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by Henri Louis Bergson,Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton

Henri_Louis_Bergson Cloudesley_Shovell_Henry_Brereton Philosophy English
  • ISBN: 1604501065
  • Category: Politics
  • Author: Henri Louis Bergson,Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton
  • Subcategory: Philosophy
  • Other formats: docx txt lrf lrf
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: Arc Manor (March 1, 2008)
  • Pages: 96 pages
  • FB2 size: 1208 kb
  • EPUB size: 1220 kb
  • Rating: 4.6
  • Votes: 186
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Book digitized by Google and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tp. Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton, Fred Rothwell.

Book digitized by Google and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tp. The Macmillan company.

by Henri Bergson (Author), Fred Rothwell (Translator), Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton (Translator) & 0 more. A succinct yet insightful treatment of the subject that anyone interested in Bergson, Psychology, early continental philosophy or literature should read.

Bergson’s idea is that we laugh because the person falling over has stopped being a person.

If by person we mean someone that is able to freely choose what they can do, clearly someone tripping over isn’t really acting as a person at that moment. He says they are in fact acting in a mechanical way. If they had been acting as a ‘human’ they would have side-stepped the thing that tripped them up and gone on their way. Being human is fluid and implies change and adjustment to meet the needs of the moment.

Author Henri Bergson. Laughter, the Meaning of the Comic. It may be pointed out that the essay on Laughter originally appeared in a series of three articles in one of the leading magazines in France, the Revue de Paris

Author Henri Bergson. Author Henri Bergson. It may be pointed out that the essay on Laughter originally appeared in a series of three articles in one of the leading magazines in France, the Revue de Paris.

By (author) Henri Louis Bergson, Translated by Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton. Free delivery worldwide. Close X. Learn about new offers and get more deals by joining our newsletter.

In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means

In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means. One of the functions of humor, according to Bergson, is to help us retain our humanity during an age of mechanization. In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means.

In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means. Like other philosophers, novelists, poets, and humorists of his era, Bergson was concerned with the duality of man and machine.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations

Henri Louis Bergson; Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton.

Henri Louis Bergson; Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton. Walmart 9781604501063. This button opens a dialog that displays additional images for this product with the option to zoom in or out. Tell us if something is incorrect. Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Henri Louis Bergson; Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton. Book Format: Choose an option.

Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (London, 1913 ), p. 34 ; hereafter abbreviated L. 2. 584 Mladen Dolar, The Comic Mimesis life and at the same time as the surplus of life, as too much life, more life than one can bear. 25. See Zupan č i č, The Odd One In, pp. 111 – 25. This content downloaded from 12. 97. If we follow this line, then the only really funny thing would ultimately be the death drive. There is a simple gag that is commonly performed by street comedians in many quarters, which enacts by the simplest of means the mechanism of mimesis.

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Reviews about Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (7):
Iarim
Bergson's analysis of the comic dwells obsessively on one theme: that witnessing any act of thoughtless repetition, carried out without regard for the specific nature and unique demands of an actual situation facing the individual, can make us laugh. That is to say, we are tickled to see people act with insensitivity to the real nuances and characteristics of life. In these instances the actor seems more machine-like than human, foolishly applying a rule without appreciating whether or not there is any actual need to do so. The resulting inflexible behavior seems a parody of a true human response, and it is this that evokes humor, says Bergson. Hence, we are amused by something like, say, customs officials who meet passengers swimming ashore from a catastrophic shipwreck that has just occurred offshore, and, instead of offering assistance, immediately demand to know if they have anything to declare.

Of course, it is a characteristic of modernity that daily life is run according to abstract regulations and schemes designed to standardize the human condition: such is life in urban, industrialized environments, where people run their days by referring to clocks, rather than attending to the cycles of nature, for example. This has an unforeseen potential for humor because it leads to absurd attempts to accommodate the rule at the expense of basic human needs: there is something both distressing and subtly funny about a factory worker who is only allowed to leave his post to urinate twice a day, as he puckers up his face and twists his legs in a weirdly cockeyed stance so as to continue to work the assembly until the predetermined moment for a bathroom break arrives. The point is that such abstract social regulating schemes have little or no connection to the actual human organism, including its desires, natural rhythms, and simple needs for care and concern, something that tends to make us feel crushed in the cogs of some vast social machinery. Yet, this dehumanized state can be funny, too, as depicted in Charlie Chaplin's film "Modern Times".

Bergson's thesis is perhaps a relevant and important observation in an age increasingly dominated, not only by mindless and empty routines, but by technology, such as the computers that are increasingly insinuating themselves into daily life. I detect a liberatory theme in Bergson's little volume, one derived from our ability to dismiss the insanity of a standardized, routinized existence through laughter: his thesis provides a reason to chuckle at the "Hal 2000" computer in Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey", rather than to reflexively and fearfully submit to what we feel to be its malevolent control of our lives. Perhaps it is human values that will triumph over the dehumanizing aspects of the machine age, after all! Although there is much more to the phenomenon of comedy than can be accounted for in the single element of thoughtless repetition, Bergson's argument is forceful and convincing.
Painbrand
It's great to reprint classics, but this "book" seems to have been "published" by a 10-year-old working from his bedroom in Kentucky. Not only is there no typesetting to speak of in this volume (it appears that public domain copy was simply poured into a Word doc), but there isn't a single YEAR mentioned anywhere in this book, aside from the reference to being "Made in the USA in 2012." The original date of Bergson's publication isn't mentioned (1911), the year that he revised it isn't mentioned, the translator's note isn't dated--in all, a completely bizarre manifestation. Save your money and read this essay on the internet. It's free. You can even print out what you find online and read it that way. You won't be doing anything different than what the manufacturer of this "book" has done.
Frey
thank you
GWEZJ
This was required reading for a college class. It is an interesting essay on the history of comedy and the people involved. It is not a funny read by the way, purely academic.
avanger
I bought this book when I was going threw a rough time and I enjoyed it. I would recommend this to anyone
Huston
t boIt is an excellent book. Also, it was delivered fast. Thank you!
Fearlesshunter
One of the more accessible books by an underrated philosopher whose usefulness, especially with regard to literary narrative, is being rediscovered, "Laughter" must qualify as one of Bergson's slighter works. Much of its importance stems from its place among the very first essays to take seriously an elusive and slippery subject. As a result, the author's thesis that laughter derives from "the mechanical encrusted upon the living" is at once somewhat dated and limiting. A reader wishes more distinctions between "comedy" and "laughter" (since many of the most revered comedies, from Shakespeare to Keaton, no longer provoke laughter from their modern audiences). Moreover, the author's thesis, though consistent with his views of "real time" (la duree), is applied too broadly to illuminate the dark let alone grey areas of "black comedy" along with numerous sub-genres, ranging from witty and garrulous, so-called "screw-ball comedy" to parody and the mock-heroic (both of the latter presenting major obstacles to appreciation let alone laughter because of what the post-modernists call "cultural amnesia").

Nevertheless, it's a readable start.

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