Humor, Tragedy, Acknowledgement, and the Absurd
“In another time they would have called him prophet…” – Anonymous quote found on Sam Kinison’s gravestone.
It is a long-standing adage that humor contains a kernel of truth. We can use jokes to communicate otherwise offensive attitudes or embarrassing situations in a lighthearted or unserious manner. Humor, like philosophy, is a mode of interpersonal communication that transcends the very conventions it relies on in order to operate.
The philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that a serious work of philosophy could be written entirely in jokes. Though he was not known for his sense of humor or playfulness, Wittgenstein also thought that grammatical jokes shared the same sense of “depth” as philosophical puzzles, because both arose from a seemingly competent misuse of language. Philosophy that takes itself seriously considers itself to be in the business of straightforwardly revealing or describing the fundamental nature of reality, whereas jokes reveal the truth only indirectly, though subtle mechanisms that are hard to explain and easy to deny. Like the ability to ask about the purpose, meaning, or value of some action or event, the ability to laugh and joke is a universal human trait.
The human being is just as much a creature of laughter as one of language and morality, and all of these practices are culturally-mediated. One has to have the relevant background experiences to “get” a joke. A person’s sense of humor reveals just as much about their values and sentiments as do their judgements of praise and blame. We might even judge someone more harshly for their sense of humor than for their choice of music or film.
Language, morality, and humor are all universal human practices that exhibit cultural variation. Various cultures and communities have developed their own humorous traditions and practices, as well as institutionalized social roles dedicated to humor, such as the cross-cultural figure of the court jester or fool, most popularly associated with medieval monarchies, but which can be found as far back as Ancient China 4BCE, and geographically-distinct cultures like the Aztecs. In her book, Fools are Everywhere Beatrice Otto argues that the jester, understood as a figure crowned by a socially-recognized authority to transcend the operative social rules and norms, is a universal phenomenon. One can find references to jester-like figures in documentations from Ancient Egypt, to the indigenous tribes in the US, to Indian sultans and emperors. Otto suggests that the court jester performed a vital function in the “ecology” of the royal court: they could say things to the king that no one else could, which granted them both a degree of reverence and a certain amount of risk. Otto argues that various cultures established social roles dedicated to humor in part because of the long-standing belief that humor is a means for communicating the truth. Humor can be a mirror that turns reality upside down and in doing so reveal it for how it really is or should be. Jesters also provided much needed comic release in times of royal tensions or offenses. Importantly, the jester’s license went as far as the king’s ability to laugh - to genuinely cause offense or betray the king’s goodwill resulted in death or dismemberment.
Polish jester Stańczyk
Thus, the jester is a someone who can subvert social norms so long as the powerful laugh with their antics. Laughter is otherwise taken to be a threat to seriousness, as laughing at the authorities can exhibit immaturity or event dissent. Laughter is contagious, and it can arise involuntarily and during inappropriate times or topics, which means laughter can become a very serious topic indeed. Laughter has thus always posed a threat to what is taken to be serious or unquestionably authoritative, such as God, tragedy, and, yes, even philosophy. It perhaps unsurprising that philosophers have tended to ignore the social dimensions of humor and comedy, (although there has been recent interest since “the slap” and other controversies associated with stand-up comedians). Further, comedy isn’t considered a “high” artform like poetry, music, or painting - though jokes, humorous songs, riddles, and comedies are just as old as these more traditional art forms (if not older). Popular art forms such as film, poetry, dance, and music all exhibit a formal structure or syntax, as do individual and categories of jokes. In fact, humor seems much closer to poetry and music, and can be an effective tool for political persuasion.
For example, laughter occupies a troubled relationship to the universal authority found in monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam. There are long-standing debates about whether Jesus laughed, as Jesus is never depicted laughing in the Bible. The prophet Muhammad is depicted as laughing as a sign of triumph and righteous superiority, not as a response to something funny or ridiculous. Interestingly, polytheistic religious such as Hinduism and non-theistic religions such as Buddhism embrace laughter as a marker of enlightenment and a method for spiritual education. Daoism, a non-theistic religion, recognizes jokes as an indirect means for ethical and philosophical communication, alongside aphorisms and parables.
