Abstract
This article attempts to shed light on the cultural understanding of laughter in the East and in the West. More specifically, it introduces the sages who take laughter as their signature both in China and in Europe and identifies the understanding of laughter as a qualification of wisdom in different cultures. In China, the earliest model is the Daoist sage, whilst in the West it is the 5th century BCE atomist philosopher, Democritus, later nicknamed the Laughing Philosopher. The Chinese ideal of the laughing sage had a more widespread influence than the Western ideal, through its endorsement by Chinese Buddhism, and the latter’s influence both on Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Zen Buddhism, combined with the Western interest in Daoism, Buddhism and Zen. In contradistinction, the legend of the laughing philosopher would remain mostly cooped in Europe and travelled little. However, as with the laughing Buddhas and the Zen laughing monks, who bring Daoist influence to religion and to art, Democritus’s influence within Europe will be palatable not only in philosophy, but also in religion, literature, and iconography. In what follows, I elaborate first on the laughing philosopher, epitomized in the West by the legend of the sage Democritus and on additional Western sources of laughter. I then turn to Chinese philosophy, and explain how the laughing sages of Daoism influenced Chinese or Ch’an Buddhism, which gave rise to the significant role of laughter in Zen Buddhism. I conclude with some cultural differences, which are transcended by the role of laughter in securing and restoring health in both the East and the West and especially by the commonalities of the human condition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For the extant fragments of Democritus’s book, see Diels (1901).
For these philosophers, see the author’s The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset (forthcoming), and Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson) (work under contract).
See also Chitwood (2004, chap. 2).
Sotion, followed by Seneca, identifies anger as a third possibility, which these alternative worldviews should replace.
Spinoza (1951) begins the Political Treatise with the remarkable statement, “I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human passions”, lest instead of ethics he would write a satire by deriding the passions, as most philosophers and theologians have done (Political Treatise, I, 4). He who rightly knows that all things follow from the necessity of divine nature and happen according to the eternal laws and rules of Nature will surely find nothing worthy of hate, mockery, or disdain, nor anyone whom he will pity; instead, “he will strive, as far as human virtue allows, to act well, as they say, and to rejoice” (Spinoza 1985, IV, prop. 73, scholium). For Spinoza on laughter and the role of cheerfulness is his thought, see Amir (2020a, pp. 500–533).
Kant was cheerful but qualified this quality as a hypochondriac’s deceptive gaiety. Kant’s definition of laughter can be found in The Critique of Judgement (Kant 1911, Sect. 54). It is followed by his criticism of Voltaire (who fails to mention laughter as one of the blessings which enable to cope with life) and by his eulogy of the health feelings that laughter promotes. The latter idea is elaborated on in The Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Kant 1974, Sect. 79). On Kant, see Amir (2014a, pp. 300–301, n. 97). The idea that the balance of humors is necessary for one’s health goes back to antiquity, to Galen of Pergamum, whose theories were immensely influential in Western medical science. Later on, good humor became cheerfulness, and laughter a means to achieve it.
Horace Kallen was the student of the laughing philosopher, Santayana. He rightly remarks that “not many take laughter for their signature”. (Kallen 1968, p. 69).
For additional information about the laughless (agelastos) legacy in philosophy and religion, see Amir (2013).
Eutrapelia, the “true wittiness” characteristic of an honorable and free person, is defined by Aristotle as a social virtue, a midway state between the excess of laughter (buffoonery) and its deficiency (boorishness) (Aristotle 2000, 4.8. 1127b). Originating in an extrapolation of Aristotle’s phrase “man is the sole animal that laughs”––an empirical observation on the human physiological reaction to tickling––this tradition sees laughter as the mark of the human being (Aristotle 2001, III, 10, 673a, 8, 28). Another mark of the human is logos, the capacity to speak or to think rationally (Aristotle 1988, 1253a; Aristotle 2000, p. 1178 a5). During the same time, belief in a laughing animal (animal ridens) is also supported by Julius Pollux (Onomasticon) and by the prominent Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin, Galen of Pergamum, whose theories dominated Western medical science for well over a millennium. Aristotle does not associate laughter with speech or rational thought and does not mention laughter in his discussion of the human being’s properties in his Categories and Topics. Subsequent philosophers do, however, and thereby influence later generations.
