Topical Guide 468
Mark Dorset
Humor: the Knack for Creating
Humorous: the Knack for Being
Eutrapelia
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3
“[…] we used to have wine,” says Gwen, “and huge meals. I mean, I thought they were going to charge us extra on the plane, for the weight we’d gained.”
“Or duty,” says Harold. He’s almost bouncing on his chair. To Belinda, he looks like a boy who has to go to the bathroom, but he’s merely full of something he thinks is funny. “Say,” he says in a tone of official suspicion, “isn’t that Italian fat you’re carrying there?” He makes a tummy-poking gesture. Matthew gets it, after a moment’s uncertainty: Harold is supposed to be a customs officer interrogating Harold and Gwen on their return from Italy. Matthew laughs, after a fashion; to be precise, he smiles and makes a snorting sound. […]
Harold doesn’t quit. “Why, ah, yes, ah, the missus and I really tucked into the pasta — ” Now Matthew’s confused again. Harold can’t be playing himself. This must be a parody of what Harold supposes a middle-class Midwesterner to be like. Belinda’s fascinated now. She wonders why Gwen has stayed married to this bloated buffoon. […]
“You’re going to have to declare that, you know,” he continues. Now Gwen is giggling, out of all proportion to the humor of Harold’s routine, giggling like a crazy woman. She seems to think Harold is hilarious, thinks Belinda. Is he? I can’t tell. I must be losing my perspective on what’s funny.
I wanted to include Monty Python’s “Smuggler” sketch here, but couldn’t find it online. that is, I couldn’t find it online in its original form, as it appeared in Season 1, Episode 5, “Man’s Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the 20th Century.” However, I did find a version in which two little toy figures perform the sketch, using the audio from the original. This strikes me as such a bizarre thing to do that I’m awarding it the Impractical Craftsman Seal of Approval. MD
Morreall, John, “Philosophy of Humor,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), First published Tue Nov 20, 2012; substantive revision Thu Aug 20, 2020:
Remarkably few philosophers have even mentioned that humor is a kind of play, much less seen benefits in such play. Kant spoke of joking as “the play of thought,” though he saw no value in it beyond laughter’s stimulation of the internal organs. One of the few to classify humor as play and see value in the mental side of humor was Thomas Aquinas. He followed the lead of Aristotle, who said in the Nicomachean Ethics (Ch. 8) that “Life includes rest as well as activity, and in this is included leisure and amusement.” Some people carry amusement to excess—“vulgar buffoons,” Aristotle calls them—but just as bad are “those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do,” whom he calls “boorish and unpolished.” Between buffoonery and boorishness there is a happy medium—engaging in humor at the right time and place, and to the right degree. This virtue Aristotle calls eutrapelia, ready-wittedness, from the Greek for “turning well.” In his Summa Theologiae (2a2ae, Q. 168) Aquinas extends Aristotle’s ideas in three articles: “Whether there can be virtue in actions done in play,” “The sin of playing too much,” and “The sin of playing too little.”
See also:
Humor: Shaggy Dog Story: The Three Rabbits TG 150; Pun: Extended or Epic Pun TG 150; Humor: “A Sense of Humor”: Value of TG 413
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