Notably, however, humor enjoys a particularly important and special relationship to the Jewish religion. While it is overly simplistic to suggest there is “a” Jewish sense of humor, many historians, theologians, and comedians have noted that there is are longstanding practices of canonical “Jewish” jokes that center on themes that mock or subvert Anti-Semite stereotypes, as well as a tendency toward self-deprecation. [Maybe I’ll rite a follow up essay exploring the connections between humor and religion in the future…]
Philosophy, like religion, takes itself to be in the business of identifying and articulating fundamental ethical truths. Thus, philosophy also shares a somewhat fraught relationship to humor, in part because philosophers often take themselves and their subject matter rather seriously. Plato was famously hostile to the comedic form, viewing comedy, poetry, and the imitative arts more broadly as posing a threat to rational deliberation and thus a genuine hinderance to ethical development - very serious endeavors, indeed. It is important to note as well that Plato’s hero and teacher, the great Socrates, was put on trial and sentenced to death for charges that stemmed in part from the reputation he developed from the way has was depicted in Aristophanes’ comedic play The Clouds. Written in 432BCE, the central character, Socrates, is portrayed as a clumsy sophist, declaring that he “walks on clouds and contemplates the sun.”
The practical, descriptive philosopher Aristotle was warmer to the value of humor, claiming that laughter is a universal human trait and arguing that the comic is the dual side of tragedy and a means for rhetoric, though he didn’t say much beyond that. Italian novelist Umberto Eco’s 1980 book, The Name of the Rose depicts a monk’s question to find Aristotle’s long-lost book on comedy, considered a heresy by the Catholic church (for the above-mentioned reasons).
If humor and laughter are the mark of the unserious, then it makes sense that humor would be seen as in tension with “serious” philosophy, the kind that communicates fundamental truths about the nature of the True and the Good. But, as the follower of The Way already understands, humor can also be a means by which we can convey genuine philosophical and ethical insights. Even Socrates, at times, seems to employ irony and sarcasm in luring the unwitting bourgeoise into his venus (gad)flytrap.
For example, in the beginning of the 16th century Desiderius Erasmus wrote a satirical “academic” essay called In Praise of Folly that lambasts political philosophers such as Plato and the Stoics for failing to appreciate the importance of folly or what is silly and unpretentious. The essay is narrated by a character named Folly who suggests that the absence of laughter in the philosopher’s ideal political society is due to the fact that philosophers lack the requisite social skills, such as charisma and wit. Folly mocks the very idea that a person could take themselves to be qualified to speak on how a society should be governed yet fail to appreciate or understand the value of humor, laughter, and silliness. Erasmus’ narrator argues that folly is a direct route to uncovering the practical significance of the “everyday” which is a necessary condition for any political or ethical philosophy worth its weight. In Praise of Folly is simultaneously a satirical takedown of the pretentiousness of traditional political philosophizing and an example of the ethical import of the comedic form. It’s got some great pictures, too.
Of course, not all philosophers thought or think that humor is without merit or value. There have been (roughly) four main philosophical theories that purport to capture the nature of humor. While I think each theory helps capture a core dimension or use of humor, philosophers have yet to provide a satisfactory theory that unifies the various ways we use and appreciate humor and captures the fact that laughter is cross-cultural and culturally mediated. That’s where my dissertation comes in. But first I’d like to offer a brief survey of the canonical theories of humor, as well as note some of their shortcomings.
Incongruity Theory
Perhaps the most compelling and well-known theory of humor is the “incongruity theory.” According to the incongruity theory, humor is a product of a clash between expectation and reality, between what the joke delivers and what should be the case.