There is no 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 (Luke 6:25; 21). At the same time, Aristotle’s thesis that laughter is a distinctive characteristic of the human being––the idea of homo ridens, “man gifted with laughter”––appears in both the Latin and the medieval Christian Latin traditions. Thus, a heated debate on laughter with far-reaching consequences arises in the Middle Ages. If Jesus, the great model of imitation for humanity, never laughs during his human life, then laughter must be alien to man, at least to Christian man. Conversely, if one posits that laughter is a distinctive feature of humankind, then homo ridens will certainly feel more able to express his own nature. Both views are found in ecclesiastical authors see Le Goff (1992, pp. 72–74).
Jesus is laughing in the writings of ancient Coptic Gnostics. See the Apocalypse of Peter 81:11 and 83:1, translated in Robinson (ed., 31990, p. 377); and the Gospel of Judas 2.3–7; 3.6; 9.3; 14.12–14, translated in Pagels and King (2007, pp. 109–110, 111, 115, 120). The Gnostic general view of the significance of laughter should be mentioned as well. Saegvild Gilhus explains that “the process of acquiring salvific knowledge in Gnosticism was akin to solving a riddle or seeing the point of a joke. In opposition to the wisdom tradition, which had a more static conception of knowledge, the Gnostic approach was dynamic and incorporated the laughter of insight or understanding” (Gilhus 1997, p. 70).
In his study of medieval humour, Jacques Le Goff explains that hilaris applied to the face; thus, vultus hilaris means a happy, pleasant face. This expression corresponds almost exactly to what we today would call a laughing face, but decidedly not a hilarious face. Laughter, in hilaris form, became a form of spirituality and behavior in the Middle Ages (Le Goff 1997).
Also among the Sufis of Islam there are the so called wise-fools (oqala-ye majnum) with Mulla Nasreddin as their most famous representative; see Farzan (1973), Shah (1977, pp. 56–97). We will soon see that in Zen Buddhism, not only is laughter necessary, but the masters of the tradition appear as complete fools.
For a more comprehensive view of the traditions of laughter that impacted Western civilization, see Amir (2013) and the forthcoming monograph in De Gruyter new series in Philosophy of Humor, Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism.
See, among others, the paintings of J. Jordaens, S. Rosa, G. de Ribera, and Rembrandt.
For the Western rejection of laughter and the reasons that led to it, see Morreall (1989).
For the attitude toward laughter in Hinduism, see Siegel 1987; in Buddhism, see Morreall (1999, pp. 49–62); and in Confucianism, see Liao (2001, chapters 5–6), as well as following references. I am somewhat responsible for Liao’s study of Confucian humor, as I thought that Confucius is much more humorous than it is usually acknowledged and I conveyed to her this intuition (see Liao’s chapter 5, 84, v). See also Jessica Milner Davis’s introductory essay to Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times (2013) titled “Humour and its cultural context: Introduction and overview”, where she writes: “The Western notion of valuing a good sense of humour is prefigured by Confucian teachings about the appropriate use of humour. Weihe Xu found an ‘inchoate ethics of mirth’ in early Chinese writings, identifying the ‘proper’ kind of humour consonant with Confucian virtue. It should be ‘never crude or rude’ (bu wei nue xi 不為虐兮) (Maoshi zhushu; [Xu 2011, p. 84]). The Confucian rites (li 禮) acted as a civilising agency in the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE). Prescribing correct behaviour from cradle to grave, they distinguished cultivated persons from the untutored. Such traditional attitudes to public decorum are ingrained in Chinese culture and form a necessary background to any study of humour in Chinese life” (Davis 2013, p. 4). On Confucian humour, see also Xu (2014). Humour in Confucianism is evidenced in Harbsmeier (1989, 1990), the latter is specifically called, “Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects”.
It wasn’t until the 12th century CE that the Japanese monk Eisai brought Ch’an to Japan and founded the Rinzai school of Zen. Dogen founded the other major school, Soto, a hundred years later. “Zen” literally translates “ch’an”: “Zen from the Japanese zazen, to sit and meditate, a translation of the Chinese ch’an, which in turn was the translation of the Indian Dhyana (meditation)” (Barrett 1956, p. vii).
By the second century CE Daoism has become a religion for the common people also. The abstract and mystical nature of Daoism is reconstructed into ritualized and formalized patterns of worship, as most religions are.
