Humornow

For Plato, humor has a malicious intent because we are finding pleasure in someone’s ignorance or weakness (12-13). Yet, It seems to be situational because he implies that finding humor in your enemy is okay, but not your friends. On the other hand, Hobbes states that we laugh when we succeed. Therefore, we are laughing at other misfortunes. He believes that people laugh because they are pleased to be deemed “better” in comparison to others (19).    On the contrary, while there are people who find humor in other misfortunes, I also believe people could laugh at individual success  without  laughing at other misfortunes. For example, laughing because you're in shock or because you're relieved to have succeeded.  Additionally, Hobbes defines the distinction between laughing with or without offense. According to Hobbes, laughing without offense is everyone finding humor in absurdity and imperfections. While, laughing with offense occurs when a person is laughing on...

     After reading through these selections for the first time in preparation for this project, I was left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The overall takeaway seemed to be an overwhelmingly negative one—first, in Plato’s writing, he states that laughter is a behavior rooted in vice and malice, an expression of superiority when we witness self-ignorance in people less powerful than ourselves—or people lowering themselves below us in their acts of self-ignorance. “Malice is the source of the pleasure we feel at our friend’s misfortune” (Plato 13), he says. Centuries later, the English philosopher takes this idea and doubles down on it, further emphasizing and condemning the petty and hostile aspects of human nature. In his magnum opus Leviathan, Hobbes states that “Sudden glory, is the passion which makes those grimaces called laughter” (Hobbes 19), meaning that the source of man’s amusement comes from either an affirmation of his own superiority, or a display of so...

  As is typical in the Western philosophical tradition, the investigation of the concept of humor begins with Plato. Plato takes a negative view of humor and comedy and dismisses it entirely from the curriculum of education for the “Guardians” of his ideal society in The Republic . In this sense, Plato does not so much theorize about what humor is so much as he theorizes about what humor accomplishes and what its end is within individuals. Plato asserts that humor has no place in the education of upright individuals because it is identified with the “ridiculous,” which is “a certain kind of evil, specifically a vice” (Plato, Philebus 48-50). For Plato, ridiculousness is the cause of laughter and laughter is always a result of a feeling a maliciousness towards others, which has no place in the education of just leaders. Hobbes continues to interweave power with comedy in his writings on humor. Hobbes, like Plato, believes that humor and laughter result in us by the perception of som...

      I disagree with Plato's theories on humor, and I think Irby's writing provides significant support to prove Plato is wrong. Plato believes laughter is something to be avoided, as it comes from a lose of control and a place of malice. According to Plato,  we laugh at vice, or self-ignorance, of people who are powerless (10). I argue that we laugh at vice or self-ignorance in our selves, and that this source of laughter is only a percentage of the things we find humorous. Irby shows this first hand, presenting the less admirable and desirable aspects of herself and personality and making jokes of her own experiences. We laugh at her work, not because we think of ourselves as better than her, but rather because we can relate to her, and are laughing at her ability to make relatable parts of the human experience into something fun and humorous. In this way, we repute Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter, that we laugh as a sudden expression of glory in feeli...

  Laura Latham EN 446D 01  January 29, 2023 Is Comedy Good? Comedy has been used and analyzed throughout history. Plato and Thomas Hobbes look at humor exclusively as a way to put others down, Kant looks at comedy as an equilibrium to balance the expectation of laughter that humans obtain, and Kierkegaard argues that comedy is separate from tragedy because the contradiction found in it is painless. Plato and Hobbes would argue that laughter and comedy are vehicles for malice. Though malicious comedy exists, it is not the story for comedy as a whole as comedy is largely meant to view the world in a more positive manner.  Plato argues that laughter produces pleasure solely as a feeling, but produces pain to the soul because it is always at the expense of others. Today, modern medicine has determined that laughter is more than one pleasurable feeling. It has been found that laughter improves the immune system, relieves pain, increases personal satisfaction, and improves ...

