Lydia B.

Amir

Kierkegaard and the Traditions of the

Comic in Philosophy
Abstract: The paper relates Kierkegaards body of thought on the comic, irony,
and humor to ten traditions of the comic (eight dating from antiquity and two
from modern and postmodern times) that represent philosophys complex relationship with the comic. I emphasize the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance
roots in Kierkegaards vision of the comic and in doing so hope to fill a gap
within the pertinent scholarship. In particular, I inquire into the sources of his
thought in and his indebtedness to these traditions in order to determine how,
if at all, his conception of the comic, irony, and humor may be deemed original.
Kierkegaard considered the comic an essential category; he referred to the comic
in his journals as early as 1842, finding new applications for it and continually
refining it. Like other modern philosophers, however, Kierkegaard was steeped
in antiquity. As a gifted Latin scholar and Greek student since his boyhood,
he was familiar with the Romans and profoundly inspired by the Greek spirit.
For a long time he harbored thoughts on irony, humor, the comic and its relation
to the tragic and intended to write a doctoral dissertation on Greek and Roman
satirethe concept of satire with the ancients and the relation of the various
Roman satirists to each other. Although he never wrote the dissertation,
Kierkegaard learned much, Walter Lowrie asserts, from his study of the subject.
I argue that Kierkegaards rich reflections on the manifold forms of the
comic owes much to a revival of ancient traditions and concepts of the comic
that, unfolding through the Middle Ages and flourishing in the Renaissance,
have been rediscovered in modern times. These are the Ridiculous Philosopher,
the Laughing Philosopher, the Comical Philosopher, Philosophy is Comedic, Wit
is a Virtue, Laughter is the Mark of Humanity, the Laughless Philosopher, the
Mocking Philosopher, Laughter is Epistemologically Valuable, and the Comic is

SKS 18, 147, JJ:9 / KJN 2, 122.

SKS 17, 241, DD:58 / KJN 1, 232.
For Kierkegaards project on satire, see Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, New York:
Cambridge University Press 2001, p. 94, p. 138. Walter Lowries remark is found in his Introduction, in Sren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom, Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1968, p. xiv.

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Ontologically Rooted. As Kierkegaards relationship with the comic within modernity since the 18th century has been investigated already, I emphasize the
ancient, medieval, and Renaissance era roots in Kierkegaards view of the
comic, mainly in order to fill a gap in the pertinent scholarship.

I The Ridiculous Philosopher

The first tradition can be traced back to the very birth of philosophy, to Thales
(6th century B.C.), whom legend ridicules for falling into a well while looking
at the sky. Plato adds a mocking Thracian servant to Aesops story about the
absent-minded astronomer, clearly inferring a direct line from the fall of Thales
to the ridicule and death of Socrates. Since antiquity to our day, this anecdote
has been recorded by many with notable variations: Diogenes Laertius, Tatian
(recorded by Stobaeus), Cicero, Ovid, Philo, Eusebius, Augustine, Tertullian,

I have not found a record of these traditions in the secondary literature. At most, studies on
literary satire refer to two irreconcilable camps, namely, the Peripatetic tradition followed by
Cicero, and the Iambos tradition seen in Iambic poetry, Old Comedy, Cynic moralizing, and
Lucilius. For the conventional division between these camps, see Kirk Freudenburg, The Walking
Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993. For valuable
information about Greek laughter, yet mostly unrelated to the division into the traditions I
propose, see Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to
Early Christianity, New York: Cambridge University Press 2008. Moreover, apart from Kierkegaards relation to Socrates, there is not much about Kierkegaards relations to other sources of
the comic in the series of monographs on Kierkegaards relations to the ancient and medieval
worlds, such as Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome I, Socrates and Plato, Tome II, Aristotle
and Other Greek Authors, ed. by Jon Stewart and Katalin Nun, Aldershot: Ashgate 2010
(Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 2); Kierkegaard and the Roman
World, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception
and Resources, vol. 3); Kierkegaard and the Patristic and Medieval Traditions, ed. by Jon Stewart,
Aldershot: Ashgate 2008 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 4).
Both a full disclosure of the traditions of the comic and a list of secondary literature on
Kierkegaards view of the comic, irony, and humor, lie outside the scope of this article. For a
fuller version of these traditions, see Lydia B. Amir, Philosophys Attitude towards the ComicA
Reevaluation, The European Journal of Humor Research, vol. 1, 2013, pp. 6 21. For references to
secondary literature on Kierkegaards view of the comic, irony, and humor, see Lydia B. Amir,
Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard, Albany: State
University of New York Press 2014, chapter 3.
Aesop, Fables, trans. by S.A. Handford, with illustrations by Brian Robb, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books 1954, chap. 65, p. 75; Plato, Works, vols. 1 12, trans. by Harold N. Fowler,
introduced by W.R.M. Lamb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann
1966, Theaetetus, 174b-e.

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379

Pierre Damien, Montaigne, Bacon, Pierre Bayle, La Fontaine, Voltaire, Kant (on
Tycho Brahe), Ludwig Feuerbach, Eduard Gans, and Martin Heidegger. This tradition views philosophy first as laughable to society, and later, as laughable both
to theologians and philosophers who prioritize practice over theory, such as Diogenes the Cynic, Erasmus, Montaigne, Shaftesbury, and Nietzsche.
Johannes Climacus alludes to Thales story as a good example of the comic.
With the Corsair affair, however, after Kierkegaard is driven to despair by the sustained retaliatory mockery initiated by the satirical journal as a response to his
attack, Kierkegaards relationship with the comic takes a dramatic turn that
influences his attitude towards ridicule. He adopts Platos association of the ridicule of Thales with the trial and death of Socrates, emphasizes the scorn Socrates must endure, relates it to the mocking of Christ, and identifies himself with
both Socrates and Christ. In 1849 he writes: I am a martyr of laughter and my
life has been designed for that; I understand myself so completely as such that it
is as if I now understand myself for the first time. Kierkegaard redefines the
content of Imitatio Dei in such a way as to shed light on this new self-understanding. If Christ came to the world now hewould be ridiculed, treated as
a mad man, but a mad man at whom one laughsI now understand better
and better the original and profound relationship I have with the comic, and
this will be useful to me in illuminating Christianity. After the Corsair affair,
Kierkegaard consciously adopts the Orthodox Churchs ideal of the holy fool
or the fool in Christs name. Kierkegaard uses the tradition of the ridiculous
philosopher who is mocked by society for making sense of the mobs laughter
at Christ and of the scorn Kierkegaard himself endured during the Corsair affair.
Kierkegaard fits in this tradition also in the second sense described above:
Following Erasmus and Feuerbach, Kierkegaard uses the pseudonyms Nicolaus
Notabene and Johannes Climacus in Prefaces chapters IV and VIII and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, respectively, to ridicule Hegels abstractions and
Hegelian theologians who are forgetful of the individuals genuine life of faith.
For the development of the Thales anecdote, see Hans Blumenberg, Le Rire de la servante de
Thrace: Une histoire des origines de la thorie, trans. by Laurent Cassagnau, Paris: LArche 2000.
SKS 7, 468n / CUP1, 516n; see also SKS K7, 344, and CUP2, 265, note 766.
SKS 21, 312 f., NB10:109 / KJN 5, 323 f.
Ibid.
On the holy fool, see Jessica Milner Davis, The Fool and the Path to Spiritual Insight, in
Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, ed. by Hans Geybels and Walter van Herck,
London: Continuum 2011, pp. 218 247. On the relation of Kierkegaard to the holy fool tradition
of the Orthodox Church, see Marie M. Thulstrup,Studies of Pietists, Mystics and Church
Fathers, in Kierkegaards View of Christianity, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie M. Thulstrup,
Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1978 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 1), pp. 61 67.

