SAE Laughter · III: Purpose Enters the Construct Laughed At
SAE 笑论·三：目的进入所笑之构
14DD is the self with a purpose, and its remainder is "I am not the only end — the other is also an end". This paper discusses laughter once one's own purpose has entered the construct laughed at.
Hobbes's two causes of laughter each find their place here. Laughter caused by a sudden act of one's own that pleases oneself is the laughter of triumph: its construct is a frame still straining, not yet complete, and its remainder is "already done"; the laugh comes only if the thing is accomplished while the frame is still taut. Its delight is an emotion that comes along with it, arising from a purpose achieved, and it is an emotion just as the bitterness of wry laughter is: triumph and wry laughter are a pair at 14DD, and in both the construct is my purpose. Laughter that sees a defect in another, compares, and suddenly raises oneself up is comparative laughter; what distinguishes it from the onlooker's laughter of 13DD is that one's own purpose has entered the construct laughed at. If comparative laughter laughs at the person, exempts the laugher, and leaves the other no way to refrain from laughing and no way to correct it without being punished, it is derision; this paper reads derision as 14DD failing the test of its own remainder. This paper also separates laughter as judgment from doing things with laughter, and records three columns case by case: the relation judged this time, the laugher's operation at that moment, and the action around the laugh. The slyness of sly laughter lies in holding back; teasing points with laughter; the laughter of love says it and still cannot say it all. Whether it is cultivation or severing is decided neither by the laugher's motive alone nor by any single consequence alone. Finally, this paper takes up the kindly superego of Freud's "Humour": Psychoanalysis III, §2.2, mentions the discussion of a benign superego in the post-Freudian literature; how the superego of "Humour" maps onto it, this paper does not decide, nor does it fix a layer by the name "superego".
Keywords: 14DD, purpose, Hobbes, the laughter of triumph, comparative laughter, derision, wry laughter, sly laughter, teasing, doing things with laughter, Freud
1. 14DD: Purpose and Its Remainder
1.1 What 14DD Is
SAE Psychoanalysis (III) defines 14DD as self-with-purpose, that is, the self with a direction. It is drawn from the Ego-Ideal line within Freud's superego, the line of "what I should become"; the punitive-conscience line is reassigned as a pathological form of 13DD, or as a residue of colonization at 14DD. The bridge of 14DD is finitude: knowing that one will come to an end and acting all the same; action needs reasons, and purpose emerges from this. Its remainder is: I am not the only end; the other is an end too.
1.2 What Laughter Gains at This Layer
At 13DD, laughter acquired an owner. At 14DD, one's own purpose enters the construct laughed at. It enters in two ways, and there is a third matter that is often mixed in with them; this paper treats them separately:
- The purpose is the construct. The thing I strain toward, my life's work, is itself seen to still have such a remainder. The laughter of triumph and wry laughter are of this kind (Sections 2 and 4).
- Purpose enters a comparison. I compare others with myself, and self-elevation enters the construct laughed at. Comparative laughter and derision are of this kind (Sections 2 and 3).
- Doing things with laughter. This is the action around a laugh: holding back, pointing out in public, satire, pranks (Section 5). Actions have purposes, but the purpose of an action is not the same as my purpose being in the construct laughed at; the fact that someone uses a laugh to get something done does not by itself show that the judgment in that laugh is at 14DD.
So this paper records three columns for each case separately: the relation judged this time (construct and remainder); the laugher's operation at that moment (the layer at which the laugher stands); the action around the laugh. No column is filled in on behalf of another; the cases are summarized in Section 7. The laugher's layer is not automatically derived from the layer of the construct laughed at, from the name of the laugh, or from the use the laugh is put to afterwards (Overview, 6.1).
1.3 Laughter as Judgment, and Doing Things with Laughter
At this layer one distinction must be established first: laughter as judgment and doing things with laughter are two different things. Laughter as judgment is the event the Overview describes, "the construct still has such a remainder"; it comes irresistibly. Doing things with laughter is action around this judgment, and can be assessed as cultivation or as severing. The truth of this judgment, its factual basis, and the consequences of applying it are to be examined separately.