Incongruity theory is often attributed to Mr.Funny Bones himself, 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant saw humor as the expression of universal rationality because it involves the appreciation of the frustration of expectation. Kant thought that laughter, like most things that we enjoy, was without moral value but laughter did have instrumental value because it helped jostle and thus warm the organs…which is pretty funny. He also claimed to have “drank” air through his nose, quenching his thirst in the middle of the night.
There are of course issues with taking incongruity to be what unifies and explains the universal nature of humor - there are lots of incongruities that aren’t funny, and it isn’t clear exactly which sorts incongruities count as humorous and why. However, I think incongruity does capture a crucial component of humor: that humor involves a grammar, structure, or quasi-logical form.
A recent proponent of incongruity theory, Tom Cochrane, has argued that in order for an audience to find something funny, they must recognize that the incongruity at the heart of a joke or depiction is “unreal.” In other words, if we interpret the joke as actually referring or applying to us or anything else in a way that causes us to evaluate our beliefs, values, or behaviors then we cannot also find it funny. Laughter as the recognition of funniness is thus a form of release or relief at the fact that we are not in any real danger, that our reputation is still intact (oh they didn’t that, they were only joking…). If we think that someone is pointing out our incongruous characteristics or beliefs in order to laugh at us from a position of superiority, then we are likely to feel shame or offense, and attitude inhibits us from finding it funny. I’ll argue that humor involves the same social-perspectival capacities as shame: considering ourselves from an external perspective, as if we were another, conscious, person. Laughter is thus the recognition of one’s limitations and incongruities without the shame or offense that should accompany it. But more on that in a bit.
Superiority Theory
So, it seems as if humor and shame share a special bond. We can use humor and laughter to mock and belittle others, to point out their incongruities or flaws in order to laugh at them, perhaps alongside others “like us.” Thus, another popular theory of humor holds that the function of humor (and laughter) is as a way to express one’s superiority. This is similar to the notion of righteous laughter, mentioned earlier. The superiority theory says that the function of humor is to demonstrate or express superiority over others and has been attributed to philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Sigmund Freud. The canonical example in support of this view is the practice of telling hostile jokes intended to make fun of other cultural or ethnic groups.
Importantly, superiority theory can be included within incongruity theory - one feels superior in relation to others’ moral, personal, or aesthetic incongruities or flaws. Humor can and is often used as a means for expressing contempt toward others for socially significant incongruities. However, if we change the conditions such that the person telling the joke is a member of a historically marginalized group, and the joke is about the ridiculousness of a stereotype that defines one group as superior to another for features that both groups instantiate, then what was once a form of superiority is now also a form of genuine social critique and a valid means of expressing political resistance. For example, the significance of self-deprecating humor in the Jewish tradition is explained in part as a response to the historical oppression faced by Jewish people. Jewish people have developed humorous practices as a means for living in a hostile world. This means that it matters who is telling the joke, the target or targets of the joke, the audience for the joke, and the historical relationships between these elements.
In fact, the appropriation and subversion of stereotypes is a long-standing tradition in humorous performances, as is the use of profanities and slang. When we center the analysis on the role of humor for people who must exist in contexts of systemic oppression, we can readily appreciate how such humor also has an emancipatory function: laughing at the oppressors might not stop them from oppressing you, but it lets them and those suffering alongside you know that their authority is not given or natural, it is forced and forged - borne from fear and insecurity rather than trust and competency. Laughing at evil demonstrates that you acknowledge that it is there but are not compelled to take it seriously.
