The Two Wise Guys: Freud and Nietzsche on Humor.

by John Marmysz

Part One
Introduction
"At times we need a rest from ourselves by looking upon, by looking down upon, ourselves and, from an artistic distance, laughing over ourselves or weeping over ourselves. We must discover the hero no less than the fool in our passion for knowlege; we must occasionally find pleasure in our wisdom."(1) Laughter is, for both Freud and Nietzsche, the vocal symptom of natural rebellion. It is the music produced by humans who are engaged in overcoming the psychological blockages imposed upon them by the forces of social order. In overcoming these blockages, the expulsion of laughter acts as a demonstration to others that the individual has triumphed over the "herd." Humorous acts of overcoming are rightly called "rebellious" and not "reactive" for they involve a willful exercise of reinterpretation on the part of the actor and not a simple, reflexive reaction away from convention. Freud, in his autobiography, wrote of Nietzsche that his "...guesses and intuitions often agree in the most astonishing way with the laborious findings of psychoanalysis..."(2) This concurrence of thought is nowhere more apparent than in a comparison of Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious and Nietzsche's The Gay Science. In these volumes, the two thinkers construct compatible pictures of psychology, finding jokes, comedy, humor and laughter to play important roles in the mental and physical health of human beings. Starting from what was at the time a controversial assumption about the existence of "the unconscious," Freud and Nietzsche go on to build models of the human mind utilizing an "hydraulic" analogy, describing thoughts and actions as the result of blocked energy seeking discharge. Both authors hold social forces responsible for the erection of these blockages and identify laughter as a kind of rebellious, psychological solution to the predicament of social oppression. It is instructive to read these books side by side, as Freud and Nietzsche utilize very different styles in their examination of similar subject matter. Freud is systematic, analytical and scientific. He organizes his book in a linear fashion, beginning with "joke technique," moving on to the "mechanism and motives of jokes" and finally ending with a discussion of "joke theory," which expands his focus to include further distinctions between "the comic" and "humor." The logical course of Nietzsche's book, on the other hand, is not so immediately apparent. His writing style is poetic, self reflective and emotionally evocative. He writes aphoristically, which makes it tempting to look at the pieces apart from considering how they fit together. They do fit together, however, and The Gay Science has a definite

thrust and direction. Book One posits and explores the idea of an unconscious. Book Two ponders the adequacy and inadequacy of various perspectives and considers the role that interpretation plays in how humans conceptualize the world. Book Three draws out the implications of "perspectivism" and begins a "de-deification" of the world. Here, laughter is introduced as a remedy to nihilism. Book Four affirms the strength of the individual, identifying a humorous attitude as a distinction of power. Book Five (written years after the first four) is a summation of the previous books, outlining the logical movement from the assumption of an unconscious, to the recognition of perspectivism, to an acceptance of the inherent a-morality of the world, to the discovery of a humorous, individual solution.

The Unconscious Worlds of Freud and Nietzsche

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes, "The course of logical ideas and inferences in our brain today corresponds to a process and a struggle amongst impulses that are, taken singly, very illogical and unjust."(3) In this, he directs our attention towards a theme that Freud would explore years later. What consciously seems rational and logical to humans is actually the end result of an irrational, internal battle of instincts seeking satisfaction. Ulike Descartes or Kant before them, both Freud and Nietzsche recognize the "unconscious," and in this recognition submit that the motivations for our thoughts and actions are not transparent to reason. The existence of an unconscious suggests a shadowy realm of normally unrecognized motivations which reach back to the most primitive and uncivilized of times. "All of us harbor concealed gardens and plantings,"(4) Nietzsche writes. These "concealed plantings" are the roots through which our present thoughts and actions draw their nourishment. Stemming from these roots, our consciousness develops as the "...last and latest development of the organic." (5) What humans are conscious of is only a very small and incomplete fragment of a much larger landscape. "Energy" is the nutrient, instincts are the roots, consciousness is the stem, conscious thoughts are the leaves and actions are the flowers in the botany of the human mind. Leaves and flowers wither and drop off periodically over the course of an individual's lifetime and, in fact, some plants never bloom. The same soil can support a variety of flora, however, and those that do blossom may, perhaps, simply utilize more nutrient. For Freud, all psychic energy originates in the "Id," and manifests itself in the two primal instincts of life and death. Morality, as imposed upon the individual by the society in which he lives, erects obstacles to the uninhibited discharge of the energy invested in these instincts and so, as a result, this quota of psychic energy becomes rerouted and discharged along less direct, but more "acceptable" or "polite" pathways. Like a river whose course is redirected to provide hydro- electric power to the town in its path, the psychic energy of human beings is dammed up by society and used to further the cause of "civilization." "The repressive activity of civilization brings it about that primary possibilities of enjoyment, which have now, however, been repudiated by the censorship in us, are lost to us."(6) The tyranny of the "superego," that internalized set of social rules, assures that each member of society adheres to proper conduct in thought and deed,