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II The Laughing Philosopher

Beginning with Democritus (5th century B.C.), this tradition features philosophers
whose final judgment of life is expressed in laughter. The tradition derives its
importance from Democritus nickname while alive, wisdom, because it points
to a fundamental association between wisdom and laughter. It is in the testimonia rather than in the fragments of his extant writings that a justification for the
name can be found. According to the legend, Democritus laughs so much that
the people of Abdera believe he has gone insane and call Hippocrates to heal
him. But when Democritus explains to the doctor that he is laughing at the
folly of humankind, Hippocrates concludes that Democritus is truly wise and
earnest, and that he is laughing to make a serious point. Democritus has been
referred to as the laughing philosopher ever since, and has had an immense
influence on Western philosophy and literature. Democritus is not alone;
Seneca, Montaigne, Erasmus, Thomas More, Friedrich Nietzsche, and George
Santayana are all recognized as laughing philosophers. Satirists such as Horace
and Juvenal refer approvingly to Democritus characteristic attitude toward the
faults of mankind. However, following Democritus admonition, you people
do not laugh at your own stupidity but each laughs at anothers, it is expected
that laughing philosophers laugh first of all at themselves.
Democritus is soon paired with Heraclitus, who is often associated with the
combination of melancholy and arrogance and who is known as the weeping
philosopher by the Roman period. Following the Greek philosopher Sotion,
who first opposes Democritus and Heraclitus, and his student Seneca, who
first compares the opposing world-views represented by these two philosophers,
there are many who prioritize one over the other, including Juvenal, Lucian of

The laughing Democritus is found in a Greek anonymous legend of the first century B.C., the
Novel of Hippocrates, composed of a collection of 27 apocryphal letters of the renowned 5th
century B.C. doctor. See Hippocrates, Pseudepigraphic Writings, ed. and trans. by Wesley D.
Smith, E.J. Brill: Leiden 1990, Letters 10 17. In the Latin testimony, at the latest in Horaces days
(1st century B.C.), Democritus was referred to as the laughing philosopher. For the laughing
philosophers legend, see Jean Salem, La lgende de Dmocrite, Paris: Kim 1996. For his
influence throughout the centuries, see Reimar Mller, Demokritder Lachende Philosoph,
in Laughter down the Centuries, ed. by Siegfried Jakel and Asko Timonen, vols. 1 3, Turku: Turun
yliopisto 1994 97, vol. 1, 1994, pp. 39 51.
Hippocrates, Pseudepigraphic Writings, Letter 17, line 5; the injunction to self-laughter is
followed by Seneca and Montaigne.
For Heraclitus as the weeping philosopher, see Ava Chitwood, Death by Philosophy: The
Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus,
and Democritus, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2004, chapter 2.

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381

Samasota, M.A. Fregoso, Etienne Forcadel, Montaigne, Spinoza, Voltaire, Lope

de Vega, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, and George Santayana.
Because Hippocrates first thought that Democritus was a victim of the black
bile, on which he was writing a book, Democritus also begins the tradition of
laughter and melancholy, which is considered in the Middle Ages the medical
form of acedia or the sin of being disgusted by God. Humanist authors attribute
this melancholic laughter to Democritus, preferring him to the weeping Heraclitus. The idea, already found in Aristotle, that melancholy is associated with genius takes root in the Renaissance. Laughing philosophers are thus divided into
two currents, according to different interpretations of Democritus laughter,
either misanthropic and melancholic, or cheerful.
Kierkegaards pseudonym alludes, in Either/Or, to the laughing and weeping
philosophers: Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep
over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at the stupidities of the world or
weep over them, you will regret it either way. Through other pseudonyms,
however, Kierkegaard considers the true philosopher, who embodies philosophy
as lived thought, a laughing philosopher or humorist to be exceeded in the hierarchy of stages of existence only by the Christian religious person, who does not
laugh. Christianity, according to Kierkegaards final view of the relationship
between Christianity and the comic, is inaccessible to humor. Living in
humor, however, can be helpful in attaining to the religious life, and masquerading as a laughing philosopher can be a good disguise for the Christian.
Kierkegaard views humor as a balance between the tragic or the pathosfilled and the comic. Thus, it may be a modern version of Democritus melancholic laughter, translated into the conventional 19th century concept of humor as
melancholic and as being the unity of tragedy and comedy. This possibility is
sustained by many utterances in Kierkegaards writings and testified to in his
journals as well: The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, he writes.
Alternatively, the Kierkegaardian humorist can be both a Democritus and a Heraclitus. Kierkegaards self-description as a two-faced Janus, laughing with one

SKS 2, 47 / EO1, 38.

SKS 7, 475 / CUP1, 522.
SKS 7, 88 / CUP1, 89; SKS 6, 391 / SLW, 422.
Karl Solger is probably the first to consider humor the unity of tragedy and comedy; the
notion that humor is melancholic [vemodig] is found in his writings as well; see Tonny A. Olesen,
The Hermeneutics of Humor in the Postscript, in Sren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on
Hermeneutics and Communication, ed. by Poul Houe and Gordon Marino, Copenhagen: C.A.
Reitzel 2003, pp. 215 227.
SKS 2, 28 / EO1, 20; also SKS 19, 212 / KJN 3, 208.

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face and crying with the other, seems to support the view that Kierkegaard associates the weeping philosopher with the laughing philosopher in his concept of
humor. These traditions are also mediated by Kierkegaards contemporaries, to
whom he is specially indebted for his concept of humor.

III The Comical Philosopher

Epitomized in Socrates (5th century B.C.), this tradition features the archetype of
the teacher and the embodiment of philosophy as both laughing and laughable.
Not only is Socrates ridiculed, but there is something fundamentally comic in his
appearance as well as in his conversations. As the main character of Aristophanes Clouds, he enters literature through the door of comedy, and his comical
image is perpetuated in the Socratic dialogues (as humorous in Xenophon and
ironic in Plato) and endures throughout antiquity. Socrates embodies a comic
couple, and the comic role he takes on as part of the dynamism of the couple
that he appropriates together with his comical degradation are necessary conditions for the exercise of his thought and especially for its development in others. The paradoxical duality he uses as a method for teaching philosophy is
expressed in an inextricable connection between the serious and the ridiculous
or between the sublime and the low, because the comical challenges serious

SKS 18, 94, FF:93 / KJN 2, 86.

Tonny A. Olesen suggests that the sources of Kierkegaards view of humor are found in his
contemporaries. Especially important is Olesens suggestion that it is likely that Jean Paul
introduced the idea that humor entered the world with Christianity. Moreover, the literature
contemporaneous with the writings of Kierkegaard is replete with discussions of humor as the
counterpart to Greek irony, such as Ferdinand Christian Baurs and Carl Daubs discussions, to
which Kierkegaard refers respectively in SKS 17, 245 f., DD:75 / KJN 1, 236 f., and in SKS 17, 216,
DD:6.a / KJN 1, 208. However, Olesen does not mention 18th century thinkers who may have
influenced Kierkegaard on these matters, such as Johann Georg Hamann and the third Earl of
Shaftesbury, or the 16th century religious thinker, Desiderius Erasmus. See Olesen, The Hermeneutics of Humor in the Postscript, pp. 225 f.; see also Markus Kleinert, Jean Paul: Apparent
and Hidden Relations between Kierkegaard and Jean Paul, in Kierkegaard and his German
Contemporaries, Tome III, Literature and Aesthetics, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2008
(Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 155 170; and K. Brian
Sderquist, Irony and Humor in Kierkegaards Early Journals, Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook,
2003, pp. 143 167.
For the comic couple in Socratic philosophy, see Anna Beltrametti, Le couple comique: Des
origines mythiques aux drives philosophiques, in Le Rire des Grecs: Anthropologie du rire en
Grce ancienne, ed. by Marie-Laurence Desclos, Grenoble: Jerome Millon 2000, pp. 215 226,
especially pp. 223 226.

