Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy

Edited by
Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno
 Introduction

Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributor Biographies
Introduction
Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno
PART I: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LAUGHTER
1. Plato on Laughter and Moral Harm
Franco V. Trivigno
2. Aristotle on Why We Laugh at Jokes
Pierre Destrée
3. The Laughing Philosopher and the Physician: Laughter, Diagnosis,
and Therapy in Greek Medicine
R. J. Hankinson
4. Divine and Human Laughter in Later Platonism
Malcolm Heath
PART II: THE ETHICAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
OF LAUGHTER AND HUMOR
5. Aristotle on Wittiness
Matthew D. Walker
6. Laughter, Social Norms, and Ethics in Cicero’s Works
Charles Guérin
7. Laughter and the Moral Guide: Dio Chrysostom and Plutarch
Michael Trapp
PART III: THE USE OF HUMOR AND COMEDY IN PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE
8. Self-Ridicule: Socratic Wisdom
Paul B. Woodruff
9. Ridicule and Protreptic: Plato, His Reader, and the Role
of Comedy in Inquiry
Mary Margaret McCabe
10. Humor as Philosophical Subversion: Especially in the Skeptics
Richard Bett
11. Philosophy Is Great Fun! Laughter in Epicureanism
Geert Roskam

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12. The Mouse, the Moneybox, and the Six-Footed Scurrying Solecism: Satire and Riddles in
Seneca’s Philosophy
Margaret Graver
13. Diogenes vs. Demonax: Laughter as Philosophy in Lucian
Inger N. I. Kuin
Index
 Introduction

C0

Introduction

Pierre Destrée and Franco V. Trivigno

C0.P1 When a joke is met with a blank, uncomprehending stare, one often tries to explain

the joke, but this response never works. A joke explained is hardly ever funny.

Theorizing about humor and comedy is also like this—understanding the inner

workings of comedy or the psychological profile of laughter will not make one laugh.

This is not necessarily a problem or a limitation in our ability to understand humor, as

some people seem to think, unless one also thinks that the explanation of why one

laughs should also cause one to laugh. But why should one think that? No one, we

assume, makes it an adequacy condition of the explanation of weeping that it make

one weep; or, to take an even more absurd example, makes it an adequacy condition

of the explanation of belching that it make one belch. The chapters in this book are as

a result not themselves funny, but they will treat the reader to a number of funny

passages from ancient philosophy.

C0.P2 To judge from the relative paucity of secondary literature on laughter, humor,

and comedy in ancient philosophy, one might have gotten the impression that the

ancients were simply not interested in this theme or only wrote in a dry and stuffy

way. This impression is simply mistaken on at least three counts. First, the ancients

theorized about laughter and its causes, they moralized about the appropriate uses of

humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and they wrote treatises on comedic

4
Introduction

composition. Second, they were often merciless in mocking their opponents’

positions, hoping to get their audience to laugh at and thus reject the laughable

opponent’s side of the debate. Third, they borrowed comedic devices and techniques

from comic poetry and drama often, though not always, to ridicule their philosophical

opponents. In short, we mistakenly expect that ancient philosophers are more like

contemporary ones, who are mostly dry and stuffy in their style and have shown

relatively little theoretical interest in laughter and comedy. The lack of attention to

ancient theorizing thus has much more to do with our contemporary expectations and

scholarly prejudices than with any lack of source material. There is, for example, a

great deal of humor and comedy in Plato, but scholars who have noticed that a stretch

of text is comedic have more often than not neglected to provide an analysis of it,

presumably on the grounds that once one has identified the text as comedic, one has

said all that needs to be said about it. The explanation for this attitude can be found,

we think, in a subtle but problematic slide between what is comedic, what is unserious

or playful, and what is trivial. If something is comedic, one might be tempted to think

along these lines, then it does not have a serious philosophical purpose and is thus not

worthy of serious scholarly attention. This line of thinking is misguided, and we hope

to demonstrate with this volume how fruitful and philosophically informative

scholarly attention to these passages can be. One of our main motivations for this

volume is to give the themes of laughter, humor, and comedy their due, as it were.

While volumes on tragedy in ancient philosophy abound, there has unfortunately not
 Introduction

been a parallel proliferation for volumes on comedy. Laughter and humor are so basic

to human existence—so present in our everyday lives—that we believe that they

deserve more philosophical attention than they get.

C0.P3 The volume is organized around three themes or sets of questions. The first set

concerns the psychology of laughter. What is going on in our minds when we laugh?

