Helmuth Plessner Laughing and Crying a Study of the Limits of Human Behavior

Northwestern University STUDIES IN Phenomenology 4 Existential Philosophy GENERAL EDITOR

John Wild ASSOCIATE EDITOR

James M. Edie CONSULTING EDITORS

Herbert Spiegelberg William Earle George A. Schrader Maurice Natanson Paul Bicoeur Aron Gurwitsch Calvin O. Schrag Hubert L. Dreyfus

Laughing and Crying

Helmuth Plessner "

Translated by

With a Foreword by

.Laughing and Crying

I

A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior JAMES SPENCER CHURCHILL and MARJORIE GRENE MARJORIE GR'ENE NORTHWESTERN UNIVEBSITY PRESS

EVANSTON

197

0

Copyright @

1970

by Northwestern University Press

Originally published in Gennan under the title Lachen und Weinen: Eine UnteTsuchung nach den Grenzen. menschlichen Yerhaltens. Third edition, copyright @ 1961 by A. Franke AG Verlag, Bern.

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 70-123611 ISBN: 0-8101-0321-4 Printed in the United States df America All rights reserved James S. Churchill is professor of philosophy ... at Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Marjorie Grene is professor of philosophy at the University of California at Davis.

Contents

Foreword Preface to the Third Edition Preface to the Second Edition Introduction I

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xi 3

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MAN TO HIS BODY The Problematic Nature of Laughing and Cry-

THE RELATION OF I.

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ing Against the Prejudice of a Dualistic Interpretation of Man and the False Altematives 3. The Eccentric Position 4. Mediateness and Explicitness, Face and Voice 2.

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THE MODES OF ExPRESSION OF

LAUGHING AND

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CRYING I. Language,

Gesture, and Expressive Movement 2. The Notion of Expressive Movement in the Light of Action 3. The Expressive Character of Laughing and Crying

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OCCASIONS OF LAUGHTER I. Expressive Movements 2. Play

3. 4. 5. 6.

70 of Joy and Titillation

The Comic Wit and Humor (The Joke) Embarrassment and Despair The Releasing Moment

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'LAUGHING AND CRYING

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OCCASIONS OF CRYING I. The Mediated Character

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THE SOURCE OF LAUGHING AND CRYING I'. Two Limits of Behavior

116

of Crying 2. Attempts at Classification 3. The Resonance of Feeling 4. The Releasing Moment

2.

The Two Boundary Reactions

Notes and References Index

IS8 16g

Foreword

have always been given to speculating about the nature of man, usually about his uniqueness, . sometimes about his want of uniqueness. But whatever their attitude or interest, they have nearly always focused their attention on man as knower, man as doer, man as speaker, or sometimes, man as maker. There is a whole area of human uniqueness which has been for the most part neglected, that is, the area of nODlinguistic expression, whether in facial grimace or in bodily bearing and movement. Where expression has been treated as such, it has . u sually been in the Darwinian mood of reducing what looked to be human mono~olies to their animal forerunners. But the range and subtlety of human expressiveness as such has had little investigation. It has seemed to' philosophers, if they have thought of it at all, to be peripheral to the more central questions of knowledge or action. Helmuth Plessner has long been interested in this neglected theme. In this little book he takes a particularly significant pair of types of expressive behavior, laughing and crying, and considers' them both in themselves and in their relation to the fundamental nature of man. Laughing and crying are not "intentional" actions, like -speaking, walking, or tacitly giving a sign, say, nod.. ding one's head or smiling in assent. They belong, I suppose, to the Aristotelian class of "involuntary actions.": Yet neither are they the sort-of: thing that other animals do; only human beings laugh and cry. Is this just ail accident of our glandular and muscular makeup.ior does it mean something in relation to the nature of man's existence as a whole? Plessner opts emphatically for the second alternative. He sees in these two phenomena a, PHILOSOPHERS

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LAUGHING AND CRYING

unique expression of our nature, or better, a breakdown of that nature which characteristically exposes it at its limits. All animals both are and have bodies. Man both is and has a body, and .knows it. But that is not to say with the rationalists that what characterizes man essentially is some kind of theoretical knowledge, some kind of "reason," which other animals do not possess. Nothing new is added to man in any substantive way, to distinguish him from other animals. The difference is in a relation: the relation of the living thing to its body,' Animals 1m out of the. center of their bodily being and cannot escape it. Their actions are at once absorbed into their bodily existence. Men too are animals; they live and experience out of and into the center of their bodily lives. But they are also the center itself in a way which is not the case for other animals. In the human case, life out of the center becomes reflexive: it sets itself to itself as its own. True, man cannot free himself from his own centered, animal existence; yet he has placed himself over against it. This Plessner calls "the eccentric position" of man. A living tliing exhibiting this structure is still boundby its animal nature, yet detached from it, free of it. Its life has its natural place, as all animal existence has, yet is at the very same time detached from Iocality, It is everywhere and nowhere. Nor is there any new entity "which comes from outside to create this situation-like Aristotelean voV~. There is only a new hiatus, a break in nature, which produces a new unity. In man "the living thing is body, is in its body (as inner life) and outside the body as the point of view from which it is both (body and inner Iife )." 10rily individuals characterized by this threefold structure, Plessner argues, should be called persons. The person is "subject of its experience, of its perceptions and its actions, of its initiative. It knows and it will ~. " Aspersons, then, we stand at a double distance from our own body. We are still animals, but in a peculiar way. For we have not only an inner life distinct from, though not separable from, our physical existence; we stand over against both of these, holding them apart from each other and yet together. It is our eccentric position that gives to our existence the ambiguity, of necessity and freedom, contingency and significance, which it characteristically displays. Laughing and crying, Plessner believes,tonstitute unique expressions of the breakdown of this eccentric position. It is when things are too much with us that we cry-even when we cry for