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383

norms. Socrates calls into question, both in thought and in deed, the appropriateness of the categories conceived, and considers the comic as conducive to
truth telling, as is shown in Alcibiades speech in Platos Symposium. By taking
none of the normal things seriously while devoting himself with great earnestness to arguments about cobblers and carpenters, Socrates the Silenus problematizes the serious. Such eccentricities (atopia) combined with his ironic manner
and satiric appearance make Socrates a genuinely serio-comic figure.
In the Renaissance, Alcibiades depiction of Socrates as a paradoxical Silenus is reprised by Erasmus in the characterization of Socrates as a wise fool,
and, following Jeromes and Augustines earlier comparison between Socrates
and Christ, Erasmus transforms Socrates into a forerunner of Christ. This
image is pitted against one which many Enlightenment writers favor, that of Socrates as a supreme rationalist. In the 18th century, two Socratics who make use of
the comical Socrates stand out, the third Earl of Shaftesbury and Johann Georg
Hamann. Shaftesbury uses Socrates not only for the picture of the moral philosopher, but also for the dialogic and ironic authorial manners of the texts written
by Plato and Xenophon. Shaftesbury maintains that the aim of the philosopher is
to edify by furthering the others autonomy. Endorsing the Socratic skeptical
methodology in his collected writings, Shaftesbury urges his readers to embark
on an open-ended quest for truth, in which his extensive use of wit, humor and
irony, and an occasional assumption of an external perspective ostensibly not
his own, serves to dismantle the writers authority. For Hamann, God works
in ironic ways to advance his purpose, and faith, rather than knowledge, is
the answer to ignorance. In his works, Hamann seeks to emulate the Alcibiadean
shell, hiding the Christian message the same way Socrates has hidden Pagan
ethics. Hamann sees himself as the Socrates of Christianity, with his wooden
arm showing the way, the role that Kierkegaard later adopts for himself along
with Hamanns literary method, which requires direct personal involvement
and indirect communication.

See Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly, trans. by Betty Radice, introd. and notes by A.H.T.
Levi, London: Penguin 1971.
See Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,
etc., ed. by John M. Robertson, vols. 1 2, Gloucester: Peter Smith 1963 [1900].
See Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, trans. with commentary by James C.
OFlaherty, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1967.

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During the 19th century an ironic Socrates steadily replaced a comic Socrates. How Socrates comicality should be characterized and his irony understood
are still controversial issues debated among contemporary prominent scholars.
Kierkegaard records detailed accounts of the interpretations of Socrates that
precede his own, influencing modernitys view of the Greek philosopher more
than perhaps any other author since the Renaissance. I believe he helped in
shaping the tradition of Socrates as the comical philosopher and the emblematic
serio-comic figure. Socrates is a life-long preoccupation for Kierkegaard. In The
Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, Kierkegaard favors Aristophanes comical protrayal of Socrates as closer to the truth than Xenophons and
Platos representations. Kierkegaard depicts Socrates as comical and ironic, but
as he considers Greek irony comical, in both the dissertation and Philosophical
Fragments, Socrates ironical stance marks him as an essentially comic figure.
At the same time, Kierkegaard insists on Socrates earnestness. Kierkegaard
holds on to the serio-comic view of Socrates also in Stages on Lifes Way and
the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where he portrays him as a unity of the
comic and the tragic, that is, as a humorist, whose true earnestness is
expressed in a mixture of jest and earnestness.
Kierkegaard comments on the comical particularity of Socrates and its use in
the maieutics in An Occasional Discourse in Upbuilding Discourses in Various

Although irony has been identified with Socrates since Aristotle, it was criticized by many
before Socrates and after Aristotle. Until Romanticism, irony was not associated with the comic.
Moreover, only since Romanticisms interest in irony has Socrates irony come to the fore and
Platos account been favored. See Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato
and Socrates, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999, p. 94.
For this assessment, see Harald Steffes, Kierkegaards Socrates Sources: Eighteenth-and
Nineteeth-Century Germanophone Studies Scholarship, in Kierkegaard and the Greek World,
Tome I, Socrates and Plato, pp. 267 311, p. 267.
For Kierkegaards view of the Xenophonic Socrates, see William McDonald, Kierkegaards
Use of the Socrates of the Memorabilia, in Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome I, Socrates
and Plato, pp. 199 211; for his view of Aristophanes, see Eric Ziolkowski, Aristophanes:
Kierkegaards Understanding of the Socrates of the Clouds, in Kierkegaard and the Greek World,
Tome I, Socrates and Plato, pp. 167 198, and The Literary Kierkegaard, Evanston, Northwestern
University Press 2011, chapter 1.
For Socrates as comic, see SKS 1, 181 / CI, 129; see also SKS 1, 195 / CI, 145; SKS 1, 202 / CI, 152.
For the description of irony as something that at rock bottom is comic, see SKS 1, 182 / CI, 131.
SKS 6, 389 / SLW, 419; for Kierkegaards view of Socrates as earnest and ironic at the same
time, see David D. Possen, Protagoras and Republic: Kierkegaard on Socratic Irony, in
Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome I, Socrates and Plato, pp. 87 104, and K. Brian Sderquist, The Sophists: Kierkegaards Interpretation of Socrates and the Sophists, in Kierkegaard
and the Greek World, Tome II, Aristotle and Other Greek Authors, pp. 183 194.

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Spirits. Working for the good, Socrates uses jest to make his listeners light-mindedness apparent and circumvent their aping of the good. He presents them with
a choice, and they choose the jest. Socrates fails in his use of jest, because his
listeners lack the earnestness with which to appreciate the earnestness of Socrates message.
Referred to as the simple wise man of old, Socrates appears also in
Upbuilding Discourses, Works of Love, and Christian Discourses; but, as Sophia
Scopetea has noted, the emphasis has changed to Socrates martyrdom at his
trial. After Kierkegaard suffers public ridicule at the hands of the comic magazine Corsair, Socrates becomes in these works the ridiculed philosopher. The
apparent similarity to the Christ-figure Kierkegaard is developing within these
same works is dispelled, as in earlier writings, by bringing out the differences
between Socrates and Christ even more sharply than before.
Kierkegaard eventually identifies with Socrates life as if it were his own. In a
draft for a section of Works of Love entitled A Self-Defense, which Kierkegaard
later omits from the text, he makes the identification explicit. When Kierkegaard collapses in the street in 1855 and has to be carried to the hospital, only
to die shortly thereafter, he leaves unpublished on his desk the last of his ten
part attack on the Danish establishment. In that manuscript one finds an article
on My Task with a passage directed to Socrates: The only analogy I have
before me is Socrates, my task is a Socratic one, to audit the definition of
what it is to be a Christian.
The influence of Socratic maieutics on Kierkegaards thinking cannot be limited to a theory of communication: it concerns the heart of his thinking as a
whole. He appeals for a new Socrates, as he sees his figure as an ideal and paradigm for communication and self-knowledge in 19th century Europe. Thus, his
maieutics is not a simple copy of the Socratic pattern, but a genuinely new appli-

SKS 8, 200 201 / UD, 96 97.

