The Category of Joy (2)

Let us continue our Easter Octave investigation on the category of joy.

2. Joy as Laughter

This dimension requires some work and clarification, as it is quite easy to confuse things, with regard to this term. For example, there is that shallow, self-centered “live, laugh, love” (appalling and unappealing); there is the somewhat “mechanical” understanding of "laughter" as “joking”, or as “telling jokes”; and there is a kind of meaningless, empty laughter, behind which one finds no self, but only superficiality; and there is also the very broad category of humor, much too broad to be used, in its entirety and indiscriminately, in association with this concept of “laughter” - and so on, and so on.

So, what do I mean, then, by laughter, as an expression of that state of joy? To exemplify what I mean, I have appended below a compilation video with scenes from (French comedian) Louis de Funès’ films about “the gendarme of St Tropez”. (This is, of course, only an example, not familiar to everyone – but one can find examples that are more suited to one’s particular experience.) However, the reason why I am using the work of Louis de Funès, and specifically this series of films, is because for me they embody some of the essence of that joyous laughter that I am trying to describe. Namely, that kind of liberating, childlike (not childish), freeing laughter, which raises one’s self out of - and above - the weight of sublunar existence.

Levity – yet not understood as “frivolity”, but in a sense closer to its etymological and historical meanings: as “lightness”, as that force that opposes gravity (as the term was used in pre-modern science) – an expression of freedom from petty, burdensome temporality. This is not, therefore, Kundera’s “unbearable lightness of being” (which actually represents a diminution in being); instead, it is an affirmation of being, of the dignity and transcendence of the human self, over and against the shackles of the sublunar, of the historical, of the material, even.

This is the laughter of children at play (seen quite unsentimentally), and also of grown-ups at play (for example, at a pick-up soccer game, in the afternoon). It is good-natured, good-humored, and well-disposed (with amiable feelings) toward the others – while, at the same time, not taking oneself, nor the others, nor life (in its intra-historical meaning) too seriously. It is thus revivifying and refreshing of the self.

Overall, it is an expression of the love of existence, of the joy of existence – and therefore a manifestation of joy, where joy is a state that expresses the plenitude of being.

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At the end of the week, we will synthesize what we have learned from all these individual posts (on the various aspects or dimensions of joy), into one summary conclusion (of sorts) of our "investigation" into the category of joy.