avoiding direct expression of life and death instincts through overt acts of sexuality or violence. Like Freud, Nietzsche traces the origin of human thought and action to "...a quantum of dammed up energy that is waiting to be used up somehow, for something..."(7) and also places a great deal of emphasis on the role that socialization plays in keeping the individual actor in line. For Nietzsche, human beings can be roughly categorized according to their "strength" or "weakness," although "...it should be kept in mind that 'strong' and 'weak' are relative concepts."(8) The strong individual is one who possesses an overabundance of energy that burst forth into creative expression. Being "overfull" with vitality, the strong individual has little need or concern for others. He is characterized by the "noble" attributes of health, independence, free thought, and joy. The weak individual, on the other hand, possesses a depressed store of energy and consequently manifests symptoms of ill health, guilt and dependence upon others. "Slave moralities" come into being when the weak band together in an attempt to protect themselves from the strong. Because of their sheer numbers, the weak are often times successful in subjecting many "nobles" to their rule of morality. Just as Freud identified the "superego" as an internalized set of socially recieved rules, Nietzsche identifies morality itself as "...herd instinct in the individual."(9) It is this internalized constraint that acts as an obstruction to the individual's free expression of instinctual impulses and to the consequent repression of energy. It is a common tendency of humans to consider the existent as necessary and the non-existent as impossible (10), but both Freud and Nietzsche are careful to avoid making this error in judgment. That history has unfolded in a certain way and produced the world as we now see it does not justify the conclusion that this is the only possible state of affairs. What triumphs commonly is no indication of what is universally possible. The energy that drives mental functions is an a-moral force which is capable of discharge under an infinite number of descriptions. Because certain thoughts and actions have consistently provided an adequate means for the discharge of this energy does not mean that they are the best, most desirable, or the only means of discharge. Such "erroneous articles of faith," while perhaps providing a certain utility in the struggle for survival, nevertheless have nothing to do with moral "truth." Moral value is not a naturally occuring quality which humans "discover," but rather a quality which emerges and evolves according to the needs that develop in the horde, tribe, group or town. Morality is a tool of oppression used to domesticate the individual, protecting the community from the creative and potentially dangerous outbursts of the "strong." Neither Freud nor Nietzsche believe that claims to moral "truth" are defensible. "Sitting in moral judgement should offend our taste."(11) There is a very apparent difference in methodological direction that this tendency takes them. Freud is led in the direction of "scientific" exploration and theorizing. He abandons any concerns that he might have with ethics, except on a purely descriptive and explanatory level. Nietzsche pursues a more ambitious and radical critique of ethics and culture in general, identifying a nihilistic state of affairs as something to be "overcome." The "nihilistic