See Sophia Scopetea, Becoming the Flute: Socrates and the Reversal of Values in Kierkegaards Late Work, Kierkegaardiana, vol. 18, 1996, pp. 29 43.
Pap. VIII-2 B 73 / WL, Supplement, 455 461.
SKS 13, 373 / M, 311.
SKS 11, 205 / SUD, 92. For Kierkegaards view of his relation to Socrates, see Paul Muench,
Apology: Kierkegaards Socratic Point of View, in Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome I,
Socrates and Plato, pp. 3 25, and Marius T. Mjaaland, Theaetetus: Giving Birth, or Kierkegaards Socratic Maieutics, in Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome I, Socrates and Plato,
pp. 115 146.

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cation of the maieutic problem in a different historical and spiritual context.

Indeed, Kierkegaard describes the art of indirect communication as the practice
in Christianity, the example being given by Christ himself, who being the Godman, lived in a human incognito. Thus, Christ becomes the master of maieutics
and the final reason for using the maieutic method. Correspondingly, Kierkegaards attempt to apply a Socratic method as a critical means to inquire into
the presuppositions and the truth claims of Christian thinkingnamely, by taking away false knowledge about the categories of Christianity as well as the categories of the selfbecomes an act of love. Kierkegaard insists, however, that
Christian maieutics main method is the use of the comic, however, and for a
large part of his life he fulfills the role of the humorist.
In mirroring the comical teacher of philosophy, the humorous teacher of
Christianity is not original. Moreover, Kierkegaards view of the necessity of indirect communication for teaching Christianity is not without predecessors: Augustine had proposed something similar to Kierkegaards maieutics, and Erasmus
appended to the Praise of Folly his Letter to Martin Dorp, in which he explains
that the mock encomium has been written under a laughable persona in order
to call the world back to true Christianity.

IV Philosophy is Comedic
For some followers of Socrates, such as Plato and the Cynics (5th century B.C.),
the comic plays such a pervasive role that their practice of philosophy is aptly
equated with comedy. Its laughter in various forms (irony, wit, sarcasm,
humor) is an important means for conveying philosophical ideas that appear

Kierkegaard writes: [M]y idea and my life, one of the most original thoughts in many years,
and the most original thought in the Danish language: that Christianity needed a maieutic
practitioner and that I understood how to be one (SKS 20, 102 103, NB:154 / KJN 4, 102 103).
SKS 12, 135 / PC, 131; SKS 9, 259 / WL, 259.
Walter Kaufman characterizes Kierkegaard as an intensely religious humorist. See Walter
Kaufmann, Introduction, in Sren Kierkegaard, The Present Age, trans. by Alexander Dru, New
York: Harper and Row 1962, p. 26.
See Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 147, p. 156; and Walter M. Gordon, Humanist Play and Belief:
The Seriocomic Art of Desiderius Erasmus, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990. For the
relation of Kierkegaard to Erasmus, see Finn Gredal Jensen, Erasmus of Rotterdam: Kierkegaards Hints at a Christian Humanist, in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, Tome II, Theology, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research:
Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 5), pp. 111 128.

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paradoxical, because they are at odds with established social values; the quick
cognitive shifts and reduced anxiety levels produced by laughter attract attention, overcome resistance, and prompt change, enabling listeners or readers to
contemplate both sets of valuessocietys and philosophyssimultaneously.
In Platos Laws, the justification of the use of the comic is intellectual: the
serious cannot be taught without the ridiculous. In the Philebus, however, the
proper aim of comedy is to unmask ignorance and pretension, making it thus
an important tool for furthering the moral aim of self-knowledge. Given this
emphasis, Platos Socratic dialoguesthe conversation, character, and irony of
Socrates combined with the laughable element Plato introduces in the format
of parody and mythcan be seen as philosophical comedies: some of his
works are tragi-comic (Symposium, Republic), while others are infused with a spirit of comedy so pervasive that they become burlesque (Cratylus, Euthydemus).
All of Platos works reflect actual comic drama and use comic techniques.
The Cynics justify the comic on moral grounds by integrating into philosophy the promising alliance between humor and moral teaching used by Aristophanes and other comic poets and playwrights. Their philosophy begins as physical comedy: tradition is unanimous on the remarkable powers of ridicule and
repartee of the Cynic Diogenes and the notorious eccentricities undertaken to
expose the artificiality of conventionentering a theater when everyone else is
leaving it and going about town in daylight with a lighted lantern looking for
an honest man. The philosophic wit introduced by Diogenes is further developed
by Crates, who, purporting to cure human confusion with gentle discourse
accompanied by much joking, laughter, and merriment and the example of his
life, passed his whole life jesting and laughing, as though on perpetual holiday.
Cynical comedy is literary as well: for the purpose of furthering philosophic
education, the Cynics invent a literary genre, the serio-comic (spoudaiogeloion),
which is primarily an attempt to adapt the Socratic forms of popular philosophical propaganda to the requirements of the Hellenistic age. The Romans
give the serio-comic its own genre in the form of satire, notably in the poets Horace and Juvenal, the former explicitely arguing that the best ethical instruction
(the utile) is mixed with pleasure (the dulce). The form is later adopted by phi-

Plato, Works, vol. 7, Laws, 816 d-e; Philebus 48a-50b.

See Roger Brock, Plato and Comedy, in Owls to Athens: Essays on Classical Subjects
Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, ed. by E.M. Craik, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1990, pp. 39 49.
Plutarch, De tranquilitate animi, trans. by Bruno Snell, Zurich: Artemis 1948, 4.226E.
Horace, Epistles, Book II and Epistles to the Pisones (Ars poetica), ed. by Niall Rudd, New
York: Cambridge University Press 1989, Ars poetica, 343.3. On the serio-comic, see Lawrence

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losophers such as Erasmus, an important figure in the serio-comic tradition;

although late antiquity and the Middle Ages are fond of the antithesis between
jest and earnestness, they nevertheless lose their ability to conceive of the two in
synthesis. Erasmus retrieves Lucians capacity for using humor to provoke the
audience into considering a subject simultaneously from divergent points of
view, and because his books are translated and read all over Europe, he is considered largely responsible for the ironic smile curling so many 16th century lips.
With the Cynics influence on all Hellenistic schools and the later influence of
these schools on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the serio-comic
becomes the main form of exoteric writing in philosophy. It is used, among others, by the Stoics, Lucian, Erasmus, Montaigne, Shaftesbury, Nietzsche, and Santayana.
Through his parodic and satiric works and the juxtaposition of his aesthetic
and religious writings, Kierkegaard uses the serio-comic to create philosophic
comedies. The fantastic comedy he plays out through his pseudonyms and
the infinitely comical drama he performs just by existing in Copenhagen
add to the serio-comic effect. As we have seen in the previous section, Kierkegaard justifies the serio-comic on moral and religious grounds. Inasmuch as the
justification is moral, it follows the Cynics. The comic is used to help effect a
change of values. Grasping us existentially by forcing an immediate choice of
laughter, offence, or indifference, the comic locates us in existence. To laugh is
to be in intimate contact with ones world-view and immediacy. Because for
Kierkegaard the comic is formed by using deep norms set in contradiction to others, laughter may involve a subtle shifting of convictions. Through laughter, new
norms may be introduced. Thus, there is nothing more earnest than the teachers
jest, whose purpose is to trick the other into seeing the truth in order to enable
him to stand alone by anothers help.
Yet Kierkegaard follows Plato in justifying the comic on intellectual
grounds as well. The serious cannot be taught without the laughable, a view
clarified, I believe, by the metaphor of the light in a journal entry: Only
Giangrande, The Use of Spoudaiogeloion in Greek and Roman Literature, The Hague and Paris:
Mouton 1972.
SKS 21, 184, NB8:96 / KJN 5, 191.
Kierkegaard ascribes Greek irony to Diogenes of Sinope (SKS 17, 235, DD:38 / KJN 1, 226) as
well as cynicism, in which he does not partake (SKS 20, 398, NB5:61 / KJN 4, 398). Diogenes is a
source of inspiration for Kierkegaard in Think about Your Creator (SKS 5, 244 / EUD, 245), and
his refutation of the Eleatics opens Repetition. For other references to Diogenes of Sinope, see
Nicolae Irina, Diogenes Laertius: Kierkegaards Source and Inspiration, in Kierkegaard and the
Greek World, Tome II, Aristotle and Other Greek Authors, pp. 111 121, especially p. 117, note 55.
SKS 27, 403, Papir 366 / JP 1, 650.

