“Pure Joy”
Spinoza on Laughter and Cheerfulness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21395096 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lydia Amir (0000-0001-6958-7055, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 500-533 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Southern Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-4283 • E-ISSN: 2041-6962 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/sjp.12399 |
| OpenAlex | W3120975455 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 39 |
Laughter is a significant topic for Renaissance and seventeenth‐century philosophers. Still, the latter rarely approved of laughter but endorsed it as useful mockery for theological or philosophical purposes. Benedict Spinoza’s view of laughter stands out as an exception to this attitude as well as to previous and later ones. Spinoza differentiates between mockery and laughter, denounces the former as evil, and characterizes the latter as “pure joy”: laughter is about oneself rather than another and originates in noticing something good, rather than base or ugly. In contrast to melancholy, cheerfulness is “always good” and is a precondition of our liberation as it furthers the use of reason. Not only is Spinoza’s view original, but it is an important source of the eighteenth‐century notions of good‐natured laughter and good humor through a more than probable influence on their proponent, the Earl of Shaftesbury. Whilst Spinoza’s view of cheerfulness is briefly addressed in recent studies, his view of laughter goes unnoticed in most commentaries and is misrepresented in humor studies. Contrary to what is assumed in the philosophy of laughter, I argue that the most important defense of laughter comes not from a British Enlightenment thinker, but from the Dutch Jewish seventeenth‐century philosopher
Aesthetics · Art · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Form of the Good · Laughter · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Humor Studies and Applications · Philosophy · Psychology · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
The Philosophical Works of Descartes
The Other Within
The Ethics of Joy
The Rationality of Emotion
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
The Social Psychology of Humor
Nietzsche et Bataille
The Legacy of Nietzsche's Philosophy of Laughter
Untimely Meditations
The Renaissance and Seventeenth-century Rationalism
The Platonic Renaissance in England
The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable. The Greek Rhetoricians and Cicero
Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition
Philosophy’s attitude towards the comic. A re-evaluation
Spinoza
Shaftesbury's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics
Logique de la Philosophie
Ethical Writings of Maimonides
The Place of Laughter in Hobbes's Theory of Emotions
The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume II
The Complete Essays of Montaigne
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |