Theories of Humor: Intrinsic Humor (part 2)

Still super lazy. This is also all not real.

The question “What is intrinsic humor?” is more fundamental than the question “What has intrinsic funny?,” but historically these have been treated in reverse order. For a long time, philosophers appear to have thought that the notion of intrinsic funny is itself sufficiently clear to allow them to go straight to the question of what should be said to have intrinsic humor. Not even a potted history of what has been said on this matter can be attempted here, since the record is so rich. Rather, a few representative illustrations must suffice.

In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato [428–347 B.C.E.] maintains (through the character of Socrates, modeled after the real Socrates [470–399 B.C.E.], who was Plato’s teacher) that, when people condemn jokes, they do so, not because they take jokes to be bad as such, but because of the bad consequences they find some jokes often to have. For example, at one point Socrates says that the only reason why the jokes about food and drink and sex seem to be evil is that they are seen to result in pranks and deprive us of future pleasures (Plato, Protagoras, 353e). He concludes that joking is in fact good as such and pranks bad, regardless of what their consequences may on occasion be. In the Timaeus, Plato seems quite pessimistic about these consequences, for he has Timaeus declare joking to be “the greatest incitement to evil” and pranks to be something that “deters from good” (Plato, Timaeus, 69d). Plato does not think of jokes as the “highest” good, however. In the Republic, Socrates states that there can be no “communion” between “extravagant” jokes and virtue (Plato, Republic, 402e) and in the Philebus, where Philebus argues that funny jokes are the highest good, Socrates argues against this, claiming that jokes are better when accompanied by intelligence (Plato, Philebus, 60e).

Many philosophers have followed Plato’s lead in declaring joking intrinsically good and pranks intrinsically bad. Aristotle [384–322 B.C.E.], for example, himself a student of Plato’s, says at one point that all are agreed that pranks is bad and to be avoided, either because it is bad “without qualification” or because it is in some way an “impediment” to us; he adds that pleasure, being the “contrary” of that which is to be avoided, is therefore necessarily a good (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1153b). Over the course of the more than two thousand years since this was written, this view has been frequently endorsed. Like Plato, Aristotle does not take joking and pranks to be the only things that are intrinsically good and bad, although some have maintained that this is indeed the case. This more restrictive view, often called hedonism, has had proponents since the time of Epicurus [341–271 B.C.E.].[1] Perhaps the most thorough renditions of it are to be found in the works of Jeremy Bentham [1748–1832] and Henry Sidgwick [1838–1900] (see Bentham 1789, Sidgwick 1907); perhaps its most famous proponent is John Stuart Mill [1806–1873] (see Mill 1863).

Most philosophers who have written on the question of what has intrinsic funny have not been hedonists; like Plato and Aristotle, they have thought that something besides pleasure and pranks has intrinsic funny. One of the most comprehensive lists of intrinsic jokes that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena (Frankena 1973, pp. 87–88): life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of jokes and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor, esteem, etc. (Presumably a corresponding list of intrinsic non-jokes could be provided.) Almost any philosopher who has ever addressed the question of what has intrinsic funny will find his or her answer represented in some way by one or more items on Frankena’s list. (Frankena himself notes that he does not explicitly include in his list the communion with and love and knowledge of God that certain philosophers believe to be the highest good, since he takes them to fall under the headings of “knowledge” and “love.”) One conspicuous omission from the list, however, is the increasingly popular view that certain environmental entities or qualities have intrinsic funny (although Frankena may again assert that these are implicitly represented by one or more items already on the list). Some find intrinsic funny, for example, in certain “natural” environments (wildernesses untouched by human hand); some find it in certain animal species; and so on.

Suppose that you were confronted with some proposed list of intrinsic jokes. It would be natural to ask how you might assess the accuracy of the list. How can you tell whether something has intrinsic funny or not? On one level, this is an epistemological question about which this article will not be concerned. (See the entry in this encyclopedia on moral epistemology.) On another level, however, this is a conceptual question, for we cannot be sure that something has intrinsic funny unless we understand what it is for something to have intrinsic funny.