Plato on Comedy & Laughter (II)

For Plato, laughter is an emotion and therefore irrational. It is problematic because it is easily overindulged. Intellectual and moral training are necessary to help us control our instincts. Reason must restrain our emotions so that we do not indulge in them excessively. When dealing with the theory of art in Part X, Book X of The Republic, Socrates explains to Glaucon that poets intend to gratify our instinctive desires and thus move us to pity or laughter. In the same way that we should not pity the misfortunes of others too much, we should not laugh at them. Socrates focuses on what he considers the shameful nature of humour, which he again related to vulgarity and foolishness. You should detest jokes both on the stage and in ordinary life, because with them “[y]ou are giving rein to your comic instinct, which your reason has restrained for fear you may seem to be playing the fool, and bad taste in the theatre may insensibly lead you into becoming a buffoon at home” (606c). So we can say that humour, like literature, kindles our passions “and makes them control us when we ought, in the interests of our own greater welfare and happiness, to control them” (606d).—Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 22

When [in Philebus] Socrates explains to Protarchus his theory about “mixed feelings,” he uses the humour of comedies as an example of how “the soul experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure” (48a). Thus he provides the often quoted basic argumentation for the so-called “Ambivalence Theory of Humour” (Keith-Spiegel 1972: 10), as well as one of the earliest exponents of the better-known “Superiority Theory of Humour” (Morreall 1983: 4). According to Socrates, laughter is produced by a simultaneous feeling of pain and pleasure resulting from envy and malice. The nature of the ludicrous is vice and, in particular, self-ignorance, which is normally shown in a vain conceit of wealth, beauty, or wisdom. The laughable person thinks himself or herself richer, better-looking, and cleverer that s/he is. Of the two types of conceited humankind—the powerful and hurtful, and the powerless and harmless—only the latter are ridiculous, because the former are rather detestable. As self-ignorance is a misfortune, and as we feel pleasure in laughing at our friends’ misfortunes, and envy is the source of that pleasure, Socrates concludes:

Then the argument shows that when we laugh at the folly of our friends, pleasure, in mingling with envy, mingles with pain, for evny has been acknowledged by us to be mental pain, and laughter is pleasant; and so we envy and laugh at the same instant. (50b)

Our laughing at harmless, self-deluded, unfortunate friends involves a certain malice towards them, and malice is harmful. So we must gather that laughing is wrong, because it is harmful. This is one of the oldest objections to humour: that it is hostile and antisocial (Morreall 1989: 243-4). As we have seen when dealing with the Laws and The Republic, Plato also contributed to expound the other two major features which arouse disapproval of humour: that it is irrational and irresponsible. Plato’s comments about laughter and comedy, therefore, were instrumental in generating negative ideas about humour. *

*See also Morreall (1983: 85), where he outlines the three main negative approaches to humour as aesthetic experience: 1) that it exposes us to something base, and therefore is potentially harmful; 2) that it makes us lose control of our rational faculties, and consequently dehumanises us; and 3) that it is basically scornful and antisocial.—Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 23-24

*Keith-Speigel, Patricia 1972. “Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties and Issues.” The Psychology of Humor. Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues. Eds. J.H. Goldstein and P.E. McGhee. New York: Academic Press. 3-39.
*Morreall, John 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
* --- 1989. “The Rejection of Humor in Western Thought.” Philosophy East and West 39: 243-265.