question" is central to Nietzsche's project. "Either abolish your reverences or - yourselves! The latter would be nihilism; but would not the former also be nihilism? - This is our question mark."(12) The absence of a set of absolutely "true" guidelines for proper thought and action is not here seen as an occasion for despair. It is, rather, and opportunity to rejoice in the multiplicity of expression of which the human mind is capable. "Positive nihilism" refocuses attention onto the creative potential of humankind, placing emphasis on individual perspective rather than on something external to the individual. "God is dead," but humans - creative, vital and life affirming - are still alive. Like Hume, Freud and Nietzsche are insistent upon the distinction between what "is" the case and what "ought" to be. Freud, in his autobiography, writes that there is no place for making moral judgments in psychoanalysis. The job of the psychoanalyst is simply to expose and describe the internal struggles of the patient. Bringing these struggles to consciousness allows for the rational will to arbitrate and reconcile conflicts. Logic, however, has a limited applicability in the unveiling of unconscious motives. The unconscious realm of the human mind makes use of modes of thought that are "...proscribed in conscious thought - faulty reasoning, in fact."(13) Each individual human being has an idiosyncratic complex of associations and psychical pathways through which the discharge of energy is accomplished. The map of any individual's personal mental infrastructure is ultimately what describes that person's perspective. Freud's picture of human psychology, then, emphasizes the individual as a unique and peculiar entity while at the same time recognizing the common material and social cause that contribute to the shaping of humans generally. Nietzsche likewise is concerned with asserting the uniqueness of individuals while not failing to recognize their conditions of origin. He distinguishes between the "cause of acting" and the "cause of acting in a particular way." "The first kind of cause is a quantum of dammed-up energy that is waiting to be used somehow, for something, while the second kind is, compared to this energy something quite insignificant, for the most part a little accident in accordance with which this quantum 'discharges' itself in one particular way - a match versus a ton of powder."(14) The "ton of powder" corresponds to the raw, psychic energy of the "Id." This is the "nuclear reactor" of the mind; a power source (or greater or lesser intensity) common to all humans which drives the mental machinery. It is a natural endowment of nature, an a-moral force seeking dissipation in accordance with the law of entropy. When fully exhausted, the result is death. When in the process of exhaustion, there is the appearence of life and animation. The prevention of the uninhibited discharge of the human being's store of energy is due to the constraining forces of, as Freud called them, the "ego" and the "superego." The "reality principle" governs the ego. According to this principle, the ego delays gratification of the instincts until such time as they can be properly satisfied according to the conditions in the environment. This is a purely practical precaution which allows the individual to navigate in the physical world. An urge towards eating can't be satisfied, for instance, unless there is something available to eat. It won't do to chew dirt or sand. The ego suppresses the energy from the Id, in this case, until such a time as it can

find discharge in the appropriate acctivity. The superego further constrains the discharge of energy by making normative judgments about available objects of desire. For instance, an individual might have an aggressive urge towards violence and another individual who is an appropriate target for that violence is present. The superego, however, might prevent the first individual from attacking the other person due to an internalized moral injunction against injuring other members of the community. These types of constraints on the discharge of psychic energy are what create blockages in the psychical pathways, causing a rerouting to take place. When psychic energy does achieve discharge, the result is a feeling of pleasure. That is why Freud calls the governing principle of the Id the "pleaure principle." It is in the interest of maximized pleasure, then, for the individual to seek efficient ways around the psychical blockages to discharge. These are the "matches" or "little accidents" that Nietzsche mentions. The individual human being distinguishes himself by his ingenuity at overcoming the obstuctions imposed upon him by the forces of social order. Triumphing over repression by way of a creative redirectio and reinterpretation of the Id instincts results in the symptoms of strength, health, and individual expression by which Nietzsche characterized the "noble" human being. "...repression...has turned out to be the main factor in the causation of what are known as psychoneuroses"(15), writes Freud. Perhaps in this Viennese psychoanalyst Nietzsche might have found a worthy collaborator; a "philosophical physician" concerned with "...the relation of health and philosophy."(16)

Part Two
Freud's Three "Laughing Situations"
Freud identified three categories of "laughing situations": joking, comic and humorous. These groupings are not exhaustive and Freud recognized that laughter is, indeed, produced under many other circumstances; for instance when a person is being tickled or hysterical. In each of the categories addressed, however, laughter is produced according to a process which seeks to economize the expenditure of psychic energy summoned for a particular purpose. This economy results in the fulfullment of the "pleasure principle" through the overcoming of the individual's own psychological blockages. Each of the laughing situations is exploitable as a tactic towards the goal of realizing personal honesty, empowerment and responsibility in a manner compatible with the Nietzschean aesthetic.