What background conditions must be in place for laughter to occur? At what exactly

are we laughing when we laugh? Is laughter necessarily hostile or derisive? Aristotle

famously wrote that, amongst the animals, only humans laugh (Part. An. 3.10.673a1–

b3). But what about the gods? Do they laugh? If so, what is the nature of their

laughter? The second set of questions concerns the ethical and social norms

governing laughter and humor. When is it appropriate or inappropriate to laugh? Can

laughter harm others? Does laughter have a positive social function? What kinds of

jokes are appropriate to make? Is there a virtue, or excellence, connected to laugher

and humor? The third set of questions concerns the philosophical uses of humor and

comedic technique. How do philosophers typically use humor in their writings? Does

the humor play primarily a negative role in criticizing other rivals, or can it play a

positive educational role as well? If it can, how does philosophical humor

communicate its philosophical content? Our aim with this volume is not to settle these

fascinating questions but more modestly to start a conversation about them, and we

hope our volume will be a reference point for discussions of laughter, humor, and

6
 Introduction

comedy in ancient philosophy, as well as being an engine for future research about

them.

C0.S1 1. The Psychology of Laughter

C0.P4 The four chapters in this section of the book treat a number of overlapping themes and

topics. Chapter 1, Franco V. Trivigno’s “Plato on Laughter and Moral Harm,”

provides an account of Plato’s views on the moral psychology of laughter and the

different ways in which laughter may be morally harmful to the laughing agent. Pierre

Destrée’s “Aristotle on Why We Laugh at Jokes” in Chapter 2 provides a general

picture of what Aristotle thinks causes us to laugh, making unexpectedness the central

feature. In Chapter 3, “The Laughing Philosopher and the Physician: Laughter,

Diagnosis, and Therapy in Greek Medicine,” R. J. Hankinson provides a reading of a

Hippocratic epistolary novel, wherein Democritus’ incessant laughing is diagnosed

not as a symptom of madness or sickness but rather as a sign of wisdom. In Chapter 4,

Malcolm Heath traces the subtly shifting attitudes toward human and divine laughter

in the later Platonist tradition in “Divine and Human Laughter in Later Platonism,”

arguing that while attitudes toward human laughter hardened, divine laughter was

given a new, more positive interpretation.

C0.P5 A common assumption undergirding much of the ancient analysis of laughter

is that laughing is very often, though not always, laughing at someone and expresses a

kind of aggressiveness aimed at the one laughed at. A starting point for much of the

debate is the famous analysis of laughter as an expression of phthonos, envy or

malice, found in Plato’s Philebus (48a–50b). Since this emotion is directed at our

friends, it is unjust and laughing in this way morally harms us. This passage is central

to Trivigno’s account of the moral harms of laughter and an important starting point

for Heath’s account of the Platonist tradition; both agree that the account cannot be

intended as Plato’s final word on laughter as such, but is rather aimed at a particular

kind of laughter caused by comic theater. Heath sees the later tradition, particularly

Alcinous and Iamblichus, as apparently taking overly strong stances against laughter,

even as they attempt to hold to Plato’s position. Destrée argues that Aristotle rejected

Plato’s analysis in terms of phthonos, arguing that a different kind of

aggressiveness—educated hubris (Rhetoric 1389a9–b11)—is what explains laughter’s

aggressive side. Proclus makes divine laughter, as Heath shows, an “aphthonos, or

generous, activity” of the gods, freeing their laughter from the negative associations

with an unjust emotion.

C0.P6 The assumed aggressiveness of laughter is often accompanied by an

assumption about the felt superiority of the one laughing, and in the case of comedy,

the inferiority of the figures that it stages to the spectators. As Trivigno and Destrée

show, both Plato and Aristotle made the inferiority of comedic figures central to their

respective accounts of the experience of comedy (Poetics 5.449a32–33; cf. Laws

7.814e4–5, 816d5–6). Plato’s definition of the laughable, to geloion, as weak self-

ignorance in the Philebus can be seen as a precursor to Aristotle’s understanding of it

the laughable as “a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others”

8
 Introduction

(Poetics 5.1449a34–35). Those laughed at are conceived of as both powerless in

general and inferior in relation to the ones laughing. Hankinson’s account of the

encounter between Hippocrates and Democritus, the laughing philosopher, most

clearly brings out the implications of superiority. On his reconstruction, there is a

pervasive worry about Democritus that he is simply mad and suffering from a

pathological condition, like excessive bile, and indeed this is why, in the novel, the

Abderans call in a doctor. But Hippocrates concludes that the philosopher was

“extremely wise in everything” (Letter 17.1.72.26–27) and that his laughter is caused

by a deep insight into the folly of all human pursuits, such that his perspective is that

of the divine.

