Table Of ContentBoston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life 7
Lydia L. Moland Editor
All Too
Human
Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
Boston Studies in Philosophy,
Religion and Public Life
Volume 7
Series Editor
C. Allen Speight, Department of Philosophy, Boston University, Boston, USA
Associate Editors
Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University, Boston, USA
M. David Eckel, Boston University, Boston, USA
Editorial Board
Andrew Chignell, Cornell University, USA
Paul Davies, University of Sussex, UK
Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago Divinity School, USA
Parimal Patil, Harvard University, USA
Eleonore Stump, St. Louis University
Alan Wolfe, Boston College, USA
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University (Emeritus), USA
Dean Zimmerman, Rutgers University, USA
Aims and Scope
Boston University Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life is an
interdisciplinary scholarly series which publishes seminal papers on topics of
pressing and perennial interest at the intersection of philosophy, religion and public
life. The series is especially interested in interdisciplinary work that illuminates
questions of value, truth, reality and meaning, as well as topics in the relevant fields
which have a particular intersection with public life (for example, philosophical and
religious perspectives on contemporary issues in ethical and political philosophy).
In addition, the series serves as a prominent forum for important academic work
emerging within the specific sub-discipline of the philosophy of religion.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8881
Lydia L. Moland
Editor
All Too Human
Laughter, Humor, and Comedy
in Nineteenth- Century Philosophy
Editor
Lydia L. Moland
Department of Philosophy
Colby College
Waterville, ME, USA
ISSN 2352-8206 ISSN 2352-8214 (electronic)
Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life
ISBN 978-3-319-91330-8 ISBN 978-3-319-91331-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946644
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims
in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: The “Free at Last” sculpture stands in the midst of Boston University’s Marsh Plaza,
and is a memorial to the life and work of BU’s most famous students of philosophy and religion, the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part
of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Editor’s Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to several institutions and individuals who made this volume possible.
The Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities gave me the opportunity to
coordinate “Comedy, Seriously” as its Annual Humanities Theme in 2012–2013.
My thanks to Kerill O’Neill, director of the center, and the many faculty members
and students who participated in that year-long exploration of all things comic.
Special thanks to my colleague Dan Cohen, a philosophical humorist if ever there
was one, for co-teaching a seminar on the philosophy of humor with me and co-
sponsoring a conference on that theme as well.
Many thanks to Professor Paul Katsafanas of Boston University for co- sponsoring
the conference on which this volume was based as part of his Workshop on Late
Modern Philosophy in 2016. Thanks to the Boston University Center for the
Humanities and Lori Kletzer, then provost of Colby College, for contributing fund-
ing for that conference. Thank you to Professor Christopher Ricks for his opening
lecture on Sterne that weekend. And many thanks to Professor Allen Speight for
encouraging me after the conference to undertake this edited volume.
My own research on humor received generous funding from the Deutscher
Akademischer Austauschdienst. Their support allowed me to spend time at the Freie
Universität Berlin where I benefitted from the hospitality of Professor Georg
Bertram and the collective wisdom of his research colloquium. I am also grateful to
Professor Klaus Vieweg at the Universität Jena for his exceptional work on this
topic and for his invitation to share my research in Jena as well. My early thoughts
on humor benefitted from audience feedback at conferences hosted by the European
Society for Aesthetics, the American Society for Aesthetics, and the American
Philosophical Association.
Bernard Prusak planted the seeds of my thinking about comedy philosophically
many years ago. He also contributed his invaluable editing skills to this volume.
Marty Tropp introduced me to teaching Bergson at my first job. Michael Prince
devoted a weekend to helping me understand Sterne.
v
vi Editor’s Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to my husband, James Johnson, for his unwavering enthusi-
asm throughout the years I have dedicated to this project. I have also benefitted from
his expert editorial insights. And I would like to offer personal thanks to Luke
Moland and Mel Conner. Both inspired an ongoing fascination with all things
humorous and a lifetime interest in laughing more.
Most of all, I am grateful to the authors of this volume’s chapters, each of whom
have embraced the almost comically difficult task of writing seriously about laugh-
ter with grace and insight: and, yes, with humor.
Contents
1 Introduction: Taking Laughter Seriously
in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Lydia L. Moland
2 Reconciling Laughter: Hegel on Comedy and Humor . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Lydia L. Moland
3 It’s Tragic, But That’s Great: K. W. F. Solger
and Humor as the Key to Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Paolo Diego Bubbio
4 Jean Paul’s Lunacy, or Humor as Trans-Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
William Coker
5 Caricature, Philosophy and the “Aesthetics of the Ugly”:
Some Questions for Rosenkranz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C. Allen Speight
6 Arthur Schopenhauer: Humor and the Pitiable
Human Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Robert Wicks
7 Humor as Redemption in the Pessimistic Philosophy
of Julius Bahnsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Frederick C. Beiser
8 ‘What Time Is It? . . . . Eternity’: Kierkegaard’s
Socratic Use of Hegel’s Insights on Romantic Humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Marcia C. Robinson
vii
viii Contents
9 Jest as Humility: Kierkegaard and the Limits of Earnestness . . . . . . 137
John Lippitt
10 The Divine Hanswurst: Nietzsche on Laughter and Comedy . . . . . . . 153
Matthew Meyer
11 Life’s Joke: Bergson, Comedy, and the Meaning of Laughter . . . . . . 175
Russell Ford
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
List of Contributors
Frederick C. Beiser was born and raised in the U.S. and studied in the U.K. at Oriel
and Wolfson Colleges, Oxford. He also studied in Germany and lived in Berlin for
many years, receiving stipends from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Humboldt
Stiftung. He has taught at universities across the U.S. and is currently Professor of
Philosophy at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Beiser is the author of
many books on German philosophy; the latest are Schiller as Philosopher (OUP
2005), Diotima’s Children (OUP 2011), The German Historicist Tradition (OUP
2011), Late German Idealism (OUP 2013) and Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German
Philosophy, 1860-1900 (OUP 2016).
Paolo Diego Bubbio is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney
University, Australia. His research is mainly in the area of post-Kantian philosophy.
In particular, he is interested in the relation of the post-Kantian tradition (from Kant
to Nietzsche) to the later movements of European philosophy. His books include
Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition: Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and
Recognition (SUNY Press, 2014) and God and the Self in Hegel: Beyond Subjectivism
(SUNY Press, 2017). He is also the co-editor of several collections of essays and the
author of numerous journal articles on nineteenth-century European philosophy, in
journals such as British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Hegel Bulletin,
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, International Journal for Philosophy
of Religion, and Heythrop Journal.
William Coker is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations
and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Having received his PhD in
Comparative Literature from Yale University in 2010 with the dissertation Romantic
Exteriority, he studies Romanticism as the inaugural phase of an ongoing critique of
the European Enlightenment from within. In Comparative Literature, Eighteenth-
Century Fiction and a number of edited volumes, he has published articles and
chapters on Rousseau, Jean Paul, Blake, Keats and Hegel. He chaired the organizing
ix