In the chapter “Black Laughter” in his book Black Folk Culture and Black Consciousnesses Sociologist Lawrence Levine argues that humor was an essential mechanism for the creation and persistence of communities of black Americans living in the US during and after slavery. Levine argues that black Americans who were/are forced to live in a racist society that defined itself as liberal and free, developed robust folk cultures and traditions surrounding insult humor, such as the popular practice of “the Dozens.” The Dozens is a general name used to refer to the ritual of insult humor which were a widespread practice in the US that went by different regional names. Where I come from we call it “Yo Momma” jokes. Levine shows how the Dozens is simultaneously a collective performance or ritual, an artistic medium for demonstrating individual verbal wit and skill, and communal method of resistance and cultural production. The most effective tool against unwanted authority is mockery, and the Dozens involves sophisticated wordplays as a weapon for navigating treacherous social waters. Trading insults between friends enables participants to not only express trust and increase intimacy but develop skills to help deal with a hostile and insulting world. Insult humor requires a rather high degree of familiarity or trust (confidence?), or explicitly artificial contexts, such as the comedic roast. Levine argues that insult humor became a means for social bonding and verbal wit, and as a way for black Americans to prepare themselves and each other for resisting an insulting world.
Paradoxically, demonstrating superiority in contexts where one is considered or expected to be inferior by the majority functions as a means of expressing pride: it undermines the presumed authority of those that aim to insult you in order to make you feel shame. Thus, superiority theory reveals that humor can be a means to challenge the legitimacy of authority in contexts where the world tells you you are inferior. However, superiority is not humor’s constitutive or fundamental function.
Superiority theory understands humor as a means for expressing contempt, disdain, or aggression toward others, thus demonstrating that one is morally or socially “superior” or better. Laughing at fools, people who are pathetic, due to personal choices or traits and traditions attributed to their culture, race, or religion is not a reflection of a pre-established social reality, but an active tool for forging that reality. This is one of the key arguments in Eric Lott’s Love and Theft where he argues blackface was a tool for forging social distinctions, rather than (merely) a form of entertainment. [Full disclosure: this is the backbone of my entire dissertation] But, there is also a longstanding and rich tradition of humor targeted at those who presume to be superior – religious authorities, politicians, emperors and the like. This is the role of humor out of which we get the cross-cultural phenomenon of the jester, as argued by Otto. Superiority theory seems to get at something important about humor, something about the way we can use humor to turn otherwise hard-lined norms and customs – a sort of perspective switch that is employed by humorist and audience alike, that is successful when the audience laughs at or “gets it.” But it’s not the whole story.
Coping Mechanism
Focusing on the importance of humor in contexts of historical oppression reveals that humor can provide a means for coping with, rather than denying, an insulting and oppressive world. Freud, predictably, also thought that humor was a psychological coping mechanism which provided a means for individuals to express otherwise taboo or “censored” beliefs and attitudes, the kind that we prefer to hide away in our subconscious. Jokes provide a means for psychological release or as a type of pressure valve, allowing us to express pent up fear, hatred, anxiety, or desire.
A canonical example in support of the view that humor functions as a coping mechanism is what Freud termed “gallows humor.” Gallows humor involves what is otherwise morbid and grotesque, what should not be joked about. A popular study used to draw on the psychological value of gallows humor focused on the value of jokes shared between hospital and health care professionals or firemen.
Humor functions as a coping mechanism because it allows us to take an external or “detached” perspective or personal distance from the tragedies that necessarily affect us, including those we cannot fully comprehend, like death and genocide. Humor can be a means by which people can acknowledge but not succumb to some of the most horrific events in human history, including the Holocaust and chattel slavery. Humor allows us to adopt a perspective as if we were another person, thus freeing us from the “serious” attitudes that are appropriate to someone befalling such atrocities and tragedies. Laughing in the face of the inhumane is not to minimize or dismiss it, but to revel in one’s resistance and survival. Laughter lets us express our fundamental subjectivity and freedom: that no matter what is thrown at us the human spirit can and will prevail. Nietzsche once warned that a “joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling” and perhaps he was referring to the capacity jokes have to enable this psychological distancing. However, I take the implicit point to be that some feelings deserve to die, at least for a moment or two.
