Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the philosophical significance of laughter and comedy in Nietzsche’s works. Although a few scholars have noted this dimension of Nietzsche’s project, these themes have yet to make their way into mainstream Nietzsche scholarship. Moreover, references to Nietzsche in current philosophical work on laughter, humor, and comedy are rare. By bringing attention to the important role that laughter and comedy play in Nietzsche’s later works, I implicitly advance the case that Nietzsche scholars should pay more attention to laughter and comedy and that Nietzsche should be discussed more frequently in contemporary work on the philosophy of laughter, humor, and comedy.
The structure of the paper is straightforward. In the first section, I provide evidence attesting to the significance of laughter in Nietzsche’s works and then explore its philosophical significance. In the second section, I do the same with comedy by drawing parallels between Nietzsche’s later philosophy and the Dionysian comedies of Aristophanes. In so doing, I show how laughter and comedy are central to Nietzsche’s life-affirming ethics and his project of self-creation, but I also note that Nietzsche’s understanding of laughter and comedy may challenge some of our most fundamental ethical intuitions.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Meyer (2012) is based on a paper first given at the annual conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society in 2003.
- 3.
Higgins (2000, 3) stakes her reading of The Gay Science on this claim.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Hatab (2005) also provides reflections along these lines.
- 7.
For instance, Morreall (2016) makes no mention of Nietzsche. I hope that this paper will help Nietzsche find his way into future revisions of the SEP entry on “Humor,” even if Nietzsche’s project has more to do with the traditional categories of laughter and comedy.
- 8.
See Siemens and Hay (2015) for an essay that explores the role of laughter in relation to Nietzsche’s figure of the free spirit.
- 9.
See Loeb (2004) for a general discussion of this issue. Following Carl Jung, Loeb also notes (135n.3) the potential connection between the flock of doves and the Piazza di San Marco, and he rightly points to Nietzsche’s poem, “Mein Glück!” in the Appendix of The Gay Science as evidence for this reading.
- 10.
In September of 1883, the month in which the second part of Zarathustra appeared, Nietzsche writes to Gast (Köselitz) that they are possibly related to one another as tragic and comic poets (Nietzsche remarks that Wagner once referred to him as a closeted tragic poet) (KSB 6, 461). Nietzsche first refers to Gast’s The Lion from Venice in a letter to Franz Overbeck in May of 1884 (KSB 6, 513) just after publishing the third part of Zarathustra. In March of 1885, just prior to the distribution of Zarathustra IV, Nietzsche then writes again to Overbeck about the opera (KSB 7, 589), and he writes to Carl von Gersdorff only a few days later exclaiming that the opera absolutely has to appear on the German stage (KSB 7, 593). References to Gast’s comic opera can be found in Nietzsche’s letters as late as 1888.
- 11.
Hatab (2005) is a significant exception. However, he conflates his discussion of comedy with the satyr play that he rightly finds in Zarathustra IV. Although Hatab is right to read Zarathustra IV as a satyr play, it is important to distinguish between the satyr play and comedy. They are two related yet distinct genres, evidenced by the fact that tragedians, not comedians, were typically the authors of the satyr play.
- 12.
Although I try to minimize it, there will inevitably be some overlap here with my 2012 article.
- 13.
This is taken from Meyer (2012, 35-36).
- 14.
See Taylor and Lee (2015) for further discussion of this distinction in relation to the sophists.
- 15.
See Solomon (2003, ch. 1) for a discussion of Nietzsche’s use of the ad hominem.
- 16.
Here, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference between a comic hero—like Peisetairos of the Birds or Dicaeopolis of the Acharnians—creating his own nomoi and the comic poet doing so, and thus there seems to be an important difference between Nietzsche’s later writings, in which the only potential comic hero is Nietzsche himself (qua divine Hanswurst), and Aristophanic comedy. Nevertheless, there is a way in which Aristophanes would often identify with the comic heroes of his plays in the parabasis (see Hubbard (1991)), and, as I note below, Cratinus even made himself into the hero of his own comedy.
- 17.
The most recent work on Nietzsche’s “great politics” by Drochon (2016) contains no references to or discussions of laughter, comedy, Aristophanes, or Nietzsche’s role as Hanswurst. Although there is no passage that links Nietzsche’s conception of great politics directly to Aristophanic comedy, the parallels between Nietzsche’s concept and the political ambitions and activity of Dicaeopolis, whose name means “just city,” from the Acharnians and Peisetairos from the Birds should be obvious.
- 18.
Leiter (2001) has drawn attention to the possible conflict between fatalism and self-creation. My point here is simply that the issue can be tied to the relation between tragedy (fatalism) and comedy (self-creation) and so also explored in these terms.
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Meyer, M. (2018). The Divine Hanswurst: Nietzsche on Laughter and Comedy. In: Moland, L. (eds) All Too Human. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5_10
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