Keeping the two apart has two advantages. First, one need not deny that a laugh is a genuine judgment just because it was used to wound; the derider has often really seen a remainder. Second, one need not defend what a laugh does just because it is a genuine judgment. What the Overview's seventh thesis calls "making someone laugh at a certain point by means of consequences" is colonization insofar as it claims a judgment on that person's behalf; what colonizes is the action, not the judgment.
2. The Laughter of Triumph and Comparative Laughter: Hobbes's Two Causes
2.1 Hobbes's Two Causes
In Chapter 6 of Leviathan, Hobbes says that "sudden glory" is the passion that produces the grimace called laughter, and that it is caused either by some sudden act of one's own that pleases oneself, or by seeing some defect in another, by comparison with which one suddenly applauds oneself. The superiority theory of laughter is often put down to Hobbes, but what he actually gives is two causes, and the first need not go through comparison with another person's defect. This paper reads the two causes as the laughter of triumph and comparative laughter respectively. Both are at 14DD, because in both one's own purpose enters the construct laughed at; they differ only in the way it enters.
2.2 The Laughter of Triumph
First, look at how this laugh actually arises:
- Still tense while checking the results list, one sees the word "admitted" (录取) and laughs out loud.
- At the moment of breaking the tape, the athlete's whole body is still driving, and the race is already won.
The two have the same structure. The construct is a frame still straining, not yet complete: the body is tense, the mind is still inside "not yet". The remainder is "already done". The frame has a place only for "not yet" and none for "already", so "already done" is exactly the point it has not taken in at this moment. The "still" sits at the level of being in use and hangs on the construct: the straining frame is still operating at this moment. Attention falls on "already", and so there is laughter; if attention stays on "it nearly didn't come off just now", what comes out is belated fear, not laughter.
Here the gap stands guard: this laugh comes only if the thing is accomplished while the frame is still taut. If success comes step by step, one sees it coming well in advance, the frame relaxes first, and when it arrives what one feels is satisfaction, not this laugh. So not every accomplishment brings laughter. A second case can be registered: the manner of accomplishment is unexpected, as when the ball clips the post and bounces into the goal; that laugh already comes close to the ordinary comic, and the core remains the first case.
The laughter of triumph has delight in it, delight at a purpose achieved. Following Overview, 5.1, this delight is an emotion that comes along with it, while the laugh is the jolt of cannot-not; the two meet at that moment, but they are not the same thing. The bitterness of wry laughter is also an emotion. So triumph and wry laughter are a pair at 14DD: in both the construct is my purpose; the remainder is "already done" on the one side and, on the other, the cost and the place to which the purpose has taken one; the emotion that comes along is delight on the one side and bitterness on the other (Section 4).
Purpose here means purpose along the line of "what I should become" described in 1.1. An intention is not a purpose: a laugh caused by a passing intention suddenly being fulfilled does not belong to this section; it is recorded separately by where the laugher stands at that moment, and is often what Paper II calls suddenness within one person.
Its boundary with the knowing smile (会心之笑) of Paper IV lies in what the laugh judges: the laughter of triumph judges my accomplishment; the knowing smile judges that my old grasp still has the place where he stands, and lets that place remain his; not doubting that any subject who has reached this point would see it this way is what this looks like within a single laugh (Paper IV, 6.2). If what a laugh judges is one's own accomplishment, and it is not merely that a joy at having gained something accompanies one's looking back, then it is not the knowing smile; whether it is the laughter of triumph is checked separately against the frame of this section. Joy by itself does not change the layer assignment (Overview, 5.1).
2.3 Comparative Laughter
Hobbes's second cause is seeing another's defect, comparing oneself with it, and suddenly applauding oneself. Here the construct laughed at is someone else's, and the remainder is that person's defect; but my own purpose also enters the construct laughed at: I use him to measure myself, and in the moment of measuring I raise myself up.
