s a Funny Thing, Humour, edited by Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot. Oxford: Pergamon. Grotjhan, Mark. 1970. “Laughter in Psychotherapy.” In Celebration of Laughter, edited by W. Mendel. Los Angeles, CA: Mara. Guignon, Charles B. 2005. On Being Authentic. London and New York: Routledge. Guitton, Jean. 1966. Justification du temps. Paris: PUF. Gurewitch, Morton. 1994. The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Gutwirth, Marcel. 1993. Laughing Matter: An Essay on the Comic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Guyau, Jean-Marie. 1890. La génèse de l’idée de temps. Paris: Félix Alcan. Hadjadj, Fabrice. 2008. La profondeur des sexes: Pour une mystique de la chair. Paris: Seuil. Hales, Steven D. 2000. “The Problem of Intuition.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 37(2): 135–47. Hall, Stephen S. 2010. Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Halliwell, Stephen. (2008) 2018. Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanfling, Oswald (ed.). 1987. Life and Meaning: A Reader. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. Hanna, Robert. 2017. “Rational Anthropology and Its Kantian Methodology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, edited by Giuseppina d’Oro and Søren Overgaard, 187–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hart, Marjolein ‘t, and Dennis Bos (eds.). 2007. Humor and Social Protest. Special Issue of The International Review of Social History, 52, supplement S15.

258

References

Hartmann, Eduard von. 1869. Philosophie des Unbewussten: Versuch einer Welstanschauung. Berlin: Duncker. ———. 1877. Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerismus und Hegelianismus. Berlin: Duncker. Hartocollis, Peter. 1983. Time and Timelessness, or, The Varieties of Temporal Experience. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1952. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag. ———. 1970. Werke in zwanzig Banden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. ———. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Arts, 2 vols. translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1986. Vorlesung über die Aesthetic. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Heller, Agnes. 2005. Immortal Comedy: The Comic Phenomenon in Art, Literature, and Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Heinegg, Peter. 2005. Better Than Both: The Case for Pessimism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hepburn, Ronald W. 1967. “Nature and Assessment of Mysticism.” In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, vol. 5, 429–34. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing and the Free Press. Hermans, Hubert, and Agnieszka Hermans-Konopka. 2010. Dialogical Self Theory: Positioning and Counter-Positioning in a Globalizing Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herzog, Thomas, and Beverly Bush. 1994. “The Prediction of Preference for Sick Humor.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 7(4): 323–40. ———, and Joseph Karafa. 1998. “Preferences for Sick versus Nonsick Humor.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 11(3): 291–312. Higgins, Kathleen. 2000. Comic Relief: Nietzsche’s Gay Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hippocrates. 1990. Pseudepigraphic Writings, edited and translated by Wesley D. Smith. E. J. Leiden: Brill. Hobbes, Thomas. 1840. “Human Nature.” In Works. London: Molesworth. ———. 1958. Leviathan. New York, NY: Macmillan, Library of Liberal Arts. Hokenson, Jan. 2006. The Idea of Comedy: History, Theory, Critique. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Hollingdale, Reginald J. 2001. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hook, Sidney. 1974. Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life. New York, NY: Basic Books.

References

259

Huddleston, Andrew. 2014. “Hegel on Comedy: Theodicy, Social Criticism, and the ‘Supreme Task’ of Art.” The British Journal of Aesthetics, 54 (2): 227–40. Hume, David. 1975. David Hume’s Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding Enquiries and Concerning the Principles of Morals [1777], edited by L.A. SelbyBigge, 3rd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd edition with text revised and variant readings by P. H. Niddich. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1986. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene Miller. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics. ———. (1739) 1995. Traité de la nature humaine, translated into French by Baranger Philippe and Saltel Philippe. Paris: GF-Flammarion. ———. 1998. “On the Dignity and Meanness of Human Nature.” In David Hume: Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, 15–47. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. (1748) 1999. Enquête sur l’entendement humain, translated into French by Didier Deleule. Paris: Livre de Poche. Huppert, Felicia A., Nick Baylis, and Barry Keverne (eds.). 2003. The Science of Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurka, Thomas. 1993. Perfectionism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. The Best Things in Life: A Guide to What Really Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurley, Matthew M., Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr. 2011. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Huskinson, Lucy. 2004. Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites. Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge. Hyers, Merritt Conrad. 1996. The Spirituality of Comedy: Comic Heroism in a Tragic World. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. 1965. “Psychoanalysis and Tragedy.” In Tragedy: Vision and Form, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 287–301. Scranton, Penn.: Chandler. Illetterati, Luca. 2014. “Limit and Contradiction in Hegel.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 127–52. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter. Inwood, Brad. 1982. “A Note on Desire in Stoic Theory.” Dialogue, 21(2): 329– 31. ———, and Lloyd Gerson (eds.). 1988. Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Irigaray, Luce. 1977. Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un. Paris: Minuit.

260

References

———. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One, translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1987. Sexes et parentés. Paris: Minuit. James, Christine A. 2005. “The Benefits of Comedy: Teaching Ethics through Shared Laughter.” Academic Exchange Extra. James, William. (1909) 1975 Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, edited by F. H. Burkhardt, F. Bowers, I. K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. (1897) 1979. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, edited by F. H. Burkhardt, F. Bowers, I. K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. (1902) 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, edited by F. H. Burkhardt, F. Bowers, I. K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. 1964. L’Ironie ou la bonne conscience. Paris: Flammarion. ———. 1998. Philosophie Morale. Paris: Flammarion. Jaspers, Karl. (1933) 1957. Man in the Modern Age, translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Jeannière, Abel. 1959. La pensée d’ Héraclite d’Éphèse, avec la traduction intégrale des fragments. Paris: Aubier, éditions Montaigne. Johnson, Gregory R. 2002. Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings, translated by Gregory R. Johnson and Glenn Alexander Magee. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation. ———. 2006. “The Tree of Melancholy: Kant on Philosophy and Enthusiasm.” In Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, edited by Chris L. Firestone and Stephen R. Palmquist, 43–61. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Jonas, Hans. 1996. Mortality and Morality: A Search of the Good after Auschwitz, edited by I. Vogel. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Jones, Ernest. 1955. Sigmund Freud: Life and Work. 3 vols. London: Hogarth Press. Joplin, David A. 2000. Self-Knowledge and the Self. New York and London: Routledge. Jung, Carl. 1931. Métamorphoses et symboles de la libido. Paris: Aubier. ———. 1951. “Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self.” In Collected Works, edited by H. Read, M. Foedham, G. Adler and W. McGuire, translated by R. F. C. Hull, 20 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

References

261

Kallen, Horace M. 1968. Liberty, Laughter and Tears: Reflections on the Relations of Comedy and Tragedy to Human Freedom. De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1902–. Kants gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Koniglischen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschafte. ———. 1911. Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, translated with seven introductory essays, notes, and analytical index by James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. (1788) 1929. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. ———. 1950. “Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics.” Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. ———. 1956. Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis W. Beck. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merril. ———. 1992–. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (German Akademie [Ak] pagination provided in margins) edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, edited by Robert B. Loude. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaplan, Aryeh. 1985. Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide. New York, NY: Schoken Books. Kateb, George. 2011. Human Dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kaufmann, Walter. 1969. Tragedy and Philosophy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company. Keith-Speigel, Patricia. 1972. “Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties and Issues.” In The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, edited by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 81–100. New York, NY: Academic Press. Kekes, John. 1995. Moral Wisdom and Good Lives. Ithaca, IL: Cornell University Press. ———. 1996. Facing Evil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2010. The Human Condition. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

262

References

———. 2016. Human Predicaments and What to Do About Them. Chicago, IL and London: Chicago University Press. Kerr, Walter. 1967. Comedy and Tragedy. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1962. Works of Love, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong. London: Collins. ———. 1967–1978. Journals and Papers, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. 7 vols. Bloomington, IN, and London: Indiana University Press. ———. 1980. The Sickness unto Death, translated and edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1985. Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1987. Either/Or, Vol. 1, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kitcher, Philip. 2007. Living with Darwin. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Klein, Melanie. 1975. “The Oedipus Complex in the Light of Early Anxieties.” In The Writings of Melanie Klein. London: Hogarth Press (Reprinted from International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1945, 26: 11–33). Kline, Linus W. 1907. “The Psychology of Humor.” American Journal of Psychology, 18: 421–41. Koestler, Arthur. 1949. Insight and Outlook. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 1964. The Act of Creation. London: Pan Books. ———. 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. New York, NY: Macmillan. Kohn, Livia. 2001. Daoism and Chinese Culture. Magdalena, NM: Three Pines Press. Kohut, Heinz. 1977. The Restoration of the Self. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Kojève, Alexandre. 1947. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Paris: Gallimard. Koller, Marvin. 1988. Humor and Society: Explorations in the Sociology of Humor. Houston, TX: Cap and Gown Press. Kramer, Deirdre A. 1990. “Conceptualizing Wisdom: The Primacy of AffectCognition Relations.” In Wisdom: Its Nature, Origin and Development, edited by R. Sternberg, 317–32. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Kraut, Richard. 1979. “Two Conceptions of Happiness.” The Philosophical Review, 99: 167–97.

References

263

———. 2007. What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Krell, David. 2005. The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Krieger, Murray. 1960. The Tragic Vision. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ———. 1963. “Tragedy and the Tragic Vision.” In Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall, 130–146. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kuipers, Giselinde. 2008. “The Sociology of Humor.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 361–98. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kümmel, Friedrich. 1966. “Time as Succession and the Problem of Duration.” In The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York, NY: George Braziller. Kupperman, Joel J. 1991. Character. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. 1995. “The Emotions of Altruism, East and West.” In Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, edited by Roger Ames and Joel Marks, with a discussion by Robert C. Solomon. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2005. “Morality, Ethics, and Wisdom.” In A Book of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives, edited by Robert J. Sternberg and Jennifer Jordan, 245–71. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ——— (ed.). 2012. Human Nature: A Reader. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Labeo, Notker. 1972–1996. “De partibus logicae,” edited by Eduard H. Sert, and Taylor Starck. Die Werke Notker des Deutchen, Neue Ausgabe. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek. Lacan, Jacques. 1966. Écrits. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1978. “Le désir, la vie et la mort.” Le Séminaire II. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1986. “L’éthique de la psychanalyse. Le Séminaire VII. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1994. “La relation d’objet. Le Séminaire IV. Paris: Seuil. Laertius, Diogenes. 1925. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, translated by R. D. Hicks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lancelin, Aude, and Marie Lemonnier. 2010. Les Philosophes et l’amour: Aimer de Socrates à Simone de Beauvoir. Essai. Paris: Editions J’ai Lu. Land, Nick. 1990. The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. London and New York: Routledge. Landau, Iddo. 1997. “Why Has the Question of the Meaning of Life Arisen in the Last Two and a Half Centuries?” In Philosophy Today, 41: 263–70. Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York, NY: Scribner’s.

