Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience

by Peter L. Berger

The author of numerous previous books of broad appeal and scholarly acclaim on subjects ranging from sociological theory to religious ethics in government and economic systems, and the coauthor of a vastly influential treatise on The Social Construction of Reality, Berger unfolds in Redeeming Laughter a new perspective on a classic domain. Berger's comic terrain is at once noble and amusing, the terrain of Erasmus and Swift. Like his predecessors', Berger's writing in these pages is bolstered with exemplary learning and wry observation.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Humor, Philosophy, Psychology

215 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Peter L. Berger was an internationally renowned sociologist, and the founder of Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. He was born in Vienna and came to the U.S. in his late teens. He had a master's degree and a doctorate from the New School for Social Research in New York. After two years in the United States Army, he taught at the University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina before going to the Hartford Seminary Foundation as an Assistant Professor in Social Ethics.

In 1992, Peter Berger was awarded the Manes Sperber Prize, presented by the Austrian government for significant contributions to culture. He was the author of many books, among them The Social Construction of Reality, The Homeless Mind, and Questions of Faith.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This looks like a winner. Just starting it, and chapter 1 (The Comic Intrusion) is already brilliant and thought-provoking. I think this is one we'd enjoy talking about. I'll try to comment as I work through it. Section and chapter titles are...

Part 1. Anatomy of the Comic
1. The Comic Intrusion
2. Philosophers of the Comic, and the Comedy of Philosophy
3. Laughing Monks: A Very Brief Sinitic Interlude
4. Homo Ridens: Physiology and Psychology
5. Homo Ridiculus: Social Constructions of the Comic
6. Interlude: Brief Reflections on Jewish Humor
Part 2. Comic Forms of Expression
7. The Comic as Diversion: Benign Humor
8. The Comic as Consolation: Tragicomedy
9. The Comic as Game of Intellect: Wit
10. The Comic as Weapon: Satire
11. Interlude: The Eternal Return of Folly
Part 3. Toward a Theology of the Comic
12. The Folly of Redemption
13. Interlude: On Grim Theologians
14. The Comic as a Signal of Transcendence

[Timothy Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work was fascinating to me. Berger plots the arguments that define the comic without constraining the comic to any particular stricture of definition. This allowed the breadth of the subject to be more freely explored. Going spelunking into the ideas of the comic came the rewards of perspective comparisons from Plato to Kierkegaard to modern expressions. The long held conception of humor as perspectival incongruity was the touchstone without indicating any other particular meaning derivations to be outside the pale of serious philosophical inquiry, which gave way, then, to well researched offerings of comic expressions revealing fascinating pattern formations throughout history. The final section of chapters entitled, Toward a Theology of the Comic, provoke an acute reflection on the correlations of the comic and ultimate matters of Faith - indeed, an enriching experience to read.

[Stark]

i felt like putting my notes in here, so this isn't a review, more so something for me to look at later

introduced me to the concept of "finite provinces of meaning," from the work of philosopher Alfred Schutz. according to him there is "the paramount reality of everyday life" and then things which establish these "provinces" which have their own rules and laws of mental physics: dreams, a particular friendship, or "comedy." you can't access these states from paramount reality, you have to cross over a border, after which they will make sense and reality won't anymore.

helmuth plessner: philosopher who thought about human laughing and crying as representing a "fall" from our mental use of our bodies as objects we control, into a "bodily condition." he thinks humans are different from animals because of our "eccentric" (but better translated as "decentered") condition of experiencing things as if we both /are/ a body (as an animal experiences) and /have/ a body. this human-only experience of being able to be outside and observe the feelings that come from the body, has become unbalanced, so that it seems like consciousnesss is the only experience that exists. until the "having" experience "collapses" into the "being" experience, and one of the ways to do this is laughter. this clicks for me, related to why comedy has always been a strong interest for me, and particularly slapstick and clowning over wit. wit is more likely to make you smile (the book notes that the difference between smiling and laughing is that only laughter interrupts breathing -- breathing! the most unconscious task of all!). while, a fart can undo millenia of conscious evolution. i always keep coming back to the most powerful art experience i've ever had, with the Paul McCarthy piece "Santa Chocolate Shop" that i saw in his retrospective at MOCA, around the turn of the century. It's a video of a debacle where chocolate, very viscerally standing in for shit, is poured and smeared everywhere, in the pretext of Santa's elves making chocolates. for a flash, just an instant, it made me feel what it was like to be in a state before we have learned excrement is dirty, pre-toilet training. a state that i know exists, but in paramount reality, has been completely cauterized from existing ever again for me. for a second i was able to look at the videoimage (and if smell or three-dimensionality had been involved i don't think the conjuror's trick would have worked) and experience the absence of revulsion, the absence of distinction between shit and other substances in the material world, that a two year old would.

[Phil Wyman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started strong. Ended amazingly. Dragged through the middle somewhat. Berger's clear dislike (and misreading in my opinion) of Bakhtin left one of the largest voices on the power of laughter out of the study - except in a cursory manner. Despite this, Redeeming Laughter is a necessary addition to an under studied subject. His closing short chapters on the religious dimension of the comic are the highlight of the book.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Defintely not one of Berger's best, but an entertaining read anyway.