Comparative laughter and the onlooker's laughter of Paper II both sit in the cell "I see, the other does not" of the Overview's seeing grid; the difference lies in whether comparison comes in. Someone reading the story of the man of Chu who marked his boat to find his sword (刻舟求剑) may laugh simply at seeing the man trapped in his construct; this is onlooking. If, while laughing, the reader says inwardly "I'd never be that stupid", his own purpose (self-elevation) has come in; this is comparison. Kant's example of the Indian is the touchstone for this boundary: Kant says explicitly that we laugh not because we think ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man.
2.4 Hobbes's Own Caution
Hobbes did not praise comparative laughter. In the same chapter he says that much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity, and that one of the proper works of great minds is to help others and free them from derision, and to compare themselves only with the most able. This caution leads straight into Section 3: if comparative laughter laughs at the person and exempts the laugher, it becomes derision; and 14DD has a remainder that is a test it must itself pass.
3. Derision: 14DD Failing the Test of Its Own Remainder
3.1 Structure
Derision is a kind of comparative laughter: I see the remainder of the other's construct, yet what I laugh at is the other person; my own construct is tacitly exempted, as if I had no remainder; the end point is often the other's embarrassment. It contains a judgment, and it also contains an action: the judgment is "his construct still has such a remainder"; the action is imposing this judgment on him in public while placing oneself outside the construct.
Schopenhauer, in Chapter 8 of Volume II, describes derision as announcing to the defeated opponent how badly the ideas he had held fail to agree with reality. This description captures a common end point of derision: the other is defeated.
3.2 The Remainder of 14DD
The remainder of 14DD is "the other is also an end". Derision is precisely a failure of this test: in derision, the other is used as material for my self-elevation, his construct is treated as my entertainment, and his embarrassment as my gain. According to Psychoanalysis III, if a purpose can be sustained only by denying the other's independence, it remains structurally at 14DD and even moves toward forced construct-closure. Derision can thus slide toward severing: the object of the laughter slides from the construct to the person.
A second-order structure is also worth noting. The derider tacitly assumes that his own construct has no remainder, and this is exactly the posture he derides: treating a construct as though it had no remainder. So the derider himself often becomes the object of the next laugh.
3.3 How Derision and Teasing Are Told Apart
Derision and teasing (Section 5) both use laughter to point to the remainder of someone else's construct. They cannot be told apart by the laugher's motive alone. What this series offers is three tests, not a single criterion:
- Is it the construct or the person that is laughed at? Teasing laughs at the construct; derision laughs at the person.
- Does the laugher exempt himself? Teasing often counts the laugher in as well ("I was like that once"); derision tacitly assumes the laugher has no remainder.
- Can the other decline to laugh, and correct it without being punished? This test matters most. If the other has no way to disagree, then whatever the laugher has in mind, no room has been left.
End points can overlap: a single tease can at once embarrass the other, make the other laugh too, and lead the other to repair his own construct. The end point is only one aspect of the testing and does not by itself decide between cultivation and severing; the three tests have to be taken back to the concrete application and walked through one by one.
3.4 A Hard Case: Kong Rong's Reply to Chen Wei
The Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World), in its chapter "Speech and Conversation" (言语), records that when Kong Rong was ten he went with his father to Luoyang, and Chen Wei, a Grand Master of the Palace (太中大夫), remarked to others: "Bright as a child does not mean fine as a man (小时了了，大未必佳)." Kong Rong answered at once: "I imagine, sir, that as a child you must have been very bright (想君小时，必当了了)." The text adds that Wei was greatly discomfited (韪大踧踖).
First, sort out who is doing what. The text records one remark by Kong Rong and Chen Wei's discomfiture; it does not record anyone laughing. What Kong Rong produced was speech, not laughter. The ones who laugh are the readers, and a reader's laugh is recorded separately, by the layer at which that reader stands at that moment. So there are two things to examine here: Kong Rong's remark as an action of "pointing with words", and the reader's laugh.
The structure of Kong Rong's remark is to turn the other's construct back upon him: the rule Chen Wei applied to the child turns out to have such a remainder too, namely Chen Wei himself. Walking through the three tests of 3.3 one by one:
- Construct or person: the rule is turned onto Chen Wei himself; what is pointed at is the rule, but where it lands is the person. Both sides are present.
