Bernard Schweizer

Published: Jan 01, 2019 by Free Inquiry
Authors: Bernard Schweizer

This article argues that comical offensiveness is not a clear-cut matter with perpetrators and victims neatly separated. Those who seek to regulate humor in order to prevent it giving offense are misunderstanding both the dynamics of humor and the nature of offensiveness. Using empirical data and statistical analysis, this article takes a free speech approach to argue against censoring humor.

Published: May 01, 2018 by European Journal of Humor Research
Authors: Bernard Schweizer & Karl-Heinz Ott
Subjects: Media and Cultural Studies, Anthropology - Soc Sci

Using an empirical approach, this study addresses the question whether followers of different religious beliefs (Christians, Muslims, and Hindus), as well as Atheists and Agnostics manifest different senses of humour when rating a variety of jokes. The study further investigates whether one’s religious background influences the threshold of what is considered offensive. And finally, it seeks to answer whether jokes targeting religions other than one’s own are always perceived as funnier.

Published: Aug 01, 2016 by HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research
Authors: Bernard Schweizer & Karl-Heinz Ott
Subjects: Media and Cultural Studies, Religion, Anthropology - Soc Sci

This study analyzes the reactions of practicing Christians and atheists to various kinds of humorous materials. The goal was to determine whether the presence or absence of Christian belief serves as a predictor for humor appreciation, specifically whether practicing Christians appreciate certain types of humor more (or less) than atheists do.

Published: Jan 05, 2016 by Chronicle of Higher Education Review
Authors: Bernard Schweizer

This reflective essay looks back on the experience of teaching a college course about religious comedy. It discusses the challenges faced by the students and the instructor and ponders the reasons for the students' resistance to the assigned literary texts by Boccaccio, Twain, Anatole France, James Morrow, Ron Currie, Jr., and others.

By: Bernard Schweizer

By: Bernard Schweizer
Subjects: Literature, Philosophy and Religion, Religion

Studies in American Humor
Volume 7, Number 1, 2021, pp. 246-249

BOOK  REVIEW

Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum
By Bernard Schweizer
New York: Routledge, 2020. 254 pp.

REVIEWED BY JAY FRIESEN

doi: 10.5325/studamerhumor.7.1.0246

At the outset of his book, Christianity and the Triumph of Humor, Bernard Schweizer expertly frames his topic by juxtaposing two seemingly contradictory views: that humor runs counter to religion and that humor and religion are in fact symbiotic. Wary of absolutes, Schweizer uses these opposed positions as a point of departure in his exploration of how the two positions are inextricably tied to each other. To his credit, he presents a highly nuanced thesis, arguing that it is a mistake and counterproductive to suggest that humor either supports or detracts from religious ideals. Instead, he makes the case that comedy is better understood if viewed as a complex, rhetorical tool for both those who propagate religious beliefs and those who challenge them.

Through this lens, the book presents numerous examples that demonstrate the crucial role humor has played in the cultural, aesthetic, and religious evolution of Christianity. Schweizer splits his book into two complementary parts. He dedicates two chapters in part 1 to exploring the ideological components of humor, which he then draws on in his account of the cultural and historical manifestations of religious comedy. Nevertheless, part 1 is not merely a formality; the two chapters are noteworthy not only for setting the parameters for his later analysis but also for their own significant contributions. In chapter 1, Schweizer challenges the commonly held assumption that humor is inherently coded as liberal leaning rather than conservative. In this analysis, what stands out is how deftly the chapter moves from a theoretical exploration of ideology to a quantitative analysis of humor appreciation and then to a synthesis of the two that produces a rewarding model with which to analyze different comedic modes. The value of this model is that it allows for multiple readings of a single funny text or performance, which undermines overly simplistic calls for censorship of caustic comedy or, for that matter, any definitive declaration about how someone supposedly must interpret a piece of humor. 

Chapter 2 focuses on the morality of humor within the Christian tradition. Utilizing his model from chapter 1, Schweizer continues to push back against the interpretations of humor as either good or bad. Of particular importance is his discussion of offensive humor. Schweizer cleverly circumvents criticisms of offensive comedy by arguing that the value-neutral categories of liminality and entrenchment are preferable to the overly moralistic ones of good or bad. An understanding of humor in terms of shifting boundaries (liminality) or reinforcing them (entrenchment) enables a productive conversation about humor without “the straitjacket of a moral dualism” (42). Jointly, these two chapters set the stage for the historical analysis that follows. 