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389

when there is another light is it possible to determine the position of the first in
relation to the other. This justification makes the use of the serio-comic more
than a didactic device to be discarded when no longer useful. Rather, as Kierkegaard explains in his doctrine of true earnestness (a mixture of jest and earnestness), the serio-comic is always necessary, because it is first and foremost an
existential requirement that is ultimately justified on religious grounds. Everything that is religiously important in the world is also, that is, at the same time, a
jest, since no finite act can capture the infinite. By teaching people how to laugh,
Kierkegaard teaches them how to live, because the comic devices he uses necessitate the incorporation of new existential norms. The comic teaches a sense of
proportion, because it indicates what is important and what is not, what pertains
to eternity and what to temporality, what is worthy of an absolute relation and
what of a relative relation, and how to maintain both relations simultaneously.
Kierkegaard points to the Roman Stoic Cato the Elder as a precursor of the
dialectical reciprocity between jest and earnestness, and rightly so, as the
Stoics, following Socrates, anticipate Kierkegaard on that matter; moreover,
the Roman Stoics, who emphasize the importance of being active in the world
while practicing stoicism, share Kierkegaards concern about the importance
of holding simultaneously private beliefs about cosmic values and partaking
actively in everyday business. Pascal is another precursor of Kierkegaards
view of earnestness as the source of jest: Eloquence, he says, requires the pleasant and the real, but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true; Christian laughter is thus a saintly ridicule of human mistakes, and derisive laughter
should be praised for awaking us to the earnestness of existence. Thus, Kierkegaard can be seen as innovative not in the use of the serio-comic, but in the kind
of religious justification that makes the serio-comic necessary for the religious
person. Moreover, he is innovative in arguing for the serio-comic as a lifestyle
(the ironist and the humorist) and not only a literary form.

SKS 24, 134, NB22:57 / JP 2, 2240.

SKS 8, 201 / UD, 96 f.
SKS 7, 72 / CUP1, 70 f.
For the Roman Stoic view on how to practice Stoicism in the world, see, for example,
Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, in The Harvard Classics, ed. by Charles W. Eliot,
New York: P.F. Collier and Son 1937, sayings CLIV, CLXXVII, CLXXXVI; see also pp. 172 f., p. 177, p.
180.
Blaise Pascal, Penses, in Penses and The Provincial Letters, trans. by W.F. Trotter and
Thomas MCrie, New York: Modern Library 1941, fragment 562.

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V Wit is a Virtue
Beginning with Aristotle (4th century B.C.), this tradition maintains that laughter
used correctly is a virtue, thereby making laughter a part of the good life. Eutrapelia, the true wittiness characteristic of an honorable and free person, is an
Aristotelian social virtue, the middle way between the excess of laughter (buffoonery) and its deficiency (boorishness). This tradition includes Theophrastus, Cicero, Panaetius, Demetrius, Plutarch, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Spinoza,
Shaftesbury, and contemporary philosophers who consider humor a virtue, such
as the two eminent Kierkegaard scholars Robert C. Roberts and John Lippitt.
Without resolving the controversy surrounding the view that Kierkegaard is
a virtue ethicist, we can safely argue that Kierkegaard aims at building character and considers the capacity to use laughter in accordance with his ethics of
the comic not only beneficial but also necessary to that aim. Kierkegaard stands
in a philosophical and theological tradition more concerned with self-purification than with self-fulfillment; thus an important role of the comic in both Stages
and Postscript is to purify the pathos-filled emotions by amending their immaturity. Moreover, the comic plays an important role in the fulfillment of Kierkegaards ideal of simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute
telos (end, goal) and relatively to relative ends. Not only is the relative end
conquered as a jest, that is, held as comical, but humor, as the mixture of jest
and earnestness, enables the concurrence of disparate relations. Becoming a
master of the comic is thus an infallible mark of ones position in life: But
what does it mean to have actually reflected oneself out of the immediate with-

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. by Roger Crisp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, 4.8. 1127bff.
For a view of humor as a virtue that is inspired by Kierkegaard, see Robert C. Roberts,
Humor and the Virtues, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, 1988,
pp. 127 149; for humor as a trait highly useful in the development of the virtues, see John
Lippitt, Telling Tales: Johannes Climacus and Narrative Unity, Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook,
2005, pp. 71 89. For humor as a virtue see Lydia B. Amir, Pride, Humiliation and Humility:
Humor as a Virtue, International Journal of Philosophical Practice, vol. 1, 2002, pp. 1 22.
For Kierkegaard as a virtue ethicist, see David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker,
New York: Cambridge University Press 1996; Robert C. Roberts, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and
a Method of Virtue Ethics, in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by Martin J. Matustik and
Merold Westphal, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1995, pp. 140 148. This
view is rejected by other scholars.
SKS 6, 340 / SLW, 366; SKS 7, 86 / CUP1, 87. See Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, p.
29, note 5.
SKS 7, 478 / CUP1, 525.

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out having become a master in the comicwhat does it mean? Well, it means
that one is lying.
Kierkegaard can argue that a sense of the comic is necessary because,
closely related to his view of human moral corrigibility, he maintains that
humans are corrigible in their perception of the comic as well: Remember,
says Climacus, that you are ethically responsible for your use of the comic.
It is the virtue of honesty that grants Climacus a more than ordinary sense of
the comic, inasmuch as any ability to create an illegitimate comic effect is a failure of character towards the structures of the created order. The comic, he further explains, must have the resource of a consistent and well-grounded ethical
view, a sacrificial unselfishness, a high-born nobility that renounce the
moment.
It is not the Aristotelian wit that is useful in building a Kierkegaardian character, but humor, as the comic and the tragic (or the pathos-filled) are both necessary for a balanced character, and jest and earnestness cannot be separated.
Still, the Kierkegaardian ideal use of the comic will be an Aristotelian middle
way between light-mindedness and obtuseness, since neither light-mindedness
nor obtuseness is Christian. A Christian is meant to be jesting and earnest
about the same thing, because human existence should be taken with sufficient
earnestness to strive sincerely, find fault, and repent; at the same time, it should
also be taken with sufficient jest to accept the escape of redemption and to relativize even the best human plans in light of divine governance.
Whether or not he is a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicist, Kierkegaard advances
a version of the Aristotelian virtue of eutrapelia that has been given a Christian
justification. Aristotles emphasis on the difference between the laughter of the
slave and the laughter of the free man, with the latter constituting the norm of
good laughter, leaves traces in Kierkegaards thought; for Kierkegaard, the
humorist can teach others how to laugh. The difference between Aristotle and
Kierkegaard on this matter, however, is that humor for Kierkegaard is not just
SKS 7, 255 f. / CUP1, 281. For a fuller exposition of the role the comic fulfills in a Kierkegaardian good life, see Amir, Humor and the Good Life, chapter 3. After completing the manuscript, I have discovered an ally in Will Williams, The Legitimacy of the Comic: Kierkegaard and
the Importance of the Comic for His Ethics and Theology, Ph.D. thesis, Baylor University 2011.
SKS 7, 471n / CUP1, 519n.
SKS 7, 564 / CUP1, 622; SKS 8, 71 f. / TA, 74.
Quidam compares the comic and the tragic to two legs or necessary extremities of movement
for the person who wishes to exist by virtue of spirit and after having abandoned immediacy,
SKS 6, 391 / SLW, 422. Only the association of jest and earnestness is true earnestness (cf. SKS 6,
339 / SLW, 365).
SKS 8, 346 / UD, 246 f.