- Self-exemption: not discernible. Kong Rong neither puts himself in nor shows that he places himself outside.
- Can the other decline to laugh, and correct it without being punished: Chen Wei is a Grand Master of the Palace and Kong Rong a ten-year-old child; but this passage alone is not enough to determine which side would be punished for answering back. What Chen Wei suffers is discomfiture; the text does not say he was suppressed and unable to reply. Derision cannot be established, and there is no need to certify that the other side was safe either.
Having walked through all three, derision cannot be established. The end point is embarrassment, but the end point does not decide on its own.
The reader's laugh is recorded separately. What it judges is "this rule still has such a remainder, namely the very man who states it". The layer at which a reader stands at that moment varies from reader to reader: one who sees only the rule turning back on its speaker is an onlooker; if one delights in Chen Wei's discomfiture and inwardly raises oneself up, one's own purpose has come in, and again the tests of 3.3 are walked through one by one. This judgment is not settled on its behalf by Chen Wei's discomfiture.
This case is kept as a hard case, and that is exactly its use: it is the test case for the end-point criterion between teasing and derision, and it shows that a clever remark cannot be characterized by its consequences.
4. Wry Laughter: The Remainder of the Construct of Purpose
4.1 Structure
The construct of wry laughter is one's own purpose: the plans, the vocation, the lifelong ambition along the line of "what I should become". It still has such a remainder: the cost paid for it, or the unexpected place to which it has taken one. At that moment the laugher still stands within this purpose and still owns it as his own; the remainder is also in view, and the cost is not small. Attention falls on the remainder, and so there is laughter; if it falls on the loss of the purpose, there is weeping.
The bitterness is an emotion and comes from the cost; the laugh is the jolt of cannot-not and comes from focus. The two characters of 苦笑 (literally "bitter laugh") are exactly these two layers (Overview, 5.1). Section 3 of the Overview says that cost sorts the kinds of laughter but does not separate laughter from weeping; wry laughter is an instance of exactly that statement.
Schopenhauer, in Chapter 8 of Volume II, discusses wry laughter: one's own laugh when an expectation one held with complete conviction is exposed. This agrees with the present section, except that Schopenhauer still reads it in terms of victory and defeat: the expectation has lost to reality. This paper's reading is that the expectation (the construct) is still owned as one's own, the point that exposes it (the remainder) is in view together with it, and the laugh does not judge who won.
4.2 An Example: Su Shi's "Inscribed on My Portrait at Jinshan" (自题金山画像)
Late in life Su Shi inscribed a portrait of himself: "My heart is like wood already burnt to ash; my body like a boat untethered. I ask you, what has your life's work been (问汝平生功业)? Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou (黄州惠州儋州)." The poem does not mention laughter; what follows is this paper's reading.
"Life's work" is a construct of purpose: what a scholar-official strains toward over a whole life. Asked about it, the answer is three places of banishment. These three place-names are the remainder of this construct: what the construct of achievement did not take in is precisely the places it brought him to. On the reading this paper has chosen, he still asks about his "life's work", and so still owns it; the fact of asking does not by itself rule out that he is looking back at a construct he has already set down. The remainder is there too: the three places of exile, each one distinct and countable. The force of these two lines lies in attention not stopping at the loss of achievement but falling on the string of remainders "Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou", and in giving them as the answer, as the achievement itself. This is exactly the structure of wry laughter: the cost is extremely heavy, and it is still laughter.
4.3 Wry Laughter and the Laughter of Despair
Wry laughter and the laughter of despair of Paper IV can both carry very heavy costs, but their layers differ. Wry laughter is at 14DD: the purpose is still operating, and one still stands within one's own purpose, only seeing its cost as a remainder. The laughter of despair is at 15DD by the four definitional conditions of Paper IV, 2.3: the subject is convinced that at this moment no option whatever remains, and this grasp claims to have no remainder left; one sees that one is, astonishingly, still searching, and sees this seeker as one's own direction (if what one sees is a futile self, it is the self-mockery of 13DD). Whether there really is a way out has little to do with it. The former is a remainder of the construct of purpose; the latter is a remainder of the subject's situation. Su Shi wrote these lines late in life, and a reader may also read them toward the laughter of despair; this paper takes only their construct-of-purpose side and leaves the other side to Paper IV.
