THE LAST FUNNY FRENCHMAN AND THE GERMAN WHO GOT A JOKE

Voltaire and Bob Hope (Michael Prowse, August 1 2003, Financial Times)

On his deathbed, Voltaire was asked to renounce the Devil. "This is no time for making new enemies," the Enlightenment philosophe is reported to have quipped. [...]

Perhaps because he regarded suffering as endemic to life, Schopenhauer worked hard to solve the riddle of humour. He argues that the essence of a joke lies in finding an object that can - at a stretch - be subsumed under a concept even though it differs greatly from the objects usually subsumed under that concept. We laugh involuntarily when we grasp the incongruity: when we see that the object does not really fit the concept after all.

To illustrate his theory, Schopenhauer tells a joke. A king laughs when he sees a peasant wearing light summer clothes in the depth of winter. "If you had put on what I have put on," says the peasant, "you would find it very warm." "What have you put on?" asks the perplexed king. "My entire wardrobe," the peasant replies. We laugh (if we laugh), says Schopen- hauer, because although the peasant's light summer outfit can be subsumed under the concept "an entire wardrobe", most wardrobes, and the king's in particular, are far more extensive.

Or consider Voltaire's deathbed joke. The object here is the Devil, and he can be subsumed under the concept of "not making new enemies". But we immediately see the incongruity, at least from a religious perspective. The Devil is the one being whom we might want to make our enemy, especially on our deathbed.

Animals are thus incapable of laughter, notwithstanding the panting sounds that chimps sometimes make, because they lack a faculty of reason. Unable to form concepts, they cannot identify incongruities between objects and the concepts under which they are subsumed. We laugh at a chimps' tea party because chimps are being visibly subsumed under the concept "human" and we see that this is incongruous. But they would not laugh if they saw Tarzan swinging from a tree.

The great thing about jokes, though, is that you can crack them, or find them funny, without understanding their conceptual underpinnings. This is perhaps just as well, or there would be even fewer stand-up comedians of Bob Hope's quality.

Mr. Schopenhauer's theory explains why the two greatest jokes of all time are the following:

(1) Q: Did you hear what happened to the Pope when he went to Mount Olive?

A: Popeye beat the crap out of him.

(2) A man walks into a drugstore and says: "Do you do urinalysis here?"

The guy behind the counter says: "Sure".

"Fine. Wash your hands and make me a cheese sandwich." Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2003 12:47 PM