264

References

———. 1960. “Feeling and Form.” In The Comic in Theory and Practice, edited by John J. Enck, Elizabeth T. Forter, and Alvin Whitley, 81–86. New York, NY: Appleton Century Crofts. ———. 1964. “The Great Dramatic Forms: The Comic Rhythm.” In Theories of Comedy, edited with an introduction by Paul Lauter, 497–522. New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Leach, Stephen, and James Tartaglia. 2018. “Postscript: The Blue Flower.” In The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia, 274–83. London and New York: Routledge. Leach, Stephen, and James Tartaglia (eds.). 2018. The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers. London and New York: Routledge. Leacock, Stephen. 1935. Humor, Its Theory and Technique. London: Lane. ———. 1938. Humor and Humanity. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Lear, Jonathan. 2003. Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony. New York, NY: Other Press. ———. 2011. A Case for Irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leibniz, Gottfried W. 1978. Zie Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by C. I Gerhardt. Berlin: Weidmann. ———. (1765) 1996. New Essays on Human Understanding, translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Lenoir, Frédéric. 2013. Du bonheur: Un voyage philosophique. Paris: Fayard. ———. 2015. La puissance de la joie. Paris: Fayard. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963–1976. Structural Anthropology, vols. 1–2. New York, NY: Basic Books. ———. 1967. “ The Story of Asdiwal.” In The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, edited by Edmund Leach, 1–47. London: Tavistok. ———. 1969–1980. Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vols. 1–4. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Levinas, Emmanuel. (1969) 1974. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by A. Lingis. Pittsburg, PA: Dusquesne University Press. Levy-Valensi, Éliane Amado. 1965. Le temps dans la vie psychologique. Paris: Flammarion. Lewis, Clive S. 1985 The Four Loves. London: Collins Fount Paperbacks. Lewis, Michael. 1992. Shame. New York, NY: The Free Press. Liebman, Joshua Loth. 1946. Peace of Mind. London, Toronto: William Heinemann. Lintott, Sheila. 2016. “Superiority in Humor Theory.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 74 (4): 347–58.

References

265

Lippitt, John A. 1996. “Existential Laughter.” Cogito, 10(1): 63–72. ———. 1999. “Laughter: A Tool in Moral Perfectionism?” In Nietzsche’s Futures, edited by John A. Lippitt, 99–126. New York, NY: Macmillan/St Martin’s Press. ———. 2000. Humor and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought. New York, NY: Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press. ———. 2005. “Is a Sense of Humour a Virtue?” The Monist, 88: 72–92. Lipps, Theodor. 1898. Komic und Humor: Eine psychologish-äesthetische Untersuchung. Hamburg/Leipzig: Verlag von Leopold Voss. Livingston, Donald W. 1998. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Loewald, Hans L. 1978. Psychoanalysis and the History of the Individual. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Long, Anthony A. 1986. Hellenistic Philosophies: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. ———. 2015. Greek Models of Mind and Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Löwith, Karl. 1949. Von Hegel zu Nietzsche: Der revolutionäre Bruch in Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts, Zweite Auflage. Vienna: Europa Verlag. Lucian. 1913–1967. Works, translated by A. M. Harmon, K. Kilburn and M. D. MacLeod. London: W. Heinemann. Luckman, Thomas. 1971. The Invisible Religion. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company. Lucretius, Carus Titus. 1947. De rerum natura, edited and translated by Cyril Bailey. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lund, Frederick Hansen. 1930. “Why Do We Weep?” Journal of Social Psychology, 1: 136–51. Luper, Steven. 2009. The Philosophy of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1974. Économie libidinale. Paris: Minuit. MacArthur, David. 2017. “On Metaphysical Quietism and Everyday Life.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, edited by Giuseppina d’Oro and Søren Overgaard, 249–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacHovec, Frank. J. 1988. Humor. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Macready, John Douglas. 2018. Hannah Arendt and the Fragility of Human Dignity. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books. Magnus, Bernd, and Kathleen M. Higgins. 1996. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

266

References

Mainländer, Philipp. 1876. Die letzen Hohenstaufen. Ein dramatisches Gedicht in drei Theilen. Leipzig: Heinrich Schmidt and Carl Günther. ———. 1886. Die Philosophie der Erlösung, II. Zwölf philosophischer Essays. Frankfurt: C. Koenitzer. 2nd edition, 1894. ———. 1996. Schriften, edited by Winfried H. Muller-Seyfarth. 4 vols. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag. Malcolm, Norman. 2001. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malpas, Jeff, and Robert C. Solomon (eds.). 1998. Death and Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. Malraux, André. 1933. La condition humaine. Paris: Gallimard. Mandel, Oscar. 1963. “Tragic Reality.” In Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall, 60–65. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mann, David. 2002. “Misanthropy and the Broken Mirror of Narcissism.” In Love and Hate—Psychoanalytic Perspectives, edited by David Mann, 164–85. Hove, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge. Mann, Thomas. 1947. The Magic Mountain, translated by H. D. Lowe-Porter. New York, NY: Knopf. Marcuse, Herbert. 1955. Eros et civilization. Paris: Seuil. Mares, Ed D. 2004. “Semantic Dialetheism.” In The Law of Non-Contradiction, edited by Graham Priest, J. C. Beall and Bradley Armour-Garb, 264–75. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marinoff, Lou. 2007. The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes. New York and London: Sterling. ———. 2019. On Human Conflict: The Philosophical Foundations of War and Peace. Lanham, MA: Hamilton Books. Marmysz, John. 2003. Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Martin, Bernard. 1969. “Introduction.” In Lev Shestov, Dostoevksy, Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Ohio, OH: Ohio University Press. Martin, Michael. 2002. Atheism, Morality, and Meaning. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Martin, Rod A. 1998. “Approaches to the Sense of Humor: A Historical Review.” In The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, edited by Willibald Ruch, 15–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2000. “Humor and Laughter.” In Encyclopedia of Psychology, edited by A. E. Kazdin, vol. 4. American Psychological Association. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

References

267

———. 2007. The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ———. 2008. “Humor and Health.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 479–521. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———, and Herbert M. Lefcourt. 1983. “Sense of Humor as a Moderator of the Relation Between Stressors and Moods.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45: 1313–24. Marx, Karl. 1852. Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon. New York, NY: SchmidtHelmich. Maslow, Abraham. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York, NY: Harper & Row. May, Rollo. 1953. Man’s Search for Himself. New York, NY: Random House. McBride, William. 2018. “Camus and the Meaning of Life.” In The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia, 245–51. London and New York: Routledge. McCabe, Mary Margaret. 2019. “Ridicule and Protreptic: Plato, His Reader and the Role of Comedy in Inquiry.” In Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno, 181–96. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. McConnell, Terrence C. 1988. “Interpersonal Moral Conflicts.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 25: 25–35. McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGill, Vivian Jerauld. 1967. The Idea of Happiness. New York, NY: Frederick A. Praeger. McMahon, Darrin M. 2004. “From the Happiness of Virtue to the Virtue of Happiness.” Daedalus, 133 (2): 5–17. ———. 2006. Happiness: A History. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press. Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Ménager, Daniel. 1995. La Renaissance et le rire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Menon, Vengalil Krishnan Krishna. 1931. A Theory of Laughter. London: George Allen & Unwin. Merrien, Catherine. 2010. De l’amour: De Platon à Comte-Sponville. Paris: Eyrolles. Merton, Robert K. 1976. Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays. New York, NY: The Free Press.

268

References

Metz, Thaddeus. 2013. Meaning of Life: An Analytic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyer, Matthew. 2008. “Review of Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism: A Study of Nietzsche’s Relation to the Pessimistic Tradition: Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Leopardi.” The Journal of Nietzsche’s Studies, 35/36: 195–98. Michel, Laurence, and Richard B. Sewall (eds.). 1963. Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Miller, David L. 1969. Gods and Games: Toward a Theology of Play. New York, NY: World Publishing Company. Miller, William I. 1997. The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2005. Faking It. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Minois, Georges. 2000. Histoire du rire et de la dérision. Paris: Fayard. Minsky, Marvin. 1983. “Jokes and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious.” In Methods and Heuristics, edited by R. Groner, M. Groner, and W. F. Bischof, 171–93. London: Elbaum. Moland, Lydia. 2016. “‘And Why Not?’ Hegel, Comedy, and the End of Art.” Verifiche: Rivista Trimestrale di Scienze Umane (1-2): 73–104. ——— (ed.). 2018. All Too Human: Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Monro, David Hector. 1951. Argument of Laughter. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. Monroe, Charles R. 1995. World Religions: An Introduction. New York, NY: Prometheus Books. Montaigne, Michel de. (1924) 1965. Essais, edited by Pierre Villey and re-edited by Victor-Louis Saulnier. Paris: PUF. ———. 1967. The Complete Works of Montaigne, translated by Donald Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1998. Essais. Paris: Imprimerie nationale. Morreall, John. 1983a. Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 1983b. “Humor and Emotion.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 20: 297–304. ——— (ed.). 1987. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 1989a. “The Rejection of Humor in Western Thought.” Philosophy East and West 39(3): 243–66. ———. 1989b. “Enjoying Incongruity.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2(1): 1–18.

References

269

———. 1997. Humor Works. Amherst, MA: Human Resource Development Press. ———. 1998. “The Comic and Tragic Visions of Life.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 11(4): 333–55. ———. 1999. Tragedy, Comedy and Religion. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2001. “Sarcasm, Irony, Wordplay, and Humor in the Hebrew Bible: A Response to Hershey Friedman.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 14(3): 1–9. ———. 2008. “Applications of Humor: Health, the Workplace, and Education.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 429–78. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2009. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2010. “Comic Vices and Comic Virtues.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 23(1): 1–26. Morrison, Andrew P. 1986. The Culture of Shame. London: Jason Aronson. ——— (ed.). 1986. Essential Papers on Narcissism. New York, NY: New York University Press. Most, Glenn W. 2000. “Generating Genres: The idea of the Tragic.” In Matrices of Genre: Authors, Cannons, and Society, edited by Mary Depew and Dirk Obbink, 15–36. Cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press. Muecke, Douglas C. 1966. The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen. Mulkay, Michael. 1988. On Humour: Its Nature and Its Place in Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Muller, Herbert J. 1956. The Spirit of Tragedy. New York, NY: Knopf. Mulnix, Jenifer Wilson, and M. J. Mulnix (eds.). 2015. Theories of Happiness: An Anthology. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press. Murdoch, Iris. 1970. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Myers, Henry Alonzon. 1956. Tragedy: A View of Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nagel, Thomas. 1969. “Sexual Perversion.” The Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1): 5–17. Reprinted in Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex 1977 –92, edited by Alen Soble. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997. ———. 1971. “The Absurd.” The Journal of Philosophy, 68: 716–27. ———. 1979. Mortal Questions. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1986. The View from Nowhere. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

