On The Unitary Principles And Various Manifestations Of Smile And Laugh

Humor or comic sensitivity is a traditional topic of aesthetics. The obvious effect of humor is the raising a laugh or mirth; therefore, to understand the nature of humor is to understand the principles by which humor makes us laugh. Philosophers normally focus on the laugh exclusively caused by humor, but we also laugh for other reasons rather than only for humor, so some laugh from other dark corners often interrupts their reflections. Consequently, it would be more advisable to get a comprehensive understanding of all forms of smile or laugh, by which it should be easier to understand humor.Every mother knows that a baby less than one month old smiles silently and sweetly, so the first human smile is biological and not involves cognitive and cultural elements. The cause of the first infantile smile is a natural expression of physical satisfaction, and its function is to inform the mother that the baby is in well-being. The primitive way of communication as such between mother and baby is vital for our survival. We call the principle a smile as such bases on is’the pleasure principle’. The smile emerging from the intimacy between mother and baby is a basic vehicle for humans to express friendliness and goodwill to each other.Any satisfaction of desire in the adult world, such as that of fortune, social statue and notability, etc., leads to laugh or smile. The cause for the laugh is not physical. Cognitive satisfaction’kidnaps’the laugh nervous system for a forced labour. And any other types of laugh also involve the kidnapping as such.Every individual has begun smiling or laughing due to’the cognition of images’ since she or he was about three-month-old. Humans are born with the cognition for images of all things around. And the disinterested pleasure with the cognition is just the aesthetic pleasure defined by Kant. We call the cause for the laugh due to the cognition of images’the image principle’.The funny laugh is the one we produce while some sensitive parts of the body, e.g, armpit and the sole of the foot, are properly stimulated. The subject in such circumstance in an unbearable and unpleasant experience will laugh uncontrollably. We call the mechanism for the laugh as such’the reflex principle’because it is of reflex, which means that under such a condition the laugh nervous system is kidnapped to make an involuntary burst of laughing as a signal of forced flattery to the stimulator for stopping him to hurt us.The central interest of this thesis is on ’the incongruity principle’. Having examined four important theories of humor, we have adopted and developed the incongruity theory conceived by Schopenhauer. We have found that all ludicrous cases involve mistakenly putting an object under some other concept. The cause for the mistake is due to the fact that only one aspect of the object is similar or identical with some aspect of the concept, which will create some incongruity. We are able to freely realize the incongruity, so we will experience a pleasure which produces laugh.Thus we have gotten a conclusion that all human smile or laugh is due to one of or a mix of the four principles mentioned above:the pleasure principle, the image principle, the reflex principle and the incongruity principle. The pleasure principle is primitive and physical while the reflex principle is an evolutionary device for self-defense, and the image principle and the incongruity principle are aesthetic.Smile and laugh leave us an impression of unlimited diversity, so it would be pretty understandable to have a suspicion to the claim putting various manifestations of smile and laugh under just four principles; Nevertheless, just as the dreadful diversity of tints and shades of clors are just the results of three-primary colors mixed up according countless proportions. As the same, we finally have an analysis of the obtained meanings of smile or laugh in various social-cultural contexts. Moreover, we also have discovered that the incongruity hidden in all cases of humor is the central essence of human culture and freedom. On this view, smile or laugh are fundamental to humans despite its lack of solemnity.