Jokes
Freud made a distinction between "innocent" and "tendentious" jokes. Innocent jokes produce pleasure, and perhaps laughter, soley through the utilization of faulty reasoning in "joke technique." Puns and plays on words are of this type. Tendentious jokes, on the other hand, serve the further aim of overcoming blockages to the discharge of the life and death instincts. Jokes of the later type are the ones of concern to us here. In tendentious jokes, pleasure is produced when the energy expended upon the repression of sexual or hostile feelings is lifted, allowing the free discharge of the Id

instincts. There is, in short, an economy made in the expenditure on inhibition. Consider the following joke: A lawyer walks into a bar with a duck under one arm and orders a drink. The bartender looks up and angrily exclaims, "Hey! You can't bring that pig in here!" The lawyer retorts, "This is a duck, not a pig." The bartender, turning red with anger, bellows back at the lawyer, "I wasn't talking to you!" This is an example of what Freud termed an "aggressive joke." It's aim is to allow the discharge of energy from the death instinct through an expression of hostility. Normally, it would be considered rude and socially innapropriate to tell a lawyer (or anyone else) that you think he's swine. This joke, however, allows the inhibition preventing impolite behavior to be circumvented. The success of this joke counts on, first, an audience that shares an inhibition against hostile expression and, second, a common sentiment that lawyers are particularly deserving targets of attack. These initial conditions being satisfied, the joke succeeds in producing pleasure by way of at least three joke techniques: displacement, allusion and double meaning. As the joke begins, the audience is led to believe that the bartender is addressing his comments to the lawyer. The scene constructed by the joke teller leads to this assumption. The only characters introduced as pertinent to the story are the lawyer, duck and bartender, and the joke teller counts on the fact that the duck will not be recognized as an appropriate conversation partner. It turns out, by the end of the joke, that this is a mistaken assumption, and that the bartender is, in fact, addressing the duck. The joke teller exploits an ambiguity in reference, diverting the listener's train of thought, and there is "...the displacment of the psychical emphasis to a topic other than the opening one."(1) Displacement is the major technique used in the joke. It allows the listener to be cought off guard so that the appropriate "anti-cathexes" do not have the opportunity to be erected in the listener. In addition, allusion is utilized. The bartender does not come out and say, "Lawyers are pigs!", rather he alludes to his disgust with that profession by way of clarifying to whom he is speaking. Finally, the joke also depends upon double meaning. The listener's train of thought is led from the meaning of "pig" as an animal to the use of "pig" as an epithet. In a hostile joke, like this one, the socially imposed proscription against overt hostile behavior is circumvented by way of a joke teller who consciously constructs a story exploiting the faulty reasoning techniques that all humans are prone to. These techniques are similar to what are referred to in critical thinking textbooks as "fallacies of ambiguity." They play on words or phrases that can be understood in more than one sense, providing "shortcuts" in the reasoning process that defy the rules of logic but that also provide a savings in psychical expenditure that is necessary for the joke to succeed. By consciously presenting a listener with a ready made story utilizing these techniques, the joke teller saves the listener the work of overcoming his own inhibitions. The listener need only allow his unconscious to "decode" the incoming message. Laughter results when the energy from the Id instincts is freed by the lifting of the inhibitory anti-cathexis. "...the hearer of the joke laughs with the quota of psychical energy which has become free through the lifting of the inhibitory cathexis; we might say that he laughs this quota

off."(2) The successful jokester must be skillful in his manipulation of the "joke code" and he must be aware of his audience. "...every joke calls for a public of its own and laughing at the same joke is evidence of a far-reaching psychical conformity."(3) But the amount of "work" that goes into the construction of the joke offsets the savings brought on by the joke techniques, and this is why one cannot tell one's self a joke. The jokester is an instructor to his audience. He sacrifices his own full enjoyment in order to guide the listener on a journey during the course of which the individual's power to overcome socially imposed inhibition is demonstrated. The laugh at the end of a joke is like the outburst of laughter experienced by the Zen disciple when he achieves satori. In a flash of enlightenment, everything becomes clear. A non-rational series of connections leads to the sudden achievement of a quantity of pleasure directly proportional to the strength of the inhibition that is overcome. The jokester, like the Zen master, shows his students that rebellion is fun. At the end of book four of The Gay Science, Nietzsche introduces the character of Zarathustra, who is an example of an unsuccessful jokester. "...I want to give away and distribute until the wise among men enjoy their folly once again..."(4), he instructs, but having separated himself from the world of humans for so long, he is out of touch with the social inhibitions of his lsiteners. As a consequence, Zarathustra is unable to guide and instruct his audience. The beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written immediately after The Gay Scienc, finds this ineffectual comedian being wildly misunderstood as he attempts to impart his message to a group of spectators at a high wire demonstration. Instead of laughing with this "prophet," the crowd ends up laughing at him. Instead of understanding his "joke," they find him "comic" in the sense that Freud called "naive." "The naive occurs if someone completely disregards an inhibition because it is not present in him - if, therefore, he appears to overcome it without any effort."(5) Zarathustra illustrates the perils that a Nietzschean proselytizer faces. He may be seen as a buffoon rather than a saint, and it is just this uninhibited state that characterizes the noble individualist. His lack of psychological inhibitions spearates him from the "herd" so completely that he may appear insane and wholly unenviable, but this unrepressed existence is, in fact, indicative of a "new health." "Common natures...see the noble person as a kind of fool; they despise him in his joy and laugh at his shining eyes."(6) Such a naive person is incapable of leading others, but he is able to act as an example of a possible alternative to the iron cage of social existence.