Unless otherwise noted, all omissions and entries in square brackets in all quotations are by the author.
Scharfstein finds “something of a parallel” for the “relativizing breadth” of Zhuangzi’s sympathies in Montaigne (1998, p. 143). Hsiao-Chuan Wang, in Montaigne and Taoism (1998), compares the views of the human condition and the good life that Montaigne endorses with those of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and concludes that Montaigne and Daoism share a very similar concept of wisdom. He traces the differences in their respective thought to the differing backgrounds and ages. He examines the concept of nature, the relativity of our knowledge, moderation, solitude, and self. Whilst he finds the paradox of coincidentia oppositorum both in Daoism and Montaigne, which could explain the humor they share, Wang fails to mention laughter as a common characteristic of these philosophies, without which the spiritual harmony or interior liberty he points to as their goal could not be achieved (Wang 1998, p. ii). The same lacuna can be found in other studies that highlight the affinities of Montaigne with Daoism, such as in Marcel Conche’s (2014). However, Montaigne is a laughing philosopher, as is the Daoist sage. This omission is filled by Frédéric Lenoir, who in his recent book on happiness (2013) dedicates a chapter to the laughter of Montaigne and of Zhuangzi; this affinity has not gone unnoticed by Scharfstein himself (1998, pp. 523–524).
Barrett (1956, pp. 27–28).
See the entry “Daoism and Buddhism” in Encyclopedia.com https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/daoism-and-buddhism
Hyers here quotes Suzuki on the nature of satori.
As noticed by Hyers (1989b, p. 274).
See the Lama Govinda’s association of compassion with smiling humour in Hyers (1989b, p. 170): “A Man with a sense of humor cannot be but compassionate in his heart, because his sense of proportion allows him to see things in their proper perspective” (Lama Anagarika Govinda 1956, p. 177; quoted in Hyers 1989b, p. 176)
E.g., Costanzo (2020); Chey and Davis (2011); Davis and Chey (2013); Rea (2015). Contanzo focuses on film, Chey and Davis edited two collections of papers, one about laughter in Ancient China and the other in Modern China. Christopher Rea has written a new history of laughter in China, arguing that from the 1890s to the 1930s, the way Chinese people thought and talked about what is funny has been transformed. He focuses on five cultural expressions of laughter—jokes, play, mockery, farce, and humour—to reveal the textures of comedy that were a part of everyday life during modern China’s first “age of irreverence”, and the lasting legacy of this facet of Chinese cultural modernity in the Chinese language. This study has widespread implications for our understanding of humour as a part of human culture, Rea argues (2015).
Seven articles were written as part of a project defined as “Towards a Cultural Specialty on Humor Perception and Usage”. One of them, Jiang et al.’s “Cultural Differences in Humor Perception, Usage, and Implications” (2019) states: “Humor is a universal phenomenon but is also culturally tinted. […] Previous literature has shown that Easterners and Westerners differ in humor perception (e.g., Chen and Martin 2007) […] Since the era of Ancient Greece, it has been a long tradition among Westerners to embrace humor (Grant 1924/1970; Martin and Ford 2018).” Mary Grant’s research has been almost ignored and Rod Martin’s approach to humor history has not been amended, as far as I know, in the second edition he co-authored with Thomas Ford. Grant is introduced and Martin criticized in Amir (2014b). However, this goes against the views advanced by Morreal in his article, “The Rejection of Humor in Western Thought” (1989), his monograph, Taking Laughter Seriously (1983), and the anthology he edited, The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (1987), which were accepted in the whole field of humor studies. For an attempt to rectify the accepted view about antiquity, see Halliwell (2008), Destrée and Trivigno (2019), about modern philosophy, my monographs as listed in the references, and for philosophy in general, be it Eastern or Western, the recently founded periodical, Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, and the forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan Philosophy of Humor Handbook.
See Davis (2013).
My assertion does not contradict research. See again Jiang et al.: “However, the results about East–West cultural difference in humor usage, the relationship between humor and psychological well-being are rather mixed and inconsistent (e.g., Kazarian and Martin 2004; Chen and Martin 2007; Hiranandani and Yue 2014). Whether there is East–West cultural difference in humor perception, usage, as well as humor and psychological well-being relationship remains unclear.” And, the research done in positive psychology about wisdom corelates it with humor.
