Critchley, Simon. On Humour. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Critchley's book has probably become one of the most-cited overviews of the topic of humour. He traces the three prominent theories of humour: superiority, relief and incongruity, along with descriptions of laughter from classical through to recent texts. His chapters deal with topics ranging from the question of whether humour is particular to humans, the body and humour, Bergson's notion of the mechanical and laughter, ethnic humour, the idea of humour as creating community and Freud's theories on humour. Much of the book simply and concisely outlines discussions that have occurred around these topics. For instance, in his chapter on ethnic humour, Critchley suggests that ethnic jokes reveal the repressed anxieties of the teller (75). In humour, Critchley argues that we align and differentiate ourselves with communities, both in ways we find pleasurable and positive and in ways we find uncomfortable.

Critchley offers Freud the last word on humour, focusing his final chapter on his late essay "Humor," in particular. The chapter moves from laughter and humour to a discussion of the smile. He writes, "a smile is the mark of the eccentricity of the human situation: between beasts and angels, between being and having, between the physical and metaphysical. We are thoroughly material beings that are unable to be that materiality. Such is the curse of reflection, but such also is the source of our dignity. Humour is he daily bread of that dignity" (109). The chapter finally closes with Beckett, a playwright whose humour is often not at all risible and whose smiles are rife with a range of emotions and negations. He concludes, paraphrasing Beckett between his hyphens,

For me, it is this smile—deriding the having and the not having, the pleasure and the pain, the sublimity and suffering of the human situation—that is the essence of humour. This is the risus purus, the highest laugh, the laugh that laughs at the laugh, that laughs at that which is unhappy, the mirthless laugh of the epigraph to this book. Yes, this smile does not bring unhappiness, but rather elevation and liberation, the lucidity of consolation. This is why, melancholy animals that we are, human beings are also the most cheerful. We smile and find ourselves ridiculous. Our wretchedness is our greatness. (111)

It's interesting that Critchley moves away from laughter at this moment and towards the smile. I think his focus on laughter (and smiling) stems from his interest in the bodily experience of humour, but the study of humour (as opposed to its physiological response) precludes distinctions between smiles and laughter (or smiles as laughter as this concluding quote seems to suggest) as evidence of humour's occurrence or as part of its analysis. I'm not sure that the smile in this case indicates a laughter at unhappiness, but does indicate the linkage between affect and humour, or the notion that humour acts as a microcosm of our affective relation to our existential situation. Moreover, privileging wretchedness as greatness seems a potentially problematic move without further analysis or support, though it's a provocative idea.

Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

In a book that includes more jokes than many on the topic, Cohen offers an accessible and readable a description and analysis of joking, with chapters entitled, "Jokes Are Conditional," "When Jokes are Assymetrical," "Problems and Occassions for Joke-Making," "Jewish Jokes and the Acceptance of Absurdity," and "Taste, Morality, and the Propriety of Joking." In his introduction, Cohen limits his object of study to two specific joke forms: short story jokes and formula jokes. Though in a less specific manner, he reinforces Douglas's point that jokes work because their audience brings certain awareness or assumptions to the joke (3). Unlike some others, Cohen begins by asserting his belief that no comprehensive theory of jokes is possible (10). He does suggest understanding jokes as a form of "performance" (11), a position which his text, rife as it is with jokes, reinforces. In this, he offers perhaps the most explicit linkage between performativity and humour studies.

His last chapter, "Taste, Morality, and the Propriety of Joking" offers an explicit consideration of black humour and dark jokes. He asks,

Do I think we should joke about absurdities? Should we be laughing at the fact of death? Death is a bleak topic. Jokes about death can be bleak. But apart from all that bleakness, joke-telling about death has a special dark side, which it shares with much joke-telling.