The Comic
Comic situations are found in the world, not constructed the way that a joke is. A comic situation arises when an individual makes a comparison between his own expenditure of psychic energy on a task and that of someone else, coming to the conclusion that his own expenditure is inappropriately large. He then laughs off the excess energy. In the case of the "naive" it is easy to see how this would work. Imagine a child, not yet subjected to the full force of social conditioning, who has been instructed by his parents that "honesty

is the best policy." Now, one day Mommy and Daddy take Junior for a drive. Dad is driving 50 mph in a 35 mph zone and get pulled over by Mr. Police Officer. Mr. Police Officer asks Dad if he knows how fast he was going, and Dad under estimates his speed by 15 mph. Junior comes to the rescue, however, blurting out their actual speed and correcting Dad's error. To Mom, Mr. Police Officer, and perhaps later, Dad, this may be a comic situation. With years of social conditioning behind them, the adults find it inappropriate to be completely honest in certain situations, especially when such honesty could result in financial or emotional harm to another person. Acting otherwise would normally be an indication that the individual involved was being purposefully hurtful and deliberately violating an implicit rule of conduct. In the present case, though, the adults know that the child has no idea that his behavior is inappropriate and that he has applied the maxim of honesty without being aware of other intervening expectations. The situation becomes comic when the adults realize that they are spending more energy than the child in cognitive processing. In this way, comic situations arise when there is an economy in the psychic energy expended on "ideation." You might say that the "comic" provides instruction in the art of overcoming by example. Comic situations demonstrate the artificial character of social mores by supplying examples of individuals who are unconcerned with, and in fact unaware of, certain societal constraints. In Freudian terms, these are people who possess and underdeveleoped Superego. They are like children, and laughing at a comic situation is like regaining the "...lost laughter of childhood."(7) This activity transports the observer back to a time when he himself was unconcerned and unaware of moral constraints. His "...laughter expresses a pleasurable sense of...superiority"(8), and by "laughing off" the excess psychical energy, he is involved in a kind of infantilism. He regresses to a child-like state where the inhibitions to instinct discharge are forgotten and where, if only for a short period, he becomes a "Yes-sayer." By laughing at a comic situation, the individual achieves a state of empathetic abandon, and it is only when able to regain composure that the constrictures of convention succeed in overriding the pleasures of uninhibited, instinctual expression. Both joking and comic situations allow the observer to be passively involved in a circumstance where there is instruction in the details of psychological liberation. But joking is instructive in a different way than the "comic." With jokes, the joke teller is an engineer who purposefully and deliberately constructs a story which circumvents socially imposed blockages to the discharge of the Id instincts. He "tricks" the listener into laughing, and in laughing the listener gets his first taste of nihilism. In comic situations, on the other hand, instruction takes place by way of example. A person who is unemcumbered by certain psychological blockages naively demonstrates his freedom from constraint, and in so doing provokes laughter in those more well socialized. In either case, laughter results when repressed psychic energy is liberated in accordance with the pleasure principle. In a rebellious gesture to the rules of convention, laughter represents a sudden, short lived and pleasurable disregard for the internalized protocols of the community. Winning the battle against repression is a necessary condition for laughter in these cases. "And who knows how to laugh anyway and live well if he does

not first know a great deal about war and victory?"(9)