Humor is a means for communities and individuals to cope with a hostile or unforgiving world, and to acknowledge without accepting those incongruities that aim to humiliate and demean, that can only attempt to rob us of our humanity and freedom. Ted Cohen dedicates an entire chapter to identifying and explaining the history and significance of the so-called “Jewish” sense of humor. Cohen argues that a focus on Jewish humor reveals how humor allows creatures like us to deal with what is otherwise incomprehensible, such as death and the incongruous nature of an all-powerful God that allows rampant misery and misfortune. Like religious faith, humor is a means for us to acknowledge what we cannot fully comprehend. Humor, it turns out, is more spiritual than guttural, as many of those socially awkward philosophers once claimed.
However, it’s hard to see how humor as a coping mechanism is wholly distinct from humor as a means for expressing superiority. In many ways, feeling superior is a way we cope with our involuntary, unequal, but necessarily human environments. Incongruity is found in all cases: whether its the incongruity of reality itself, the fact that self-conscious beings exist in a world where they know they will die but cannot do anything about it, or the ways in which other humans reveal themselves to be inhumane. Crucially, in every instance humor and laughter only make sense in a social setting, which brings us to our final and most promising philosophical theory.
Social Bonding Theory
Another popular theory about humor posits humor as a particularly effective means for expressing otherwise taboo or prohibited attitudes or terms. In the beginning of the 20th century, philosopher Henri Bergson wrote a book called Laughter where he suggested that “laughter always stands in need of an echo” because humor is a distinctly social phenomenon. 99 years later, Ted Cohen proposed in his book Jokes that jokes perform an essentially social function. According to Cohen, we tell jokes and try to make each other laugh in order to increase bonding and intimacy. Cohen argues that jokes are conditional because they require background familiarity with culturally-relative experiences, values, or events. Effectively drawing on those universal but specific experiences in order to cause people to laugh, creates what he called “affective communities” which are related to each other through the shared feelings that underlie laughter’s echo. Group laughter can be coercive: no one wants to be the “killjoy” who doesn’t laugh or the person who isn’t hip enough to “get it.” The social role of humor helps capture why humor is a particularly effective means for group creation, persistence, and solidarity, such as the use of memes in the rise and popularity of the alt-right.
Further, each of the previous theories of humor presuppose a social context or environment. For example, it is because humor is a means for expressing attitudes that are conditional on culturally-relative values and experiences that we can use jokes to further distinguish ourselves from “others” - in order to express superiority to them or to others “like us.” Though we might laugh while watching a movie alone in our room, laughter first arises because we find ourselves in a social world, as something we do with and because of other people.
In fact, it seems that the capacities required to appreciate and perform behaviors intended to make other people laugh arise relatively early. Children try to make their caregivers laugh starting around 10 months old, and do so universally. Psychologists, historians, and anthropologists all more or less agree that humor is a universal human capacity, though they disagree on its evolutionary origins and mechanisms. Someone raised by wolves would feel neither shame nor express laughter; the significance of laughter only makes sense in a world with other beings that can recognize us as laughing, and that can potentially laugh with us.
The ability to appreciate humor develops alongside the capacity to recognize a “logical” or “grammatical” order in the world, particularly as we recognize other people recognize it to be, which is why humor is conditional or culturally relative. We speak grammatically long before we can state or explain the rules of grammar. We begin telling jokes and behaving in otherwise ridiculous ways in order to make other people laugh with us, with the faith that they’ll recognize we aren’t speaking mere gibberish, or behaving awkwardly due to incompetency. Attempting to be funny or tell a joke implies that a recognition that other people also have the capacity to distance themselves from the order of the world, and can not only acknowledge but even appreciate when that order exhibits inconsistencies.