270

References

———. 1987. “The Absurd.” In Life and Meaning: A Reader, edited by Oswald Hanfling, 49–59. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. Neiman, Susan. 2002. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. New Jersey, NY: Princeton University Press. Nerhardt, Goran. 1976. “Incongruity and Funniness: Towards a New Descriptive Model.” In Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Applications, edited by Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot, 93–116. London: Wiley. Neusner, Jacob, and Alan J. Avery-Peck. 2005. “Altruism in Classical Judaism.” In Altruism in World Religions, edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Nezu, Arthur, Christine Nezu, and Sonia Blissett. 1988. “Sense of Humor as a Moderator of the Relation between Stressful Events and Psychological Distress: A Prospective Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54: 520– 25. Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1969. “Humor and Faith.” In Holy Laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective, edited by Conrad Hyers, 134–49. New York, NY: The Seabury Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1938. La volonté de puissance, edited by Friedrich Wurzbach and translated by Geneviéve Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1954a. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In The Portable Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: The Viking Press. ———. 1954b. Twilight of the Idols. In The Portable Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: The Viking Press. ———. 1954c. The Antichrist. In The Portable Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: The Viking Press. ———. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Random House. ———. 1967. The Genealogy of Morals, translated by Walter Kaufmann and Reginald J. Hollingdale. New York, NY: Vintage. ———. 1968. The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and Reginald J. Hollingdale. New York, NY: Vintage. ———. 1974. The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Random House. ———. 1979. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, translated by Reginald J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books. ———. 1982. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, translated by Reginald J. Hollingdale and introduction by M. Tanner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

271

Nikulin, Dmitri. 2014. Comedy, Seriously: A Philosophical Study. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Nilsen, Don L. F. 1993. “Humor and Therapy.” In Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography, 11–15. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Norrick, Neal. R. 1986. “A Frame-Theoretical Analysis of Verbal Humor: Bisociation as Schema Conflict.” Semiotica, 60(3–4): 225–45. Norton, David Fate. 1993. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Novalis. (1797–99) 1997. Philosophical Writings, edited and translated by M. M. Stoljar. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1994. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2001a. Upheavals of Thoughts: A Theory of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001b. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001c. “Stoic Laughter: A Reading of Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis.” In Seneca and the Self, edited by Shadi Bartsch and David Wray, 84–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———, and Juha Sihvola (eds.). 2002. The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nuzzo, Angelica. 2014. “The Justice of Contradiction: Logical Advancement and Historical Transformations.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 109–26. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter. Nygren, Anders. 1982. Agape and Eros, translated by Philip S. Watson. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. O’Connell, Walter. E. 1976. “Freudian Humor: The Eupsychia of Everyday Life.” In Humour and Laughter:Theory, Research, and Applications, edited by Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot. London: Wiley. Olin, Lauren. (Forthcoming). “Humor.” In the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, edited by M. Vargas and J. Doris. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Osbeck, Lisa M., and Daniel N. Robinson. 2005. “Philosophical Theories of Wisdom.” In A Book of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives, edited by Robert J.

272

References

Sternberg and Jennifer Jordan, 61–83. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Osborn, Ronald E. 2017. Humanism and the Death of God: Searching for the Good After Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ottospeer, Willem. 2018. In Praise of Ambiguity: Erasmus, Huizinga, and the Seriousness of Play. Leiden, The Netherlands. Leiden University Press. Outka, Gene. 1972. Agape: An Ethical Analysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Panksepp, Jaak. 2007. “Neuroevolutionary Sources of Laughter and Social Joys: Modeling Primal Human Laughter in Laboratory Rats.” Behavioural Brain Research, 182(2): 231–44. Parfait, Nicole. 2001. Cioran ou le défi de l’être. Paris: Desjonqueres. Park, Jin Y. 2008. Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books. Parkin, John. 1997. Humor Theorists of the Twentieth Century. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Pascal, Blaise. 1941. Pensées; The Provincial Letters. Pensées, translated by W. F. Trotter; The Provincial Letters, translated by Thomas M’ Crie. New York, NY: Modern Library. ———. 1976. Pensées. Paris: GF-Flammarion. Passmore, John. 1970. The Perfectibility of Man. London: Duckworth. Passy, Isaak. 1963. Tragichnoto. Sofia. Peale, Norman V. 1952. The Power of Positive Thinking. New York, NY: PrenticeHall. Perkins, Franklin. 2014. Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Perler, Dominik. 2018. Feelings Transformed: Philosophical Theories of the Emotions 1270 –1670, translated by Tony Crawford. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Penjon, Auguste. 1893. “Le rire et la liberté.” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, 36: 113–40. Philonenko, Alexis. 1998. La Philosophie du Malheur, vol. 1: Chestov et les problèmes de la philosophie existentielle. Paris: J. Vrin. Piaget, Jean. 1959. The Language and Thought of the Child, translated by Marjorie and Ruth Gabain, preface by E. Claparède. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York, NY: Humanities Press. Pihlström, Sami. 2011. Transcendental Guilt: Reflections on Ethical Finitude. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. ———. 2014. Taking Evil Seriously. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

References

273

Pinker, Steven. 2008. “The Stupidity of Dignity.” The New Republic, May 28, 28–31. Pinkus, Karen. 2009. Alchemical Mercury: A Theory of Ambivalence. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Pippin, Robert B. 1997. Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Satisfaction of European High Culture. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Plato. 1966. Works, translated by Harold N. Fowler, introduction by W. R. M. Lamb, in 12 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann. Plessner, Helmuth. 1970. Philosophische Anthropologie. Lachen und Weinen. Das Lächeln. Anthropologie der Sinne. Mit Literaturverz. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag. ———. 1982. “Autobiografische Einfuhrung, Der Mensch als Lebewesen, Das Lacheln.” In Mit anderen Augen. Aspekte einer philosophischen Anthropologie. Sttutgart: Reclam. Plotinus. 2018. The Enneads, edited by Lloyed Gerson, and translated by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R. A. King, Andrew Smith and James Wilberding, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Poincaré, Henri. 1904. “L’état actuel et l’avenir de la physique mathématique.” Bulletin des sciences mathématiques, 28(2): 302–24. (English translation in The Foundations of Science (The Value of Science). New York, NY: Science Press, 1913, chapters 7–9: 297–320.) Polac, Michel, and Clément Rosset. 2003. Franchise Postale. Paris: PUF. Polhemus, Robert M. 1980. Comic Faith: The Great Tradition from Austen to Joyce. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pollio, Howard R., and John W. Edgerly. 1996. “Comedians and Comic Style.” In Humor and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Applications, edited by Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot, 215–42. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Popkin, Richard H. (ed.). 1996. Scepticism in the History of Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Popper, Karl R. 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson. ———. 1962. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1994. The Myth of the Framework. London: Routledge.

274

References

Porphyry the Phoenician. 1975. Isagoge, translated and edited by Edward W. Warren. Mediaeval. Sources in Translation, vol. 16. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Portmann, John. 2000. When Bad Things Happen to Other People. New York, NY: Routledge. Potkay, Adam. 2007. The Story of Joy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prichard, Duncan. 2010. “Absurdity, Angst, and the Meaning of Life.” The Monist, 93 (1): 3–16. Priest, Graham. 2014. “Contradictory Concepts.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 13–26. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter. ———, and Richard Routley. 1989. Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Graham Priest, Richard Routley and Jean Norman. München: Philosophia Verlag. Primoratz, Igor (ed.). 1997. Human Sexuality. Aldershot: Ashgate, The International Research Library of Philosophy. Prinz, Jesse J. 2010. “The Moral Emotions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, edited by Peter Goldie, 519–38. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Quennel, Peter. 1988. The Pursuit of Happiness. London: Constable. Quinn, Philip. 2000. “How Christianity Secures Life’s Meanings.” In The Meaning of Life in the World Religions, edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy Martin, 53–68. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Quintilian, Marcus Fabius. 2001. The Orator’s Education, translated and edited by Donald A. Russell. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rabouin, David (ed.). 1997. Le désir. Paris: Flammarion. Racamier, Paul-Claude. 1976. “L’interprétation psychanalytique des schizophrénies.” In Encyclopédie médico-chirurgicale. Paris: EMC. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. 1940. “On Joking Relationships.” Journal of the International African Institute, 13(3): 195–210. Rapp, Albert. 1947. “Towards an Eclectic and Multilateral Theory of Laughter and Humor.” Journal of General Psychology, 36: 207–19. Renz, Ursula. 2017. “Socratic Self-Knowledge in Early Modern Philosophy.” In Self-Knowledge: A History, edited by Ursula Renz, 146–63. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ——— (ed.). 2017. Self-Knowledge: A History, edited by Ursula Renz. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ribeiro de Magalhães Leite, Thiago. 2017. “On Nietzsche’s Gay Science.” Israeli Journal for Humor Research: An International Journal, 5(2): 60–74.

References

275

Richter, Jean Paul. 1964. “Introduction to Aesthetics (1804).” In Theories of Comedy, edited with an introduction by Paul Lauter, 307–14. New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Ricœur, Paul. 1969. The Symbolism of Evil, translated by Emerson Buchanan. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ———. 1974. The Conflict of Interpretations. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. (1967) 2001. “Sexualité: la merveille, l’errance, l’énigme.” Histoire et vérité. Paris: Seuil, réédité collection “Points”. Roberts, Robert C. 1987. “Smiling with God: Reflections on Christianity and the Psychology of Humor.” Faith and Philosophy, 4(2): 168–75. ———. 1988. “Humor and the Virtues.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 31: 127–49. Robinson, Vera. 1977. Humor and the Health Professions. Thorofare, NJ: Slack. ———. 1983. “Humor and Health.” In Handbook of Humor Research, edited by Paul E. McGhee and Jeffrey H. Goldstein, vol. 2, 109–28. New York, NY: Springer. Roche, Mark William. 1997. Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and Critique of Hegel. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Roeckelein, Jon E. 2002. The Psychology of Humor: A Reference Guide and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Ronell, Avital. 2003. Stupidity. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Rorty, Amélie O. 2001. “Introduction.” In The Many Faces of Evil: Historical Perspectives, edited by Amélie O. Rorty. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2010. “A Plea for Ambivalence.” In the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, edited by Peter Goldie, 425–44. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rosen, Michael. 2012. Dignity: Its History and Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rosen, Ralph M. 2015. “Laughter.” In A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, edited by Pierre Destrée and Penelope Murray, 455–71. New York, NY: Wiley. Rosset, Clément. 1967. Schopenhauer, philosophe de l’absurde. Paris: PUF. ———. 1983. La Force majeure. Paris: Minuit. ———. (1960) 1991. La Philosophie tragique. Paris: PUF. Quadrige. ———. 1993. “The Overwhelming Force”; “The Cruelty Principle”; “Notes on Nietzsche.” In Joyful Cruelty: Toward a Philosophy of the Real, edited and translated by David F. Bell. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. Le Régime des passions et autres texts. Paris: Minuit.