Humor
The intensity of laughter in jokes and comic situations is due largely to the passive posture of the observer. Less intense and more sustained is the pleasure achieved through "humor." Humor arises when an individual becomes actively invovled in the reinterpretation of a situation and chooses to repudiate the possibility of his own suffering. Humor has a dominating effect. By viewing a situation as humorous, an individual places himself in a position of superiority to that situation and in so doing makes himself "...impervious to wounds dealt by the outside world."(10) Reinterpreting the world in a humorous manner allows the individual to assert his psychological and physical fitness, which are prerequisites for countering the possibly crippling effects of a nihilism resulting from the exposure of morality's groundlessness. A humorous attitude is characteristic of overflowing strength and a self sufficiency that allows the individual to heroically face the lack of objective moral constraints on his behavior. The realization that "anything is permitted," rather than resulting in despair, results in joy, gaiety and a sense of power. The strong individual appreciates that the lack of any metaphysical justification for externally imposed systems of morality only encourages and reinforces the authority of self imposed constraints. "It will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest gaitey in such constraint and perfection under a law of their own."(11) Humor is concerned with the making of jokes. Previously we considered jokes from the listener's point of view, noting that because of an economy in the listener's psychic energy expenditure on inhibition, laughter results from hearing a joke. We also noted that a person cannot tell himself a joke and produce laughter in himself since the amount of energy expended on the "work" of constructing a joke offsets the savings produced by the use of the joke techniques. The humorous attitude of the joke teller does produce its own, less intense, form of pleasure, however, through an economy in the expenditure of affect or emotion. This "humorous pleasure" is described by Nietzsche as "schadenfroh"(12), which is translated by Walter Kaufman as meaning "taking a mischievous delight in the discomfort of another person." This delight is precisely the savings in affect described by Freud in his portrait of the mental process that takes place in the mind of a humorist. "...the essence of humor is that one spares oneself the affects to which the situation would naturally give rise and overrides with a jest the possibility of such an emotional display."(13) Whereas jokes and the comic involve more than one person, humor requires only a single individual possessing a sufficiently strong Ego. A humorous attitude results when the Ego, normally governed by the "reality principle," ignores that principle and allows the "pleasure principle" to be fulfilled instead. In such a case, the individual "rereads" a potentially dangerous, harmful or unpleasant situation and refuses to recognize it as such. Instead, he transforms it into an opportunity to extract pleasure from the world. In this way, humor is "...the triumph of narcissism, the Ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability, (14) In taking a humorous attitude towards one's self, the Superego assumes it's "parental" role, and there is a

shift of energy from the Ego. Freud is vague on just how the Superego and the Ego interact in this case, but for the moment it will be enough to say that generally humor involves domination by the individual over himself or the environment by way of forsaking the reality principle in favor of the pleasure principle. The adoption of a humorous attitude requires "...the denial of the claim of reality and the triumph of the pleasure principle."(15)

Part Three
Overcoming Nihilism Through Humor
Both Freud and Nietzsche concur that a humorous attitude is healthy and "elevating." Freud ironically makes this point within the organized, systematic and decidedly serious framework of psychoanalysis. Nietzsche. on the other hand, utilizes a more poetic and at times whimsical style. He begins and ends The Gay Science with a series of rhymes. A stanza from To the Mistral: A Dancing Song captures some of the stylistic flavor, as well as the thematic content, of much of this book: "Dance on myriad backs a season, billows' backs and billows' treason - we need dances that are new! Let us dance in myriad manners, freedom write on our art's banners, our science shall be gay!"(1) The "gay science" that Nietzsche desires is a marriage of laughter and wisdom. This allaiance is made possible when one rejects the claim of an authoritative "reality" and asserts the priority of individual perspective in any interpretation of the world. For Nietzsche, the physical world is a domain where flux, change and transistion reign. "The total character of the world...is in all eternity chaos..."(2) This Heraclitean state of affairs is of special concern to human beings. Consider that people navigate through a constantly changing environment, encased in bodies undergoing constant transfiguration, experiencing a never ending flood of mental states. It is just not possible for any two humans to see, hear or feel the same things or for any single human to see, hear or feel the same thing twice. A human being's perspective is determined by his physical make-up and position in the world, and since both of these constantly undergo change, individual perspective never remains static. At every moment, an individual's "reality" undergoes revision. "...the world has become 'infinite' for us all over again, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it may include infinite interpretations."(3) These interpretations, however, do not hold any objective clout when it comes to identifying actual essences existing independently in the world. So in the same way that there are infinite "realities," "There is no 'reality' for us..."(4) Nietzsche advocates an approach towards wisdom which incorporates a repudiation of socially defined "realities" with willful and active reinterpretation, resulting in an attitude towards the world that Freud would characterize as "humorous." Left alone without the need for communication, human beings would experience the world as a never ending series of sensations and "consciousness" would never develop. For a "solitary human being who lived like a beast of prey," consciousness would even be a liability, iterfering with the unreflective discharge of instinctual drives and endangering his very