C0.P7 As Hankinson notes, attributing this kind of laughter of superiority to the gods

seems troubling, and Plato at any rate would have none of it. In Republic 3, he

criticizes the scene in Homer in which the gods are overcome by unquenchable

laughter at the sight of Hephaestus serving drinks (Iliad 1.599–600). On Trivigno’s

account, the core problem is that the gods are put in a passive position, and this is

both impossible because of the gods’ nature and irreconcilable with their role as moral

exemplars of perfect self-possession. Heath also traces the implications of this

passage for later Platonist reflections on divine laughter: while Iamblichus would

deny the possibility that gods laugh, Proclus turns the laughter in Homer into an

important symbol of the gods’ joy in their own creative activity and good will toward

the cosmos. This is divine superiority to be sure, but one that stands in stark contrast
 Introduction

to the divine perspective taken up by Democritus. Living beings may be the

“playthings” of the gods, as Plotinus and Plato assert (Enneads 3.2.32–39; cf. Laws

644d), without thereby being worthy of derisive laughter.

C0.P8 But what of more benign forms of laughter? Drawing on a passage from the

Rhetoric, Destrée argues that unexpectedness is important for Aristotle’s

understanding how laughter functions, particularly in puns and wordplay. He places

Aristotle in opposition to Plato on phthonos and provides an account of a more benign

sort of laughter, one that does not depend necessarily on superiority or aggressiveness,

but rather on the raising and failing to meet of certain expectations. On Heath’s

account, some of Plato’s portrayals of laughter may be understood as violations of

expectations, but Plato’s theorizing about laughter shows no sign of this. As both

Trivigno and Heath notice, Plato’s more playful form of laughter in the Laws still

employs ridicule, but in a playful and nonaggressive spirit. Heath also finds a more

benign and less aggressive interpretation of Plotinus’ put-down of Longinus as “a

philologist, but not a philosopher,” as reported by Porphyry (Plot. 14.18–20). By

interpreting the phrase as a pun, or play on words, in response to Longinus’ own

wordplay in a work highly critical of Plotinus’ understanding of forms, Heath shows

how the anecdote can be squared with Porphyry’s overall presentation of Plotinus as

gentle and welcoming of criticism.

C0.S2 2. The Ethical and Social Significance of Laugher and

Humor

10
 Introduction

C0.P9 In the following three chapters, the authors take up an ethical and social perspective

on the appropriateness of laughter and humor. In Chapter 5, “Aristotle on Wittiness,”

Matthew D. Walker offers a detailed reading of the chapter Aristotle devotes to

wittiness (eutrapelia) in the Nicomachean Ethics, arguing that it should be considered

a virtue dealing with the irrational—epithumetic—part of the soul. In Chapter 6,

“Laughter, Social Norms, and Ethics in Cicero’s Works,” Charles Guérin focuses on

the notion of decorum as a bridge between the pragmatic and the ethical

understanding of laughter. In Chapter 7, “Laughter and the Moral Guide: Dio

Chrysostom and Plutarch,” Michael Trapp analyses how these philosophers share a

concern with good and bad laughter at both the individual and communal level, and

how they propose ethical self-improvement on that matter.

C0.P10 Laughter poses some serious ethical and social challenges, especially when

one’s laughter is directed at a friend or fellow citizen and when there is an audience

who shares (or not) in that laughter. If the primary cases of laughter are aggressive, as

Plato seems to think, then the social standing of the target of laughter may be

damaged, the relationship between the target and the joker may be harmed, and the

joker himself may be perceived by the audience as a buffoon. More broadly, laughing

at fellow citizens would ultimately destroy the bonds of friendship that hold the polis

together. How can one navigate this difficult terrain, and what kind of laughter would

be appropriate for a good and socially cohesive city?

