AT LEAST THEY HAD AN ETHOS

Abstract

I argue that the uniqueness of comedy lies in its potential for social critique. Reading through Aristotle, Hegel, and Umberto Eco, I show that because comedy is not negative, not a counter-argument, it can expose social structures for what they are.

Keywords:

• Aristotle
• Eco
• Hegel
• comedy
• social critique
• class

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Having just read the title, I must ask you to put down this paper and immediately watch Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, The Big Lebowski (Gramercy Pictures, 1998). If you have just watched it, even if yesterday, so have I. Watch it now again, with me. This argument will make no sense otherwise.

2 Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, trans. William Weaver (New York: Warner, 1984) 12; idem, Il Nome Della Rosa (Milan: Tascabili Bompiani, 2007) 20.

3 Eco, The Name of the Rose 277; idem, Il Nome Della Rosa 477.

4 Eco, The Name of the Rose 277; idem, Il Nome Della Rosa 477.

5 Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Hippocrates Apostle, Elizabeth Dobbs, and Morris Parslow (Grinell, IA: Peripatetic, 1990) 1448b.

6 Ibid. 1448b25.

7 Coen and Coen.

8 “Nor is practical wisdom concerned with universals only – it must also recognize the particulars; for it is practical and practice is concerned with particulars” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984) 1141b).

9 In speaking of how one can know what is good and yet not do it, Aristotle gives the following reason: “[ … ] there is nothing to prevent a man's having both premisses and acting against his knowledge, provided that he is using only the universal premiss and not the particular; for it is particular acts that have to be done” (ibid. 1146b).

10

This is why some who do not know, and especially those who have experience, are more practical than others who know; for if a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome, but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health. (Ibid. 1141b)

11 Ibid. 1140b.

12 See Ibid. 1177b.

13 Aristotle, Poetics 1450a.

14 Ibid. 1454a.

15 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, vol. III (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n.d.) 527; idem, The Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. F.P.B. Osmaston, vol. IV (London: Bell, 1920) 301. Hereafter, this text will be cited as Aesthetics followed by German and English page numbers.

16 Aesthetics 527/301.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid. 529/303.

19 Ibid. 530/304.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid. 531/305.

22 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie, vol. 3, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels. Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1969) 13; idem, “Theses on Feuerbach” in The German Ideology and Related Manuscripts, vol. 5, rpt in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1845–47 (New York: International, 1976) 29.

23 Aesthetics 553/328.

24 Coen and Coen.

25 Ibid.