276

References

Rothenberg, Albert. 1971. “The Process of Janusian Thinking in Creativity.” General Psychiatry, 34: 195–205. Rougemont, Denis de. 1983. Love in the Western World, translated by Montgomery Belgion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1996. Les mythes de l’amour. Paris: Albin Michel. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Emile, or On Education, translated by Alan Bloom. New York, NY: Basic Books. Rowan, John, and Mick Cooper. 1999. The Plural Self: Multiplicity in Everyday Life. London: Sage. Ruch, Willibald. 1993. “Exhilaration and Humor.” In The Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis and J. M. Haviland, 605–16. New York, NY: Guilford Publications. ———. 2008. “The Psychology of Humor.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 17–100. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———, and Gabriele Köhler. 1998. “A Temperament Approach to Humor.” In The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, edited by Willibald Ruch, 203–28. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Runzo, Joseph. 2000. “Eros and Meaning in Life and Religion.” In The Meaning of Life in the World Religions, edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy Martin, 187–201. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. ———, and Nancy M. Martin (eds.). 2000. The Meaning of Life in the World Religions. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Russell, Bertrand. 1917. “A Free Man’s Worship.” In Mysticism and Logic, 46–57. London: George Allen & Unwin. ———. 1930. The Conquest of Happiness. London: George Allen & Unwin. ———. 1987. Autobiography. London: Unwin. Russell, Daniel C. 2012. Happiness for Humans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rycroft, Charles. 1995. Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books. Ryle, Gilbert. 1979. On Thinking. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Safranski, Rudiger. 1990. Schopenhauer and theWild Years of Philosophy, translated by Ewald Osers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Salesne, Pierre. 1988. “‘Cixous, Hélène’ ou l’art de l’innocence,” translated by M. Hanrahan. In Writing Differences: Readings from the Seminar of Hélène Cixous, 113–26. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Salem, Jean. 1996. La légende de Démocrite. Paris: Kimé. Sallis, John. 1991. Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

References

277

Santayana, George. 1906. Reason in Science. Vol. 5 of The Life of Reason, by George Santayana. New York, NY: Scribner’s. ———. 1910. Three Philosophical Poets, Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1916. Egotism in German Philosophy. London, Toronto: J. M. Dent. ———. 1920. Little Essays, Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author. New York, NY: Scribner’s; London: Constable. ———. 1922. Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. New York, NY: Scribner’s; London: Constable. ———. 1925. Dialogues in Limbo. London: Constable and Co. ———. 1944. Persons and Places: The Background of My Life. New York, NY: Scribner’s; London: Constable. ———. 1948. Dialogues in Limbo. Enlarged edition Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues. New York, NY: Scribner’s. ———. 1953. My Host the World. New York, NY: Scribner’s; London: Cresset Press. ———. 1954. Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1968. The Birth of Reason and Other Essays, edited by Daniel Cory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ———. 1980. Reason in Society. New York, NY: Dover. ———. 2015. Reason in Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943. L’être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1955. The Flies, in No Exit and Three Other Plays, translated by Stuart Gilbert and Lionel Abel. New York, NY: Viking. ———. (1943) 1957. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, translated with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes. London: Methuen. ———. 1965. Existential Psychoanalysis, translated by Hazel E. Barnes. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery. ———. 1971. L’Idiot de la famille: Gustave Flaubert de 1821 à 1857. Paris: Gallimard, 3 tomes (1971–1972), tome 1. Savan, David. 1994. “Spinoza on Duration, Time, and Eternity.” In Spinoza: The Enduring Questions, edited by Graeme Hunter, 3–30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Scanlon, Thomas M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

278

References

Schär, Hans. 1950. Erlöslungsvortellungen und Ihre Psychologische Aspekte. Berlin: Rascher. Scheler, Max. 1957. “Über Scham und Schamgefuhl.” Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band 1, Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre, 55–148. Bern: Francke. ———. 1963. “On the Tragic.” In Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall, 27–44. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Schellenberg, John L. 2007. The Wisdom to Doubt: Justification of Religious Skepticism. Cornell, IT: Cornell University Press. Schiffer, Irving. 1978. The Trauma of Time: A Psychoanalytic Investigation. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Schiller, Friedrich. 1960. “On Simple and Sentimental Poetry.” In The Comic in Theory and Practice, edited by John J. Enck, Elizabeth T. Forter, and Alvin Whitley, 22–3. New York, NY: Appleton Century Crofts. Schlegel, August W. 1962–1974. “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature” (Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur ). In Kritische Schriften und Briefe. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich. (1799) 1971a. “Lucinde.” In Lucinde and the Fragments, translated by P. Firchow. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. ———. (1800) 1971b. “Ideen.” In Lucinde and the Fragments, translated by P. Firchow. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. Schmidt, Dennis, J. 2001. On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Schmidtz, David. 2001. “The Meanings of Life.” In Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol. 22: If I should Die, edited by Leroy Rouner, 170–88. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Scholem, Gershom. 1970. “Opening Address.” In Types of Redemption; Contributions to the Theme of the Study-Conference Held at Jerusalem 14th to 19th July 1968: Studies in the History of Religion XVII, edited by Zwi Werblowsky and C. Jouco Bleeker, 5–12. Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1893. Studies in Pessimism: A Series of Essays, selected and translated by T. Bailey Saunders. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. ———. 1965. On the Basis of Morality. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. ———. 1966. The World as Will and Representation, translated by Eric F. J. Payne. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Dover. ———. 1974. Parerga and Paralipomena, translated by E. F. J. Payne. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2004. L’Art d’être heureux. A travers cinquante règles de vie. Paris: Seuil.

References

279

———. 2009. “Prize Essay on the Basis of Morality.” In Arthur Schopenhauer: The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, translated Christopher Janaway. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Screech, Michael Andrew. 1983. Montaigne and Melancholy: The Wisdom of the Essays. London: Duckworth. Scruton, Roger. 1986. Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ———. 1987. “Laughter.” In The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, edited by John Morreall, 156–71. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2010. The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 1995. Moral and Political Essays, edited and translated by John M. Cooper and J. R. Procope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sève, Bernard. 2007. Montaigne: Des règles pour l’esprit. Paris: PUF. Sewall, Richard B. 1965. “The Vision of Tragedy.” In Tragedy: Vision and Form, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 34–39. Scranton, PA: Chandler. Shaffer, Jerome. A. 1997. “Sexual Desire.” In Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex 1977 –1992, edited by Alan Soble. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of ). (1900) 1963. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., edited by John M. Robertson. 2 vols. Gloucerster, MA: Peter Smith. ———. (1990) 1992. The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, edited by Benjamin Rand. London: Swan Sonnenschein and New York: Macmillan. Reedited, London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press. Shaw, Beau. 2015. “Nietzsche, Humor and Masochism.” Israeli Journal for Humor Research: An International Journal, 4(2): 31–50. Sherover, Charles M. 1975. The Human Experience of Time: The Development of Its Philosophic Meaning. New York, NY: New York University Press. Shestov, Lev. 1969. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy, translated by Spencer Roberts. In Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche, introduction by Bernard Martin. Ohio, OH: Ohio University Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1984. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Shultz, Thomas R. 1972. “The Role of Incongruity and Resolution in Children’s Appreciation of Cartoon Humor.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 13: 456–77.

280

References

Sias, James. 2016. The Meaning of Evil. New York, NY: Springer Nature. Silk, Michael S. (ed.). 1996. Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Culture and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simon, Alfred. 1989. Le Monde, 27 December. Singer, Irving. 1984–1987. The Nature of Love. 3 vols. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. ———. 1994. The Pursuit of Love. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1995. How Are We to Live? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (ed.). 2004. Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skinner, Quentin. 2002. “Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter.” In Visions of Politics, vol. 3, Hobbes and Civil Science, 142–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Adam. (1759) 1976. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Huston. 2001. “The Meaning of Life in the World’s Religions.” In The Meaning of Life in the World Religions, edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin, 255–68. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Smith, Richard H. 2008. Envy: Theory and Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Steven B. 2003. Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Soble, Alan (ed.). 1980. Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co. Soble, Alan. 1996. Sexual Investigations. New York, NY: New York University Press. ——— (ed.). 1997. Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex 1977 –1992. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Sokolov, Aleksandr Nikolaevich. 1972. Inner Speech and Thought, translated by G. T. Onischenko, edited by D. B. Lindsley. New York, NY: Plenum. Soll, Ivan. 2012. “Schopenhauer on the Inevitability of Unhappiness.” In A Companion to Schopenhauer, edited by Bart Vandenabeele, 300–13. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Solomon, Robert C. 1975. “Sexual Perversion.” In Philosophy and Sex, edited by Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, new revised edition. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

References

281

———. 1976. The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. New York, NY: Doubleday. ———. 1999. The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. “Pessimism versus Existentialism.” The Chronicle Review of Higher Education, 53 (21): B5. Sorabji, Richard. 2002. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Speier, Hans. 1998. “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Laughter and Power.” American Journal of Sociology, 103(5): 1352–1401. Spencer, Herbert. 1860. The Physiology of Laughter. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1860. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1971. “Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy.” The Philosophy Forum, 9: 39–64. Spinoza, Benedict. 1951. A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise. Translation with an Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes. New York, NY: Dover. ———. 1985a. “Ethics.” In The Collected Works of Spinoza, translated and edited by Edwin Curley, vol. I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1985b. Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. In The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Steiner, George. 1996. “Absolute Tragedy.” In No Passion Spent: Essays, 1978– 1996, 136–37. London: Faber and Faber. Sternberg, Robert J., and Jennifer Jordan (eds.). 2005. A Book of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Stoddart, Michael. 1989. “Le désir sexuel.” La Recherche (special issue on sexuality), 213: 1060–85. Sully, James. 1877. Pessimism: A History and a Criticism. London: Henri S. King and Company. Suls, Jerry M. 1972. “A Two Stages Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons.” In The Psychology of Humor, edited by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul F. McGhee, 81–100. New York and London: Academic Press. ———. 1983. “Cognitive Processes in Humor Appreciation.” In Handbook of Humor Research, edited by Paul E. McGhee and Jeffrey H. Goldstein, vol. 1, 39–57. New York, NY: Springer. Sytsma, Justin, and Jonathan Livengood. 2016. The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy. Peterborough, ON, Canada: Broadview Press. Szondi, Peter. 1978. Schrifen, edited by Jean Bollack. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

282

References

———. (1961) 2002. An Essay on the Tragic, translated by Paul Fleming. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Tartaglia, James. 2016. Philosophy in a Meaningless Life. London: Bloomsbury. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Taylor, Richard. 1981. “The Meaning of Human Existence.” In Values in Conflict: Life, Liberty, and the Rule of Law, edited by Burton Leiser, 3–26. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing. Tellez, Jean. 2009. La joie et le tragique: Introduction à la pensée de Clément Rosset. Paris: Germina. Theweleit, Klaus. 1987–1989. Male Fantasies, translated by Stephen Conway. 2 vols. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. Thiele, Leslie Paul. 1990. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tiberius, Valerie. 2015. Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Psychology. New York, NY: Routledge. Trisel, Brooke Alan. 2002. “Futility and the Meaning of Life Debate.” Sorites, 14: 70–84. Unamuno, Miguel de. 1972.TheTragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, introduction by Salvador de Madariaga, afterword by William Barrett. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Valerio, Paola. 2002. “Love and Hate: A Fusion of Opposites—A Window to the Soul.” In Love and Hate—Psychoanalytic Perspectives, edited by David Mann, 251–64. Hove, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge. Vannoy, Russell. 1980. Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration. Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books. V¯atsy¯ayana. 1992. Kama Sutra, translated by Alain Danielou. Paris: Edition du Rocher. Vattimo, Giani. 2014. “Insuperable Contradictions.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 173–80. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Veatch, Thomas C. 1998. “A Theory of Humor.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 11(2): 161–215. Velleman, David. 1991. “Well-Being and Time.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 48–77. Ventis, Larry. 1987. “Humor and Laughter in Behavior Therapy.” In Handbook of Humor and Psychotherapy, edited by William Fry and Waleed Salameh, 149–69. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange. Verdon, Jean. 2001. Rire au Moyen Age. Paris: Perrin.

