dc.description.abstract | Henri Bergson′s work Laughter(Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique,1900)is the first work on the subject of laughter in the history of philosophy studies. This book continues Bergson’s system that proposed in his previous work Time and Free Will(Essai surles données immédiates de la conscience,1889) and Matter and Memory(Matière et mémoire,1896), create a humor theory closely related to cognitive theory and sociality.
However, Bergson’s humor theory will meet two notable issue in recent comedies andjokes. One is Bergson describe that “laughter must rely pure intellect conscious, without affection”, the other one is “laughter is social society’s corrective gesture”. In modern’s humor comedies and jokes, it’s common to see works that take the purpose as arousing the audience′s emotions and leading affections, and the gestures in these laughter seems more likely to be describe as a kind of sympathy rather than a corrective punishment. Inspired by the secular sympathetic laughter which proposed by the literary critic James Wood, we believe that the corrective laughter has a connection with the modern humor laughter, thus we can be further expanding Bergson’s humor theory by exploring Bergson′s theoretical basis.
In this article, we investigates through the analysis of laughter write by Mark Sinclair and A.R. Lacey, the interpretation and extension of the theories in laughter write by Stephen Crocker、Simon Critchley、Ian Wilkie and Natalie Diddamsb, and the concept about perception and consciousness, aesthetic and sympathy from Bergson’s previous works. By searching those articles, we want to describe how sympathy add in modern’s humor comedies and change the gesture of laughter, in order to understand the produce of the laughter that merging consciousness of both intellect and affection. | en_US |