         Out of the various humor theories included in these readings, I was especially struck by Soren Kierkegaard's exploration of contradiction. This form of humor involving irony and unexpectedness is exhibited in several aspects of my everyday life, whether it be present in the media on my phone, in the literature that I read, or right here on Loyola's campus. Oftentimes, this form of humor is the most successful in making me laugh because of its ability to reverse the ordinary or the mundane. Kierkegaard notes that, in our everyday lives, "wherever there is contradiction, the comical is present" (83). In other words, humor can be found when people speak or behave in ways that contradict what is expected of them. Humor can be found in the events that oppose the standards or customs. Thomas Hobbes would agree with Kierkegaard, as he states that "whatsoever it be that moves laughter, is must be new and unexpected" (20). The insights of these philosophers ...

     Each of the theorist have their own view on how and if humor should be used. For Plato and Hobbes, humor is a vice that is used to put others down. The ridiculous is only found in the mockery of ignorance or the glee at besting another. They both state that because of this, laughter is always wrong. However, I think we can all agree that this view of humor is incredibly simplified. While humor can be malicious (when it is directed at people who have less power than you) it can also be used to reveal injustices in our own society. When people use humor (as Irby does) to point out the flaws in society, she is more attacking a system or set of norms as opposed to a specific person. While most people are made uncomfortable by the topics that Irby wants to discuss, finding humor in the situation makes people more comfortable engaging in the conversation. Therefore, humor has value outside of just mockery, it provides people a way of critiquing the current pow...

I found Immanuel Kant’s theories of humor and laughter interesting but this may be because I did not fully understand them. Kant gave examples of stories that we laugh at and find pleasure in but I never laughed at them or understood why I should be laughing. So, I tried to understand his explanation of why people laugh. He said that in one story we laugh “not because we deem ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man, or because of anything in it that we note as satisfactory to the understanding, but because our expectation was strained and then was suddenly dissipated into nothing” (48). I think Kant is trying to say that we often laugh at times when someone says something that is unexpected. We laugh because at the end of a story that someone tells we see a “falsehood immediately.” He suggests that we may not be laughing because someone is being funny but we might be laughing at ourselves because we falsely assumed that the person telling a story was going to say something different....

  Victoria Sabatino January 30th  Reflection  I want to focus this reflection on the quote by Plato that says, “And yet the malicious man is somehow pleased with his neighbor’s misfortunes.” While I think that Plato otherwise has a very grim and not fun view of humor, he does get this right. To my understanding, the word that comes to mind for this quote is “schadenfreude” a German word that means “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.” And the word and its meaning are true, this is a type of humor, and I will admit, it is funny.  Plato’s quote made me think of schadenfreude because there is a song in one of my favorite musicals Avenue Q that is simply titled ‘schadenfreude’ and it is all about this type of humor. It pokes fun at how we laugh at people’s misfortunes even if they are not funny. In the song, the two characters talk about this concept because they are both down on their luck, and are finding themselves victims to this type of ...

     Plato, Hobbes, Kant, and Kierkegaard offer various opinions on what constitutes funny, what expense humor arises, and what kind of person stimulates a laugh from others. Plato first explains humor as a "pleasure and paint that lies in the malice of amusement" (12). He finds that humor is almost always at someone else's expense and that the individual being laughed at must be acting foolish or in some way untraditional that warrants such mockery. Plato and Socrates concluded that "when we laugh at what is ridiculous in our friends, our pleasure in mixing with malice mixes with pain" (13). I find this ideology quite controversial as the only form of humor is not the result of others' ills, and humor is not always accompanied by mal intent of ridicule over someone we care about. A similar form is taken by Thomas Hobbes, who claims that "by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by compassion whereof they suddenly applaud themselves" ...

      Plato is correct that there can be malice in humor. However, the answer should not be to avoid  laughter,  it should be to act in a more virtuous and empathetic way. Humor and laughter do not just divide  people, as he and Hobbes suggest; humor has the ability to bring people together. I think that this is why it  is so important that when you consider what you find funny, you also reflect on how that relates to your  life and your experiences. As we have talked about in class, there is the boundary of being able to laugh at  something if you are part of the "in-group." Plato might emphasize that there may be a power imbalance  at play, which causes you laughing at something you cannot at least tangentially relate to, to be malicious.  Hobbes might say that you laugh even though you are in the "out-group" because you are glad you are  superior to the in-group.  What type of comedy we engage with and find funny should...