References

283

Vieweg, Klaus. 2014. “Zur Logic moralischer Urteile.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 153–72. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. 1962. Thought and Language, edited and translated by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wagner, Richard. 1896. “Art and Revolution.” In Prose Works, translated by William Ashton Ellis, 8 vols. 1: 21–65. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Waldron, Jeremy. 2012. Dignity, Rank, and Rights, edited by Meir Dan-Cohen. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Walker, Margaret Urban. 2007. “Moral Psychology.” The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, edited by Linda Martín Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay, 102–15. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Ward, Keith. 2001. “Religion and the Question of Meaning.” In The Meaning of Life in the World Religions, edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin, 11–30. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Warin, Francois. 1994. Nietzsche et Bataille. Paris: PUF. Warner, Michael, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun. 2010. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Waterman, Alan S. 1993. “Personal Expressiveness (eudaimonia) and Hedonic Enjoyment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64 (4): 678–91. Webber, Jonathan. 2018. “Beauvoir and the Meaning of Life.” In The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia, 224–31. London and New York: Routledge. Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms. 1992. Springfield, MA: MerriamWebster. ———. 1993. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster. Webster New World Dictionary. 1999. Fourth edition. New York, NY: Wiley. Weil, Simone. 1949. L’Enracinement. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1978. Lectures on Philosophy, translated by Hugh Price, with an introduction by Peter Winch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weitz, Morris. 1967. “Tragedy.” In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, vol. 8, 154–61. New York, NY: Macmillan and The Free Press. Welsh, Wolfgang. 2014. “Wie wir auf Konsistenz aus sind––und warum.” In Contradictions: Logic, History, Actuality, edited by Elena Ficara, 193–208. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Welton, Donn (ed.). 1999. The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

284

References

White, Richard. 2013. The Heart of Wisdom: A Philosophy of Spiritual Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Whitman, Walt. 1973. Leaves of Grass. Norton Critical Edition, edited by Scolley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Wieger, Leon. 1984. Wisdom of the Taoist Masters: The Works of Lao Zi (Lao Tzu), Lie Zie (Lieh Tzu), Zwang Zi (Chuang Tzu). Lampeter, UK: Llanerch Press. Wielenberg, Erik J. 2005. Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1973. “Ethical Consistency.” In Problems of the Self, 166–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 1996. “The Women of Trachis: Fictions, Pessimism, Ethics.” In The Greeks and Us, edited by R. B. Louden and P. Schollmeier, 43–53. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, Edmund. 1947. Europe Without Baedeker. London: Secker and Warburg. Winnicott, Donald. W. 1949. “Hate in the Counter-Transference.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 30: 69–74. Wispé, Lauren. 1987. “History of the Concept of Empathy.” In Empathy and its Development, edited by N. Eisenberg and S. Janet, 17–37. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Witt, Mary Ann Frese (ed.). 2007. Nietzsche and the Rebirth of theTragic. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1963. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wisse, Ruth R. 1971. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, Susan. 1997a. “Happiness and Meaning. Two Aspects of the Good Life.” Social Philosophy and Policy, 14: 207–25. ———. 1997b. “Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World.” In Quaestiones Infinitae, vol. 19, 1–22. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Utrecht University. ———. 2010. Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wollheim, Richard. 1971. Sigmund Freud. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Wong, David. 1984. Moral Relativity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

References

285

Woodruff, Paul B. 2019. “Self-Ridicule: Socratic Wisdom.” In Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno, 165–81. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Woodward, Anthony. 1988. Living in the Eternal. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Young, Julian. 2013. The Philosophy of Tragedy: From Plato to Žižek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014. The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth. 1996. The Anatomy of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. 1980. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yovetich, Nancy, J. Alexander Dale, and Mary Hudak. 1990. “Benefits of Humor in Reduction of Threat-Induced Anxiety.” Psychological Reports, 66: 51–58. Zupanˇciˇc, Alenka. 2008. The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Author Index

A

Abel, Lionel 15, 32, 33 Abraham, Karl 101, 115 Adams, Henry 33 Adams, Reginald B., Jr. 83 Agassi, Joseph 106, 117, 230, 234 Ainslie, George 95 Alain 162, 163, 165, 186 Alcuin 123, 124 Aleichem, Sholem 148 Alexander the Great 168 Allison, Henri E. 64 Alquié, Ferdinand 177, 190 Altman, Matthew C. 37, 114 Amir, Lydia 31–33, 37, 39, 40, 58, 60, 61, 64, 66, 91–95, 114, 115, 117, 142, 143, 149, 184–187, 190, 191, 228–231, 233 Anaximander 135

Anderson, Maxwell Winterset 7 Andronicus of Rhodes 43 Annas, Julia 162 Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret 47, 60 Apte, Mahadev L. 103, 116 Apter, Michael 104, 116 Aquinas, Thomas 43, 44, 59, 98, 114, 228 Arendt, Hannah 16, 17, 29, 35, 39, 115, 147–149 Argyle, Michael 186, 227 Aristophanes 72, 109, 134 Aristotle 2, 3, 18, 42–45, 57–59, 66, 94, 97, 122–124, 134, 143, 158, 167, 168, 174, 178, 187, 191, 197, 219, 228 Arnim, Hans von 228 Arpaly, Nomy 60

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5

287

288

Author Index

Attardo, Salvatore 184 Augustine of Hippo 13, 17, 20, 36, 44, 199, 212, 213, 219, 231 Avery-Peck, Alan J. 228 Axel, Robert 190

B

Baas, Bernard 60 Badiou, Alain 195, 228 Bahnsen, Julius 4, 8, 27, 29, 30, 38, 39, 95, 142 Baker, Robert 58 Bakhtin, Mikhail 115 Baldwin, James M. 94 Ballesteros, Antonio 233 Bardon, Adrian 190 Barnett, Mark A. 94 Basu, Sammy 81, 93, 144, 149 Bataille, Georges 8, 31, 42, 43, 58, 122, 130, 146 Baudelaire, Charles 124, 131, 135, 147 Baudrillard, Jean 58 Bauman, Zygmunt 103, 116 Baylis, Nick 187 Beattie, James 85, 94 Beauvoir, Simone de 57, 128, 144, 145 Becker, Ernst 59 Beckett, Samuel The Chairs 127 Beiser, Frederick C. 20–22, 29, 30, 34, 37–39, 142 Beistegui, Miguel de 32 Bellah, Robert N. 230 Benatar, David 4, 22, 29, 30, 33, 34, 59, 60, 145, 233 Benjamin, Walter 3, 25, 33

Benoist, Alain de 210 Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron 60, 93, 94, 115, 180, 191, 194, 228 Berdiaev, Nikolai 31 Berenson, Bernard 161 Berger, Arthur A. 27, 39 Berger, Douglas L. 61 Berger, Peter L. 9, 148 Bergson, Henri 73–75, 90, 91, 116, 124, 125, 135, 143, 147, 159, 177, 189, 190, 201, 202, 207, 229 Berlin, Isaiah 38 Berlyne, Daniel E. 90 Bernstein, Richard J. 34, 36 Bersani, Leo 172, 188 Beversluis, Joel 209 Billings, Joshua 2, 3, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29, 35, 36, 38, 69, 90 Bishop, Michael 167 Biswas-Diener, Robert 187 Blachowicz, James 115 Blackburn, Simon 58 Blackwell, Kenneth 51, 61 Bleuler, Eugen 100, 101, 115 Blissett, Sonia 93 Bloom, Harold 115, 222–225, 233 Blücher, Heinrich 147 Boethius 123, 124 Bohr, Niels 132, 133 Bok, Sissela 185, 186 Bono, Edward de 132, 146 Booker, Christopher 134, 147, 191 Booth, Wayne C. 184 Borchert, Bruno 64 Bos, Dennis 78 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 44, 59 Botting, Fred 31 Bradley, Francis Herbert 35

Author Index

Brahami, Frédéric 212–214, 219, 230–233 Braybrooke, Marcus 230 Brecht, Bertolt 39 Bremmer, Jan 58 Brodrick, Michael 61 Bruckner, Pascal 185 Brumbaugh, Robert S. 192 Buber, Martin 229 Buddha 149, 200, 225 Bull, Nina 182 Burton, Robert 54, 64, 231 Bush, Beverly 93 Butler, Judith 3, 57

C

Calhoun, Cheshire 117 Calhoun, Craig J. 231 Callan, Eamonn 228 Camus, Albert 3, 13, 20, 21, 29, 33, 34, 145 The Myth of Sisyphus, 11, 165 State of Siege, 128 The Stranger , 7 Capella, Martianus 123, 124, 143 Carlyle, Thomas 39, 78 Sartor Resartus, 38 Carmody, Denise Lardner 64 Carmody, John Tully 64 Carnap, Rudolf 62, 63 Caro, Elme-Marie 22, 37, 38 Carroll, Noël 92 Cartwright, David E. 228 Cervantes, Miguel de 126, 148 Chafe, Wallace 84, 93 Chanter, Tina 57 Chaplin, Charlie 148 Charney, Maurice 125

289

Chirpaz, François 28 Chopra, Deepak 191 Chrétien, Jean-Louis 58, 191 Chuang Tzu 54, 149, 200, 207, 229 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 184, 228 Cioran, Emil 8, 21, 31 Cixous, Hélène 117 Clément, Catherine 117 Clooney, Francis X.S.J. 61 Clowes, Edith W. 31 Coe, Cynthia D. 37, 114 Cohen, Alix 93 Cohen, Sheldon 91 Cohen, Ted 152 Comte, Auguste 208, 209, 212–214, 217, 219, 221, 230–232 Comte-Sponville, André 58, 130, 145, 166, 185, 186 Conche, Marcel 232 Confucius 199 Conrad, Joseph The Heart of Darkness 7 Cooper, David E. 35, 140, 141, 149, 201, 229, 238, 239 Cooper, John M. 36, 58 Cooper, Mick 115 Cornford, Francis Macdonald 89 Corrigan, Robert W. 28, 32 Corsini, Raymond J. 90 Critchley, Simon 36, 39, 81, 83, 93, 125, 127, 143, 144, 152, 153, 184 Crossan, John Dominic 121, 142 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály 183, 191 Cusa, Nicholas de 144, 147

D

Dahlkvist, Tobias 30, 31, 37, 38

290

Author Index

Dale, J. Alexander 93 Dante, Alighieri 143 Davenport, Manuel M. 89, 144 Davies, Christie 103, 116 Davis, Dineh 78, 91 Davis, Jessica Milner 144 Davy, Marie-Madeleine 59 Deleuze, Gilles 42, 43, 57, 163, 165, 186 Democritus 26, 81, 82, 92, 126, 144, 153, 195, 224 Dennett, Daniel C. 63, 81–83, 93, 231 Derrida, Jacques 3 Descartes, René 19, 20, 43, 57, 98, 114, 208, 213, 215, 216, 219, 220, 228, 232 Desmond, William 7, 30 Destrée, Pierre 92 Dews, Peter 36 Dickens, Charles 126 Diels, Hermann 149, 184, 238 Diener, Ed 187 Dienstag, Joshua Foa 4, 15, 21, 22, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 175, 190 Dijn, Herman de 190 Dingli, Sandra 146 Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit 187 Donougho, Martin 90 Don Quixote 126, 130, 136, 148 D’Oro, Giuseppina 62 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 6, 31 The Brothers Karamazov, 6, 129 Crime and Punishment , 6 Drever, James 94 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt 33 Dühring, Eugen 38 Durkheim, Emile 9, 32