Santayana, “A General Confession”, cited in Schilp (1940, p. 14).
Bergson (2017, pp. 23–25).
This is the title of a lecture by Allen Watts, the famous Zen popularizer, see:
References
Adkin, Neil. 1985. The fathers on laughter. Orpheus. 6: 149–152.
Amir, Lydia. Work under contract. Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Amir, Lydia. Work under contract. Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Amir, Lydia. 2013. Philosophy’s Attitude towards the Comic. A Reevaluation. European Journal of Humor Research 1(1): 6–21.
Amir, Lydia. 2014. Humor and the Good Life: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Amir, Lydia. 2014. Taking the History of Philosophy on Humor and Laughter Seriously. The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal 5: 43–87.
Amir, Lydia. 2017. Truth and Humor in Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. In Humor und Religiosität in der Moderne, ed. G. Hartung and M. Kleinert, 93–109. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Amir, Lydia. 2018. Taking Philosophy Seriously. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Amir, Lydia. 2019. Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Amir, Lydia. 2020a. “Pure Joy: Spinoza on Laughter and Cheerfulness”. In The Southern Journal of Philosophy 58(3): 500–533.
Amir, Lydia. 2020b. “The Epistemological and Theological Role of Humor in Hamann’s Thought”. In Eric Achermann, Johann Kreuzer and Johannes von Lüpke, eds. Johann Georg Hamann: Natur und Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht (Hamann-Studien; 4), 379–99.
Amir, Lydia. Forthcoming. The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, Rosset. New York, NY: Routledge.
Aristotle. 1988. The politics. ed. by Stephen Everson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aristotle. 2000. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. and ed. by Roger Crisp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aristotle. 2001. On the Parts of Animals I–IV. Trans. with an introduction and commentary by James G. Lennox. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Barrett, William, ed. 1956. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
Bergson, H. 1999. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Trans. by C. Bereton and F. Rothwell. Kobenhavn and Los Angeles: Green Interger.
Bergson, Henry. 2017. L’énergie spirituelle. Paris: PUF Quadrige.
Blyth, Reginald H. 1969. Zen Humor. In Holy Laughter, ed. Conrad Hyers, 198–207. New York, NY: The Seabury Press.
Burton, Robert. 1989. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Eds. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, Rhonda L. Blair, with an introduction by J. B. Bamborough. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chan, Shirley. 2011. “Identifying Daoist Humor: Reading the Liezi”. In Chey and Davis, eds. (2011, 73–88).
Chen, Guo-Hai., and Rod A. Martin. 2007. A comparison of humor styles, coping humor, and mental health between Chinese and Canadian University Students. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 20: 215–234. https://doi.org/10.1515/HUMOR.2007.011.
Chey, Jocelyn, and Jessica Milner Davis, eds. 2011. Humour in Chinese Life and Letters: Classical and Traditional Approaches. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Chitwood, Ava. 2004. Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Clasquin, Michel. 2001. Real buddhas don’t laugh: Attitudes towards humour and laughter in Ancient India and China. Social Identities 7 (1): 97–116.
Conche, Marcel. 2014. Philosophising ad Infinitum: Infinite Nature, Infinite Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Costanzo, William V. 2020. When the World Laughs: Film Comedy East and West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Critchley, Simon. 2002. On Humour. London and New York: Routledge.
Davis, Jessica Milner. 2011. “The Theory of Humor and Traditional Chinese Medicine. A Preamble to Chapter 3”. In Chey and Davis, eds. (2011, 31–36).
Davis, Jessica Milner. 2013. Humour and its Cultural context: Introduction and Overview. In Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, eds. 2013. Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1–22.
Besse, Pierre de. 1615. Le Démocrite Chrétien. Paris: Nicolas du Fossé.
Montaigne, Michel de. 1965. Essais. Eds. P. Villey and V. Saulnier. Paris: P.U.F.
Destrée, Pierre, and Franco V. Trivigno, eds. 2019. Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Diels, Hermann. 1901. Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta. Berlin: Apud Widmannos.
Douglas, Mary. 1975. Implicit meanings: Select Essays in Anthropology. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Farzan, Massud. 1973. Another Way of Laughter: A Collection of Sufi Humor. New York, NY: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Fedotov, Georgy P. 1966. The Russian Religious Mind, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid. 1991. Religion, Laughter and the Ludicrous. Religion 21: 257–77.
Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid. 1997. Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion. London: Routledge.
Goff, Le., and Jacques. . 1992. Jesus a-t-il ri? L’histoire 158: 72–4.
Goff, Le., and Jacques. . 1997. Laughter in the Middle Ages. In A Cultural History of Humour, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 40–53. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gomez, Angel M., and Garcia. 1984. The Legend of the Laughing Philosopher and Its Presence of Spanish Literature. Cordoba: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Cordoba.
Grant, Mary A. 1924/1970. The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable: The Greek Rhetoricians and Cicero. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature.
Halliwell, Stephen. 2008. Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harbsmeier, Christoph. 1989. Humor in Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Philosophy East and West 39 (3): 289–310.
Harbsmeier, Christoph. 1990. Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (1): 131–61.
Hippocrates. 1990. Pseudepigraphic Writings. Trans. and ed. by Wesley D. Smith. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Hiranandani, Neelam A., and Xiao D. Yue. 2014. Humour styles, gelotophobia and self-esteem among Chinese and Indian University Students. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 17: 319–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12066.
Hyers, M. Conrad., ed. 1969. Holy Laughter. New York, NY: The Seabury Press.
Hyers, M. Conrad. 1970. The Ancient zen master as clown-figure and comic midwife. Philosophy East and West 10 (1): 3–18.
Hyers, M. Conrad. 1974. Zen and the Comic Spirit. London: Rider.
Hyers, M. Conrad. 1988. Once-Born, Twice-Born Zen. Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Academic.
Hyers, M. Conrad. 1989. The Laughing Buddha: Zen and the Comic Spirit. Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Academic.
Hyers, M. Conrad. 1989. Humor in Zen: Comic Midwifery. Philosophy East and West 39 (3): 267–77.
Jiang, Tonglin, Hao Li, and Yubo Hou. 2019. “Cultural Differences in Humor Perception, Usage, and Implications”. In Frontiers in Psychology 10, Article 123. https//doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00123
Joubert, Laurent. 1579. Traité du ris, contenant son essance, ses causes, et mervelheus essais, curieusemant recherchés, raisonnés & observés. Paris [publisher unknown].
Kaiser, Walter. 1963. Praisers of Folly: Erasmus, Rabelais, Shakespeare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kallen, Horace M. 1968. Liberty, Laughter and Tears: Reflections on the Relations of Comedy and Tragedy to Human Freedom. De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1911. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Trans. by James Creed Meredith. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1974. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Trans., with an introduction and notes by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Kavanaugh, Kieran, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD. 1991. “General Introduction”. In The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Washington, DC: ICS Publications.
Kazarian, Shahe S., and Rod A. Martin. 2004. Humour Styles, Personality, and Well-Being among Lebanese University Students. European Journal of Personality 18: 209–219. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.505.
King, Karel L., and Elaine Pagels, eds. 2007. Reading Judas. The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity. New York, NY: Viking Press.
Labeo, Notker. 1996. De partibus logicae. In Eduard H. Sehrt and Taylor Starck, eds. Die Werke Notkers des Deutschen, vol. 7: Die kleineren Schriften. Ed. James C. King and Petrus W. Tax. Neue Ausgabe. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Altdeutsche Textbibliothek).
Lama Anagarika Govinda. 1956. The Way of the White Clouds. London: Hutchinson.
Laozi. 1963. Tao Te Ching. Trans. D.C. Lau. London: Penguin Books.
Lee, A.C.J. 1993. Chuang Tzu’s Wit and Wisdom. Ching Feng 36: 12–23.
Lee, Lily Xiao Hong. 2011. “Shared Humor: Elitist Joking in Shishuo xinyo (A New Account of Tales of the World)”. In Chey and Davis, eds. (2011, 89–116).
Lenoir, Frédéric. 2013. Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide. New York, NY: Melville House.
Liao, Chao-chih. 1998. Jokes, Humor and Chinese People. Taipei: Crane Publishing.
Liao, Chao-chih. 2001. Taiwanese Perceptions of Humor: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Taipei: Crane Publishing.
