[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Punch Line
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 08:35:56 -0500 (EST)
Thanks to R. Paul for the further quote, this time from Monk.
We are considering the claim (often ascribed to Black or other critic of
the Tractatus) that the Tractatus "was" (or 'is' in historical present) a
'joke' played on Witters himself. The source seems to be Witters himself when
he said that a whole book could be written which would 'consist of a
succession of good jokes', implicating "and a punch line" and further
implicating
that the "Tractatus" could have been THAT book, since, after all, as a
famous Irish lady once said, "Humour is essentially subjective" (she goes on
to compare it with beauty in art, which this same lady thought to be 'in the
eye of the beholder').
In a message dated 2/21/2014 10:46:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx provides an interesting quote from Monk:
Monk quotes Wittesr:
"'Humour is not a mood but a way of looking at the world"
---- This is interesting and may equivocate on 'mood'. In "Aspects of
Reason", Grice was using 'mood' a lot -- as in 'the indicative mood'.
Moravcsik,
who was attending the lectures (at Stanford) said to Grice: "You shouldn't
say 'mood'; the correct spelling is 'mode'". From then on, Grice started
to write, 'indicative mode'.
---- Similarly, it is easy to rephrase Witter's claim to read:
Humour is not a mode.
But possibly he DID mean 'mood'. "Mood" is Anglo-Saxon (and thus Germanic,
like Witters); mode is Latin. When Shirley Bassey sings,
"I'm in the mood for love"
it would be otiose to think that she is in the indicative mode for loving.
---
People are said to be 'moody', but not mody (but cfr. modest).
--- Negation always implicates the contrary (cfr. Emma Watson, "I'm NOT in
love -- and I have NOT got a current boy friend!"). Therefore, appying this
to Witters, we get:
Humour is a mood.
I.e. Witters is 'playing' with the claim that someone ("or other" as Geary
would add) once said (or even worse, WROTE) that humour was a mood.
Now, the positive aspect comes later, as usual:
"but a way of looking at the world".
Note that the force of the statement (as per illocutionary force) is
brought by the opposition. The statement,
"Humour is a way of looking at the world"
would not travel too far as a memorable quote: "Humour is NOT a mood; but a
way of looking at the world" does. It has a Heideggerian resonance:
'being-in-the-world' and 'looking'.
Monk goes on:
"[he] wrote while he was in Rosro [Norway]"
and this was possibly motivated by some chat at a Norwegian wood pub or
other. There IS such a thing as Norwegian humour.
Note that the specification felt important by Monk ("This was a Rosro
thought by Witters") invites us to qualify the dictum to read:
"Norwegian humour is not a mood; it's a Norwegian way of looking at the
Norwegian world".
------ Any Norwegians on the list?
------
Monk goes on:
'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.'"
----- I would add "Austria", since after all Nazi Germany originated in
Austria, no? (Witters's homeland).
Monk stops quoting and provides an editorial:
"To understand what that 'something' is it would perhaps be instructive to
look at humour as something strange and incomprehensible."
Or not, of course.
Here I would refer to McEvoy's commentary, since 'good spirits' are brought
in. "Spirit", like "mood", can be ambiguous. Literally, a spirit is a
ghost (as in the holy ghost, as referred to by Adriano Palma in his
contribution to this thread). Ghosts can be evil or other. When 'other', they
are
called 'a good spirit', and often pluralised ("There were three good spirits
in
the haunted mansion").
----- Now, to BE in a good spirit is assumed by Witters (or Monk) to be
more or less equivalent as to be 'in a humorous mood'.
The idea that humour is a good, I claim, has to be traced to the Greek
theory of the HUMOURS (vide Wikipedia, -- Galen Strawson should know about
this).
Monk writes that it is INSTRUCTIVE (his word) to regard humour as
'incomprehensible' (and 'strange' or odd, since strangers or foreigners do have
a
mood of humour -- the phrase 'sense of humour' is restrictive, since there
are usually two senses -- or four at most -- the the right, to the left, up,
and down). But surely a teacher should be reprimanded if, when lecturing,
he would utter the phrase:
"It is instructive to regard Sanskrit mythology as incomprehensible".
The fact that the teacher does not comprehend should not IMPLICATE that
nobody can!
Or not. I'm sure Attalardo, the great Griceian humorist CAN (if Witters
Kant).
Cheers
Speranza
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