Each “theory” of humor gets something right about the nature and function of humor, but none of them can explain everything we care about when we care about humor. I think we ought to add another to the mix. I propose what I’ll call the “social acknowledgement” theory of humor. According to acknowledgement theory, humor is a method of collective acknowledgement or expression, one that requires the materials out of which communities build and navigate their social reality: mutual expectations about what is and is not permissible, appropriate, and the like. According to social acknowledgement theory, humor utilizes the same capacities for recognizing social conventions as language, which is why humor (like language) facilitates social bonding, increases intimacy, and serves as a particularly efficient means to express otherwise socially-inappropriate attitudes such as contempt and superiority, and enables us to laugh at the horrific and absurd. Jokes are like lies - a manipulation of the very capacities that make interpersonal communication and coordination possible.
In fact, I think the significance of humor in the face of the inhumane, the incomprehensible, the overbearing, and the horrific sheds light on its most important feature. One controversial topic in the philosophy of humor is the nature and permissibility of jokes that involve racist, sexist, or otherwise demeaning stereotypes. However, as I mentioned above, historically oppressed cultures have employed insult humor and self-deprecation as a means for undermining the authority of harmful stereotypes and subverting the established power structure. Importantly, to utilize harmful stereotypes that apply to oneself in order to reveal that they are ridiculous or not to be taken seriously, is not always or only to accept or endorse them. To joke about being bad at math because one is a girl is not the same as claiming that one really is bad at math because they really wear dresses. The appropriate attitude to the latter being stated as fact would be pity or dismissal. Likewise, the appropriate response to the tragic or inhumane is despair, anger, or disgust. When we take something seriously, then we are compelled to adopt a particular attitude about it given its seriousness. This is why jokes taken “too far” offend and shame - the jokester failed to appropriately gauge the seriousness of the situation.
But, as Thomas Nagel once argued, human existence is absurd because we have the perpetual capacity to consider everything we cherish most dearly and seriously as arbitrary, unserious, and utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe. This ability to “step back” from the seriousness from which we take our lives not only provides psychological relief but is a marker of our “most interesting characteristic”: self-consciousness. To be self-conscious is to be able to take this “external” perspective on oneself, to consider the necessary limits of one’s abilities without the ability to transcend them. Humor is thus a product of our essential human characteristic: our self-consciousness.
To see how humor relates to self-consciousness, consider the subversive power of insult humor. A disparaging stereotype only makes sense when uttered from the perspective of someone that despises or pities another person or group and in a larger cultural or historical context. To use that stereotype against oneself as a member the purported target class associated with that stereotype is to defang the power taking that perspective is supposed to have in the first place - the authority to enact the “distanced” perspective on oneself that leads to shame. But, to joke about the tragedies that befall us or the stereotypes that are used against us is not to “resign” oneself to the narratives dictated by the stereotype or dominant script: as pitiable, powerless, or tragic. Self-deprecating humor and insult humor are a means by which we can express and collectively acknowledge an insulting and incongruent world without endorsing, accepting, or denying it. Humor can allow us to acknowledge what is otherwise insulting or ridiculous without endorsing it (which is why comedy is a tricky moral space). Humor and laughter are collective forms of expressing self-conscious defiance.
The connection between self-consciousness and defiance was first articulated by 20th century existentialist writer and philosopher Albert Camus. Camus believed that defiance was the only appropriate attitude one can adopt in the face of the absurd. In his seminal novella The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argued that human existence is necessarily absurd because humans are value and reason-seeking creatures thrown into a valueless and irrational universe. Camus compares our existence to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who attempted to overthrown death and was sentenced to an eternal punishment of rolling a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down again each evening. According to Camus, Sisyphus’ fate is tragic because he is conscious of the futility of his actions. Likewise, humans are doomed to an existence that is also essentially futile: yearning for meaning in a universe utterly devoid of it. Camus drew on Sisyphus as an “absurd hero” because he performed his necessary but futile fate out of revolt and defiance, which Camus understood to be the only “coherent” response to the recognition of futility at the heart of the absurd.