survival. In such a pre-social condition, humans would be governed by the unconscious. Now, whereas Freud paints a picture of the unconscious as a region where the orderly discharge of psychic energy through the twin instincts of life and death takes place, Nietzsche depicts a less harmonious terrain. Instead of recognizing only two instincts, he refers to a wide variety of instincts and mini-instincts which develop in accordance with specific circumstances. There are instincts of "preservation,"(4) "possession,"(5) "industriousness, obedience, chastity, filial piety, and justice,"(6) "weakness,"(7) "the herd,"(8) "fear,"(9) and "power."(10) In fact, any type of knowledge can become instinctive.(11) In the unconscious realm the instincts battle one another, each assering its own right to discharge in an appropriate acctivity. The most powerful instincts are those invested with the most energy, and they are the triumphant ones, expressing themselves most successfully. The "instincts" are really just avenues through which an organism discharges energy. According to the circumstance, healthy humans develop instincts which provide for the greatest utility in energy discharge. A "beast of prey," for example, is best served by the instincts of aggression, cunning and self sufficiency. Consciousness is unnecessary in facilitating the discharge of such instincts and would, indeed, probably just get in the way by promoting self reflection rather than action. According to Nietzsche, experience encourages the development of appropriate instincts but "...consciousness is merely an accidental property of experience and not its essential attribute."(12) If all human individuals were sufficiently strong and healthy, there would never have arisen the need for a consciousness. But humans are "herd animals." Most are weak in one way or another, needing the help and protection of their peers. Communication facilitates cooperation between individuals so that each imperfect unit can make up for the shortcomings of others. By banding together they exhibit "the strength of the weak." In order to communicate it is necessary to know what is to be communicated. Consciousness develops in order to allow reflection and "knowing one's self" so that individuals can become aware of their deficiencies and weaknesses, seek out others and form mutual support systems. Consciousness follows from mankind's herd nature. It is "...really only a net of communication between human beings."(13) Communication is "herd signal," useful for the survival of the group, but pointing to no real, underlying, necessary truths. It is shallow and superficial in that it translates the purely personal "eruptions" from the unconscious into the common language of the herd, in the process modifying, generalizing and falsifying the content. What humans are conscious of is only a superficial translation of a very small portion of what goes on in the depths of the human body. Thoughts and actions possess the characteristics of being "life affirming" or "life denying." This distinction of Nietzsche's is reminiscent of Freud's distinction between the life and death instincts, though there are significant differences between the two. Recall that for Freud, the life and death instincts are both aimed at the discharge of psychic energy. In Nietzschean terms, this suggests that both of these instincts are life affirming, since they both have as their goal the discharge of energy, which is the expression of

