Aristotle on Comedy & Laughter (I)

Aristotle comments that man is “the only animal that laughs” (On the Parts of Animals III, 10). This comment is taken by Barry Sanders as a proof that Aristotle dignifies laughter as a sign of humanity (Sudden Glory. Laughter as Subversive History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 101-102.).

Aristotle does think that eutrapelia (wittiness that renders conversation pleasant) makes for a virtue and humour serves as a rhetorical device. Nevertheless, when he speaks of comedy, we may sense that he does so with the same breath of Plato:

[Comedy is] an imitation of men worse than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted without causing pain.--Poetics, Chapter 5, 1449a.

--table content based on Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 26

It is a great loss that most part of the passage on comedy in Poetics is missing. While Leon Golden attempts to reason out what Aristotle might have suggested, we pay our respect to his research (“Aristotle on Comedy.” The Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism 42. 3: 283-290.) with due reserve.