next up previous
Next: Timing: brevity and surprise Up: Competing theoretical views Previous: Aggression

Superiority

Thomas Hobbes, in a compositional analysis of the range of human emotions (1651/1958), points out the role of the feeling of superiority in humor.

LAUGHTER .. is caused ... by [among other things] the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. (Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 57)

This too can be accommodated in terms of the present theory. If in some humorously viewed situation, it happens that someone else is responsible for a moral violation, and the perceiver is not, then the conditions are met for having the feeling of superiority. Much humor involves other people making mistakes (this constitutes V), but doesn't involve the perceiver making a mistake (this helps with N). Consequently much humor enables feelings of superiority.

However, people may laugh at themselves, too. If not entirely nonsensical, it is at least a more complex matter to index who is superior to whom, when a person is presumed to be superior to himself. If one wants to apply the concept of perceived superiority to self-deprecating humor, one must assume two selves, one of which is responsible for the violation, the other of which is superior to the first, and then the same logic that applies to two people applies here. In either view, superiority is a consequence, in some forms of humor, of the present theory: someone or something is responsible for a moral violation, and therefore the perceiver who presumably is not, can think of herself as superior.


next up previous
Next: Timing: brevity and surprise Up: Competing theoretical views Previous: Aggression
Tom Veatch
1999-07-15