5. Doing Things with Laughter: Sly Laughter, Teasing and the Laughter of Love
In the Overview's seeing grid, the cell "I see, the other does not" holds several kinds of laughter: sly laughter, teasing, derision, the laughter of love. Their judgment is the same: "his construct still has such a remainder, and he has not yet seen it". What differs is the action around this judgment, that is, how the gap is handled. This section separates them by their manner of pointing.
5.1 Sly Laughter: Able to Point, Yet Not Pointing
Sly laughter laughs at the other side's running into a construct and failing to find its remainder. It is not sudden but persistent, because it is waiting for the moment the other finds that remainder. Following Overview, 4.1, a gap within one person is sudden, and a gap between persons is persistent; sly laughter belongs to the latter, and its end point lies in the other.
There is a story about Nasreddin (known to Chinese readers as Afanti, 阿凡提). He borrowed a pot from his neighbour, and when he returned it he added a small pot, saying the pot had given birth; the neighbour gladly accepted. The next time he borrowed the pot he did not return it, saying the pot had died. When the neighbour asked how a pot could die, he replied: if you believed it could give birth, why not believe it could die? From the first return of the pot onward, Nasreddin saw that the neighbour's construct (believing anything when there is a bargain to be had) still had such a remainder; he kept holding it back, and waited; the story ends with him spelling it out himself. So the story is not pure sly laughter: it also shows the fork that follows sly laughter. Once it has been spelled out, whether the neighbour is embarrassed or laughs too, the story does not say.
The slyness of sly laughter lies not in the laugh but in holding back. Holding back is an action, and what it is for decides which way this laugh goes: if it is to watch the other get stuck, it slides toward derision; if it is to let the other chisel it out himself, it comes close to what SAE's Education as Subject-Condition calls cultivation: not blocking, letting the subject chisel for itself. A teacher holding back an answer and a prankster holding back the trick may make exactly the same judgment, yet the actions differ.
Once sly laughter is recorded in three columns, its layers come apart too. The judgment of sly laughter, "I see, he does not", requires representing the other's present not-knowing as the state of another subject, that is, the distinction between subject and other. Only waiting, as Nasreddin does, for the neighbour to believe something false requires an understanding of false belief. The judgment of sly laughter is at 13DD at the earliest, for reasons of structure and not of age; mirror self-recognition and knowledge access are only signs of this structure (Paper I, 4.2); the layer of any particular sly laugh is still recorded by where the laugher stands at that moment. Before this, the giggling in hide-and-seek tracks the relation "he hasn't found me yet", which Paper I registers as a tendency of the sly-laughter structure. "Holding it back and not telling", as an action done with laughter, is something of which purpose can be spoken, and it is discussed in this paper; but the purpose of this action does not fix the layer of that laugh's judgment.
5.2 Teasing: Pointing with Laughter
Teasing points with the laugh itself. Diogenes brought a plucked chicken into Plato's lecture room and said: "Here is Plato's man." The source does not record him laughing; what follows is this paper's reading: he points with the plucked chicken, pointing out that the definition "featherless biped" still has such a remainder. According to Diogenes Laertius, "having broad nails" was then added to the definition; the text uses the passive voice and does not say who added it. The end point of this case is absorption: the remainder is taken into the repaired construct.
The story of Foyin and Su Shi, "unmoved by the eight winds, yet blown across the river by a single fart (八风吹不动，一屁打过江)", is widely told and often taken as an example of teasing; but Su Shi's reaction differs from version to version: in some he is mortified and angry, in others he roars with laughter. One must first choose the version to be used and then judge it by the three tests of 3.3 one by one, not settle it by the single consequence of whether he was mortified or laughed.