Dziemidok, Bohdan 90, 142, 148, 149

E

Eagleton, Terry 24, 29, 39, 63 Eastman, Max 91, 191 Eckel, Malcolm D. 61 Edgerly, John W. 86, 94 Edwards, Paul 60 Eichenbaum, Louise 117 Eichmann, Adolf 16 Eid, Michael 187 Einstein, Albert 62 Eisenberg, Nancy 94 Ellis, Albert 91 Ellis, Fiona 60 Elliston, Frederick 58 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 229 Emmanuel, Steven M. 233 Empedocles 42 Epictetus 197 Epicurus 43, 57, 161, 186, 188 Epstein, Isidore 228 Erasmus, Desiderius 144 Praise of Folly, 126 Esslin, Martin 144 Eysenck, Hans J. 84, 93

F

Faulkner, William Absalom, Absalom 7 Feinberg, Joel 59, 184 Feldman, Simon 114, 116 Ficara, Elena 95 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 23, 24, 28, 39, 53 Fisher, Mary Pat 209, 210, 230, 231

Author Index

Fisher, Rhoda L. 94 Fisher, Seymour 94 Fletcher, Horace 187 Flugel, John C. 90 Ford, Dennis 63, 231 Foucault, Michel 3, 42, 44, 57, 58 Fowler, Jeaneane D. 230 Fowler, Merv 230 Frankfurt, Harry G. 105, 117, 142 Frauenstädt, Julius 4, 21, 29 Freud, Sigmund 3, 6, 8, 9, 14, 21, 37, 42, 43, 45, 47, 57, 58, 75, 78, 79, 87, 91, 94, 98, 101, 102, 111, 112, 114, 115, 125, 138, 142, 143, 149, 161, 163, 166, 171–173, 186, 190, 196, 204, 205, 209, 223, 229, 230 Fridja, Nico H. 33, 93 Froese, Katrin 39, 92 Frye, Northrop 68, 89, 90 Fry, William F. 78, 91, 93

291

Gimbel, Steven 90, 146, 184 Giora, Rachel 184 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 23, 194 Goldhill, Simon 29 Goldie, Peter 93 Goldman, Alan H. 58 Goldsmith, Marcella Tarozzi 154, 179, 184, 191 Gordon, Paul 28, 32 Gouinlock, James 169, 187 Greenspan, Patricia 102, 115 Griffin, David Ray 230 Grimaldi, Nicolas 59 Grim, Patrick 95 Grossman, Saul A. 91 Grotjhan, Mark 91 Guattari, Félix 42, 57 Guignon, Charles B. 114 Guitton, Jean 191 Gurewitch, Morton 184 Gutwirth, Marcel 143 Guyau, Jean-Marie 191

G

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 115 Galen of Pergamum 123 Gale, Richard 190 Galle, Rolland 29 Garrett, Aaron 115 Garrett, Don 163, 186 Gelven, Michael 76, 80, 81, 91, 143, 153, 191 George, Brendan vii Georgopoulos, Nenos A. 32 Gerard, Alexander 91 Gerson, Lloyd 61 Gertler, Brie 114 Gibbard, Allan 191 Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid 89

H

Hadjadj, Fabrice 58 Hales, Steven D. 185 Halliwell, Stephen 92 Hall, Stephen S. 221, 222, 232 Hanfling, Oswald 63 Hanna, Robert 64, 65 Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von 4, 21, 29, 30, 38 Hart, Marjolein ‘t 78 Hartocollis, Peter 176, 178, 182, 183, 190, 191 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 3, 10, 12, 18–20, 25, 27, 28, 36,

292

Author Index

39, 42, 43, 46, 54, 68–72, 89, 90, 94, 95, 103, 116, 122, 133, 135, 137, 140, 145, 146, 149, 154, 179, 195, 225, 226, 228, 229 Heidegger, Martin 3, 21, 25–27, 39, 128, 145 Heinegg, Peter 30 Heller, Agnes 9, 32, 76, 87, 91, 94, 128, 143, 145 Hepburn, Ronald W. 55 Heraclitus 26, 135, 140, 149, 155, 184, 238 Hermans, Hubert 115 Hermans-Konopka, Agnieszka 115 Herzog, Thomas 93 Hesiod Theogony 42 Higgins, Kathleen M. 39, 93, 185, 232 Hippocrates 82, 92 Hobbes, Thomas 43, 57, 82, 93, 99, 228 Hokenson, Jan 92 Hölderlin, Friedrich 3, 18, 19, 23, 25, 27, 28, 36, 141 Hollingdale, Reginald John 147 Homer 167 Hook, Sidney 37 Hudak, Mary 93 Huddleston, Andrew 90 Huizinga, Johan 125 Hume, David 43, 47, 57, 63, 66, 98, 127, 144, 148, 201, 208, 213, 215–218, 220, 229, 231, 232 Huppert, Felicia A. 187 Hurka, Thomas 191 Hurley, Matthew M. 32, 74, 83, 90, 93, 115

Huskinson, Lucy 147 Hyers, Merritt Conrad 6, 27, 28, 30, 39, 142, 148 Hyman, Stanley Edgar 14, 33

I

Iamblichus 35, 36 Illetterati, Luca 94 Inwood, Brad 61, 64 Irigaray, Luce 3, 57

J

James, Christine A. 92 James, William 4, 15, 29, 33, 36, 175, 222 Jankélévitch, Vladimir 5, 30, 184 Jarvie, Ian 106, 117 Jaspers, Karl 8, 128, 147 Jeannière, Abel 149 Johnson, Gregory R. 33, 64 John, St. 44, 176 Jonas, Hans 36 Jones, Ernest 57, 115 Joplin, David A. 114 Jordan, Jennifer 233 Joubert, Laurent 124 Jung, Carl 135, 147

K

Kallen, Horace M. 137, 145, 149, 191 Kant, Immanuel 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 29, 31, 33, 36, 43, 46, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62–64, 91, 94, 141, 161, 195, 197, 212, 228, 231

Author Index

Kaplan, Aryeh 228 Karafa, Joseph 93 Kateb, George 148 Kaufmann, Walter 32 Keith-Spiegel, Patricia 74, 90 Kekes, John 29, 33, 34, 59, 63, 66, 98, 102, 114, 116, 145, 191, 223, 231, 233 Kerr, Walter 31, 68, 89, 121, 137, 138, 142 Keverne, Barry 187 Kierkegaard, Søren 3, 7, 19, 20, 27, 39, 40, 76, 78, 83, 91, 92, 120, 130, 142, 146, 154, 182, 184, 191, 208, 213, 215, 219, 220, 229, 232 Kim, Amy vii Kitcher, Philip 63, 231 Klein, Melanie 115 Kleist, Heinrich von 23 Kline, Linus W. 91 Koestler, Arthur 64, 89, 90, 104, 116, 132, 133, 146 Köhler, Gabriele 91 Kohn, Livia 64 Kohut, Heinz 105, 117, 157, 185 Kojève, Alexandre 42, 57 Koller, Marvin 91 Kramer, Deirdre A. 94 Kranz, Walther 149, 184, 238 Kraut, Richard 186 Krell, David 20, 29 Krieger, Murray 2, 3, 29, 33 Kuipers, Giselinde 77, 91 Kümmel, Friedrich 191 Kupperman, Joel 105, 114, 117, 222, 229, 230, 233

293

L

Labeo, Notker 122, 124, 125, 143 La Bruyère, Jean de 101 Lacan, Jacques 3, 42, 43, 57 Laertius, Diogenes 61, 232 Lancelin, Aude 58 Landau, Iddo 59, 63 Land, Nick 31 Langer, Susanne K. 89, 91, 181, 191 La Rochefoucauld, François de 101 Larsen, Randy J. 187 Leach, Stephen 23, 38, 39, 59, 63 Leacock, Stephen 91, 179, 184, 191 Lear, Jonathan 91, 115 Lefcourt, Herbert M. 91 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 16, 17, 20, 35, 36, 43, 57 Lemonnier, Marie 58 Lenoir, Frédéric 185 Leopardi, Giacomo 21, 31 Levinas, Emmanuel 36, 42 Levi-Strauss, Claude 9, 32 Levy-Valensi, Éliane Amado 191, 192 Lewis, Clive S. 94, 191, 229 Lewis, Michael 85 Liebman, Joshua Loth 148, 233 Lintott, Sheila 92 Lippitt, John A. 39, 81, 83, 92, 93, 142 Lipps, Theodor 91 Livengood, Jonathan M. 65 Livingston, Donald W. 144 Locke, John 51, 197 Loewald, Hans L. 191 Long, Anthony A. 61, 167, 168, 187, 234 Losev, Aleksei 31 Löwith, Karl 37 Lucian 123, 143

294

Author Index

Luckmann, Thomas 9, 32 Lucretius, Carus Titus 57 Lund, Frederick Hansen 91 Luper, Steven 230 Luther, Martin 13, 199 Lyotard, Jean-François 57

M

MacArthur, David 62, 63, 65 MacHovec, Frank J. 142 Macready, John Douglas 147 Magnus, Bernd 185, 232 Mainländer, Philipp 4, 8, 21, 29, 30, 37 Malcolm, Norman 65 Malebranche, Nicholas 43 Malinowski, Bronislav 53, 211 Malpas, Jeff 233 Malraux, André 29 Mamardashvili, Merab 31 Mandel, Oscar 5, 30 Mann, David 115 Mann, Thomas 184, 192 Mao Zedong 209, 230 Marcuse, Herbert 57 Mares, Edwin D. 95 Marinoff, Lou 61, 92 Marmysz, John 152, 184 Martin, Bernard 31 Martin, Michael 63 Martin, Nancy M. 63 Martin, Rod A. 74, 90, 93, 94 Marx, Karl 43, 58, 140, 154, 179, 184, 209 Maslow, Abraham H. 79, 91 May, Rollo R. 79, 91, 186 McBride, William 145 McCab, Mary Margaret 90

McConnell, Terrence C. 92 McDowell, John 63 McGill, Vivian Jerauld 185 McMahon, Darrin M. 185 McTaggart, John 35 Mead, George H. 115 Meidan, Abraham 230, 234 Melville, Herman 7, 33 Moby Dick, 7 Ménager, Daniel 143 Mencius 199, 200 Menon, Vengalil Krishnan Krishna 91 Merrien, Catherine 58 Merton, Robert K. 103, 116 Metz, Thaddeus 39, 59, 60, 63, 64, 145, 188, 189 Meyer, Matthew 37 Michel, Laurence 32 Miller, David L. 136, 148 Miller, William I. 85, 94, 103, 108, 117 Minois, Georges 143 Minsky, Marvin 93 Moland, Lydia 39, 90, 142 Molière 134 Monro, David Hector 90, 91 Monroe, Charles R. 201, 228 Montaigne, Michel de 7, 32, 58, 66, 81, 82, 92, 101, 122, 124–127, 135, 143, 144, 147, 163, 165, 169–171, 186, 195, 208, 213, 215, 217, 218, 220, 223–225, 231–233 Morreall, John 27, 39, 40, 75, 81, 83, 89, 91, 93, 143, 179, 180, 184, 191 Morrison, Andrew P. 111, 117 Most, Glenn W. 29