C0.P11 Two types of answers have been given to this challenge: The first is to insist

that some kinds of humor and laughter are “nonaggressive” and indeed are aimed at

providing amusements and entertainment in social settings that strengthen bonds of

friendship. And in that case, aggressiveness should not be thought to be usually, or

necessarily, present; mocking laughter is only one type of laughter, not the typical

laughter that goes with wittiness. On the contrary, as Walker argues, the virtue of

wittiness consists in joking and taking jokes that aim at amusement and entertainment,

not at criticizing people or undermining their social status. For Aristotle, joking is

central to amusement, which is an important part of human life, and a boorish person

who never enjoys a joke is a vicious figure, who seems to want to deny that part of

our humanity. Some of these jokes will be at a friend’s expense, for example, in the

context of a symposium, but these cases of teasing may be understood as instances of

“educated hubris,” that is, a kind of mock or false hostility. Of course, such teasing

can go wrong or be taken in the wrong way, and this is why we need a virtue to avoid

our laughter becoming a source of enmity, both in the sphere of private friendship,

and in the broader social or political framework. For Cicero, especially in his De

officiis and his Letters, as Guérin shows, joking is also part and parcel of our

humanity, if in a different way. Since our humanity very much depends on our ability

both to avoid violence and to show kindness through our deeds and words,

nonaggressive humor is plausibly the best tool to make sure our verbal exchanges

12
 Introduction

with our fellows go in a properly human way. A pleasant, charming, humorous art of

conversation is therefore an essential ethical requirement.

C0.P12 A second response is to show that even aggressive laughter can be appropriate

and a source of social cohesion by identifying enemies and established a shared

conception of the social unit’s values. One can think of this as an educational kind of

laughter, since it teaches the citizens about what they stand for and what kind of

behavior they will not tolerate. This type of humor can be used in symposium settings

among friends, in line with the norms of Aristotelian wittiness, but there are other,

more public circumstances in which aggressive laughter can be used in a proper way.

In the Roman public sphere, such aggressive laughter was quite commonly used to

call an opponent’s behavior or morality into question. As Guérin argues, this is a

central feature in Cicero’s conception of rhetoric, which he develops in his De

oratore. Adapting Aristotle’s definition of the ridiculous in Poet. 5, which consists in

the physical deformities or foolish misdeeds of an “inferior” character, into his own

rhetorical framework, Cicero advocates using deformity, mistakes, and social

degradation as sources for laughter in order to defeat one’s opponent in a political

assembly or a courtroom. For Cicero, this use in turn constitutes an important tool that

helps bind the community together, reinforcing shared norms and values.

C0.P13 These community- and friendship-building cases of laughter also have a

darker side, as Trapp demonstrates in his analyses of Dio Chrysostom’s discourse to

the Alexandrians and Plutarch’s Life of Antony. According to Trapp, the aim of Dio
 Introduction

Chrysostom’s discourse is to try to make Alexandrians see how deeply ridiculous they

are, because they are fond of each and every joke and become subject to an “intense

and intemperate laughter” (Alex. orat. 29). They have, as a community, laughed too

much, as it were, and their bonds have been established on problematic and ultimately

harmful premises. Instead, Dio recommends that they, in the typical Stoic fashion,

attempt to follow the truly wise person and experience joy or rejoicing (chara), as

opposed to the foolish laughter that make them unable to follow and exercise their

reason. Similarly, in his Life of Antony, Plutarch aims at showing that it is the very

propensity to jesting and being jested with that made Antony vulnerability to

flatterers, especially to Cleopatra, and this susceptibility is the ultimate cause of his

undoing. Here, Plutarch offers a very subtle moralizing exercise, as his readers are

meant to feel, reflect on, and ultimately be warned against what Trapp calls “the

seductive pull of shared laughter.” Here, shared laughter does not function as a way of

reinforcing good moral values, but of fostering and sustaining immoderate tendencies

that ultimately cause moral harm.

C0.P14 Worries about the consequences of laughter for the jester himself, as we have

seen it in Dio and Plutarch, go as far back as Plato, who, in Republic 10, warns

against buffoonery. This is also a central concern in Aristotle’s exposition of the

virtue of wittiness, since buffoonery is one of the excesses or vices. Defending what

he calls a “epithumetic” view on wittiness, Walker contends that if pleasure and

amusement is crucial to (nonaggressive) laughter, the excess of laughter, both in

14
 Introduction

joking and in hearing jokes, amounts to a kind of “lack of self-control” (akrasia), or

even “overindulgence” (akolasia), which is the typical flaw of epithumia, or irrational

desire. In a similar vein, for Cicero, as Guérin argues, the jester should be seen as the

incarnation of good taste and moderation, and this should be the case both in the

context of letters and exchanges with friends, and in public discourses; jesters who

would not be able to exert restraint and joke at any time and at all costs would end up

buffoons, become ridiculous themselves, and ruin their standing. Here too,

moderation in joking, whether it is aggressive or not, is a virtue, at least in the social

sense that it allows one to do one’s “duty” and fulfill one’s proper “function”

(officium) as a human being and a citizen. For Cicero, this obligation amounts to an

implementation of decorum, or appropriateness, that partly constitutes the good life.

