Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic (by Henri Bergson).
My obsessive love for comedy led to me this philosophical nugget. The English translation of Henri Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic was published in 1911. Despite its age, many of his observations about humor still hold up.Henri Bergson was an early 20th century French philosopher. Bergson's essay on laughter states that laughter is an intellectual response. We laugh because we feel uncomfortable when the unexpected occurs. When in a situation over which we have no control occurs, laughter is a release.Henry Bergson’s Laughter is a collection of three essays. Bergson begins the work with a brief introduction in which he clarifies that his aim is not to define “comic” as a term, but rather to.
Bergson's study of the comic really is a benchmark. There's Freud on Jokes, and Bergson on laughter. They're not too far from each other in time, and they're both central reading if you want to understand why we laugh and with what consequences. The beauty of Bergson's account, I think, is his complete disregard of easy solutions.In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, Laughter explores what it is in language that makes a joke funny and what it is in us that makes us laugh.
The complete text of Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic by Henri Bergson. Presented by Auth o rama Public Domain Books. II. A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had.