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a social virtue; it is an existence-art, that is, an art of living and thinking, and
only as a result, a form of communication. Alternatively, it is a mask, whose purpose is to hide the inwardness of the religious person, and as such, it acquires
religious importance.

VI Laughter is the Mark of Humanity

Originating in an extrapolation of Aristotles phrase man is the sole animal that
laughsan empirical observation on the human physiological reaction to ticklingthis tradition sees laughter as the mark of humanity. Known as homo
ridens, it reaches its apogee in the Middle Ages, when scholars identify rationality with the capacity to laugh, and in the Renaissance, when laughter is considered fit for a world that is not a valley of tears and for a being made of contradictions. This tradition emphasizes philosophys special interest in laughter, as
it reveals the essence of the human by its affinity with the rational, or otherwise.
Julius Pollox, Galen, Porphyry, Marcius Capella, Boethius, Alcuin, Notker Labeo,
Joseph Joubert, Montaigne, Rabelais, Baudelaire, Voltaire, and Sartre, among
others, belong to this tradition. Although we know today that humans are not
the only animals to laugh, contemporary philosophers revive this view, with
humor replacing laughtera change due to the zeitgeist. The question of the relation between rationality and certain forms of laughter, such as humor, is still relevant today.
Climacus refers to Aristotles view without commenting on its truth. Kierkegaard does not consider laughter that which demarcates us from animals, how-

SKS 7, 474 / CUP1, 521. For humor as the mask of the religious person, see SKS 7, 461 / CUP1,
508.
Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals I-IV, trans. by James G. Lennox, Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press 2001, III, 10, 673a8, 28. Another mark of humanity is logos, the capacity
to speak or to think rationally (Aristotle, The Politics, ed. by Stephen Everson, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1988, 1253a; Nicomachean Ethics, 1178a5). Although Aristotle does
not mention laughter in his discussion of the properties of the human in his Categories and
Topics, subsequent philosophers do and thereby influence later generations.
For laughter in the Middle Ages, see Jean Verdon, Rire au Moyen Age, Paris: Perrin 2001. For
laughter in the Renaissance, see Daniel Mnager, La Renaissance et le rire, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1995.
See Robert R. Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, New York: Viking 2000.
For a contemporary view that associates humor and rationality, see John Morreall, Taking
Laughter Seriously, Albany: State University of New York Press 1983, p. 100.
SKS 7, 465 / CUP1, 513; see also SKS K7, 341 and CUP2, 254, note 756.

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ever; rather, both he and Anti-Climacus assert that the ability to speak and the
capacity for despair constitute the human beings superiority or advantage
over the animal, as well as the fact that the single individual is more than
the species. In his dissertation, however, Kierkegaard assailed as moral prudery and an irony-stifling straitjacket Friedrich Schlegels assertion in Lucinde
that man is inherently [by nature] a serious beast, and Climacus affirms in
Postscript that the more competently a person exists, the more he will discover
the comic. But it is as an epiphenomenon of earnestness that the comic is discovered, because true earnestness itself invents the comic. Essential to our
being as the comic may be, it is still lower than the tragic in Kierkegaards
thought, and is not the mark of humanity.

VII The Laughless (agelastos) Philosopher

Beginning with Pythagoras, the first to call himself a philosopher (6th-5th century
B.C.), this tradition features the philosopher as never laughing, because he is too
preoccupied with lofty ideas to be engaged in such an earthly matter. The ideal
of the perfect human being who never laughs (the agelastos) is shared by Greek
philosophers, Egyptian priests, Jewish ascetics, and Christians: Jerome, Basil,
and John Chrysostom opposed laughter and jocularity, as did the Church Fathers
in general. This was justified by the view that there is no mention, much less
any account of Jesus laughing in the Gospels. Laughter is mentioned in the
reported sayings of Jesus, but it is to berate those who laugh in godless sinfulness and to announce that they will weep in the fullness of time, while those
who weep now, are blessed and will laugh later.
Moreover, Aristotles eutrapelia gains a negative connotation in Greek and
Roman culture, which eventually reaches its peak with Christianity. In his Epistle

SKS 11, 131 / SUD, 15; SKS 11, 19 / WA, 13; see also SKS 11, 16 / WA, 10; SKS 11, 17 / WA, 11. For
the superiority of the single individual over the species, see SKS 11, 229 / SUD, 118; see also SKS
11, 232n / SUD, 121n.
SKS 1, 322 / CI, 288; Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. by Peter Firchow,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1971, p. 128; SKS 7, 420 / CUP1, 462.
SKS 6, 340 / SLW, 366.
Pythagoras is described as an agelastos by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers,
trans. by R.D. Hicks, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1925, 8.20.
See Neil Adkin, The Fathers on Laughter, Orpheus, vol. 6, 1985, pp. 149 152.
Lk 6:25; 6:21. But if Jesus is a human being and Aristotle made laughter the mark of
humanity, Jesus must have laughed. For the controversy over Jesus laughter, see Jacques Le
Goff, Jesus a-t-il ri?, Lhistoire, vol. 158, 1992, pp. 72 74.

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to the Ephesians, St. Paul counts eutrapelia among the vices to be avoided: neither filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor jesting, which is not convenient. Monastic
rules proscribe laughter; conversely, weeping over the wretchedness of this world
is praised as a Christian virtue. Christian saints rarely laugh except in defiance of
imminent martyrdom.
Around the 12th century, the Church brings laughter under control by distinguishing admissible ways of laughing from inadmissible, and reaches a codification of the practice of laughter, of which scholasticism assumes ownership. The
Churchs relation with laughter has not evolved much since Thomas Aquinas
rehabilitation of the Aristotelian virtue of wit or eutrapelia, a plea for restrained
laughter followed by Pascal. Before the middle of the 20th century, only the
Gnostics recognized and appreciated Christs laughter. Christian behavior, however, is more varied than Christian theoretical considerations.
Kierkegaard refers to Pythagoras silence rather than to a rejection of laughter, as the latter is subsumed under the former. The view that humor should be
excluded from Christianitys holy of holies is Kierkegaards final view of the relations between them. The highest ideal for Kierkegaard is that of the religious
Christian who does not laugh: a truly religious person does not consider the
comic as the highest level. The religiousness described as hidden inwardness
is inaccessible to comic interpretation as it contains the contradiction that
humor dominates as something lower than itself. Humor is said to be justified
in relation to Christianity only when the latter becomes aesthetic, that is,
when it is confused with outward expressions, or with paganism. The Kierkegaardian view of the agelastos Christian has been the most widespread within
the history of the relation of Christianity with humor or laughter.

