Philosophers Are Useless

Dear Dr. Hegel,

I'm finishing a screenplay and the other people in my class don't think it's funny enough.  One of them said it seems like I took you for my model and recommended I contact you for suggestions about how I can punch it up.  What do you think is funny?

—The Bringer Of Funny

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Dear The Bringer Of Funny,

Comedy is concrete instantiation of the Unhappy Consciousness in the universal tragedy of History.  The truth of Comedy is that all great big essential fixtures that stand over against self-consciousness are really products of, and at the mercy of, self-consciousness. 

Comedy has, therefore, above all, the aspect that actual self-consciousness exhibits as the fate of the gods.  These elementary Beings are, as universal moments, not a Self and are not equal.  They are, it is true, endowed with the form of Individuality, but it is only in Imagination and does not really truly belong to them.  They are entangled in actual existence merely through the pretensions of the Self. 

When the gods deem it necessary to alter the identities, for example, of children in possession of similar gaits and countenances, such that the mistake of their mothers is codified by the mechanism of Law, the immanent dialectic of the Self is evident in the mutual recognition of the Self in the Other.  They, the children, each observe in their counterpart the fundament of Self which they have taken as their own.  Their mistake is the essence of Comedy.

P.S.  Concerning the most appropriate mode of representing situations pregnant with conflict—the final result of the issuing from the entirety of the interthreading and conflicting skein of human life, movement, and accomplishment—it is asserted and maintained that flatulence never fails to work out tranquil resolution.

Comments

[Sisyphus]

Perfect, considering I'm reading about how Marx used Hegel right now!

... and wait, did you just say that farting is the Aufhebung?

[JP]

You should syndicate this as an advice column:
"Ask George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel"...

[SEK]

Perfect, considering I'm reading about how Marx used Hegel right now!

I had to spend some time reading about Hegel and comedy because of a terrible article on Twain and Hegel's definition of comedy. The thing is, I didn't know it was terrible until after brushing up on ol' G.W.F.H., by which point I'd wasted an afternoon. (Well, I did get a post out of it, so it wasn't a total loss, but still.)

JP,

No, I say, with thunder, because no one should have to spend that much time in that man's head. Esp. not me.

[Martin G.]

You should check out Kant's dry-as-dust explication of comedy. It's just Kantastic! Check out his sample jokes:

"The heir of a rich relative wishes to arrange a grave burial service, but complains that he doesn't suceed. The reason (so he says) is that "the more money I give the mourners to look sad, the happier they become". When we hear this story, we laugh out loud. "

Or

"An Englishman at an Indian's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer, turned to froth, rushed out. The Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great amazement. - Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman. - Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming out, replied the Indian, but how you managed to get it all in. - This makes us laugh, and it gives us a hearty pleasure."

[Scott McLemee]

From Kant's pamphlet on Swedenborg:

"If a hypochondriac is troubled by gas in the stomach, it all depends on which direction it takes -- if it goes downwards, then it comes out a fart, but if it rises upwards, it's an apparition or a holy inspiration."