‘Shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods’: Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy and the meaning of life

Abstract

This paper argues that comedy is the essence of the human condition. In setting out my case I draw on the work of French process philosopher, Henri Bergson. Here I present an exploration of Bergson’s work showing how his theory of comedy, set out in Laughter (1900), influenced his later writings, notably Creative Evolution (1907). In Laughter, Bergson explores the social purpose of laughter and argues that it is ‘rigidity’ that in all cases brings about our downfall and gives rise to laughter as a social corrective. This is expressed in his famous apothegm ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’. Here I show how these ideas are relevant to a central theme of Creative Evolution, the development of human intelligence. Though intelligence, through invention, fits us to our environment it results in what Bergson calls a ‘mechanistic habit of mind’ which produces irony as the fundamental human condition.

Keywords:

• Instinct and intelligence
• irony
• laughter
• process philosophy
• qualitative multiplicity
• quantitative multiplicity
• unintended consequence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1  The superiority theory holds that we find humour in the misfortunes of others; the incongruity theory asserts that we find things that confound our expectations funny; and the relief theory says that we laugh to release emotional or psychic energy and this gives us pleasure. In fact, the three deal with different aspects of humour and are complementary rather than competing (Watson 2015).

2 In this, Bergson is joined by evolutionists who have examined the origins of laughter. See Gervais and Wilson (2005).

3 Laughter as a social corrective has been commented on by others (see, for example Billig 2005) but needs to be set against the view of laughter as transgressive (Bakhtin 1984), highlighting laughter’s essential ambiguity.

4 Interestingly, Bergson’s theory of comedy is exemplified to an astonishing degree in the film Strictly dynamite (1934, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Jimmy Durante) (Ortolano 2015). In the film a struggling high-brow writer, Nick, is mistakenly hired as a gag-writer for comic star ‘Moxie’, played by Durante who is fed up with recycling tired old jokes. At one point Moxie picks up Bergson’s Laughter from Nick’s bookshelf and quotes from it, commenting “you know boys, he’s got something there”. The ensuing action demonstrates various forms of rigidity as set out by Bergson. Ortolano (2015, 322) writes, “the use of Bergson and his theory transcend the film’s narrative”. This is very true.

5 https://libquotes.com/albert-einstein/quote/lbf7o4b

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cate Watson

Cate Watson is Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership and Governance within the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, UK. Her research interests lie in institutional and professional identities, particularly as these relate to issues surrounding practices of leadership and governance. She is also interested in the development of humour as a methodology for the social sciences and is the author of Comedy and social science: towards a methodology of funny. (Routledge; 2015).