Part 2 looks more closely at humor within the Christian tradition over time. Chapter 3 begins by investigating humor in the Middle Ages. Schweizer chooses his examples wisely so that he can carefully show a progression of thought. In line with his argument that humor is not inherently liberal minded, in documenting this progression he demonstrates what he identifies as the erosion of taboo and absolute authority. In his examination of the writing of David Javerbaum, for example, Schweizer jettisons a superficial reading of the writer’s work as simply blasphemous in favor of one that demonstrates how the aesthetics of humor allows radical humorists to layer laughter and thoughtfulness.

Chapter 4 shifts periods, offering a more contemporary look at pop culture. Relying on examples like South Park, Schweizer pulls salient observations about culture and religion from each of his illustrations and moves beyond the false binary of so-called good versus so-called bad comedy. Instead, he argues it is crucial to appreciate humor for opening up spaces for sophisticated discussion on religious issues. 

Schweizer’s book is valuable in its ideological exploration, theoretical model creation, and refutation of a narrow, liberal understanding of humor as well as in its application of these ideas in his discussion of both historical and contemporary cases. By outlining the ways religions other than Christianity view humor, he provides a valuable service to those who might use his work as a stepping stone to explore other religious traditions’ comedic complexities. Schweizer deftly transitions, for example, from a discussion of Jewish humor to that of Muslim humor. His so-called rule of humor, as it relates to the Islamic Koran and Hadiths, demonstrates how his model of liminal and entrenched humor suggests a different relationship among variations in types of religious humor, as well as a path through which one would be able to study these differences. 

There are natural limitations in taking a particular approach to humor and religion, and that is the case for Schweizer’s focus on religion and morality of humor, the false dichotomy of good versus evil. One way to have perhaps strengthened his model would have been to draw parallels to the ways that other scholars have presented similar concepts. 

In this book, Schweizer delivers a well-researched and powerfully reasoned argument on the relationship between Christianity and humor. Humor theorists will find value in his conceptual modeling, social scientists will appreciate his data sets, religious scholars will be drawn to the book’s themes and ideas, and all readers will benefit from its interdisciplinary approach to the subject matter. 

By: Bernard Schweizer
Subjects: Literature, Philosophy and Religion, Religion

The European Journal of Humour Research 9 (1) 196–199 
www.europeanjournalofhumour.org 

BOOK REVIEW 

Schweizer, Bernard (2019) Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum, New York: Routledge. 

There is a version of confirmation bias endemic to philosophy. Philosophy is a prepositional discipline, it needs an “of”. But to do quality philosophy of physics, philosophy of art, or philosophy of mind, you have to have mastery, not only of philosophy, but also of physics, art, or neuroscience. Acquiring the secondary expertise requires significant time and effort, which in turn generally necessitates an intrinsic interest in the field. As such, philosophers of x will tend to have a personal commitment to the value and virtue of x from their dedication to their studies, or, if they have not put in the work, they betray a lack of authority in x when analysing it. This colours philosophical discourse, making contributions generally either less critical or less well-informed, despite the fact that well-informed critique is the coin of philosophy. 

Bernard Schweizer’s book Christianity and the Triumph of Humour is among the gems that avoid this concern. It is a well-informed and critical discussion that inserts itself in the contemporary discourses of both philosophy of humour, making contributions to the specific subject and to the field in general, and Christian theology, holding up the philosophically interesting questions in all their glorious complexity. 

The term triumph in the title indicates that one should expect the book to referee a conflict between Christianity and humour. There is a limited truth to that. Christianity arises in part as a reaction to the hedonistic excesses of the Roman elite. As a result, it has long harboured theological approaches with an anti-sensualist ethic. Goodness is found in faith, in the afterlife, in the soul properly aligned, in asceticism, in emulating the suffering of Jesus. Laughter, joy, and merriment are shallow pleasures of the flesh, of sin, and therefore to be avoided. There is no depiction in the Gospels of Jesus laughing, so the question “What would Jesus do?” must therefore be asked literally in all seriousness. Humour is thereby dismissed as problematic. 

