Why do we laugh? Science still does not have an answer to exactly why. Maybe this is due to science not knowing where to look. Maybe this is due to the empirical nature of Liberalism and its inadequate metaphysics. Philosophers across the ages have speculated as to why we laugh. However, this is no problem to Process Philosophers who have concepts such as elan vital and view reality as a process. Bergson describes three different comedy styles before combining them all into a hybrid version of his own devising.
Superiority Comedy Theory: this comedy theory was made popular by Plato and Descartes. Everyone is very familiar with this for it is at the heart of slapstick comedy - deriving laughter at the expense of others. This creates a sort of power dichotomy where those who aren’t being laughed at create a type of superior psychological height from which to look down on the victim with contempt.
Relief Comedy Theory: this comedy theory was popularized by Freud and Herbert Spencer. Nervous buildup of feeling sorry for the comedian as he builds up the joke and then uses the punchline to release the anxiety. Freud’s theory of anxiety stems from a fear of loss, but we prefer fear to anxiety. This is why we like scary movies - a horror film builds anxiety or anticipation within us to release it with a jump scare. This can be very cathartic and can be used as a psychological tool to bring us back to ‘homeostasis’. Adorno criticizes this by saying tv sitcoms can be used to distract consumers from the problems of capitalism by acting as a sort of relief valve - if the proletariat went home and couldn’t relieve the pressures from being exploited in capitalist society then maybe this pressure would build up into a potential flash point of revolution.
Incongruity Comedy Theory: this comedy theory was popularized by Aristotle. Context matters and is central to the buildup, the comedy is embedded in the resolution to the incongruity setup by the joke. Laughter occurs when context is violated absurdly, and an inversion of expectation happens. Example: Man walks into a bar, and says “Ouch”.
Bergson’s Comedy Theory: now this is where it gets fun. Bergson combines all these previous three theories of comedy and synthesizes the strongest parts of them but adds on a pragmatic social element. Bergson says that comedy regulates society (such as the court jester or Voltaire, the ability to speak truth to power) but at the same time can be simply ridiculous or absurd and used just for laughs. This gap that emerges between comedy regulating society (serious) and just for laughs (absurd) - tension is created from this gap. This is where Vitality exists, and where Bergson invokes his ‘Mechanical Encrusted onto the Living’ concept.
There have been a few grand world theories from Philosophy such as the Mechanical Universe (Mechanism) and Final Causes (Teleology, where humans are endpoints). Bergson places his Vitalism (elan vital) in contrast with these two grand world theories. If Mechanism says nature is like a machine, and Teleology says humans are some special creatures endowed by a Creator, then Vitalism says life is actually a process. A process with its own rules where Physics, Chemistry, and other sciences can not adequately deem intelligible in their systems because their sciences treat the world as a static entity. Science describes material life but not the entire process of life (see Marcuse argument on Instrumental Reason). Since life is a process, to use Mechanism (Mechanical Universe) to describe the totality of life is to encrust the mechanical onto the living. This is at the heart of comedy at times (maybe why we like doing the robot dance), say someone is walking through the woods illustrating their ‘Grand Plan’ of how the universe works - only to trip on a stump. Laughter ensues because if this omnipotent, omniscient being that can theorize about the totality of life can’t see a stump right in front of him - then what God is he really? This is the core of so many Greek myths, pride comes before the fall. Alan Watts says that when we think we are God, in that moment God looks down upon us with a smile and says, “have at it”, causing us to falter. We are finitely track minded whereas God is infinitely track minded (See Spinoza). Many stories were told of absent-minded geniuses over the history (Adam Smith comes to mind) so much so that it has become a sort of comedy trope.
An Automaton is defined as a moving mechanical device that imitates human beings, well when the inverse occurs, a human being acting as an automaton this can be the source of comedy. But as the Greeks knew very well, comedy’s sister is tragedy. For look at us now, human beings are complex processes being used and exploited in the cogs of the Capitalism machine. Capitalism wishes us to rid ourselves of all of our human behaviors and act as the machines they want us to be (through alienation, reification and then fetishisation). This is the great tragedy of our day, and deep down we know this isn’t right. Bergson says this is where Vitalism reigns supreme. Nature is not a machine, human behavior is a process, a vital impulse is at the origin of life. Whitehead’s Ultimate Reality is a process of the emergence of novelty, of creativity, a ‘pulse’ that pulses through everything. What is this pulse of Whitehead’s? Creative Evolution, Vitalism, elan vital of Bergson. This is the key to process philosophy. “The virtuous and free are those who do not block the life force (elan vital) that is within themselves.” Maybe this is what the Greeks referred to as the muse embodying you in the midst of a creative endeavor, Alan Watt’s ‘getting out of your own way’. Your ego only clouds your inner connection, at the heart of us all we know what to do. It’s only when anxiety and fear join the party do we start to become muddied. There is no coincidence that wise sages believe deeply in the power of humor. Alan Watts loves giving his example of if you were to go into a restaurant and see someone eating a menu (mistaking the menu or the representation for the food) you would laugh. This is laughing at rigid individuals who take ideas and thoughts too seriously, but at the other end of that to be too flexible and not believe in anything would be equally a mistake. The Buddha finds the middle path, and does not fall into Whitehead’s fallacies (misplaced concreteness, believing in simple space-time coordinates).
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Bergson
The mechanism behind comic action to Bergson can be described as having a type of structure of comedy — that where beings who possess elan vital act like machines or simply matter, then comedy will ensue. This is due to the following structural rules:
Repetition: think Abbot and Costello — acting like a dummy or talking to a wall
Inversion: think of the scene in Indiana Jones where he has a duel with a swordsman in which Indiana Jones pulls out a gun — the swordsmen looked like he would win but what actually unfolds inverts our expectation (of roles)
Reciprocity: where someone talks past someone else robotically — not seeming to get the gist of the point being made in a conversation, or not being able to see the forest for the trees type comedy
With verbal comedy language plays a significant role. This is where we see the issues with translating jokes amongst different languages, like from English to French or vice versa. Comedy in this way seems to be untranslatable, but what can translate? How can we translate metaphors or meaning without key components being lost in translation ?
There are two types of verbal comedy categories:
Comic Words: internal, comedy through self deprecating jokes — laugh at comic
Witty Words: external, comedy at another’s expense maybe through crowd work — laugh at other
In this way Bergson creates a wide taxonomy of Comedy, to describe it in various ways. The comic experience can be described in such a way as when we are moved from being a person to seemingly an object (mechanical encrusted on the living) and back again. This is to play fun at the imperfection of humans (too smart, too dumb, etc.) to remind us that we are creative evolutionary souls (elan vital) deep down that can identify as our body or our mind if we wish; but we are souls rather than bodies or minds, and comedy can be used in such a way as to improve the spectator. That is to say, comedy can hold up human ‘deformity’ to a spotlight — our tendency to slip back into nature, the tendency to slip back into being thinking you are an ‘object’; comedy is ready to correct us, and it is in this way that comedy regulates society.
A Vital work of Process Philosophy, thank you Mr. Jack F. and that's no Joke!!!