Author Index

Mother Theresa 206 Mo Tzu 200, 203, 207 Muecke, Douglas C. 184 Mulkay, Michael 116, 149 Muller, Herbert J. 33 Mulnix, Jenifer Wilson 185 Mulnix, Michael Joshua 185 Muhamad 38 Mumford, Lewis 33 Murdoch, Iris 32 Myers, Henry Alonzo 5, 30, 32

N

Nagel, Thomas 11, 32, 33, 58, 60, 135, 145, 147, 184 Neiman, Susan 16, 17, 20, 26, 33–37, 39 Nerhardt, Göran 90 Neusner, Jacob 228 Nezu, Arthur 93 Nezu, Christine 93 Nicholson, Hugh 61 Niebuhr, Reinhold 91, 129 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3–5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 20, 21, 25, 27, 30–32, 37, 39, 43, 44, 48, 52, 61, 66, 76, 81–83, 91, 93, 112, 128, 133, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145, 147–149, 154, 155, 157–159, 162–164, 170, 171, 176, 182, 185–188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 197, 208, 209, 213, 218–221, 225, 228–230, 232, 233 Nikulin, Dmitri 39, 72, 90 Nilsen, Don L.F. 91 Norrick, Neal R. 93 Norton, David F. 232 Novalis 23, 24, 39

295

Nozick, Robert 231 Nussbaum, Martha C. 9, 10, 32, 51, 58, 61, 92, 102, 109, 111–113, 115, 117, 156, 185, 197, 228, 233, 234 Nuzzo, Angelica 94 Nygren, Anders 228

O

O’Connell, Walter E. 93 Olin, Lauren 92 O’Neill, Eugene 6, 7 Long Day’s Journey into Night , 7 The Iceman Cometh, 6 Orbach, Susie 117 Osbeck, Lisa M. 222, 233 Osborn, Ronald E. 191 Ottospeer, Willem 116 Outka, Grene 228 Overgaard, Søren 62

P

Panksepp, Jaak 143 Parfait, Nicole 31 Parkin, John 117 Park, Jin Y. 233 Parmenides 42 Parnet, Claire 57 Pascal, Blaise 7–9, 20, 32, 44, 59, 66, 101, 144, 148, 158, 159, 185 Passmore, John 60 Passy, Isaak 136, 148 Paul, St. 6, 126 Penjon, Auguste 191 Perkins, Franklin 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 34, 35, 38 Perler, Dominik 93

296

Author Index

Philonenko, Alexis 31 Piaget, Jean 115 Piette, Lauriane vii Pihlström, Sami 32, 34, 36 Pinker, Steven 148 Pinkus, Karen 115 Pippin, Robert B. 2, 29 Plato 6, 9, 19, 20, 32, 42, 43, 45, 54, 56–59, 64, 66, 72, 90, 97, 108, 114, 115, 117, 124, 135, 143, 147, 168, 174, 197, 229, 231 Plessner, Helmut 122, 125, 143 Plotinus 58, 191 Plümacher, Olga 4, 29, 38 Poincaré, Henri 132, 133, 146 Polac, Michel 145 Polhemus, Robert M. 181, 182, 191 Pollio, Howard R. 86, 94 Pollux, Julius 123, 124, 143 Popkin, Richard H. 230, 234 Popper, Karl R. 62, 64, 196, 204–206, 221, 229, 233 Porphyry the Phoenician (of Tyre) 123, 124, 143 Portmann, John 228 Potkay, Adam 156, 185, 232 Price, Hue 63 Prichard, Duncan 145 Priest, Graham 95 Primoratz, Igor 58 Prinz, Jesse J. 117 Pyrrho of Ellis 51, 219

Q

Quennell, Peter 185 Quinn, Philip 145 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius 123, 143

R

Rabelais, François 124 Rabouin, David 43, 45, 46, 57, 60 Racamier, Paul-Claude 115 Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. 88, 94 Rapp, Albert 91 Renz, Ursula 114, 115 Ribeiro de Magalhães Leite, Thiago 93 Richards, Ivor Armstrong 8 Richter, Jean Paul 82, 154, 184 Ricœur, Paul 9, 10, 31, 32, 58 Rimbaud, Arthur 158 Season in Hell , 158 Roberts, Robert C. 81, 83, 93, 106, 117 Robinson, Daniel N. 222, 233 Robinson, Vera 91, 93 Roche, Mark William 90 Roeckelein, Jon E. 93, 94, 149 Ronell, Avital 81, 82, 93, 130, 131 Rorty, Amélie O. 35, 102 Rorty, Richard 63, 116 Rosen, Michael 148 Rosen, Ralph M. 92 Rossellini, Roberto 148 Il Generale della Rovere, 148 Rosset, Clément 5, 7, 8, 30, 31, 127, 128, 144, 145, 155–159, 185 Rothenberg, Albert 133, 146 Rougemont, Denis de 58, 229 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 21, 37, 197, 228, 229 Routley, Richard 95 Rowan, John 115 Ruch, Willibald 78, 91, 233 Runzo, Joseph 63 Russell, Bertrand 35, 49, 51, 61, 66, 160, 175, 190

Author Index

Russell, Daniel C. 187, 229 Rycroft, Charles F. 115 Ryle, Gilbert 115

S

Safranski, Rudiger 92 Salameh, Waleed A. 91 Salanter, Israel Rabbi 228 Salem, Jean 92 Salesne, Pierre 117 Sallis, John 32 Sankara 50 Santayana, George 15, 33, 48, 49, 53, 61, 62, 66, 81, 122, 125, 126, 143, 144, 161, 162, 167, 169–173, 176, 186–188, 195, 201, 203, 204, 207, 224, 226, 229 Sartre, Jean-Paul 7, 12, 13, 33, 34, 42, 43, 58, 98, 111, 114, 124, 128, 144 Nausea, 7 No Exit , 7, 12 The Flies, 128 Savan, David 190 Scanlon, Thomas M. 60 Schär, Hans 60 Scheler, Max 3, 14, 33, 117 Schellenberg, John L. 53, 63, 211, 231 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 2, 3, 18, 19, 28, 114, 145 Schiffer, Irving 176, 190 Schiller, Friedrich 3, 18, 19, 23, 28, 35, 137 Schlegel, August W. 3, 23 Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich 3, 18, 19, 23, 24, 35, 39, 90

297

Lucinde, 39 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 23 Schmidt, Dennis, J. 2, 20, 25–29, 36, 39, 68, 70, 71, 89, 90, 145, 146 Schmidtz, David 63, 145 Schmitt, Arbogast 3 Scholem, Gershom 60 Schopenhauer, Arthur 3, 4, 7, 8, 15, 19–21, 26, 29–31, 33, 37, 38, 47–50, 58, 60, 61, 78, 91, 92, 95, 99, 106, 115, 117, 127, 144, 148, 161, 163, 166, 169, 171–173, 176, 186–188, 196, 201–203, 207, 229 Schroeder, Timothy 60 Screech, Michael Andrew 232 Scruton, Roger 38, 58, 82, 93 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 81, 82, 92, 126, 165, 174, 195, 197 Sève, Bernard 232 Sewall, Richard B. 5, 14, 30–33, 72, 90 Sextus Empiricus 51, 61, 217, 219, 232, 233 Shaffer, Jerome A. 58 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of ) 54, 64, 76, 81, 82, 98, 115, 156, 231 Shakespeare, William 6, 31, 134 Shaw, Beau 144 Sherover, Charles M. 190 Shestov, Lev 8, 31 Shklar, Judith N. 230 Shultz, Thomas R. 90 Sias, James 35 Sihvola, Juha 58 Silk, Michael S. 29 Simon, Alfred 127

298

Author Index

Singer, Irving 58, 199, 228, 229 Singer, Isaac Bashevis 148 Singer, Peter 145, 191, 228 Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter 233, 234 Skinner, Quentin 92 Smith, Adam 197, 228 Smith, Huston 53, 54, 63, 211, 230, 231 Smith, Richard H. 115 Smith, Steven B. 60 Soble, Alan 58 Socrates 42, 72, 97, 111, 168, 203, 205, 226, 229, 233 Sokolov, Aleksandr Nikolaevich 115 Solger, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand 19 Soll, Ivan 171, 186, 188 Solomon, Robert C. 15, 34, 37, 58, 63, 76, 91, 145, 156, 157, 185, 194, 218, 228, 232, 233 Sophocles 6 Sorabji, Richard 64, 233 Sparks, Simon 32 Speier, Hans 91 Spencer, Herbert 91 Spiegelberg, Herbert 148 Spinoza, Benedict 26, 39, 43, 44, 48, 49, 51, 57, 59, 60, 66, 98, 99, 101, 115, 156, 157, 159, 162–165, 169, 170, 176, 185–188, 190, 193, 194, 225–229 Steiner, George 8, 32 Sternberg, Robert J. 233 Stern, Robert 93 Stoddart, Michael 58 Strayer, Janet 94 Sully, James 22, 37, 38 Suls, Jerry M. 90 Sytsma, Justin 65

Szondi, Peter 2, 28, 32

T

Tartaglia, James 23, 38, 39, 59, 63 Taubert, Agnes 4, 29, 38 Taylor, Charles 212, 230, 231 Taylor, Richard 59, 63 Tellez, Jean 185 Tertullian 126 Thatamanil, John J. 61 Theweleit, Klaus 117 Thiele, Leslie Paul 61, 228 Tiberius, Valerie 60 Tieck, Johann Ludwig 23 Tocqueville, Alexis de 14 Toulet, Paul-Jean 182 Trisel, Brooke Alan 59, 63 Trivigno, Franco V. 92 Twain, Mark 33

U

Unamuno, Miguel de 4, 7, 8, 14, 21, 29, 33, 130, 146

V

Valerio, Paola 103, 115, 116 VanAntwerpen, Jonathan 231 Vannoy, Russell 58 V¯atsy¯ayana 57 Vattimo, Gianni 141, 149 Veatch, Thomas C. 106, 117 Velleman, David 190 Ventis, Larry 91 Verdon, Jean 143 Vidal, Gore 162, 186 Vieweg, Klaus 95

Author Index

Voltaire, François 124, 213 Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich 115 W

