Short Essay on Humor in General and Satire in Particular

Inspired by “Coda: Swift Today”, by Kenneth Craven, author of 
“Jonathan Swift and the Millennium of Madness: The Information 
Age in Swift’s ‘A Tale of a Tub’”;  E.J Brill, Leiden, 1992.  

	The above-referenced essay by Craven contrasts differences, 
or disproportionalities in more general terms, from start to finish.  
An early example is the exposition of the difference in ‘author’ 
and ‘authority’.  The tension in his reading of Freud’s “Civilization 
and Its Discontents” is between institutions and individuals.  
He also develops in detail the human activity that Sartre described 
as “the desire to be God” in juxtaposition with the fact of human 
mortality.  He contrasts the activities of religion (seeking truth 
from authority) and science (seeking truth from experimentation).  
What does any of this have to do with Swift?  Can we agree with him 
that Swift is the ‘final authority’ on satire, until we agree among 
ourselves what we mean by ‘satire’.

	IMHO ( = in my humble opinion) satire is a special case of 
humor, in general; and the Kantian approach to understanding 
ontological as well as ethical issues is to consider the conditions 
for the possibility of ‘x’ to occur.  What are the conditions for 
the possibility of humor?  Animals may exhibit behaviors that we 
might characterize as puzzlement or bemusement; and they may even be 
‘amused’.  But, do they laugh?  I think that the essentiality of 
humor inheres in the ability of the human mind/body computer enigma 
to recognize the disproportion between the way things seem to be and 
the way that things really are.  That is when we laugh in theater, 
when the whole audience knows how things really are and the 
characters play out their gradual (or sudden) discoveries.  We are 
all in on the reality, while the characters are dealing with their 
perceptions.  In other words, it may only be humans who can be
“in on a joke”.  Sometimes, the master humorist plays the joke on 
us, so that we have to laugh at ourselves for not catching onto the 
reality as soon as some of the characters have done so.

	Perhaps the foregoing thought belongs in a footnote, instead 
of the text, because it makes metaphysical assumptions that lie 
at the core of the Platonic/Aristotlean dilemma; and the underlying 
philosophical issues remain unresolved after two millennia.  
But, it is at this point that the practical philosopher wishes to 
duck these perplexities by making an appeal to common sense.  You 
know what I mean.  Right?

	So, if the condition for the possibility of humor depends on 
intuition of the difference between what’s real and what only 
seems to be real, how is satire a special case of humor.  Again, 
the Kantian approach would be to inquire into the conditions 
for the possibility of satire; and I believe that the concept 
requires the introduction of a previously unmentioned notion, 
specifically the intuition of a condition in which things are 
not ‘the way they *ought* to be’.  An example that leaps to mind 
is Will Rogers’ quip that he didn’t make jokes, he just reported 
the facts.  So, Ken, I can’t buy into the proposition that Swift 
was the ‘final’ authority on satire.  There will be satire as 
long as our species survives to devine that the reality is not 
the way that it should or ( to duck another philosophical conundrum) 
the way that we think it should be.
                                                         
          M. David Tilson         

(postscript: Ken I notice they gave you the last word in the more
recent book on Swift.  Congratulations)