Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior

185 Pages·1970·18.47 MB·English

by  Helmuth Plessner

Northwestern University
4
Phenomenology
STUDIES IN
Existential Philosophy
GENERAL EDITOR
John Wild
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
James M. Edie
CONSULTING EDITORS
HerbertSpiegelberg
William Earle
George A. Schrader
Maurice Natanson
PaulBicoeur
Aron Gurwitsch
Calvin O. Schrag
Hubert L. Dreyfus
Laughing and Crying
Helmuth Plessner
"
Translated by
With a Foreword by
.Laughing
and Crying
I
A Study of the Limits
of Human Behavior
JAMES SPENCER CHURCHILL
and MARJORIE GRENE
MARJORIE GR'ENE
NORTHWESTERN UNIVEBSITY PRESS
EVANSTON 197 0
Copyright @ 1970 by Northwestern University Press
Originally published in Gennan under the title
Lachen und Weinen: Eine UnteTsuchung
nach den Grenzen. menschlichen Yerhaltens.
Third edition, copyright @ 1961 by
A. Franke AG Verlag, Bern.
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 70-123611
ISBN: 0-8101-0321-4
Printedin the United States dfAmerica
All rights reserved
James S. Churchillis professor of philosophy
... at Purdue University at Fort Wayne.
Marjorie Grene is professor of philosophy
at the University of California at Davis.
Contents
Foreword xi
Preface to the Third Edition 3
Preface to the Second Edition 5
Introduction 12
I / THE RELATION OF MAN TO HIS BODY 23
I. The ProblematicNature ofLaughingandCry
ing
2. Against the Prejudice of a Dualistic Interpre
tation of Man and the False Altematives
3. The Eccentric Position
4. Mediateness and Explicitness, Face and Voice
·2 / THE MODES OF ExPRESSION OF LAUGHING AND
CRYING 48
I. Language, Gesture, andExpressiveMovement
2. The Notion of Expressive Movement in the
Light of Action
3. The Expressive Character of Laughing and
Crying
3 / 70
OCCASIONS OF LAUGHTER
I. Expressive Movements of Joy and Titillation
2. Play
3. The Comic
4. Wit and Humor (The Joke)
5. Embarrassment and Despair
6. The Releasing Moment
[ix]
x / 'LAUGHING AND CRYING
4 / OCCASIONS OF CRYING 116
I. The Mediated Character of Crying
2. Attempts at Classification
3. The Resonance of Feeling
4. The Releasing Moment
5 / THE SOURCE OF LAUGHING AND CRYING
I'. Two Limits of Behavior
2. The Two Boundary Reactions
Notes and References IS8
Index 16g
Foreword
PHILOSOPHERS have always been given to speculating
about the nature of man, usually about his uniqueness,..some
times about his want of uniqueness. But whatever their attitude
or interest, they have nearly always focused their attention on
manas knower, man as doer, man as speaker, orsometimes,man
as maker. There is a whole area of human uniqueness which
has been for the most part neglected, that is, the area of nOD
linguistic expression, whether in facial grimace or in bodily
bearing and movement. Where expression has been treated as
such, it has ..usually been in the Darwinian mood of reducing
what looked to be human mono~olies to their animal forerun
ners. But the range and subtlety of human expressiveness as
such has had little investigation. It has seemed to' philosophers,
if they have thought of it at all, to be peripheral to the more
central questions of knowledge or action.
Helmuth Plessner has long been interested in this neglected
theme. In this little book he takes a particularly significant pair
of types of expressive behavior, laughing and crying, and consid
ers' them both in themselves and in their relation to the funda
mental nature of man. Laughing and crying are not"intentional"
actions, like-speaking, walking, or tacitly giving a sign, say, nod..
ding one's head or smiling in assent. They belong, I suppose, to
the Aristotelian class of "involuntary actions.": Yet neither are
they the sort-of:thing that other animals do; only human beings
laugh and cry. Is this just ail accidentof our glandular and mus
cular makeup.ior does it mean something in relation to the na
ture of man's existence as a whole? Plessner opts emphatically
for the second alternative. He sees in these two phenomena a,
[xi]
xii / LAUGHING AND CRYING
unique expression of our nature, or better, a breakdown of that
nature which characteristically exposes it atits limits.
All animals both are and have bodies. Man both is and has a
body, and .knows it. But that is not to say with the rationalists
that what characterizes man essentiallyis some kind of theoreti
cal knowledge, some kind of "reason," which other animals do
not possess. Nothing new is added to man in any substantive
way, to distinguish him from other animals. The difference is in
a relation: the relation of the living thing to its body,'Animals
1m out of the.center of their bodily being and cannot escape it.
Their actions are at once absorbed into their bodily existence.
Men too are animals; theylive and experience outof andinto the
center of theirbodily lives. But they arealso the centeritselfin a
way which is not the case for other animals. In the human case,
lifeoutof the centerbecomesreflexive: itsets itselftoitselfas its
own. True, man cannotfree himselffrom his own centered, ani
mal existence; yet he has placed himself over against it. This
Plessner calls "the eccentric position" of man. Aliving tliing ex
hibiting this structure is still boundby its animal nature, yet de
tached from it, free of it. Its lifehas its natural place, as all ani
mal existence has, yet is at the very same time detached from
Iocality, It is everywhere and nowhere. Nor is there any new en
tity "which comes from outside to create this situation-like
Aristotelean voV~. There is only a new hiatus, a break in nature,
which produces a new unity. In man "the living thingis body, is
in its body (as inner life) and outside the body as the point of
view from which it is both (body and inner Iife)."10rily individ
uals characterized by this threefold structure, Plessner argues,
shouldbe calledpersons. Thepersonis "subjectof its experience,
of its perceptions and its actions, of its initiative. Itknows and it
will~."
Aspersons, then, we stand at a double distancefrom ourown
body. We are still animals, but in a peculiar way. For we have
not only an inner life distinct from, though not separable from,
our physical existence; we stand over againstboth of these, hold
ing them apartfrom each other and yet together. It is our eccen
tric position that gives to our existence the ambiguity, of neces
sity and freedom, contingency and significance, which it char
acteristically displays.
Laughing and crying, Plessner believes,tonstitute unique ex
pressions of the breakdown of this eccentric position. Itis when
things are too much with us that we cry-even when we cry for