Wagner, Richard 157, 185, 218, 232 Art and Revolution, 157, 219 Tristan and Isolde , 157, 219 Waldron, Jeremy 148 Walker, Margaret Urban 110, 117 Ward, Keith 53, 63, 211, 231 Warin, Francois 31, 58 Warner, Michael 231 Waterman, Alan S. 169, 187 Webber, Jonathan 145 Weil, Simone 21, 37, 229 Weitz, Morris 28 Welsh, Wolfgang 95 Welton, Donn 58 White, Richard 187 Whitman, Walt 112 Wieger, Leon 149 Wielenberg, Erik J. 63, 231 Williams, Bernard 7, 14, 32 Williams, Donald C. 30, 32, 33, 229 Wills, Thomas A. 91 Wilson, Edmund 186

299

Wilson, Scott 31 Winnicott, Donald 115 Wispé, Lauren 94, 196, 228 Wisse, Ruth R. 148 Wittgenstein, Ludwig ix, 63, 65, 66, 138, 149, 235 Witt, Mary Ann Frese 32 Wolf, Susan 63, 145, 231 Wollheim, Richard 57 Wong, David 92 Woodruff, Paul B. 226, 233 Woodward, Anthony 186 Wordsworth, William 141, 238

Y

Yeats, William Butler 157, 219 Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth 109, 117 Young, Julian 29, 59, 63 Yovel, Yirmiyahu 33 Yovetich, Nancy J. 93

Z

Žižek, Slavoj 3 Zupanˇciˇc, Alenka 90

Subject Index

A

C

absurd 4, 11, 20, 21, 26, 59, 86, 121, 122, 125–129, 135, 152, 186, 233, 239 alienation 140, 141, 214, 238, 239 ambivalence xi, 5, 46, 74, 75, 84, 86, 88, 95, 97, 100–105, 108, 112, 115, 116, 120, 133, 174, 237 ambivalence theories of humor, 74 as necessary, 74, 100, 105 personal, 103 social, 5, 103, 116 art 7, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26 Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) 79

comedy/the comic xi, 26–28, 39, 40, 67–76, 78, 85–87, 89, 90, 92, 97, 106, 119–122, 125–129, 131–134, 136–138, 142, 145, 146, 148, 152, 153, 155, 174, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 195, 225, 227, 228 conflict xi, 6, 9, 10, 14, 21, 25, 33, 35, 46, 55, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75–81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 92, 97, 99–106, 112, 113, 119, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140, 146, 155, 170–173, 175, 177, 205, 209, 223, 236–238 internal conflict/inner opposition, 70, 72, 75, 89, 100, 113, 121, 174, 178, 238 contradiction/opposition ix, 6, 8, 9, 25, 27, 30, 45, 46, 67, 69, 73,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 L. Amir, Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5

301

302

Subject Index

81, 88, 89, 94, 95, 97, 101, 102, 107, 112, 120–122, 124, 132, 133, 136, 139, 141, 145, 146, 154, 155, 175, 200, 214, 225, 236, 238 Cynics 198

D

deliberation xi, 47, 60, 89, 105, 106, 120, 174 desire as humorous 106, 174 as lack, 42–44, 46, 52, 121 mastery of, 43, 44 various kinds of, 173 dignity 127, 147, 148, 194

E

Empathy 196 epistemology epistemological benefits of Homo risibilis ix, 193, 207, 227, 239 epistemological costs, 11, 41 pyrrhonism, 208, 213, 227 skepticism, 208, 212–214, 239 ethics compassion xii, 195, 196, 202, 203, 206–208, 220, 235, 236, 239 empathy, 196, 206 ethical benefits of Homo risibilis, xii, 193, 196, 203, 208, 239 global, 203, 206, 207 indiscriminate loves of humanity, 196 pity, 196, 197

evil x, 1, 4, 5, 16–18, 20, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34–36, 39, 45, 48, 51, 219, 223, 236 F

fool/folly/inanity 5, 76, 120, 122, 124, 126, 127, 130, 136, 143, 153, 174, 195, 224, 225 in Christ name, 122, 126 on philosophy name, 122, 126, 127, 174, 224 G

German idealism 2, 3, 22, 25, 53 Globalism/global x, 142, 196, 206, 207, 210, 226, 233, 235 ethics, 196, 203, 204, 206 worldview, x, xii, 142, 203, 206, 207, 221, 239 H

happiness ancient views 161, 162, 169, 173 an argument in favor of, xii, 55, 160, 163 critiques of, 17, 224 hedonism, 171, 188 modern views, 161, 162, 168, 170 harmony 17, 24, 44, 71, 140, 151, 155, 169, 174, 224, 230, 238 Homo ridens 89, 119, 122–125 Homo risibilis ix, x, xii, 95, 113, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 129, 133, 141, 143, 144, 146, 151, 152, 160, 172–175, 182, 184, 188–190, 193–196, 207, 208, 221, 224, 225, 235, 238

Subject Index

humanism 208 humanity xi, 4, 35, 46–49, 56, 86, 108, 112, 113, 119, 123–126, 130, 135, 136, 138, 139, 142–144, 152, 196, 198–207, 209, 214, 221, 229, 237 solved away, 52, 141, 208 the human predicament/the human condition ix–xi, 4, 5, 8, 12, 16, 17, 26, 27, 29, 38, 41, 44, 47–49, 52, 53, 59, 66, 92, 95, 97, 99, 101, 107, 112, 113, 119–121, 130, 132, 133, 137, 139, 141, 145, 148, 151, 153, 175, 176, 178, 184, 193, 208, 213, 221, 223, 235–239 a formula for, xi, 8, 27, 47 humor/humour/laughter benefits ix, 67, 78–82, 84, 89, 92, 97, 108, 120, 142, 151, 174, 226 constitution, 237 humorous mood, 97, 106, 112, 119–121, 133, 139, 142, 227 as intrapersonal communication, 81, 87–89 self-referential, xi, 67, 78, 81–83, 85, 87–89, 92, 99, 107, 111–114, 116, 120, 125, 180, 227, 237 theories, ix, 27, 67, 73–78, 90, 103, 104, 122, 132, 139, 174 as transformative, 99, 141

I

incongruity 74–76, 82, 83, 90–92, 104, 112, 119, 132, 139, 140, 152, 155, 179

303

International Association of the Philosophy of Humor (IAPH) 40

J

joy xii, 6, 51, 79, 138, 151, 155–159, 163, 165, 171, 173–175, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187–189, 193, 194, 218, 219, 221, 225, 227, 236, 237

K

Kabbalah 199

L

liberation 30, 34, 41, 49–52, 61, 71, 110, 111, 117, 134, 136–138, 151, 155, 159, 190, 227 love 5, 6, 13, 14, 20, 24, 42, 44–46, 54, 57, 58, 64, 100–103, 130, 132, 136, 158, 159, 169, 170, 172, 183, 196, 198–207, 222, 225, 228–231 impersonal, 51, 61 indiscriminate loves of humanity, 196 lucidity 137, 221, 239

M

meaning of life x, 16, 17, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 39, 45, 59, 63, 188, 189, 230, 236 metaphysics 13, 21, 29, 30, 51, 53, 54, 59, 62–65, 94, 203, 218, 233

304

Subject Index

metaphysical quietism, 63 methodology 62–64

Philosophy of Humor Yearbook 39 Pyrrhonism 218–220

N

R

naturalism/naturalistic 26, 39, 61, 170

reason, rationality xi, 5, 23, 27, 33, 51, 55, 56, 62, 87, 89, 104, 106, 107, 111, 123, 124, 153, 156, 157, 168, 169, 172, 198, 209, 210, 215, 221, 236 and emotions, xi, 51, 87, 104, 107, 156, 159, 198 its scope, 23 a new model of rationality, 99 redemption/salvation 8, 17, 19, 21, 30, 36, 38, 41, 47–50, 55, 60, 135, 136, 138, 169, 176, 188, 201, 209, 213, 215, 225, 226, 237 Homo risibilis as redemptive, 113, 151, 220 redemption here and now, 169, 188 religious, 13, 21, 48, 49, 55, 169, 175, 220, 237 religion ix, xi, 5, 8, 20, 27, 29, 36, 41, 47–49, 53, 54, 64, 65, 138, 176, 196, 199, 201, 203, 207–211, 213, 220, 226, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237, 239 in the contemporary world, 1, 16, 53, 54, 207, 208, 211, 220 ridicule and the comic 106, 120, 122, 127–130, 133, 135, 136, 138, 153, 154, 177, 227 and dignity, 121, 126, 136, 175 ridicule awareness, 122, 129, 136, 139, 194, 195, 227

P

paradigm 2, 26, 82, 102, 122, 132, 148, 179 comic, 27 new, 27, 122 tragic, 6, 7, 236 peace of mind/tranquility/serenity x, 41, 43, 48–50, 55, 154, 162, 168, 169, 171–173, 180, 188, 198, 213, 219, 220, 223, 226, 227, 237 Peale 187 pessimism x, 1, 4, 15–17, 20–22, 27–29, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 92, 163, 166, 175, 236 philosophies and religions x, 47, 151, 196, 203, 208, 220, 226 Eastern and Western, 41, 198, 220 typology of, xi philosophy 16 contemporary, x, 7, 9, 16, 27, 54, 62, 65, 82, 122, 130, 151, 166, 167, 221, 235 and modernity, 2 perennial, x, xii, 235 requirements of, x, 202, 235 role in the world, 23, 25, 66, 169, 217, 222 and the tragic sense of life, 3, 4, 7, 15–17, 20, 24, 27, 138

Subject Index

ridicule resolution, xi, 132, 133, 141, 177, 184 the ridiculous human being, Homo risibilis, ix, xii, 113, 119, 122, 124, 125, 129, 141, 194, 207, 227, 238 and the tragic, ix, 120, 121, 127–129, 133, 136–138, 146, 155, 175, 177, 227 Romanticism 23, 39, 223

S

Secularism/secularity 211, 212, 231 self -acceptance 86, 88, 107, 112, 138, 206, 236, 238 -change, xi, 66, 88, 89 -knowledge, xi, 9, 89, 97–100, 105, 107, 111–116, 120, 124, 134, 174, 237, 238 -love, 142, 148, 194 Sympathy 196

305

177, 207, 210, 212, 218, 221, 225, 226, 232, 233, 236–239 time and the comic 154, 176, 181, 184 and eternity, 176, 178, 181, 183 timeliness, xii and the tragic, 16, 17, 24, 27, 151, 176, 177, 184 tragedy/the tragic sense of life x, xi, 1–5, 7–10, 14–29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 67–73, 88, 89, 121, 128, 129, 136–138, 141, 145, 146, 152, 154, 155, 158, 179, 202, 218, 219, 225, 227 origins, 3, 8, 10, 158

U

unconscious 15, 23, 98, 111, 177, 223 and humor, 99

V

T

virtue 6, 51, 59, 82, 83, 161–164, 168, 169, 187, 194, 198, 226 and happiness, 13, 36, 194

tension/gap/discrepancy x, xi, 1, 5, 6, 8, 11–13, 20, 28, 36, 41, 44, 46–49, 52, 54, 56, 58, 63, 67, 74–76, 80, 83, 87, 88, 95, 99, 101, 106–108, 119–121, 132, 134, 135, 138, 139, 141, 157, 161, 162, 167, 168, 174, 175,

Wisdom x, xii, 5, 20, 42, 44, 87, 114, 126, 127, 136, 165, 169, 174, 200, 221, 222, 224–226, 229, 233, 235, 236

W