Teasing can serve to wake someone up, and can even have the effect of cultivation: it does not hand over the answer, it only points with a laugh, leaving the step of seeing to the other. But, as Section 3 said, this is only a possibility; it depends on whether the other can decline to laugh and can correct it without being punished.
5.3 The Laughter of Love: Said, Yet Never Said in Full
The laughter of love has the same structure as sly laughter: I love you, and you know it, but you do not yet know that I love you that much. What has been registered is "love"; what has not yet been registered is "that much". The formula's "such a remainder" lands here on the words "that much". It differs from sly laughter in its manner of pointing: sly laughter could say it and does not; the laughter of love says it and still cannot say it all.
In the children's book Guess How Much I Love You (McBratney), the little hare shows again and again, with gestures, how much he loves, and every time the big hare says it out loud, always reaching a bit further. The book does write laughter: the little hare speaks laughing as he hops (laughed), the big hare answers smiling (smiled), and at the end the big hare whispers, smiling (per the Candlewick US edition, 1995, pp. 24, 26, 36). The structural explanation that follows is this paper's reading: each time the big hare speaks, the little hare's measure gains another remainder; saying it does not exhaust the "that much". That the book writes laughter does not certify the layer of this laugh.
Which layer the laughter of love falls in requires first asking which kind of love it is. SAE Psychoanalysis (IV), §2.3, distinguishes: "I do things for you" is 14DD investment; "I confirm you are an independent end" is 15DD. If the big hare's love is the former, the laughter of love is at 14DD; if the latter, at 15DD. This determination must check the operation of the laugh in question, and not rely on the name "love". Nor is the laughter of love exempt from testing because it cannot be said in full: "Sooner or later you'll understand how much I love you" can also become a reason for not allowing the other to disagree. If two people look at each other and laugh, each taking the other as an end, neither doubting that the other will laugh, that is 16DD laughter, which this series only registers (Paper IV, Section 7).
6. Freud's Gallows Humour
6.1 Freud's Example and Explanation
In "Humour" (German 1927; Riviere's English translation 1928), Freud gives an example: a prisoner being led to the gallows on a Monday remarks that, well, this week is off to a good start. His explanation is that humour saves the expenditure of emotion that the situation would otherwise have called for; the superego comforts the frightened ego as an adult comforts a child, as if saying: look, this world that seems so dangerous is no more than a children's game, fit only to be joked about. Humour thereby rejects the demands of reality. The essay speaks of this kindly superego in a hypothetical tone.
6.2 Which Line This Superego Belongs To
SAE Psychoanalysis (III) splits Freud's superego into two lines: the Ego-Ideal line ("what I should become") goes to 14DD; the punitive-conscience line is reassigned as a pathological form of 13DD, or as a residue of colonization at 14DD. Its §2.2 mentions two things, both attributed to the post-Freudian literature: discussion of the benign superego, and debate over the superego's "positive functions"; that paper reads them as recovering the submerged Ego-Ideal line.
Whether the kindly, consoling superego of "Humour" is the benign superego mentioned there, this paper does not decide. It consoles, yet does not set out "what I should become", and in this it differs from the typical form of the Ego-Ideal line; but this is no ground for saying that the upstream paper has not discussed a benign superego. This paper registers it as not yet mapped, to be settled after case-by-case alignment with Psychoanalysis III, §2.2. While it remains registered, the layer of this laugh is not fixed by the name "superego".
6.3 Divergence from the Laughter Series
First, the three columns (this paper's reading). The relation judged: the construct used in this week is off to a good start is the plans for and expectations of a week; the remainder is that this week is not going to happen. He says the remainder in the grammar of this very construct, so construct and remainder are in view together. The layer at which the laugher stands at that moment: undetermined; see below. The action around the laugh: he made a joke.
Freud's explanation differs from this series in two places. First, for him the superego sees the world as a children's game: the danger is shrunk and the demands of reality are rejected; the essay says this plainly, and this paper does not soften it on his behalf. It is close to Kant's expectation transformed into nothing. On this series' side, construct and remainder are both in view, the danger is still a danger, and the laugh neither decides whether it stays or goes nor rejects it. Second, his structure is one of looking down: the superego stands above and consoles the ego. The laughter of despair of Paper IV has no party looking down: the present I opens toward the future self, and that self is not above but ahead. The two differ in tense, and they differ in the other they confirm.
