“If I had not read Bergson,” William James wrote in A Pluralistic Universe, “I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper privately.” James had been engaged in a very long philosophical debate with the leading Idealists of his day, F.H. Bradley and Josiah Royce, when Bergson came to the rescue. James thought that Bergson supplied him with the Continue Reading …
Episode 92: Henri Bergson on How to Do Metaphysics
On Bergson’s “An Introduction to Metaphysics” (1903). With guest Matt Teichman.
Episode 92: Henri Bergson on How to Do Metaphysics
On Bergson’s “An Introduction to Metaphysics” (1903). How does metaphysics differ from science? While Kant had dismissed metaphysics as groundless speculation about things beyond human knowledge, Bergson sees it as a matter of grasping things “from the inside” via intuition. With guest Matt Teichman. Learn more.
End song: “I Recall” by Mark Lint & the Simulacra
Precognition of Ep. 92: Henri Bergson
Guest Matt Teichman introduces Bergson’s essay “An Introduction to Metaphysics.”
Topic for #92 (and a Not School Group): Henri Bergson
Listen to Matt Teichman’s introduction to the reading. Henri Bergson is an early 20th century French philosopher that PEL listeners may recall from our philosophy of humor episode, and we’ll be tackling his philosophy proper via the entrance drug “An Introduction to Metaphysics,” a short essay from 1903 (freely available online) that is essentially pheonomenology without the jargon (Husserl, Heidegger, Continue Reading …
Humor as Epoché: Irony and Hypothesis
Near the end of our humor episode, I threw out the truism that humor tends to deal with something we’re uncomfortable with, like death, sex, or embarrassment itself. The example I gave was of someone like Ed Conard making jokes about being rich. Now, I’ve since seen Conard on the Daily Show, and while he was good natured enough, I Continue Reading …
In Defense of the Expectation Thesis
[Editor’s note: We’re happy here to get a contribution on humor from Philosophy Bro who was on our recent Wittgenstein episodes. Give him a nice round of applause.] I think that “funny” is one of those words that you’re going to have a real bad time trying to delimit or explain entirely. But, uh… fuck it. Here goes. In Wittgensteinian Continue Reading …
Deeply Funny?
(Image: Tom Motley when he’s all spiffed up.) It is a little known fact, even among our philosophically sophisticated readers, that Heidegger argued for the supremacy of German humor. Because German jokes have the most precise underlying structure, he argued, German humor would rule the earth for a thousand years. (Sorry if you’ve already heard some version of that old Continue Reading …
Humor Case Study 2: Henny Youngman
So Mark took on the comedy stylings of Louis CK in the first case study, someone who establishes a core insight and then plays it out through both content and performance. I’d like to take a look at two other (multi-generational!) comedians who rely on establishing a premise quickly using audience assumptions and then make a joke by twisting either Continue Reading …
Humor Case Study: Louie CK
We mentioned Louie CK on the episode in the context of his body image bits, but since he’s not a paradigm case of that (meaning it’s not his only shtick), we didn’t pursue it. So here’s a piece from I chose semi-randomly for us to discuss, having to do with kid naming and in general dealing with your offspring: Watch Continue Reading …
Humor and Imagination (and Humor vs. Good Humor)
One point I had intended to make during the episode was about the role of the imagination in aesthetic appreciation, including appreciation of humor. One distinction that Bergson glossed over and which we weren’t very consistent about making is the difference between “falling within the category of humor” and “actually being funny.” This came through a bit in our discussion Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor
On Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society’s demands. Other types of humor are derivative from this. With guest Jennifer Dziura.
Episode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor (Citizens Only)
On Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society’s demands. Other types of humor are derivative from this. With guest Jennifer Dziura. Learn more.
End songs: “The Nipple Song” (1991) and “Come On, Lady” (1990, with Ken Gerber and Brian Hirt) from Mark Lint’s Black Jelly Beans & Smokes, plus Jen’s standup.
Topic for #57: Henri Bergson on Humor
Here’s the episode. What is humor? Henri Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900) states that humor is a social tool by which we mildly scold each other for being insufficiently adaptive and flexible. On this account, the paradigm of humor is the absent-minded person, but any form of idiocy or freakishness or social ineptness also Continue Reading …
Daniel Coffeen on Bergson’s Matter and Memory
One of the name-drops on the Sartre episode is Henri Bergson, a philosopher who was in vogue in France at the time Sartre wrote, famous among other things for promoting and anti-atomic epistemology. Kant, for instance, thought that we get our idea of number out of time, meaning that time is essentially something we can count. For Bergson, time is Continue Reading …