Descartes on the Principal Causes of Laughter

As opposed to the philosophical views of the likes of Plato, Descartes offers a much more literal sense of the principal causes of laughter and the parts of the body involved in the process. He writes, “Laughter consists in the fact that the blood, which proceeds from the right orifice in the heart by the arterial vein, inflating the lungs suddenly and repeatedly, causes the air which they contain to be constrained to pass out from them with an impetus by the wind-pipe, where it forms an inarticulate and explosive utterance” (Descartes 21-22). Immediately after this fresh take on the parts of the body involved in laughter, Descartes lists what he believes are the principal causes and, more importantly, why it doesn’t involve the principal joys. He offers the idea that although laughter may look like it is related to joy, it cannot be caused by joy, with the exception of when it has some wonder or hate mixed in with it. This idea of hate being mixed in with laughter goes back to the ideas of the previous philosophers that people laugh at the inconveniences of other humans. Descartes, however, makes a distinction when it comes to ridicule: he writes, “It is not wrong to laugh when we hear the jests of another; these jests may even be such that it would be difficult not to laugh at them; but when we ourselves jest, it is more fitting to abstain from laughter, in order not to seem to be surprised by the things that are said, nor to wonder at the ingenuity we show in inventing them” (Descartes 25). To Descartes, it is not morally wrong to laugh at jokes made at the expense of another person. In fact, it is only natural that we would do so. However, he does agree with the previous philosophers that being surprised is a factor that goes into laughter, even if we have to try to suppress it. This leads into the final point Descartes makes, which is the two principal cause of laughter. The first of these is the previous notion of surprise, while the other has to do with liquor and its role in increasing the rarefaction of blood, echoing back to his much more physical ideas on the root causes of laughter. 

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