The Divine Hanswurst: Nietzsche on Laughter and Comedy

The purpose of this paper is to explore the philosophical significance of laughter and comedy in Nietzsche's works. Although a few scholars have noted this dimension of Nietzsche's project, these themes have yet to make their way into mainstream Nietzsche scholarship. Moreover, references to Nietzsche in current philosophical work on laughter, humor, and comedy are rare. By bringing attention to the important role that laughter and comedy play in Nietzsche's later works, I implicitly advance the case that Nietzsche scholars should pay more attention to laughter and comedy and that Nietzsche should be discussed more frequently in contemporary work on the philosophy of laughter, humor, and comedy. The structure of the paper is straightforward. In the first section, I provide evidence attesting to the significance of laughter in Nietzsche's works and then explore its philosophical significance. In the second section, I do the same with comedy by drawing parallels between Nietzsche's later philosophy and the Dionysian comedies of Aristophanes. In so doing, I show how laughter and comedy are central to Nietzsche's life-affirming ethics and his project of self-creation, but I also note that Nietzsche's understanding of laughter and comedy may challenge some of our most fundamental ethical intuitions.