‘Shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods’: Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy and the meaning of life

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that comedy is the essence of the human condition. In setting out my case I draw on the work of French process philosopher, Henri Bergson. Here I present an exploration of Bergson’s work showing how his theory of comedy, set out in Laughter (1900), influenced his later writings, notably Creative Evolution (1907). In Laughter, Bergson explores the social purpose of laughter and argues that it is ‘rigidity’ that in all cases brings about our downfall and gives rise to laughter as a social corrective. This is expressed in his famous apothegm ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’. Here I show how these ideas are relevant to a central theme of Creative Evolution, the development of human intelligence. Though intelligence, through invention, fits us to our environment it results in what Bergson calls a ‘mechanistic habit of mind’ which produces irony as the fundamental human condition.