But it would be a gross oversimplification to paint Christianity writ large with this brush. Sure, there have been those who sought to eliminate all bodily pleasures among the movers and Shakers in the history of Christian thought, but, there are also those who make a place for humour in the well-lived Christian life. Aquinas (2012 [1274]), as well as the Enlightenment writer Shaftesbury (who is curiously absent from Schweizer’s discussion), contended that an all-loving God would not have created beings in his image who would not experience awe, wonder, and joy in Creation. While there are morally problematic instances of humour, the line goes, this ought not taint the phenomenon as a whole. 

Contemporary thinkers under the mantle of the “theology of laughter” have taken up this bifurcated Christian approach to humour – there is good humour and bad humour and we should be able to develop a Christian basis for the criterion that distinguishes them. While good humour is generally correlated in the material realm with ice cream sandwiches, the development of an abstract criterion of demarcation turns on a comic version of the Golden Rule. We ought to only engage in nice humour, playful humour, humour that would not hurt us if it had been directed at us. 

Schweizer clearly and rigorously analyses the postulates of the theology of laughter, finding some of its pillars to be legitimate and others to be problematic. Chief among those that are not well-grounded is the requisite distinction between good and bad humour. In a move reminiscent of Kant’s taking Hume’s distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas and showing it to conflate two distinct distinctions, Schweizer takes the good humour/bad humour distinction to conflate two distinctions: (1) soft versus hard humour and (2) transgressive versus reactionary humour. The hard/soft distinction has Freudian overtones in that it resembles the tendentious/non-tendentious distinction Freud employs (Freud 1955 [1905]: 96). The transgressive/reactionary distinction focuses on the liminal aspect of much humour, that is, humour often plays at social, ethical, or logical boundaries. This means that some humorous utterances can have the effect of questioning whether these boundaries are legitimate. Such humour acts are to be considered transgressive since they raise the real possibility of transgressing the pre-established boundary. But there are jokes that do the opposite. Ethnic jokes that trade on stereotypes, for example, reinforce the “us versus them” divisions by making entire groups the butt of jokes and that further entrenches outgroups’ lack of social capital. With these two perpendicular distinctions, we now have four categories of humour. 

To maintain one’s position as a philosopher of humour in good standing, it is required that all new books rehearse the standard humour theories (superiority, play, relief, and incongruity), make the claim that none of these theories succeed in supplying necessary and sufficient conditions that account for all humour acts, and note that they are not mutually exclusive. Schweizer not only keeps his union membership card, but goes the standard route one better in using his two distinctions to categorise the jokes that are well-accounted for by each humour theory. His four categories, he argues, allows us to generate a general typology of humour. This will likely be seen as the important contribution of this book for the broader philosophy of humour discourse, that is, the conversation beyond questions of humour and religion. 

With this new technical tool in hand, Schweizer returns to the question of laughter theology and the possibility of distinguishing good humour from bad humour. The necessary distinction should require acceptable Christian humour to be placed in one or two of the four categories, leaving the remaining boxes to contain the unacceptable humour. And there, Schweizer argues in great detail, is the rub. If you examine a wide range of humorous texts that in some way mention Christian doctrine or believers, some being the epitome of what is intuitive held to be good, clean, wholesome, Christian humour and others being clear examples of the sort of humour acts good Christians would seek to avoid or, indeed, quash, then you would expect to find clear differences in terms of what categories of humour the constituent jokes occupy. But alas, Schweizer contends, humorous texts are complex in that they invariably contain elements of all four categories. 

To demonstrate this, Schweizer considers two streams of Christian humour – humour aimed at Christians and Christianity from the 14th century to Twitter, and comedy by contemporary Christian stand-up comedians. Selecting representative case studies from both streams, Schweizer walks the reader through the texts, examining the range of humorous utterances made. The obvious concern with making generalised claims about 700 years of humour from a small handful of selected instances is cherry-picking, especially when Schweizer contends that we see a trend in the first stream. While quibbles about outliers could, of course, be made, the breadth and importance of the analysed texts should be thought a good sample. Schweizer works the reader through Dante’s Divine Comedy, Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Voltaire’s Candide, Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger, France’s The Revolt of the Angels, Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, Morrow’s The Godhead Trilogy, Currie’s God is Dead, and Javerbaum’s The Last Testament: A Memoir by God. 