Foreword /

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joy. It is when the ambiguity in our fundamental situation breaks forth in such a way that we can't control it-and yet not in such a way that it harms us-it is in such a situation that lVe laugh. Plessner elaborates this basic theme in a number of subtle ways) and also invokes and criticizes the literature, anthropological) psychological, and in part philosophical, that is available on this double topic; but his central theme is the one just stated. It is difficult to place this work in any particular pigeonhole of philosophical literature. Indeed, Plessner himself, in his introduction, disavows any such exercise. It may, however, help American readers to find their way if we label it as belonging to that branch of philosophy known on the continent of.Europe as "philosophical anthropology." Indeed, it is a classic in this field. But) the reader may well ask, what is philosophical anthropology? On the map of contemporary philosophy, it is hard to locate. As Plessner rightly insists about his own study, it belongs neither to any special empirical -ology nor to any special philosophical -ism. Philosophical anthropology is a philosophical study of the nature of man. But as Wilfred Sellars has put it, "the aim of philosophy) abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term" (Wilfred Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963], p. I). Thus although a philosophical study of man may use psychology, neurophysiology, physical and social anthropology, sociology, it is none of these. Nor does its perspective belong to anyone philosophical school. In a way it resembles phenomenology, for its aim is description rather than argument, insight rather than analysis.)But it entails no method of reduction, no intuition of essences] no claim to apodicticity. Plessner's source in this little book, he says, is just "experience." And by this he means not the abstract units of sense or feeling of traditional empiricism but simply everyday experience in the most ordinary and comprehensive sense. The sciences of man, poetry, painting, ordinary encounters of man with man: all this may be grist for the writer's mill. Wherever he can find it he will garner insight into human nature: in this case into that strange pair of human monopolies, laughter and tears. MARJORIE GRENE

University of California, Davis November, Ig6g

-

Laughing and Crying

FOR CASPER

BAs

AND BAUKJE RAS-HEEREMA

Preface to the Third Edition

Two WORKS ON LAUGHING AND CRYING could not be taken into account in the second edition since they appeared simultaneously with it: Alfred Stern's Philosophie du rite et des pleurs (Bibl. de Philos. Contemp.) (Paris, 1949), and Francis Jeanson's Signification humaine du Tire (Paris, 1950) . Stem, who was inspired by Bergson, approaches the phenomena from the standpoint of value and disvalue. Jeanson, although a follower of Sartre in outlook and method, arrives at the same moral and philosophical standpoint: human phenomena must be considered from the perspective of value to which every human being subjects himself. (See the excellent critique by S. Strasser, "Anthropologtsche Beschouwingen over Lachen en Wenen," Tydschrift voor Philosophie, XV [1953], in which he compares Jeanson's inquiries with my own.) The psychophysical problematic plays no role for these two French authors. For Stem, the representative of an older generation, it is a matter of psychic reactions: the anthropological question is still veiled by the psychological dimension. Jeanson, on the other hand, has already passed beyond this problematic before he begins. He is an existentialist, and pursues his quite arbitrary explications on the basis of a human existence [Dasein] already immune from separation into bodily and mental dimensions: on a pre theoretical level of irresponsible moralizing, from a position perhaps also suitable for the aims of verstehende psychology. I should not neglect to mention that-also in 1950, the year in which the second edition was published-I followed Kunz's suggestion and included the phenomenon of smiling in my analy-

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LAUGHING AND CR.YING

sis. This work first appeared in the Festschrift for van der Leeuw. In 1953 it was included in my selected essays and lectures, Zwischen Philosophie und Gesellschaft (Bern). H.P.

