[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein and humorhe believed
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 09:19:03 +0000 (GMT)
"The recent 'discussions' here of Wittgenstein's 'sense of humour' seem a
bit thin and jejune, in light of his serious interest in the subject of
humour."
They may be thin and jejune but so is this remark: Robert's post does not
really begin to say what position W had on humour (I suspect W did not think
the fundamentals of his position on humour could be said, but that's another
story); and the W remark about a Germany where humour was stamped out also
seems thin and jejune - can one really easily imagine a society where humour is
stamped out but the spirits of people are high [try to imagine, as W elsewhere
urges, "in a real case"]? Also Robert does not even begin to indicate how W's
"serious interest" in humour overlapped with what W took have philosophical
importance: we know W took "serious interest" in designing a house but does
that mean he thought this was of any philosophical importance? This last point
is of particular importance because "recent 'discussions'" focused on whether
there was humour in W's philosophical work: that W cracked a joke or laughed at
one, or even had a "serious interest"
in humour (of some unfleshed-out kind), serves only as a (dare one say) thin
and jejune basis for determining whether there is humour in his major
philosophical works.
Donal
On Saturday, 22 February 2014, 3:46, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wittgenstein not only had a sense of humour but thought a lot about humour and
the human condition. Some of what he thought is captured in pages 528--533, of
Monk's Wittgenstein: the Duty of Genius. Much of what's there is expository,
but Wittgenstein himself sometimes speaks. One important aspect of
Wittgenstein's thinking about humour is that he believed that an understanding
of it was close to an understanding of music. (Apparently much of this is
expressed in Culture and Value—which I keep meaning to read.)
His well-known wit is another story.
'Humour is not a mood but a way of looking at the world,' [he] wrote while he
was in Rosro,* 'So if it is correct to say that humour was stamped out in Nazi
Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything
of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.' To understand what
that 'something' is it would perhaps be instructive to look at humour as
something strange and incomprehensible.
*Rosro, Norway
The recent 'discussions' here of Wittgenstein's 'sense of humour' seem a bit
thin and jejune, in light of his serious interest in the subject of humour.
Robert Paul
(Is that my toothache, or yours?)
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