Laughter: A Tool in Moral Perfectionism?

Abstract

This essay considers two themes which have not, to my knowledge, previously been connected: the role of laughter in Nietzsche’s thought (with particular reference to Thus Spoke Zarathustra); and what several commentators have recently taken to calling Nietzsche’s ‘moral perfectionism’. Though some writers have discussed laughter in Nietzsche, the attention it has been given remains relatively minimal. When laughter is discussed, it is more likely to be construed on a metaphorical level, and connected with such themes as ‘lightness’ and ‘dance’ (for Zarathustra does indeed make these associations);¹ or the focus put upon Part IV as some kind of literary comedy.² The former is keen to link laughter with joy; the latter tends to focus upon the more obviously parodic elements of Part IV, such as the ‘Ass Festival’. I have myself commented elsewhere upon a Nietzschean laughter which is essentially joyous, contrasting a Zarathustran ‘laughter of the height’ with a ‘laughter of the herd’; a Bergsonian laughter of social correction.³ But in this essay, I want to consider another kind — or use — of laughter, of which there are also traces in Zarathustra. This laughter, I shall suggest, can play an important role in a project of ‘moral perfectionism’. So the essay is not primarily a piece of ‘Nietzsche scholarship’.

He is more worthy of the human race who laughs at it rather than sheds tears over it.

(Seneca)