C0.S3 3. The Use of Humor and Comedy in Philosophical

Discourse

C0.P15 The previous section analyzed some ways of dealing with the potential danger of

laughter in the ethical and social realms as well as with the moral and social benefits

one can get from humor and laughter. This section deals with the usages of humor that

nearly all ancient philosophers show in their writings from Plato up to Lucian and

Sextus Empiricus, and what role these passages play in communicating with their

readers. The two first chapters in this section explore some of the multifaceted

humorous devices that we find in Plato’s work. Focusing on the figure of Socrates in

“Self-Ridicule: Socratic Wisdom,” Paul B. Woodruff argues that ridicule, especially

self-ridicule, helps one to remain close to truly human wisdom, that is, the full-

fledged recognition of one’s ignorance. In “Ridicule and Protreptic: Plato, His Reader,

and the Role of Comedy in Inquiry,” Mary Margaret McCabe provides an analysis of

the Philebus’ account of the laughter to show how Plato, particularly in the dramatic

frames, causes in his readers the mixed pleasure of laughter in order to create deep

puzzlement and provoke them toward philosophical reflection. If Aristotle’s use of

humor as a philosophical device is quite limited, we find that Hellenistic and Roman

philosophies made the widespread use of its various forms. In “Humor as

Philosophical Subversion: Especially in the Skeptics,” Richard Bett presents humor as

it was used in a critical spirit, with a focus on how the ancient Skeptics exploited

humorous devices. In “Philosophy is Great Fun! Laughter in Epicureanism,” Geert

Roskam examines how a similar polemical and critical laughter at empty ideals is

connected with truth and true freedom in Epicureanism. On the Stoic side, in “The

Mouse, the Moneybox, and the Six-Footed Scurrying Solecism: Satire and Riddles in

Seneca’s Philosophy,” Margaret Graver rehabilitates Seneca’s sense of humor, and

examines how both other- and self-directed humor is used as a way of marking the

boundaries of philosophy in his Letters. Finally, in “Diogenes vs. Demonax: Laughter

as Philosophy in Lucian,” Inger N. I. Kuin examines how Lucian describes the figures

of Diogenes and Demonax, and contends that through the latter, Lucian offers an

implicit defense of laughter as a tool for expanding the philosophical mind.

16
 Introduction

C0.P16 Since aggressive laughter is generally considered to be the central case of

laughter, it is no surprise then that the most widespread usage of humor is derisive,

sometimes even strongly abrasive, aimed polemically either at philosophical

opponents and their views or against common opinion. Such philosophically derisive

laughter was already present before Plato: consider, for example, Xenophanes’

criticism of divine anthropomorphism. But it is first in Plato’s depiction of Socrates

that we get a methodology whereby such laughter, or the potential exposure to it,

becomes a crucial part of philosophic critique. The Socratic elenchus, as Woodruff

reminds us, aims at shaming and ridiculing the interlocutor, exposing his self-

ignorance and the defects of his mind. While Socrates usually targets non-

philosophers, at least in the dialogues, philosophers using humor to shame and

ridicule one another was very common.

C0.P17 Several comedic devices were commonly used. The most direct, and harshest,

one was defamatory language and direct abuse: as Bett and Roskam highlight, Timon

and Epicurus were among the toughest insulters of their rivals. One strategy,

borrowed directly from Old Comedy, was to come up with inventive nicknames. Not

even Socrates escapes the Epicurean Zeno’s vindictiveness, as the latter dubbed him

“the Attic clown.” Since competition between philosophical schools was fierce,

especially during Hellenistic and Roman periods, insulting and laughing at your

philosophical opponents was a forceful tool to unite one’s followers or disciples

against other schools of philosophy, and therefore to reinforce their sense of

belonging to their philosophical community. But more interestingly, as Roskam

proposes, this ridicule must have also had the effect of demystifying the aura that

surrounds the big names in the philosophical tradition and thus provoking

independent thinking. One widespread usage of derisive laughter consisted in making

fun of the arguments of one’s opponents by vividly illustrating their absurd

consequences, or by analogizing the argument to some absurd or illogical parallel.