According to Camus, taking the attitudes of faith or hope as a response the absurd amount to denying that the search for meaning is essentially and necessarily futile. Defiance and revolt, on the other hand, are attitudes that take as their precondition the recognition of futility or what is otherwise a hopeless situation: that one is responsible to a world that they had no say in and for no greater purpose or reason. For Camus, the attitude of defiance in the face of the futility and meaningless of our striving and suffering does not give our lives meaning, but instills a sense of nobility and self-respect. Defiance is the recognition of futility without the resignation that should accompany it, it is the final frontier of self-conscious freedom.
Nagel, in the piece mentioned above, criticizes Camus for taking the absurd too seriously, for judging it to be a problem in need of revolt. Nagel thinks the appropriate attitude to the absurd is irony: if nothing matters, then that doesn’t matter either and there’s no use getting worked up about it and defying a world that isn’t listening anyway. Irony involves the “external” perspective that grants us distance from an otherwise insulting world, but remaining at an ironic is psychologically inert. David Foster Wallace worried about the post-modern emphasis on irony. Wallace thought irony could serve a useful role from time to time but is alienating when made into a way of life, akin to a form of willful delusion. To be human just is to involve oneself in the world, to care about what is by all accounts idiosyncratic and trivial. Seeing the futility of combatting, say climate change, with a detached irony is to take up the position that it “doesn’t really matter.” Irony becomes incoherent in Camus’ sense when it functions as a way of life because it is identical to denying or dismissing the human significance of human concerns. Family members laughing at the techno music that accidentally plays during the funeral isn’t a marker of ironic detachment or posturing, but something more liberating, a brief repose from the seriousness of the situation. It is a brief revelation that no matter how serious life is or must be, its seriousness is and always has been based on our attitudes and behaviors. That humans concerns don’t matter to the universe is not a reason why such concerns shouldn’t matter to us. The animal that can feel sorry for itself is an animal that must be able to laugh at itself as well.
Laughter reveals the lighter side of Camusian defiance: a means by which we can collectively acknowledge futility, hostility, the wretched and absurd, without accepting it as appropriate, endorsing it, denying it, ignoring, or avoiding it. Laughter can mark collective acknowledge of something as a problem - as incongruous or unreasonable - without entailing that we’re saying it is okay, preferable, reasonable, or appropriate.
On my reading, Sisyphus’ fate isn’t tragic because he is aware that his eternal task is utterly futile - his fate is tragic because the Gods took away his ability to laugh at the futility of his condition and his suffering alongside others who he recognizes are doomed to the same fate. Perhaps Sisyphus could laugh at the gods, mocking them and demonstrating superiority, but mocking laughter isn’t the same as laughing with others at the ridiculousness of futility. Defiance may give our lives nobility but laughter redeems us, and both attitudes exhibit the incorrigibility of self-respect and limitlessness of human freedom.
According to the social acknowledgement theory, humor is a means of communal acknowledgement alongside, but importantly different from serious, straight-faced assertions and claims. Humor is a universal cultural practice that enables communities to mutually acknowledge features of the social world that might otherwise lead to offense, dismissal, or denial. Like the blues songs of Leadbelly, which are often ironic and lighthearted though dealing with the serious and insulting, art more generally operates as a medium for collective acknowledgement that operates in some sense “outside” the conventions of social reality at the same time it acknowledges or refers to them. Whether an artwork is “true” is not something we take to be important for evaluating its aesthetic value (unless the work purports to be about the truth). Art shows rather than tells, and as Wittgenstein gestured, therein lies its ethical significance as well.
Art forms like humor are the means by which we can collectively acknowledge what we might otherwise fail to fully comprehend, accept, or endorse. Revolt and laughter are politically and socially transformative because these attitudes involve an acknowledgement of what is insulting, unjust, and oppressive, of an illegitimate authority without any of the corresponding attitudes that should accompany the acknowledgement of such truths. Acknowledgement, rather than denial or avoidance, is a necessary step toward action and change.