Critical Response to Simon Critchley's "On Humour. Thinking in Action"

Simon Critchley is an English philosophy writer. He writes humorously about his subjects, from colonization to continental philosophy. Critchley states that philosophy starts with disappointment. His style relies heavily on philosophical beliefs, (some thousands of years old, such as Cicero and Plato), without regarding scientific reassessments or experimentation's on said subjects. This makes his writing more humorous because of the leaps in logic this allows, and assists his gaps in reasoning to be ignored.

In “On Humour” Critchley evaluates wit, satire and Beckett’s ‘mirthless laugh’, but closely aligns laughter specifically with humour in his 2nd chapter “Is Humour Human”. These two words (laughter and humour) are neither separated or defined, and this flaw motives my lack of enjoyment of the writing. Furthermore, Critchley does not mention Freudian notions, such as sexual repression or laughing being a release of stored psychical energy, but uses Plessner to illustrate that the gap between the physical and the psychical is in fact humans themselves. Critchley could have made use of a straightforward quote such as follows: “Thus the joke allows expression of the forbidden. Our yield of pleasure equals the psychical energy saved by our not having to repress. The joke beats the repression of the sexual and aggressive drives and is thus a mechanism of defence. It provides a release from tension. Beware the humourless and the solemn.”[1] and used it to introduce religious piety later mentioned, but instead he chooses to remain elusive. Even though Critchley has his “doubts about Plessner’s certitude”[2] the avoidance of science is obvious. This attitude of separating unique humanity from boorish animality dominates the chapter. When Critchley touches on anthropological subjects, distinctly avoiding the word ‘evolution’ and using instead ‘transformation’, it is only to illustrate the “distance of human culture from animal life.”[3] He attempts to “define the human as a dynamic process”[4] in the context of regarding “humour [as being] precisely the exploration of the break between nature and culture.”[5] It is in my opinion, this high self-esteem of humans that permeates early Western and Eastern philosophical writings, that makes Critchley ignore the various opportunities he has to direct his writing to the more important questions: “are all animals incapable of reflection?”[6] in light of Plessner’s views. Perhaps, like mentioning the word evolution, he might scare his audience so he politely skips to his next paragraph (‘A Small Bestiary’) quickly, beginning, bizarrely with “If humour is human, then it also, curiously, marks the limit of the human” as if anything had been proved previously, and then begins the adjacent paragraph (‘Outlandish Animals’) with “Humour is human.”[7] as if stating an obvious fact. The lack of Freudian or Darwinian accomplishments, chimpanzee communication, training and humour, is annoying enough without Critchley’s consistent praise for mankind that echoes ancient, obsolete philosophy.

It is within the first four sentences that Critchley questions, considers and answers whether animals are capable of humour, using the rhetoric of a remote philosopher who had never seen a higher primate, (except for other humans) and proudly illustrates from “Galen and Porphyry, through Rabelais to Hazlitt and Bergson”[8] that this thought has been ingrained in philosophical thinking. It is all the more reason to question something that has passed down the centuries unchallenged and, in my opinion, unfounded.

Plessner’s concept of an eccentric human capable of having a “reflective attitude towards its experiences and towards itself”[9] could be transferred and explained as mirror neurons, existing in the brains of dolphins, elephants, greater apes (orang-utans, homo sapiens, bonobos, gorillas, and chimpanzees). An animal that has mirror neurons is capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror, and are prerequisites for any behaviour that can be described as humorous, but not necessarily including laughter. Even this thought is being challenged by neuroscientists Jaak Panksepp and Jeff Burdorf of Green State University, who are searching for laughter (and by extension, [but not proof from the former,] humour also) in rats, and in neural circuits and more ancient regions of the animal brain that we share with small mammals like rodents. After all, human brain occupies 2% of body mass; in small rodents the relative goes up to 10%.
“The concept of mirror neurons postulates a neuronal network that represents both observations and execution of goal-directed behaviour and is taken as evidence for the validity of the simulation theory, according to which human subjects use their own mental states to predict or explain mental processes of others.”[10]
If mirror neurons are present in elephants, dolphins and apes like humans, then they could all be capable of an eccentric position whereby they can have a “reflective attitude towards its experiences and towards itself.”[11]
Humorously enough, it is lying and deception that makes scientists aware of the consciousness of animals in test experiments.
“It seems clear that on many occasions animals communicate inaccurate information or intentionally avoid conveying certain types of information to others. In many cases the versatility of deceptive or misleading behaviour provides even more suggestive evidence of conscious intent than the transmission of reasonably accurate information.
de Waal has described other examples of somewhat deceptive behaviour in primates, along with intriguing patterns of friendship and reconciliation.”[12]
Critchely, who avoids evolution, addresses his chapter from postulating that “If, as ethnologists report, laughter originated in the animal function of the aggressive baring of teeth” without realizing that higher primate evolution took a turn from aggression to submission. Reflexive teeth-baring has been well proven by many scientists and primate specialists that our own smile comes from the “fearful or submissive expression. It has therefore been hypothesized that smiling evolved as an indicator of cooperativeness and altruism. In a phylogenetic analysis, van Hooff compared the way various primates employ the silent bared-teeth display and concluded that the appeasing and friendly qualities of the human smile are not unique.”[13]
If it is true that not all animal’s lives are zentrisch, that the smile originated from fear, and more importantly that it is not unique in humans, then perhaps humour is not unique either.
“Captive chimpanzees have been trained to signal “funny” in situations marked by incongruity, such as when they are representing incorrect signs. Some of these chimpanzees also signal “funny” when attempting to urinate on people.”[14] It would seem that even types of humour, (toilet humour) are not unique to humans.
But what of laughter, evolved from social signalling and having more in common sonically with animal calls than human speech? As for Critchley’s long list of philosophers through the millennia who have naively adopted Aristotle’s belief (“Galen and Porphyry, through Rabelais to Hazlitt and Bergson”[15] ) here is a longer list of scientists who have experienced, but also written peer reviewed reports about chimpanzee laughter.
“The opinion often repeated in the popular media that laughter is unique to humans is unfounded. From at least the time of Darwin (1862) there has been an awareness that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and other great apes emit a laugh-like vocalization when tickled and during play (Bernston, Boysen, Bauer and Torello 1989, Fossey 1972, Marler and Tenanza, 1977, Van Lawick-Goodall 1968, Yerkes 1943).”[16]
It is important to note that the chimpanzee laughter is breathy and grunt-like, but shares close acoustic characteristics (shapes, lengths, patterns) but is generated by a different pattern of neuromuscular activity. (Province and Bard, 1994) But even more importantly, laughter of both humans and chimpanzees occurred almost exclusively in social contexts.

