Georg Friedrich Meier: Thoughts about jokes (1744)

 

(1718-1777)
By Skara kommun - Georgius Fridericus Meier; Uploaded by Magnus Manske, CC BY 2.0 

It seems almost a joke in itself to read an author from the Wolffian tradition of philosophy discussing the merits of jokes: how could such a system, with a penchant for droll rules, help us to understand imaginative and unruly world of jokes? Yet, this is exactly what Georg Friedeich Meier sets out to do in his Gedanken von Schertzen - to find rules by which to decide which jokes are effective and which are not. Just like an artist might not be able to explain why her works are beautiful, similarly a joker might not know why some joke is particularly funny.

To clarify a bit, Meier is not a pure Wolffian, but more precisely, hails from the tradition of Baumgarten. Now, while Baumgarten’s metaphysics was, on the whole, more intellectualist than Wolff’s, which still had some empiricist leanings, in one particular aspect Baumgarten’s philosophy was more receptive to the messiness of such topic as jokes. Baumgarten accepted that in addition to the clear and distinct perfection of conceptual thought, senses have their own kind of perfection, embodied in the new discipline of aesthetics. Baumgarten hadn’t at this point published his work on aesthetics, mentioning it only briefly in his psychology, but Meier as his student probably knew about Baumgarten’s more concrete ideas.

In addition to the obvious idea that jokes should induce laughter - at least when time and audience are right for them - Meier notes that jokes are dependent on two faculties, wit and sharpness. These two faculties are in a sense opposite: while a sharp mind provides distinct notion of separate entities, wit notices all correspondences between them, such as similarities of qualities and quantitative proportions. Mere wit is not enough for a joke, or otherwise allegories could be jokes, but neither is mere sharpness nor making people laugh - conceptual analysis is no joke and neither is any old prank.

Now, what makes a joke good or bad, Meier says, can depend either on the topic joked or on the very form of the joke. He at once concentrates his work on the latter kind of perfection. Still, he does note that topic can affect our overall enjoyment of joke: a blasphemous joke can make us uneasy, no matter how good it technically is.

Formal perfection of joke consists simply in showing wit and sharpness and making people laugh. Meier specifies this rather obvious remark by giving more definite criteria for the perfection of a joke. A good joke, Meier says, must be both complex and novel - or at least complex and novel jokes are better than simple and unoriginal ones. Complexity of a joke - or more precisely, joke impressing many ideas at once - entices imagination and causes pleasant emotions, when we have the ability to conceive many things at once. Novelty, on the other hand, shows that the joker has originality and not just good memory. An old joke might have seemed funny at first, but becoming too familiar it has lost its ability to make us laugh. Thus, a good joker doesn’t repeat her stories over and over again.

A good joke shouldn’t be just witty, Meier notes, but it should also be sharp. In other words, the connections uncovered in a good joke should not be too obvious, because mere similarity does not induce laughter. What this means in practice is, for instance, comparing very small and insignificant things with great and significant things and finding unexpected similarities. Especially funny, Meier says, is putting apparently contradictory matters on the same level, which he considers to be the essence of irony. The more points of contact uncovered for sharply distinguished things, the more perfect the joke is. All of these points of contact need not be made explicit, and indeed, it is better if many of them are left implicit. Furthermore, these points of contact should concern the essence of things, thus, Meier concludes, mere word plays are very imperfect jokes and a sign of bad taste (here Meier shows his own personal taste).

Meier also notes that good jokes should be unexpected. A joke told after a number of other, similar jokes has not much of an impact, because the ideas suggested by it are too distinct in our minds. Instead, a perfect joke should be preceded by ideas of a very different sort, being like a flash of sudden witticism. Thus, Meier notes, a joke told in the middle of very serious lectures requiring conceptual distinctness is a sign of great wittiness, and even more witty is when a person jokes at the time of her own death. Because a joke should be completely unexpected, audience should not have too much time to think about the matter beforehand, so it should not be preceded by any lengthy introductions. Particularly to be avoided is laughing before one’s own joke.

In addition, Meier notes, a good joke should have all the marks of beauty, that is, sensuous perfection. Firstly, a good joke should produce a clear idea of what it attempts to convey. That is, audience should not need any detailed explanations to understand it. Then again, a good joke should also be lively, which means that it shouldn’t be too conceptualised and analysed, just like geometrical explanation of a beautiful object is not beautiful. This means that jokes should not be too long. In order to combine clarity and brevity, jokes should be aimed at the specific audience listening to it. Finally, best jokes should concern true matters, although good jokes can also be told of things someone believed to be true, such as pagan gods.

Meier doesn’t have that much to say about what in a good joke makes someone laugh, because he admits that genesis of laughter is still not very clear. He does point out that laughter is primarily connected to positive ideas, although it can have mediate connection to negative ideas, such as when we laugh at our enemies. He also notes deformities and roguery as examples of things causing laughter, although too great a deformity causes empathy and too great a roguery anger. A general rule Meier concludes from these examples is that laughter happens when we observe incongruities in unimportant trifles. Then again, laughable as such is no true joke, if the aspects of witticism and sharpness are missing. Thus, funny anecdote is not yet a joke nor is a laughingstock a witty joker. Similarly, although a good performance can enhance the effect of a joke, performance as such does not make anything a joke.