Preface to the Second Edition

WITH ONE AUSPICIOUS and one drooping eye, as befits the case, I again send out into the world this book, which was first published irl 1941 and has been out of print for eight years. I am thankful that, despite these unauspicious times in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, the book has not lost its attraction for reader, publisher, or, let us hope, for the critics as well. I would have been happy to take more account of thoughts and suggestions from the latter, especially van der Leeuw, Binswanger, Kunz, and Portmann. But I must abstain, lest-to speak with Jean Paul-the water level of annotations rises to a menacing height, With van der Leeuw (,cGrenzen van menschelyk gedraf,' Alg. Ned. Tydschr. u. Wysbegeerte en Psychologie, XXXVI [1942]) I know that I am in complete agreement. Possibly my concept of eccentricity [Exzentrizitiit] makes, within the framework of this study, a more static iinpression than van der Leeuw's concept of abstraction in his Der Mensch und die Religion (Basel, 1940). This cannot be avoided, however, inasmuch as the" former concept is also intended to bring into view man's concrete bodily existence, for which the possibility of detachment from the body (and herewith the path to the control of bodily organs, to the limit of total self-possession) must be shown to be constitutive, even in its purely somatic expressions. Those who .know my Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (Berlin, 1928), forgotten since 1933, will concur with me in this. There I settled accounts with Cartesianism. On the other hand, I am not in accord with Binswanger's critique, which is oriented entirely to method (Schweizer Archiv fur Neurologie und Psychiatrie, XLVIII, No. I [1941]). It cannot

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LAUGHING AND CRYING

be answered even in terms of a philosophical anthropology, but only in a philosophy of anthropology, which must afford at the same time a critique of phenomenology. As a former student of Husserl, I am familiar with the misgivings of phenomenologists with regard to "theory." Binswanger is quite right; a strictly phenomenological analysis of human existence must reject concepts such as "attitude toward the body" as "constructions," not taken from man's actual self-interpretation. And there is no doubt that a self-disclosing description of the full import of human existence of the kind that Binswanger desires and carries out, a description which confines itself within the horizon of this existence, attains what descriptive psychology earlier aspired to but was unable to attain with the ontological technique at its disposal, namely, the explication -..of the matter-of-course [des Selbstverstiindlichen]. Similar tendencies are also apparent in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. To understand a phenomenon means, in this dimension, to take it back into the particular context of meaning from which it arose. Does not Binswanger himself really see this when" he holds that the question whether I have succeeded in understanding (or explaining?) laughing and crying as limiting cases of human behavior is answerable only on the basis of a newly elaborated theory? I take heart from Binswanger's acknowledgment that I was the first to advance a theory of laughing and crying-and now await the second. I was tempted to follow the suggestion of Hans Kunz (Basler Nachrichten, December 28, 1941) and specifically include the phenomenon of smiling in my account, but I had to resist the temptation. Smiling is a mode of expression sui generis. It is ( I) a germinal form, a braking form, and a transitional form for laughing and crying, thus, a mimic * expression surrounded by nonmimic expressions; (2) an expression "of" and gesture "for" an Incalculable profusion of feelings, sentiments, attitudes, modes of social intercourse, and states or conditions, such as civility and awkwardness, superiority and embarrassment, compassion, understanding, indulgence, stupidity and cleverness, gentleness and irony, inscrutability and candor, repulsion and enticement, astonishment and recognition; (3) a gesture of pre• ccMimic"-pronounced mimic, formed from "mime't-s-is used here as an English rendering of mimisch, "silently expressive," as in "mime," but "spontaneous." There is no connotation of "mimicry" or "imitation."-M. G.

Preface to the Second Edition /

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tense (~'Keep smiling from East Asia to America") * which says everything and nothing, the representative gesture par excellence, to this extent an exemplar of eccentricity as the unbridgeable gap between man and himself. In a word, I would have had to add a chapter to the book which would have widened its compass, and I feared this would weaken its impact. Perhaps I was wrong; in that case I hope in the third edition to be able to make up for the omission. I have dealt in the Notes with Adolf Portmann's observations in his Biologische Fraqmente zu einer Lehre vom Menschen (Basel, 1944) and "Die Biologie und das Phanomen des Geistigen' (Eranos-lahrbuch, XIV [1946]). For the rest, I have assimilated, in addition, some of the older and some of the more recent literature; on the other hand, I have made no changes in the text. At this point, I should also like to express my sincere thanks to my critics and my publisher, Dr. Lang in Bern, for their confidence in me. I

Our idea of what is common to all men and differentiates them from other beings adheres-within the framework of familiar types of physical appearance and posture-to certain modes of behavior which are capable of development and which facilitate the intellectual and historical existence of man on whatever level or interpretation of culture you will: speaking, acting methodically, and shaping things in various ways [variables Gestalten]. Strange to say, however, our conception of the human monopolies deals as well with two forms or, indeed, outbursts, of an elementary character, incapable of-higher development: laughing and crying. No reference to their lack of utility and the various ways in which we may find them offensive can dissuade us from thinking that a creature without the possibility of laughing and crying is not human. No attempt, however ingenious, to find instances of laughing and crying among animals can overcome our mistrust of them and release us from the duty of clarifying what laughing and crying really mean. For this, as with all specifically human utterances, man himself must be heard. Only his grasp of these utterances, the interpretation which he gives them, the significance which he confers on them in the management of his life, reveals them in their • The original reads: "Keep smiling von Ostasien bis Amerika"

-J.S.C.

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LAUGHING AND CRYING

full extent, and, what is more, ali this belongs to them internally as their formative and impelling power. Any external registration of sound stimuli, of gesture and expressive movement [Gebiirde] , • misses the significance