So gallows humour has two possible places in this series. If at that moment the prisoner stands within his own purpose, the week's plans are still his, and he has spoken the remainder of this week's construct, then the laugh neighbours wry laughter and is at 14DD. If he has discovered that he is, astonishingly, still thinking in terms of "a week", still searching within a grasp that claims "there is nothing left", and if this meets the four conditions of Paper IV, 2.3, then it falls toward the laughter of despair of Paper IV; if what he sees is a futile self, it is close to the self-mockery of 13DD. The original gives too little information to decide between the two; this paper keeps both open.
7. The Three-Column Summary Table
The cases of this paper are listed below in the three columns. Undetermined cells are written as undetermined; no column is filled in on behalf of another (1.2).
| Case | Relation judged (construct and remainder) | The laugher's operation at that moment | Action around the laugh |
|---|---|---|---|
| The laughter of triumph: exam results, finish line (2.2) | A frame still straining, not yet complete; the remainder is "already done" | Standing within one's own purpose, 14DD | No necessary action |
| Comparative laughter (2.3) | Someone else's construct, with his defect as the remainder; my self-elevation enters the construct laughed at | 14DD; without comparison, it is the onlooker's laughter of Paper II | No necessary action |
| Derision (3.1) | As for comparative laughter | 14DD, failing "the other is also an end" | Imposing the judgment on the other in public, exempting oneself; judged by the three tests of 3.3 |
| Kong Rong's reply to Chen Wei (3.4) | Kong Rong's words: Chen Wei's rule still has such a remainder, namely himself; the reader's laugh judges the same | The text does not record Kong Rong laughing; if, on this paper's reading, Kong Rong had such a laugh, his standing is undetermined; the reader's laugh varies by reader | Kong Rong points with words; the three tests do not establish derision |
| Wry laughter: Su Shi (4.2) | The construct of his life's work; the remainder is the places it took him | The poem does not record laughter; if, on this paper's reading, there is such a laugh, he still stands within the purpose, 14DD; the other side can be read toward Paper IV (4.3) | Spoken in a poem (this paper's reading) |
| Sly laughter: Nasreddin (5.1) | "I see, he does not": the neighbour's construct still has such a remainder | The text does not record Nasreddin laughing; if, on this paper's reading, he laughs, the judgment of sly laughter is at 13DD at the earliest, and this instance's standing is checked separately; the giggling of hide-and-seek is a 12DD tendency | Holding back, whose purpose sets the direction; ends with spelling it out |
| Teasing: the plucked chicken (5.2) | The definition "featherless biped" still has such a remainder | The text does not record laughter; if, on this paper's reading, someone laughs, the standing is undetermined | Pointing with a plucked chicken; the end point is absorption |
| The laughter of love: the hare book (5.3) | The registered "love"; the remainder is "that much" | Depends on which kind of love: investment is at 14DD, confirming an independent end is at 15DD; check each time | Said out loud, never said in full; must also pass the tests |
| Gallows humour (6.3) | The plans for and expectations of a week; the remainder is that this week is not going to happen | The text does not record the prisoner laughing; if, on this paper's reading, there is such a laugh, 14DD and 15DD are both kept open | Making a joke |
8. Connections and Contrasts
| Point in this paper | Connection (within SAE) | Contrast (external) |
|---|---|---|
| 14DD is the self with a purpose; its remainder is that the other is also an end | Psychoanalysis III | — |
| Three columns recorded separately: relation judged, laugher's operation, action with laughter (summary table, Section 7) | Overview, 6.1 | — |
| The laughter of triumph: the straining frame and "already done"; paired with wry laughter | Overview, 4.1 (the gap), 5.1 (emotion and laughter) | Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 6 |
| Comparative laughter | Overview, 4.5; the onlooker's laughter of Paper II | Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 6 |
| Derision slides toward severing; the three tests | Psychoanalysis III: forced construct-closure; internal colonization | Schopenhauer, vol. II, ch. 8 (derision) |
| Kong Rong: a hard case; the three tests do not establish derision | The three tests; the end point does not decide on its own | Shishuo xinyu, "Speech and Conversation" |