Lichter, David, and Lawrence Epstein. 1983. “Irony in Tibetan Notions of the Good Life”. In C.F. Keyes and E. V. Daniel, eds. Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lutz, C.E. 1953–1954. “Democritus and Heraclitus”. In The Classical Journal 49: 309–314.
Amir, Lydia, ed. Forthcoming. The Philosophy of Humor Handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marmysz, John. 2020. That’s Not Funny: The Humor of Diogenes. Philosophy of Humor Yearbook 1: 97–115.
Martin, Rod A., and Thomas Ford. 2018. The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press.
Moeller, Hans-Georg., and Paul J. D’Ambrosio. 2017. Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Monroe, Charles R. 1995. World Religions: An Introduction. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Morreall, John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Morreall, John, ed. 1987. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Morreall, John. 1989. The Rejection of Humor in Western Thought. Philosophy East and West 39 (3): 243–66.
Morreall, John. 1999. Comedy, Tragedy and Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Müller, Reimar. 1994. “Democrit – der ‘lachende Philosoph.’” In Siegfried Jäkel and Asko Timonen, eds. Laughter Down the Centuries. Vol. 1/3, Turku: Turun yliopisto, 1994–1997, 39–51.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1954. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In Friedrich Nietzsche. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. W. Kaufmann. New York, NY: Vintage.
Plato, works. 1966. Plato's keen eye in his dicussion of laughter. Philebus 48–50.
Rea, Christopher. 2015. The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Robinson, J. M., ed. 31990. The Nag Hamadi Library in English, 3rd revised edition, trans. by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Literary Project. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins.
Salem, Jean. 1996. La légende de Démocrite. Paris: Editions Kimé.
Santayana, George. 1948. Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues. Enlarged. New York, NY: Scribner’s.
Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. 1974. Mystical Experience. Baltimore: Penguin.
Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. 1998. A Comparative History of World Philosophy: The Upanishads to Kant. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Schilpp. Paul A. 1940. The Philosophy of George Santayana. Evanston/Chicago: Northwestern University (The Library of Living Philosophers),
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 1995. Moral and Political Essays. Edited and translated by John M. Cooper and J. R. Procope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shah, Idries. 1977. Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humour. London: Octagon Press.
Siegel, Lee. 1987. Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Skinner, Quentin. 2002. “Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter”. In Quentin Skinner. Visions of Politics, vol. 3, Hobbes and Civil Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 142–176.
Spinoza, Benedict. 1951. A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise. Trans. with an introduction by R. H. M. Elwes. New York, NY: Dover Publications.
Spinoza, Benedict. 1985. Ethics. In The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, vol. I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The Suda. 1853. Paris: Gaisford-Bernhard.
Suzuki, D.T. 1971. Sengui: The Zen Master. New York, NY: New York Graphic Society. [For Suzuku’s writings, see also Barrett, Williams].
Swift, Paul A. 2005. Becoming Nietzsche: Early Reflections on Democritus, Schopenhauer, and Kant. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Syrkin, Aleksander. 1982. On the Behavior of the ‘Fool for Christ’s Sake.’ History of Religions 22 (2): 150–71.
Tiquia, Rey. 2011. “The Qi that got lost in Translation: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Humour and Healing”. In Chey and Davis, eds. (2011, 37–48).
Wahl, Jean. 1963. Le pouvoir et le non-pouvoir. Critique 195 (196): 778–94.
Wang, Hsiao-Chuan. 1998. Montaigne and Taoism. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International Publisher.
Xu, Wei He. 2011. “The Classical Confucian Concepts of Human Emotion and Proper Humour”. InChey and Davis, eds. (2011, 49–72).
Xu, Yeihe. 2014. “Confucianism”. Entry 66 in Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. 2 vols., ed. by Salvatore Attardo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Yu, Lu K’uan. 1960–1962. Ch’an and Zen Teaching. 3 vols. London: Rider.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Funding
There was no funding.
Conflict of Interest
I declare that there is no conflict of interest in the publication of this article, and that there is no conflict of interest with any other author or institution for the publication of this article.
Ethical Statements
I hereby declare that this manuscript is the result of my independent creation under the reviewers’ comments. Except for the quoted contents, this manuscript does not contain any research achievements that have been published or written by other individuals or groups. I am the only author of this manuscript. The legal responsibility of this statement shall be borne by me.
Data Availability
Not applicable.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
Author contributors
I am the only author.
