On Humour (Thinking in Action) Paperback – August 30, 2002

Great place to start. I've used this as a textbook for my Comedy Theory course for many years, and I recommend it to anyone trying to understand why people laugh. (Please take with a grain of salt the one-star review from Christopher Gontar. If you google his name, he's left a one-star review for literally every comedy theory book. Not sure why!)

This book is about as good as it gets for anyone wanting to think in depth (not necessarily "seriously") about humour. It is commendable both for its overview of the relevant theories as well as for Critchley's original ideas. It is short enough to read in an evening, but sufficiently substantial as well. Critchley writes as well as any contemporary philosopher I've read, which helps immensely when tackling a subject like this.

Critchley observes humour from many perspectives: What is the role of crossing conventional cultural boundaries in comedy? How are the most simple-minded and -- may I say -- barbaric jests used as tools of societal isolation, racism and sexism? In what manner are religious ideas similar to or different from comical conceptions? Most importantly Critchley observes the relationship between our cultural existence and our profound and inescapable, but constantly disturbing animality.Critchley's writing is extremely enjoyable. His theorizing could be occasionally hard to grasp if not familiar with his philosophical background, but the book never turns dull. Actually, in addition to being able to keep up the reader's enthusiasm, Critchley's writing is also remarkably amusing. Not only being explained perceiving theory of comedy, the reader is also able to test the theory himself while reading by observing his own chuckles, bursts of laughter and dark grins as Critchley tells -- depending on the context -- more or less witty jests. And always the jokes help to illustrate his more academical ends.Personally I found the work fresh and inspiring, and also in aesthetic sense nimble. Enjoyable book, from cover to cover.

Critchley's analysis of humor is mostly in error, though it points toward the true theory of humor that I presented in 2011, having begun to develop it in 2008. How does he point in the right direction? While he focuses on the fictional notion of objects or animals bestowed with humanity, this happens to be a key image of diminutive self-deception of superiority. Rather than for the reasons Critchley gives, we find the animal-as-human funny for the simpler reason that it represents a kind of small-scale "ambition," the "desire to be man."How anyone can deny a principle like that and prefer the threadbare alternatives--objectively--is beyond me. Is it worth it to reject something so ingenious and original as that, all to support the inferior status quo? Surely you can understand an argument as simple as this, so if you don't agree or fail to act, you are delinquent. By flouting the rule of reason you refuse to grow up. You are being asked repeatedly to respect truth, like a rebellious twelve-year-old.The desire to be man in beings that are non-human, is not literal of course, but only figurative. And the less than human is a sign referring to type-differences among actual humans.But what is signified in that case is real. And wherever there is any kind of ambition -- which is comical if it is small -- there's self-deception. All humor and comedy either constitute or represent this idea. But the aspiration in the thing-as-human is an elementary fact of experience, and the explanation is original to me. I point to that originality not in my own interest but to indicate a remarkable deficiency in psychology and philosophy. This book does gesture at this truth about power advancement as expressed in such juxtapositions, never yet explicitly acknowledged by the human race. Yet otherwise, the book is not of much value. Worse, perhaps, Critchley might also have made a better interpretation of what he presents as the opposite of thing-becoming-human. For when mentioning "man becoming animal" he does not tell us that this transformation is epitomized in the punishment of mortals in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In other words, he misses the strong possibility that this reversed transformation is more tragic, or at least more mythological than comic.All of Critchley's analysis of humor, then, continually returns to the image of the human as divided between soul and body as a sign that the mind does not belong to the body and is too great for it. Critchley thinks that all humor alludes to this image of the human as a thinking animal or thinking inert object. On that point he is correct. Humor does indeed always allude to this image to one degree or another. He is right to note a break or discrepancy that makes any less-than-human thing endowed with consciousness look ridiculous for that endowment.But the error is to claim that our disposition or response of amusement consists in recognizing the futility of the effort to close this gap between soul and body. To say as Critchley does that our sense of humor makes use of that undeniably humorous image in such an overly complex way is really a jest masquerading as analysis. For it is somewhat witty that the explanation of humor would be made even more ineffectively pedantic than it naturally is. And it is an idea in which Critchley is influenced by Freud, who thought that the explosive moment of getting humor and of laughing itself were signs of discovered futility. It did not work well with Freud, who did not publish a single correct explanation of a complex joke, even superficially.Critchley seems to agree that we see a ridiculous person as being mismatched as to "soul" and "body." Their soul in this sense represents the behavior or higher mental ability they have strangely acquired or pretend to have. Their body, being that of an animal or a child, may be understood as their actual life, the reality that they face and are in denial of. Critchley only sees the surface of this relation, not what is going on at the heart of it, nor why it is humorous or comical.Those, in any case are the ideas through which humor arises for its own sake and as the driving force or substance of social conversation, a competency in mirth which it seems truly fortunate to possess. Persons who ridicule either themselves or others are still at least using the same image when they create humor more abstractly.The mismatching of a soul and body then, is a central image that is found in humor and comedy. It calls for an explanation or reason for its effect. The simplest and most convincing reason, is that this ridiculous object, like all others, represents diminutive selfish self-deception. And the humor response is just a mental vicarious imitation of that mad condition.The fact that the soul mismatched with its human body evokes delusion, explains why it is a non-serious and comical image. And when Critchley focuses on the inner experience of fracturing, he takes us in a more serious direction. Mental fracturing is not unique to the comic. This particular sort of desire, since it is abstract (and deriving from phenomenology), belongs more to tragedy than to comedy. Although the image of the thing as human is comical, the striving for integration that it might evoke is a tragic nisus or effort, not a comic or humorous one.Many have written -- for example Alenka Zupancic -- about how all serious things are at all times vulnerable to humor, though we never find them to be inherently or objectively ridiculous. So for Zupancic as well as Critchley, it does look as though all people and figuratively even things seek to preserve themselves from the fracturing that leads to their being seen as ridiculous, or to their breaking into laughter. But because this larger category applies to all things and not merely minds, it does not support Critchley's thesis at all.The image of the human as divided between soul and body is funny just because it is an image of delusion or selfish self-deception. It is impossible that there is any other reason. The human is thus seen as a thing or animal that aspires to the human. Just as in the Sartrean dictum that "man is the desire to be God," so we should say, though it is not literally true, that "dog is the desire to be man." But all mere "things" appear as signs of the desire to be "man," to be sentient or conscious, things of which a more powerful human type is more exemplary than a weaker one.I have confronted Critchley in person on the question why he doesn't want to see these images in this simple sense of delusion or petty ambition, and he has given no reason why he doesn't want to see it that way. One might write a book now about how unobjective and irrational our academic culture has become. Perhaps it would have even further positive effects than improving this issue of humor theory.Well -- have it your way for now--don't entertain ideas and truth but promote what is worthwhile in individuality, difference, and contingency. But if public opinion turns around, then philosophy might follow suit by adopting a more honest position about emotion and human nature.

