Is a sense of humour a virtue?

Monist

Volumn 88, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 72-92

  Lippitt, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949619939     PISSN: 00269662     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/monist20058816     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967-78), vol. 2, entry 1763
2. Robert C. Roberts, "Humor and the Virtues," Inquiry 31 (1988), pp. 127-49
3. One sign of how overlooked this section of the Nicomachean Ethics has been is that Hugo Rahner entitled his article on it "Eutrapelia: A Forgotten Virtue" (see M. Conrad Hyers [ed.] Holy Laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective (New York: Seabury Press, 1969), pp. 185-97). Rahner begins his article with the question: "Did you ever practice eutrapelia?" (p. 185). The context makes it quite clear that he expects his audience not to have much of a clue what he is talking about
4. The so-called "incongruity theory" is standardly held to be one of the three major traditional "theories" of humour (alongside "superiority" and "relief"). For an overview of such theories see: John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983)
5. John Morreall (ed.) The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987)
6. John Lippitt, "Humour and Incongruity," Cogito, 8 (1994), pp. 147-53
7. "Humour and Superiority," Cogito 9 (1995) pp. 54-61
8. "Humour and Release," Cogito, 9 (1995), pp. 169-76
9. and Noël Carroll, "Humour," in Jerrold Levinson (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 344-65
10. Cited in Marie Collins Swabey, Comic Laughter: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 115
11. D. H. Monro, Argument of Laughter (Carlton, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1951), p. 235
12. Plato, Apology, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in The Last Days of Socrates (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1969), 36c-37a
13. M. F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to Be Good," in Amelie O. Rorty (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), p. 77
14. On this point, see Morreall (cited in n. 7, above) "Funny Ha-ha, Funny Strange and Other Reactions to Incongruity," in Morreall (ed.), 1987, pp. 188-207
15. John Morreall, Comedy, Tragedy and Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 151
16. Richard Moran, "The Expression of Feeling in Imagination," Philosophical Review, 103 (1994), pp. 75-106
17. Or so Climacus says in a number of places. Actually, the full picture is rather more complicated: for a detailed account, see John Lippitt, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought (London: Palgrave, 2000), especially ch. 5
18. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 110
19. This point about "vision" is a significant part of Aristotle's understanding of virtues (aretai) as opposed to skills (technai). Whereas in the latter case the excellence of the product is normally sufficient to say that its maker acting skilfully in producing it, in the case of a virtue, "we need to see not only what she did or said; we need to know how she saw what she was doing or saying" (Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics (London: Routledge, 2001, p. 55, my emphasis)
20. Iris Murdoch, "Vision and Choice in Morality," in Existentialists and Mystics (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1999), pp. 80-81, my emphasis
21. Reinhold Niebuhr, "Humor and Faith," in Hyers (ed.), 1969 (cited in n. 4, above) p. 141
22. M. Conrad Hyers, "The Comic Profanation of the Sacred," in Hyers (ed.), 1969 (cited in n. 4, above) p. 26
23. Compare Wittgenstein: "Working in philosophy . . . is really more a working on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's way of seeing things." (Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 16e. I am grateful to Laurence Goldstein for reminding me of this remark
24. Flannery O'Connor, "Revelation," in Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), pp. 491-92
25. This point is made in various places: see, for instance, Stages on Life's Way, ed. and trans. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 366
26. and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trans. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 80-93
27. Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man (London: Arena, 1984), pp. 154-55
28. Dorothy Parker, "Résumé," in The Collected Dorothy Parker (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1989), p. 99