Though this statement is provocative, Cohen does not go on to suggest what this "special dark side" of jokes around death might consist of. However, he goes on to offer a discussion around contentious issue of morality and ethnic or other jokes often considered objectionable. At the beginning of this chapter, Cohen posits a line determining when a joke is "out of place," at the question of avoidance. He suggests a joke is objectionable when it is a mechanism used to avoid, rather than address a topic head on (69). At the same time, Cohen goes on to suggest that ethnic jokes are not necessarily objectionable because they "purvey stereotypes" (78). All jokes, he argues, portray fictions and falsehoods. With ethnic jokes, Cohen acknowledges there may be something "especially disagreeable or obnoxious in this particular idea's being believed" (79). However, he stops short of condemning jokes that take African Americans, for instance, as their butts because he believes making moral declarations on jokes is an impossible task. In trying to imagine the moral response of an "ideal observer"—a figure often used in analytical moral theory—to ethnically-charged jokes, Cohen argues that one cannot definitively say whether such a creature would object or welcome such jokes (81). So far, he goes on to argue, it cannot be shown that such jokes produce genuine harm to someone (81). Thus, rather than arguments over whether jokes are good or bad, funny or unfunny, Cohen argues that analysts should be interested in the fact that even objectionable jokes can be funny and wonder why this might be so (84).

Morreall, John. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humour. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

The latest book from a man who has made it one of his academic missions to establish the parameters of the philosophical understanding of humour. The first part of the book summarizes work he has done in the past to collect and name the three central theories of humour: 1) superiority theory, which Morreall describes as seeing humour as anti-social; 2) incongruity theory, which he describes as the view of humour as irrational; and 3) relief theory, which sees humour as a kind of pressure valve that releases social or psychic tension. He adds to these the minority view of Aristotle and Aquinas and, more recently, Robert Latta, which sees humour as playful relaxation.

In "That Mona Lisa Smile: The Aesthetics of Humour," one of the more interesting chapters in the book for the purposes of this work, Morreall describes humour as an aesthetic experience aligning it with the Kantian notion of disinterestedness (or suggesting that the goal of aesthetic humour is disinterested, focused only on providing amusement), adding to his description of the aesthetic of humour the elements of surprise or a shift in perspective, which contribute to its aesthetic appeal or pleasure (70). He distinguishes this from "non-aesthetic" humour on the basis of the motivation behind the joke, with jokes focused on superiority, for instance, falling into the latter category (72). Morreall wants to distinguish humorous amusement from similar kinds of cognitive shifts at work in tragedy, horror, the grotesque or macabre, suggesting, "humorous amusement, by contrast, is by itself a positive state with no negative emotions" (74). He also separates the fantastic or bizarre from humour, citing the Surrealists as an example and suggesting that these elicit cognitive rather than emotional shocks and thus cannot be considered humour. In his effort to delineate a unique kernel that is humour, however, one wonders at the exceptions to these rules: black humour, Holocaust jokes, killing jokes or nervous laughter, and how these would be accounted for in terms of their aesthetic function.

In the chapter, "Laughing at the Wrong Time: The Negative Ethics of Humor," Morreall goes on to describe 8 basic moral objections to humour, which he claims as the most common objections; that it is: insincere, idle, irresponsible, hedonistic, reducing self-control, hostile, anarchistic and foolish. In each case, Morreall cites examples to debunk each claim, though, equally, in each case, some example could be offered in support of the initial objection as well. Overall, however, in his effort to defuse these negative objections, Morreall wants to get past an ethical argument against humour that focuses on its phthonic element (Ronald de Sousa), or malicious attitude (98). Instead, Morreall describes humour as offering a "practical disengagement" (101), in this separating laughter and humour from emotion (101). In support of this division, he writes, "when we want to evoke anger or outrage about some problem, we don't present it in a humorous way, precisely because of the practical disengagement of humour. Satire is not a weapon of revolutionaries" (101). Though unclear on how someone like Swift fits into such a claim, Morreall moves on quickly from this claim to suggest in this context that the negative implications of humour are better viewed as stemming from this practical disengagement. He describes three such negative ethics in the bulk of the chapter: irresponsibility, the blocking of compassion and the promotion of prejudice, each of which is relatively self-explanatory.

