On Heidegger: This passage being less stercorine

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Highly amusing exegesis of a "passage" from Heidegger's On the Way to Language over at the Varieties of Unreligious Experience. The following is Heidegger:

I: What is the Japanese word for “language”?

J: (after further hesitation) It is “Koto ba.”

I: And what does that say?

J: ba means leaves, including and especially the leaves of a blossom-petals [sic]. Think of cherry-blossoms or plum blossoms.

I: And what does Koto say?

J: This is the question most difficult to answer. But it is easier now to attempt an answer because we have ventured to explain Iki: the pure delight of the beckoning stillness. The breath of stillness that makes this beckoning delight come into its own is the reign under which that delight is made to come. But Koto always also names that which in the event gives delight, itself, that which uniquely in each unrepeatable moment comes to radiance in the fullness of its grace.

I: Koto, then, would be the appropriating occurrence of the lightening message of grace [das Ereignis der lichtenden Botschaft der Anmut].

J: Beautifully said!

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Following is excerpted exegesis from Varieties of Unreligious Experience:

My bullshit-detectors were, at this point, raging out of control. (I concede the possibility—certainly not the likelihood—of this passage being less stercorine in the original German.)

... Perhaps Heidegger would praise Tezuka's remarks, in his own words, as 'playful thinking that is more compelling than the rigor of science'.

... Heidegger's project, in this book, and this dialogue, is to come to terms with (or at least address) the alterity of Japanese thinking, and consequently of its language.

... But Heidegger's real project is to make strange even Western thinking and language.

... Heidegger here defines iki as 'the pure delight of the beckoning stillness'. Wikipedia articulates the word's meanings with the adjectives 'simple, improvised, straight, restrained, temporary, romantic, ephemeral, original, refined, inconspicuous'. One can only conclude that there are few minds less iki than that of Martin Heidegger.

cf:
stercorine

Grace note: I am reminded of joke that my father used to tell me when I was young (and never understood until years later).

Did you hear about the cannibal who passed his friend in the jungle?


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What's the difference between a duck?

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Q: What's the difference between a duck?
A: One leg is both the same.

(From Metafilter via plep)

The Mechanics of Laughter

I once read that the Greek Philosopher, Chrysippus, died from laughter after he saw a donkey eating some figs. That seemed strange to me until I imagined the scene. To this day, I find donkeys almost unbearably amusing, especially if they are eating. I can't explain it. Something about the donkey's mouth and teeth and the simple donkeyness of it all.

Arthur Koestler had an interesting take on humor. For him, it was produced by what he called "bisociation" - the sudden intersection of two previously unconsidered "planes" of thought.

In Janus, he writes:

[Humor] is the perceiving of a situation or idea in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference or associative contexts.

And further on:

The criteria which determine whether a humorous offering will be judged good, bad or indifferent, are of course partly a matter of period taste and personal preference, partly dependent on the style and technique of the humorist. It would seem that these criteria can be summed up under three main headings: (a) originality, (b) emphasis, (c) economy.

The merits of originality are self-evident; it provides the essential element of surprise, which cuts across our expectations. But true originality is not very often met either in humor or in other forms of art. One common substitute for it is to increase the tension of the audience by various techniques of suggestive emphasis. The clown's domain is the rich, coarse type of humor; he piles it on; he appeals to sadistic, sexual, scatalogical impulses; one of his favorite tricks is repetition of the same situation, the same key-phrase. This diminishes the effect of surprise, but helps in drawing emotion into the familiar channel - more and more liquid is being pumped into the punctured pipeline.

Emphasis on local color and ethnic peculiarities - as in Scotish, Jewish Cockney stories - is a further means to channel emotion into familiar tracks. The Scotsman or Cockney must of course be caricatures if the comic purpose is to be achieved - in other words, exaggeration and simplification once more appear as indispensable tools to provide emphasis.

In the highest forms of humor, however, emphasis tends to yield to the opposite kind of virtue: economy. Economy, in humor and art, does not mean mechanical brevity, but the implicit hint of the explicit statement - the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack. The old-fashioned Punch cartoon featuring the British lion and the Russian bear 'rubs it in'; the New Yorker cartoon poses a riddle which the reader must solve be an imaginative effort in order to 'see the joke'.

In humor, as in other forms of art, emphasis and economy are complementary techniques. The first forces the offering down the consumer's throat; the second tantalizes, to whet his appetite.

So, since I have initially emphasized a rather clown-like Chrysippus, I should balance things out with something more economical: my current favorite joke. I came across it in The 100 Funniest Joke of All Time compiled by Don Steinberg for GQ:

Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says "I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here."

I burst out laughing when I read this. Koestler's bisociation certainly works. But to imagine the third guys expression. And just the pathos of it all. Then, something more essentially human. The condition of abandonment, desolation, forlornity. I think it is a supremely economical joke. It takes no skill to tell; the simple mechanics of humor power it right along. That's amazing to me. And funny as hell.