Epicurus, Seneca, and Sextus Empiricus were especially fond of, and good at, such

practices. As Roskam, Graver, and Bett relate in detail, the strategy of exposing

argumentation as ridiculous and absurd can have a devastating effect. The

ridiculousness of such arguments gets attributed to their defenders and, by

implication, to the defenders’ philosophical schools, and as a consequence laughing

readers are strongly encouraged to reject the lot and rather to endorse the author’s

non-ridiculous philosophical proposals and arguments. A third device is typical of

Plato’s dialogues: we find humorous scenes, especially at the beginning of the

dialogue, such as the famous episode of the bench at the beginning of the Charmides,

wherein the older men shove one another to make room for the beautiful young

Charmides, with the result that the two on the end are knocked clean off. As McCabe

argues, in those episodes Plato’s readers are meant to take part in the audience’s

laughing at the victim(s); but given Plato’s conception of laughter as a mixture of

pleasure and pain, these readers must experience a rather uneasy, uncomfortable

18
 Introduction

laughter, which is intended to provoke a high sense of puzzlement, and arouse in them

critical, philosophical reflection.

C0.P18 In these forms, laugher is at someone else’s expense. But we find also quite a

few cases in which laugher is directed toward oneself. One paradigmatic case,

Woodruff argues, is that of Socrates who, in the Hippias Major, has the anonymous

contradictor, that is, his own conscience or voice, who mocks him and subjects him to

ridicule. Here, Socrates seems to embody philosophical dialogue within his own

mind, constantly employing his own tactics of refutation and ridicule on himself.

C0.P19 As Graver demonstrates, Seneca’s letters are tinged with self-mockery and

contain numerous instances of self-directed humor. Unlike Socrates’ self-ridicule,

Seneca’s does not seem to be part of a strategy of ethical and epistemic improvement.

Rather, arguably more in line with Cicero, it is part of a device for maintaining the

generic decorum of the Epistulae morales, by holding himself to the same standards

as the others. A rather different self-directed mode of humor is to be found in

Diogenes. As Kuin examines through the portrait of Diogenes that Lucian offers,

Cynics exposed their bodies engaged in indecent behavior in order to provoke

laughter and shame against themselves, but for the paradoxical aim of showing their

imperviousness to mockery and their absolute freedom from all conventional

morality, though Lucian himself seems to reject this as a form of hypocritical

exhibitionism.
 Introduction

C0.P20 Besides these cases of ridicule and derisive laughter, more benign forms of

humor were also sometimes used. As Bett reminds us, puns and other forms of

wordplays are regularly to be found in Aristotle’s work, in which the main aim seems

to focus the mind of the reader and help her to follow the philosophical inquiry, not to

laugh at anything or anyone. Also, Roman philosophers, both Stoics such as Seneca

and Epicureans such as Lucretius, were keen on trying to maintain laughter and

humor within the boundaries of the decorum, that is, the appropriate way of a decent

and affable citizen practicing moderate and non-hostile laughter. It is in this context

that the figure of Demonax is relevant. He may have been the ideal of Lucian, as Kuin

argues, and he is presented as a very easy-going, amicable, and witty philosopher. He

is thus rather unusual as a paradigmatic figure of philosophical humor, as opposed to

the tougher and more derisive humor of figures like Diogenes, Timon, and Epicurus.

Demonax does criticize philosophers by using humor, but he does so in a very gentle

way, using sophisticated forms of incongruity rather than hostile or dismissive forms

of ridicule.

C0.S4 4. Conclusion

C0.P21 Our aim in this volume is not to give an exhaustive account of ancient philosophy on

the theories of laughter and comedy, the ethical and social analyses of humor, and

laughter or the philosophical uses of humor and comedy. We do hope that we may

redeem these topics as philosophically fruitful avenues into ancient thinking more

generally and that our volume contributes to a growing interest in ancient

20
Introduction

philosophical engagements with laughter, humor, and comedy. In one of his most

fascinating sentences, Epicurus says that we must “laugh and philosophize at the same

time” (SV 41). If readers of this volume do laugh, we hope it is not because of some

egregious error or deformity in one of its chapters, but because they are amused by the

wittiness of ancient philosophers, or, even better, because through them one is gaining

understanding and getting just a little bit closer to Democritus and the standpoint of

wisdom.