In the following chapter, entitled "Having a Good Laugh: the Positive Ethics of Humour," Morreall counters the negative ethics of humour by describing the "intellectual virtues fostered by humour" (112). THeseinclude: fostering open-mindedness and spurring critical thinking (113). Here, he cites Jon Stewart and Bill Mahar (sic) as examples of political satirists who "encourage us to think twice before accepting any political message" (113).

The descriptions Morreall offers of both the negative and positive attributes of humour seem anecdotal and heavily tied to whichever example he chooses to illustrate his point. For instance, humour can be said to promote prejudice when the example cited is Don Imus's "joke" about the Rutgers women's basketball team, but political (perhaps even revolutionary?) when referencing Jon Stewart. While Morreall's work reinforces the idea that critical analysis should be applied to the topic of humour, his approach is largely anecdotal and relies heavily on generalizations that don't hold when applied to a range of examples.

Ewin, R. E. “Hobbes on Laughter.”

Ewin, R. E. “Hobbes on Laughter.” The Philosophical Quarterly 51.202 (2001) : 29 – 40.

Drawing on Hobbes' wider corpus and contemporay accounts of his character, Ewin argues that Hobbes oft-quoted remarks on laughter should not be understood as a dismisal of laughter all together as a generally disagreable condition. Rather, Ewin suggests, Hobbes considers laughter at another's misfortune to be symptomatic of a particularly uncharitable and malicious passion that does not befit a great mind or a gentleman. Thus, Hobess does not rule out all laughter, but simply that which lacks compassion, which Ewin argues is the often overlooked central tenet of Hobbes's political and social theory.

Hobbes, Thomas. The elements of law, natural and politic

Hobbes, Thomas. The elements of law, natural and politic: part I, Human Nature, part II, De corpore politico ; with Three lives. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Regarded as one of the founding texts of the Superiority tradition of humour theory, wherein Thomas Hobbes asserts that “the passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from the sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly” (54). Thus, humour is a respose to perceived superiority in relation to another, or in respect to one's past self. This perception must be both new and sudden. Like many early writers (and several contemporary ones as well) Hobbes collapses any distinction between humour and laughter. Less often noted is that Hobbes also leaves open the possibility of non-mocking laughter, declaring that: "Laughter without offence, must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons, and where all the company may laugh together” (55).

Billig, Michael. Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour

Billig, Michael. Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage, 2005.

Billig offers a fairly comprehensive historical account of the key texts of humour theory from a perspective directly at odds with that offered by conventional "humor studies." Billig goes perhaps too far in the opposite direction though, declaring all humour to be an act of aggressive social control and power with the aim to humiliate and discipline its subject (194-9). In Billig's account, humour is cruel and dominating, and he therefore can function as a useful illustration of a particular anlytic extreme.

Also useful is Billig's argument that humour has become a social obligation, and very little is now considered outside the purview of humour (11-5), such that humour should be considered a form of conformity, not rebellion. Moreover, Billig asserts that it is mistaken to make any distinction between positive and negative humour (22-5), such as those offered by Zupančič and Eco, and instead he argues that all humour is a rejection of negative and critical thinking that results in a conservative mindset (30). Such misunderstandings are argued to arise from an approach that treats humour as a cognitive and intellectual, rather than emotional, phenomenon, and which thereby abstracts humour out from the social conditions wherein it operates (64-6). Socially understood, laughter is never kind-hearted, it always arises out of a desire to ridicule and discipline (134-6). In political terms, this ridicule is always on the side of the powerful, and thus cannot constitute a rebellion of any sort: in fact, Billig asserts, any attempt to conjoin political dissent with humour, robs any radical or revolutionary action of its power (209-12). In these claims, Billig represents the other dominant strain of contemporary humour theory – opposed to the carnivalesque tradition – which regards humour as Adorno does pleasure, an acritical and disempowering force that, in addition, acts to sustain social discipline through humiliation: a profoundly conservative politics of humour. Billig thus rejects any distinction between carnivalesque positive and repressive negative humour because in his conception all humour is inherently tied into normative demonstrations of superiority and indifference for human life, and thus can only be used to reaffirm, not subvert, existing social power structures

Billig offers an interpretation that holds that the function of humour may be quite different from the humorist’s intention; thus, a joke that is intended to serve a subversive function may be revealed to function conservatively. This interpretation is supported through recourse to the Freudian notion of the “tendentious joke,” a form of humour that expresses hostile or obscene thoughts (Billig 154).

Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.

Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2005.

Bergson presents humour as an intellectual, rather than emotional or sensual, matter: noting that humour requires an absence of feeling, “a momentary anaesthesia of the heart” (2-3). Bergson suggests that to find humour in a fellow human’s situation it is necessary to regard them without sympathy, and pay no heed to the pain or suffering that may be inflected on them in the course of the humour. He attributes to humour a minor social function: that of gentle reprimand where laughter as a corrective “social nagging” (66) in response to inflexible, ignorant or eccentric behaviour (8-10, 89-98). In Bergson’s account, then, humour begins to carry out a basic social function, yet this is not the political aesthetic proper, because this disciplining function arises at the level of social interaction, rather than any aesthetic aspect of a text. Furthermore, humour here operates not to defamiliarise, but to ensure that unfamiliar or unexpected behaviour is curbed. This is a political function (if not an aesthetic one), but a conservative one.

At the centre of Bergson's theory of humour is an opposition to mechanical forms of being - of speech, of movement, of thought - which humour helps to correct: “the attitudes, gestures, movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine” (15). Bodily movements, like gestures, cannot shift and alter as living thoughts do, which is why they are comic, and why imitations are funny – because they treat the body as a machine (16). Things that are similar make us laugh because they are like mass-produced goods which are inherently mechanical (17). We cannot see the rigidity in things we are familiar with though, such as in fashion clothes. There is a distinction between comic de jure and comic de facto (19), we don’t laugh at familiar things because “the continuity of custom having deadened within them the comic quality” (19).

Incongruity does not produce laughter; it just puts us in a situation where we can recognise the rigidity of an aspect (19). There are also things that we see as artificial but that are not, which we experience as funny (20). This is not logical but rather reflects the dreaming of society (20). We laugh at the natural that is mechanically tampered with or that is understood as if it were (21). The ceremonial always contains something of the comic, and becomes comical once they lose the seriousness with which convention endows them (22). We also display our rigidity when we act in a typical way at a time when we should not (23). Materiality when we expect to find vitality is funny (24) as are situations where our attention is called to the bodily over the moral, reminding us of the physical (25). It is comical when the letter (rigid) overcomes the spirit (26) – taking metaphors literally etc. The crystallisation of the mind and the inelasticity of the body go together (28). We laugh when a person gives us the impression of being a thing (28).

Eco, Umberto. "The Comic and the Rule."

Eco, Umberto. "The Comic and the Rule." Faith in Fakes. Trans. William Weaver. London: Vintage, 1998.

Eco distinguishes between humour and the comic, both of which arise out of the violation of cultural and social rules. Humour is understood as a positive force, wherein a social or textual rule is explicitly established and then broken (“Comic” 276-8), such that the values therein embedded are revealed (“Carnival” 7-8). In contrast, the comic is a rhetorical device in which a social rule or intertextual frame is broken without that frame ever being made explicit (“Comic” 272). Hence, in order for the comic to be appreciated as such, the rule must be presupposed to the extent that it is regarded as inviolable; comedy is only perceptible to those who have internalised the rule to point where it is regarded as inviolable (“Comic” 275). Thus what appears as a moment of liberation is argued to actually institute a reinforcement of the existing order: in the modern media, “laughing is allowed precisely because before and after the laughing, weeping is inevitable” (“Comic” 275). Moreover, even as the carnivalesque humour of the mass media reveals that the rules may be broken, it circumscribes the conditions for doing so, only in specific arenas and in particular ways (Eco, “Carnival” 6). The distinction between the comic and humour can therefore be framed that carnivalesque comedy breaks the rule and, in doing so, reinscribes it; where as humour acts to defamiliarise the rule and therefore make it known.