Introduction

This chapter talks about the utility of ridicule and how this can help in building community. It discusses John Hobbes' view of ridicule and refers to it as 'Hobbesian,' an understanding of laughter as an expression of prideful superiority. To look at ridicule through a Hobbesian lens is to call into doubt the very possibility of a safe or inoffensive jest. For Hobbes, then, the problem was not that the strong would constantly laugh at the weak but that vainglorious mockers would provoke angry retaliation from those whose dignity they managed to offend. The chapter also discusses the Shaftesburian view of ridicule as a contrast to the Hobbesian view. Shaftesburian laughter could be more easily shared in company without anyone present feeling slighted or diminished. No philosophy that grounded laughter in individual self-glory could account for how shared laughter forged friendship and conviviality. Ridicule, on this view, was effective against vice because, once exposed, vice naturally inspires contempt in anyone with an uncorrupted moral sense. For Shaftesburians, certain behaviours and traits were intrinsically ridiculous, meaning that any properly constituted mind should dismiss them with laughter once exposed. On the Shaftesburian view, the element of contempt that had been so central to the Hobbesian view could never be disavowed completely. On the contrary, it was from contempt that ridicule derived both its danger and its practical efficacy as an instrument of enlightenment. The chapter presents the argument that declaring ridicule uncivil is to deny its sociable and emancipatory potential.