| Wry laughter: the bitterness is an emotion, the laugh is cannot-not | Overview, Section 3, 5.1 | Schopenhauer, Volume II, Chapter 8 (wry laughter); Su Shi, "Inscribed on My Portrait at Jinshan" |
| Sly laughter: the judgment at 13DD at the earliest, the tendency at 12DD, holding back in this paper | Paper I; the 13DD window of Education as Subject-Condition; Education as Subject-Condition: not blocking, letting the subject chisel for itself | The Nasreddin story |
| The end point of teasing: absorption | Overview, 2.3 | Diogenes Laertius, Book VI, §40 |
| The layer of the laughter of love | Psychoanalysis IV, §2.3 | McBratney, Guess How Much I Love You |
| The kindly superego: mapping undecided | Psychoanalysis III: the two-line split and the benign superego of §2.2 | Freud, "Humour" (Riviere's English translation) |
9. Remainders of This Paper
- Freud: whether the kindly superego is the same as the benign superego of Psychoanalysis III, §2.2, awaits case-by-case alignment; gallows humour is kept open between 14DD and 15DD.
- The Foyin story: a version must be chosen before it can be judged.
- The laughter of love: its layer depends on "which kind of love"; the operation must be checked each time.
- Derision and teasing: this paper gives three tests, not a single criterion; end points can overlap and do not decide on their own; the Kong Rong case is a test case.
- The second case of the laughter of triumph: the boundary between the "unexpected manner of accomplishment" case and the ordinary comic awaits finer division.
Conclusion
At 14DD, one's own purpose enters the construct laughed at. The purpose itself can be the construct: the laughter of triumph sees "already done" while the straining frame is still taut, and its delight is an emotion that comes along with it; wry laughter sees the cost of a purpose as a remainder, its bitterness too is an emotion, and though the cost is extremely heavy it is still laughter. Purpose can also enter a comparison: comparative laughter measures oneself against others; derision laughs at the person and exempts the laugher, failing 14DD's own remainder, "the other is also an end". Doing things with laughter is action around a laugh: sly laughter holds back, teasing points with laughter, the laughter of love says it and still cannot say it all. The truth and basis of the judgment, and the consequences of the action of using laughter, are to be examined separately; nor is the laugher's layer derived from the name of the laugh or from its use. At 15DD, laughter stands within non dubito: in one form, within a grasp that claims to have no remainder, it sees the self that is still searching and sees that self as one's own direction; in the other, it arrives at the place another person described long ago, and lets that place remain his. That is the business of Paper IV.
References
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · Overview: Judgment and Laughter. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23286244; SAE Laughter · I: Laughter as Tendency. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287462; SAE Laughter · II: This Judgment Is Mine. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287559
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (III): Superego — The Self With a Purpose. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321417. §2.2 checked against the original; quotations follow its wording.
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (IV): Cert and Unification. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321534
- Han Qin. Education as Subject-Condition: A Philosophy of Education. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18867389
- Hobbes, T. Leviathan (1651), Chapter 6.
- Schopenhauer, A. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. II, ch. 8. English translation: Haldane & Kemp.
- Freud, S. "Der Humor" ("Humour"), 1927; English translation "Humour", trans. Joan Riviere, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 9 (1928): 1–6. English translation read and checked.
- Kant, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), §54, Remark.
- Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World), "Speech and Conversation" (言语).
- Su Shi, "Inscribed on My Portrait at Jinshan" (自题金山画像).
- Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VI, §40.
- McBratney, S. Guess How Much I Love You. Walker Books, 1994; Candlewick Press, 1995. Candlewick edition (First U.S. edition 1995): "laughed" on p. 24, "smiled" on p. 26, whispering, smiling, on p. 36, checked against the text layer of a scan; the Chinese translation not checked.