It's incredibly dry and hard to grasp. It's a very in depth analysis of comedy about how and why we laugh. I didn't enjoy it particular but some of the concepts were interesting. It's not very accessible to understanding comedy theories if you're starting out as a comedy scholar.Still, it's definitely a book needed in the field, where jokes are casually looked at and not enough science and reason is put behind it. For the experienced and scietific only, not a book to casually read without it making you think.

As with Free Will (a subject I most recently wrote about here) Humour is something we all recognise, but when forced to describe come up lacking. Certainly all attempts to explain jokes fail which is perhaps why the best part of this book are the good jokes (The Telephone Joke and the one about Attila the Hun).Humour seems to have physical boundary which is why I narrowly escaped an assault when the German I was joking with failed to see my light-heartedness and why jokes that once made sense sometimes no longer seem witty (say anything from Morecombe and Wise). Does anyone now find Chaplin funny? Has there ever been a decent female comedian? - and consider how someone like Jim Jefferies, who perhaps does not even have the best of verbal deliveries is so observant of human nature as he manages to say what one always somehow felt was the case but had not managed to find the words to express the thought. Why is it that Kenneth Williams giving a lecture as a Professor of Archaeology is funny yet Peter Cushing giving a lecture as a Professor of Anthroplogy isn't, and yet on reflection Cushing is ridiculous as Van Helsing lecturing the Chinese on Vampires (that really should be funny!) whereas Williams as Professor Crump, getting his notes in a muddle and finding (as a result) to his extreme embarrasement that the endings of his sentences have unintened sexual connotations (and which the audience seem to enjoy) should be the stuff of nightmares.I always thought that jokes aimed at national stereotypes (apart from being largely true) far from being a sign of hatred acted as a sign of inclusivity - we don't make jokes about - say, Kenyans or Thais, but then we have little to do with those nations. Perhaps for that reason I now find Sacha Baron Cohen's ridiculing of Khazaks beneath contempt; nasty, unfair and cruel.Unlike Critchley I still find the Pythons funny, especially the Jokes about Philosophers. So why does Critchley balk at the Python Jokes which he finds 'racist' and 'sexist' but not - so it seems - about dim-witted soccer-players or Nazis. Seems to me that the PC squad may have got to him - for to place a category beyond humour is to render it sacred - recall Muggeridge and The Bishop huffing and puffing about surely the funniest British film ever made, where they entirely failed to see the joke, which was not in any event about their own sacred cow - nevertheless what else is one to suspect from Britain's leading Continental Philosopher. Lighten up Critchley I would say, which is indeed what he rightly encourages in the last few pages.