Eph 5:4.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. by Thomas Gilby, London: Blackfriars 1972, vol.
II, part II, question 168, article 2; Pascal, Penses; The Provincial Letters, The Provincial Letters, no. 11.
See Verdon, Rire au Moyen Age.
SKS 4, 206 / FT, 118; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 139 f. / PF, Supplement, 157 f. Kierkegaard also refers to
Pythagoras death (Pap. IV B 93, pp. 242 f.), and uses a parable involving Pythagoras in order to
illustrate what it means to undergo the change that being a Christian actually demands (Pap.
X-1 B 107, p. 297 / PV, Supplement, 137).
SKS 7, 474 / CUP1, 522; SKS 7, 393 / CUP1, 432n; see also SKS 7, 544 f. / CUP1, 600; SKS 7, 438 /
CUP1, 483; SKS 7, 420 / CUP1, 462; SKS 6, 401 f. / SLW, 434.

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VIII The Mocking Philosopher

Beginning with the Sophist Gorgias Leontinus (5th century B.C.) and recorded
approvingly by Aristotle, this tradition recommends laughter as a rhetorical
device to destroy the opponents argument, which has led to a whole branch
of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Although rhetoricians in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are advised to soften the wit lest their characters be damaged, through
the Roman rhetoricians Ciceros and Quintilians influence on later generations
wit becomes a weapon in modern rhetoric.
Aristotle records that Gorgias said it was necessary to spoil the seriousness
of opponents by jest and their jest by seriousness. Climacus refers to Aristotle
and Gorgias phrase to denounce such use of laughter as illegitimate, on the
grounds that it is a comic use that has no existential ground. To annihilate earnestness by means of the comic and the comic by means of earnestness is a
divorce that is rubbish. The comic must have a perspective, or, as Kierkegaard says in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, laughter should have a
rational basis. Given the nature of earnestness and the comic, they cannot
oppose one another: The comic requires earnestness to function well and is
properly aimed at the earnestness of developing human subjectivity; and only
true earnestness knows the comic nature of the self and reality.
Climacus points out the incoherence of the kind of existence a person must
live in order to make that incoherent argument. Gorgias, along with his discovery, ends up on the fantastical fringe of pure being, because if he annihilates the
comic by means of earnestness, nothing remains. Gorgias and the sophists reveal
that they know as little about the comic as they do about human existence, and
Climacus critique of their transformation into fantastical entities of pure being is
very similar to his critique of the objective philosophers. The mocking philosopher rejoins the ridiculous philosopher, as Kierkegaard criticizes both for the
same reason. His criticism is also valid for the use of the comic that has permeated the zeitgeist, as the new sophists, Kierkegaards contemporaries, are unable
to resist the seduction to use the comic as a force that consumes everything.
Thus, Kierkegaard explicitly addresses this tradition of the comic in order to
reject it.

The Rhetoric of Aristotle, ed. by John Edwin Sandys, commentary by Edward Meredith Cope,
Hildesheim: G. Olms 1970, 3.18.7.
SKS 7, 475 / CUP1, 523.
SKS 8, 232 / UD, 133.
SKS 7, 469 471 / CUP1, 517 f.

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IX Laughter is Epistemologically Valuable

Originating with a British philosopher of the Enlightenment, the third Earl of
Shaftesbury, this tradition recognizes an epistemological value in laughter, as
laughter helps us grasp the truth. Shaftesburys originality lies in his unprecedented and unparalleled defense of humor, wit, ridicule, and good humor as
important epistemological tools that promote truth and rationality. Shaftesbury
considers ridicule a test of truth, humor a tool for reason, properly educated
laughter a form of critical reflection, and good humor or cheerfulness the disposition in which philosophical and religious truth are most effectively comprehended. For Shaftesbury the deist, truth is the benevolence of God, the harmony
of nature, and innate human goodness. Anything that misrepresents these
views is nothing but ridiculous.
The view that ridicule is a test of truth gains followers in the 18th century
after having been at the heart of a raging controversy over ridicules relation
to truth and reason. The idea that humor has a habilitating function with
regard to truth influences Johann Georg Hamann, Shaftesburys translator and
follower, and through Hamann, the young Kierkegaard. For Hamann, truth is
the Word that has become flesh, and humor and irony are the only appropriate modes of thought for grasping this paradox. Humor affirms that God is
wholly other and that Divine reason is fundamentally disjunctive with human
reason and consequently bound to appear absurd to humans. Humor is the
appropriate human attitude toward Divine folly, because only in the absurd
does the possibility of seeing God arise. Humors positive function is to open a
person to the acceptance of the reality of paradoxical truth and ultimately to
the acceptance of the highest paradox of allthe incarnation. Thus, for Hamann,
humor is the road to salvation.
Following Hamann, the young Kierkegaard holds the view that the comic
enables us to grasp the truth of Christianity, as Christianity is the most humorous
of all religions. Eventually disengaging himself from Hamann, Kierkegaard

See Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc.

For the controversy, see Alfred Owen Aldridge, Shaftesbury and the Test of Truth,
Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. 60, 1945, pp. 129 156.
See Jn 1:14.
See William M. Alexander, Johann Georg Hamann: Philosophy and Faith, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1966, chapters 7 and 8.
See, for example, SKS 17, 214, DD:3 / KJN 1, 206; SKS 17, 216 218, DD:6 / KJN 1, 208 210; SKS
17, 216, DD6.b and DD:6.b.a / KJN 1, 208; SKS 17, 218, DD:6.e / KJN 1, 210; SKS 17, 225 f., DD:18 /
KJN 1, 216 f.

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rejects this view, arguing that Christianity is inaccessible to humor. He nevertheless retains, I suggest, the idea that the comic is epistemologically valuable.
Thus, the mature Kierkegaard stays within this tradition, following in the footsteps of Shaftesbury and Hamann, yet devising an original explanation for the
comics relation to truth.
Indeed, Climacus in Postscript refers to Shaftesburys main thesis on laughter in order to introduce his interest in the comic: In the previous century, a thesis propounded by Lord Shaftesbury that makes laughter the test of truth engendered several little research projects to find out whether it is so. In the journals, moreover, the test of jest replaces Shaftesburys test of ridicule,
thereby indicating the crucial role the comic fulfills in the Kierkegaardian dialectic of existence: The comic is an instrument of truth, philosophys primary tool
once it steps into the new existential role Kierkegaard designed for it, which is
to lead the individual towards worshipping the true God. The comic is the
only criterion of advancement available on the negative Kierkegaardian theological ladder and the only positive indicator of ones relation to the truth. Kierkegaard maintains that only by examining the content of our laughter can we know
the sort of person we are. Kierkegaard thus views the comic as both sword and
shield whose mastery is crucial for inner progress from lower to higher stages of
existence. For lack of an external criterion for inward advancement, which is the
sole progress Kierkegaard recognizes, the comic is the main tool of examination,
correction, and evaluation an individual possesses for reflecting on himself, his
life, and his personal experiences, and for communicating this to others.
In order to fulfill its role of promoting and advancing truth, the comic
becomes for Kierkegaard an ethical-religious category. Kierkegaards ethics of
the comic, which is grounded in his hierarchy of existential spheres, prescribes
a correct use of the comic that eventually will lead to the good life. The ethics of
the comic justifies laughter, if and whenever an individuals existential position
in life is higher than the position at which he laughs. Through this device,
Kierkegaard makes certain that his edifying lessons on the comic bear on his lessons on the good life, because laughing well is living well for Kierkegaard. Moreover, as Kierkegaard does not allow himself to teach the latter, yet indulges,

For comparisons between Shaftesbury, Hamann and Kierkegaard and their different
approaches to truths relation to the comic, irony, and humor, see Amir, Humor and the Good
Life.
SKS 7, 464 / CUP1, 512.
SKS 18, 232 f., JJ:292 / KJN 2, 213: He who does not constantly dare to submit his earnestness
to the test of jest is stupid and comical.