This tour of the literature comprises the larger part of the book. It contains the evidence for the argument being made. In the long and varied tradition of humour aimed at Christianity, we see two things. First, all of the texts – from the seemingly softest to the most liminal – make use of humour in all four of Schweizer’s categories. Secondly, there is a detectable trajectory within the history of literature that treats Christianity humorously. We see an increasing liberalisation in the sphere of subjects one can treat as the butt of jokes. 

The earliest of the texts considered focus their comic venom on hypocritical clergy. There is a long tradition in European (especially Italian) jokes of playing with the character of the lascivious and greedy priest or monk. The incongruity of those who have supposedly dedicated their lives to seeking that which is holy instead using their wiles to seek physical pleasure and material goods allows us to laugh at the expense of individuals who have lost their way. The way and the institution paving the way are never mocked, only those who false pretend to be following it. 

But when we hit the Enlightenment, we see a radical shift. We start to see satire of theological doctrines. We not only laugh at the expense of Professor Pangloss himself, but also at the Leibnizian views he espouses. What is mocked now are both individuals and human interpretations of doctrine. The 19th century further broadens the range of targets to include religious institutions. The Church finds itself slipping on banana peels. The 20th century broadens the sphere even greater so that the Almighty Himself becomes an object of parody. Finally, in the 21st century, the Holy Scriptures are now ripe for satiric revision. 

This is one sense in which humour has triumphed over religion. Religion had limited the scope of allowable targets of humour, but social and intellectual progress has inflated the bubble ever-larger until now nothing remains off limits. The idea that we may mock the profane, but not the sacred has been lost. 

But while the sacred is no longer sacrosanct, this does not necessarily equate to humour diminishing the holy. Indeed, in many cases, Schweizer points out a Kierkegaardian result (Kierkegaard 1992 [1846]). It is in the irony and humour about Christianity that we can more clearly see the depth and complexity of the nature of the Divine. There are philosophical conundrums inherent in Christianity. The best humour about Christianity does not create a straw Jesus to knock off its cross, but rather allows us a clearer formulation of the real conceptual questions that Christian theology presents. 

That irony finds its converse in the consideration of explicitly Christian stand-up comedians. Performers like Mark Lowry, Brad Stine, and Anthony Griffith aim their routines at Christian congregants and the larger Christian conservative population. One might think that an act whose foundation is a thoroughgoing commitment to Christianity would therefore be perfectly in line with the sort of humour deemed desirable by the Christian theologians of laughter. But this is not the case. We see, even in the softer Lowry, clear examples that would have to be categorised as the sort of abrasive negative humour that Christians should shun. 

Should we call out this hypocrisy and demand that these Christians walk it like they talk it? That is not Schweizer’s line at all. Of course, he argues, within any sizeable humorous text, written or performed, there will be comedic elements in all four of the categories. What this shows is not a lack of consistency by Christians, but something universal about humorous texts. Their inherent complexity will make them multifaceted. This is something we need to accept. 

This acceptance leads to a form of political libertarianism. Because there is no possible clean and universal good humour/bad humour line to be drawn, we should give up trying to police humorous speech, religious or otherwise. This does not entail humour to be amoral. It just means that conversations about humour ethics will require inclusion of the intricacies of the world. We have no simple enforceable legalistic solution to questions of humour ethics, so while philosophers should continue the discussion, they must do so in an open political context in which challenging sometimes morally problematic humorous acts will be a part of popular discourse. 

There is good reason to be optimistic about the state of philosophy of humour. We are seeing a host of smart, well-argued, insightful books coming out that champion very different approaches to the field’s central questions, that take issue with each other, and that build off of insights from each other. Schweizer’s book is one more in that category. The discourse in philosophy of humour is thriving and Schweizer’s contribution to it is not to be missed. 

Steven Gimbel 

Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania 

[email protected] 

References 

Aquinas, T. (2012 [1274]). Summa Theologiae. [trans. Shapcote, L. & Mortenson, J.]. Lander: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine. 

Freud, S. (1955 [1905]). ‘Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious’, in Strachey, J. (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume VIII, London: Hogarth Press, pp. 1-247. 

Kierkegaard, S. (1992 [1846]). Concluding Unscientific Postscript. [trans. Hong H. & Hong E.]. Princeton: Princeton University Press.