Despite Critchley ignoring scientific research; discovery of the repressed mind; and chimpanzee laughter in the wild, and humour in captivity while communicating, the most annoying aspect of the chapter is his centralized view of religion coupled with his disregard for the appreciation of context. The glaring omission of other religions is never more evident than when Critchley writes “If laughter is essentially human, then the question of whether Jesus laughed assumes rather theological pertinence”[17] without even mentioning the extremely popular religion of Buddhism that is led and defined by a Messiah who laughs openly and eternally.
What the reader will quickly realize about Critchley’s use of the early Bible story is that the retort is amusing because of our knowledge of Jesus later becoming the messiah, and talking back to his mother in “messianic”[18] tones rather than modern childish ones, similar to the “sudden and incongruous humanity of the animal”[19] . The context that is not regarded when Critchley tries to persuade the reader to find hilarity of Jesus’ ministry beginning “with an encouragement to imbibe.”[20] is the mundanity of wine in the life of people in the middle-east two thousand years ago. Their methodology of drinking water without getting sick was using fermentation, as opposed to the far-east method of brewing tea. The humour aligned with finding drunkenness amusing due to its repression and being frowned upon in proper society is removed when we consider that wine was the normal beverage of choice.

But Critchley is correct in believing that those that do not laugh “invites the charge of inhumanity”[21] and is echoed by Cameron when he warns us to “beware the humourless and solemn”[22]. The very fact early christians had to “trawl the Evangelist fro evidence of levity”[23] proves that there was not a lot of humour already apparent within the New Testament anyway. But, perhaps, like Critchley’s example, we could find these funny in a new context. When Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden in the Fall, God first made them “small leather garments” (Genesis 3:21) in order to hide their nudity. Even more cringe worthy is the way that early Christians distanced themselves from other Jews by specifically not practicing kosher laws, circumcision and Sabbath, and claiming in Paul’s words, to be “Jews inwardly” and circumcized “in the heart.” (Romans 2:28 -29)




[1] Cameron, Keith Humour and History. Oxford: Cromwell Press, 1993. p 156
[2] Critchley, Simon. On humour. Thinking in Action. London: Routledge, 2003. p 29
[3] ibid, p 28
[4] ibid, p 29
[5] ibid, p 29
[6] ibid, p 29
[7] ibid, p 34
[8] ibid, p 25
[9] ibid, p 28
[10] Stamenov, Maxim. I. and Gallese, Vittorio Mirror neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003. p 135
[11] Critchley, p 28
[12] Griffin, Donald R. Animal Mind: Beyond Recognition to Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p 154
[13] Ekman, Paul; Campos Joseph J.; Davidson, Richard J.; de Waal, Frans B.M.; Emotions Inside Out: 130 Years After Darwin’s ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’ New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2003. p 14
[14] Maier, Richard Comparitive Animal Behvaiour: An Evolutionary and Ecological Approach. Chicago: Loyola University of Chicago, (Allyn and Bacon, Viacom) , 1998. p 292
[15] Critchley, p 25
[16] Heyes, Cecilia M., Galef, Bennet G. Jr Social Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture San Diego: Academic Press, Inc, 1996. p 196
[17] Critchley, p 25
[18] ibid, p 26
[19] ibid, p 30
[20] ibid, p 26
[21] ibid, p 25
[22] ibid, p 156
[23] ibid, p 26
[24] Griffin, Dustin “Satire: A critical Reintroduction” Univeristy Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1994, page 6
[25] ibid page 7
[26] Palmeri, Frank “Satire, History, Novel , Narrative Forms, 1665-1815” Associated Univeristy Press, Cranbury, NJ, page 121