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albeit through pseudonyms, in teaching the former, the comic attains additional
power as Kierkegaards main tool for teaching the good life.
Following his dispute with the satirical journal The Corsair, ridicule becomes
the test of truth for Kierkegaard in yet another way. The mark of truth is ridicule,
for (as has been shown above in the discussion of the ridiculous philosopher) if
Christ returned to the world now, he would be ridiculed.

X The Comic is Ontologically Rooted

George Santayana in the English-speaking world of the 19th and 20th centuries
along with Clment Rosset in the French-speaking world of the 20th century
are at the forefront of a tradition that views the comic as valuable, because reality itself is comical. They are preceded by philosophers who, like Hegel, without
considering reality as comical, ground the comic in reality. Hegel asserts that
the discrepancy between an assumption and reality that produces laughter is
grounded in reality itself. The comic, for Hegel, always has an ontological dimension, because it tells us something about the being of its object and, in a sense,
about being itself. This follows from his conception of dialectics, according to
which the truth is never fixed, but is rather articulated and realized in contradictory ways. The comic is precisely an awareness of this contradiction.
Kierkegaard, too, ties the comic to contradictions or incongruities that are
objective because of their being constitutive of the human self. They are the finite
and the infinite, singularity and generality, reality and idealityin short, the
human beings physical, time-limited existence and its aspirations toward the
eternal. While the discrepancy between reality and ideality that calls for a tragic
or comic interpretation is objective, because it refers to a general human predisposition or ideality, in other words, to a framework of existence that is pre-given
in an objective way, the comic or the tragic are points of view generated by considering the discrepancy from ideality to reality and from reality to ideality,
respectively. Due to the reflexive aspect of the comic, however, the comic contradiction is objective, in the sense that it is discernible to the detached, selfless eye. That the comic has an objective basis in reality is also implied by Climacus distinction, in the Postscript, between ludicrous and non-ludicrous

See George Santayana, Carnival, in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, New York:
Charles Scribners Sons 1922, p. 142; Clment Rosset, Principes de sagesse et de folie, Paris:
Minuit 1991, p. 54 and p. 59; G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, vols. 1 20, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl
Markus Michel, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1969 71, vol. 15, Vorlesungen ber die Asthetik,
vol. 3, pp. 527 530.

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things. While Climacus is unable to make ludicrous what is not ludicrous, he has
an inordinate capacity for making ludicrous what is ludicrous. Thus, Climacus refuses to make use of a comic form that illegitimately represents things as
other than they are.
The comic has an objective basis in reality insofar as there is an objective
truth (Christianity) that determines the hierarchy of forms of life according to
their distance from Christianity. This is the original text of individual existence-relationships, the old familiar text handed down from the fathers, to
which Kierkegaard refers in A First and Last Explanation in Postscript. Whoever misrepresents the hierarchy of forms of life by feeling superior to another
form of life, while actually being inferior to it, is and remains comical. That
which counts as legitimately comic is grounded in reality as a defining feature
of the world, whether or not any particular person may appreciate it. It is in
this sense that Kierkegaard, following Hegel, anticipates the tradition that considers the comic as ontologically rooted in reality.

XI Conclusion
The comic is not the highest category for Kierkegaard, as it is subsumable under
the tragic, not only in the hierarchy of lifes stages, but within each stage as well.
Within these limitations, however, the comic fulfills a crucial role in the Kierkegaardian concept of a good life. Kierkegaard anticipates the post-modern tradition and is heir to all the comic traditions of antiquity and modernity, except
two: he denounces the rhetorical tradition of the mocking philosopher and
does not subscribe to the tradition of homo ridens, which holds that laughter
is the mark of humanity. Most philosophers denigrate rhetorical wit, and not
all adhere to the thesis that man is the laughing animal. Thus, Kierkegaard
does not stand out by not endorsing these traditions; rather, he stands out by
aligning his views with the eight remaining traditions (and addressing the two
he rejects). This is remarkable, as most philosophers can be identified with
one or two traditions at most. This finding testifies both to the importance of

SKS 7, 564 / CUP1, 622.

SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 630.
See Socrates critique of Gorgias laughter, Plato, Gorgias 473e. See also Lockes and Kants
criticism of rhetoric: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vols. 1 2, ed. by
Alexander Campbell Fraser, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984; vol. 2, bk. 3, ch. 10, sec. 34; Immanuel
Kant, The Critique of Judgment: Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, trans. by James Creed
Meredith, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1952, sec. 53.

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the comic in Kierkegaards thought and to the variety of his uses of the comic,
and appears to confirm a claim, according to which he pursues a project that
gives to the comic, together with irony and especially humor, the most important
role a philosopher has ever ascribed to them.
Moreover, tracing the comic traditions and Kierkegaards attitude towards
them has enabled us to identify exactly where his originality lies: It lies in his
argument for the serio-comic as an embodied philosophy, and in the genuinely
Christian justification he gives to both the serio-comic and the comics relation to
the truth; and finally, it lies in the idea of an ethics of the comic that guarantees
this relationship. However, Kierkegaard is not innovative in his use of the seriocomic, or in a Christian justification of it, in the same way as Erasmus justifies
his Stultitia or folly in Christian terms; rather, Kierkegaard is original in the kind
of Christian justification he provides. Nor is the view that the serio-comic may be
embodied by the figures of living or ancient philosophers, such as the personifications of Socrates, Diogenes, and Crates, particularly original. Rather, Kierkegaard is the first to argue for the importance of the serio-comic as an art of life, a
lived philosophy.
Another innovation is Kierkegaards justification of the relationship between
the comic and truth. Here again, he is not so much original in finding a relationship between the two, as Shaftesbury and Hamann precede him in this respect,
but he is innovative in the kind of explanation he gives to this relationship and
in embedding it in an ethics of the comic which safeguards that in teaching how
to laugh he simultaneously teaches how to live. Although this aspect of his
thought in relation to Shaftesbury has not been explored, as far as I know, I cannot do it full justice here. Nevertheless, it can be seen that Kierkegaards
endeavor provides a criterion that differentiates true ridicule from false ridicule,
a criterion Shaftesbury assumes and demands, but does not provide himself.
Kierkegaards ethics of the comic, which mirrors the hierarchy of the life-stages,
supplies the test of the jest as a replacement for Shaftesburys test of ridicule. The ethics of the comic guarantees that the relationship of superiority
existing de facto between the laugher and the butt of the laugh matches and corresponds to the hierarchy Kierkegaard establishes between individuals whose
lives embody different worldviews. In order to accomplish this, Kierkegaard
uses the comic as a tool of reflection and ultimately of truth. It is the primary
tool of philosophy, once it steps forward into the new existential role Kierkegaard
designs for itnamely, to lead the individual towards worshipping the true God.

For a fuller exposition of the relations between Shaftesbury and Kierkegaard, see Amir,
Humor and the Good Life.

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This is why Kierkegaards lessons on the good laugh bear on his lessons of the
good life, ensuring that living well is laughing well.

This article evolved from a lecture on the same topic delivered at the conference Kierkegaard and the Traditions of Philosophy, held in Trondheim, Norway, on August 9 10, 2012.

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