power. Life affirming thoughts and actions are those that contribute to the expansion of the individual's power while life denying thoughts and actions fail to do so. Life denial, then, concerns more than simply reducing personal power; it also encompasses the preservation of a particular state. "The wish to preserve one's self is the symptom of a condition of distress, of a limitation of the really fundamental instinct of life which aims at the expansion of power..."(14) Since a willingness to change, modify, experiment with and reinterpret one's situation requires the exploitation of a quantum of energy, such a willingness is a good indicator that the person involved possesses a store of energy that is ready to be called upon and utilized rather than conserved and repressed. In the same way that wealthy people demonstrate their riches through conspicuous consumption, so too do strong, life affirming people demonstrate their strength through thoughts and actions requiring vast reserves of energy. Weak individuals, on the other hand, lack these reserves and consequently deplete their energy resources quickly or, at best, conserve and preserve what little they have. "Knowledge," according to Nietzsche, is the result of reducing something strange to something familiar. When a human being is socialized into a community, he gains knowledge insofar as the unfamiliar traits, qualities, weaknesses and peccadilloes of other members of the community, translated and communicated in lanuguage, become culturally familiar. The danger in this process is that the shallow generalizations that make up human knowledge can be mistaken for far reaching truths about all humans. This "will to truth" is a strategy used to combat the chaos of the natural world, stemming from a desire for quietude, comfort and security. By asserting something as "true," all other alternatives are eliminated, simplifying the world and creating an artificial, static state of unchanging "reality." Will to truth "...might be a concealed will to death"(15) in that it ignores the infinite number of interpretations that the world is subject to by asserting one above all others, and thereby limiting the free expression of power. It is life denying. The highest development of this tendency is found in morality and science. Nietzsche advocates a way of life that involves life affirming thoughts and actions. The healthy individual is one involved in a constant "revaluation" of the world whereas the weak individual holds on to social "truths." "Individuals - being truly in-and-for-themselves - care...more for the moment than do their opposites the herd men..."(16) This being so, social living seems out of the question for strong individuals. Social living requires that the individual submit himself to an unnatural state of passivity and stasis. The artificial superstructure of social knowledge takes precedence over the purely personal, irrational experiences of the individual. A member of society finds himself in the same situation as the person listening to a joke. He passively allows himself to be guided through a story constructed to save him an expenditure of energy that would otherwise be necessary. He plays a role in which no effort need be expended upon reinterpretation. His consciousness is constructed in such a manner that it recognizes all of the reified, linguistic symbols in a conventional, rigid manner. Only unexpectedly does his unconscious make non logical connections, and when it does it yields pleasure in the harmless form of repressed energy which breaks

through the shallow lid of consciousness. Even though this eventuality provides a hint of the artificial character of social convention - a peek at the "abyss" - most listeners/members of society are too weak to abandon the herd where comfort, conformity and safety are assured. The nihilistic ramification of this is a denial of life and continued adherence to "slave morality." The preferable, Nietzschean alternative to this is to overcome nihilism through the adoption of a humorous attitude. A humorous attitude is concerned with joke making, which is an active process involving the personal reinterpretation of situations. It, unlike listening to a joke, requires "work." In order to adopt such an attitude, one must possess enough power/energy to do the work of joke making. In so doing one demonstrates individual strength, in effect saying to observers, "Look here! This is all that this seemingly dangerous world amounts to. Child's play - the very thing to jest about!"(17) The humorist, as demonstrated by his willingness to do the work of reinterpretation, possesses a robust constitution which is capable of expending vast amounts of energy. Recognizing that there is no "true" way to interpret situations in the world, he makes a willful choice to extract pleasure from the world in disregard of social conventions telling him to do otherwise. This new, individual, shallow interpretation brings with it the joy of creation and destruction. The joke maker knocks down a socially imposed blockage to the expansion of his own power, thereby allowing the discharge of repressed energy, and then erects a new barrier or interpretation as a "necessary error." "When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is, at least very often, evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate becuase something in us wants to live and affirm..."(18) Humor is the rebellious act of an individual against the group. It is the expansion of individual power through interpretive imperialism, and laughter is its battle cry.

Conclusion
In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious and The Gay Science, Freud and Nietzsche philosophize about health no less than about laughter. The energetic discharge of instincts is a precondition for the health of an individual. Social living, however, requires that the individual repress his impulse towards energy discharge in accordance with morality. Social living, then, is an inherently unhealthy situation. It preserves and conserves the toal energy of a people rather than attempting to expand and express it. Freud and Nietzsche offer a remedy to the oppressive constraints of society. Jokes unlock the repressed energy within individuals, allowing for the healthy expression of individual power in laughter. This is a short lived solution, however, which Freud calls a "saftey valve." Of more long lasting duration is humor. In adopting a humorous attitude, an individual affirms his own power to interpret the world, and in this way overcomes the life denying effects of nihilism. Such a person may appear comic to others because he lacks the conventional internalized constraints of a community, but this is a distinction of freedom and wisdom. "Gay science" is wisdom gained humorously. Nietzsche introduces the concept of the "Ubermensch" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a way towards overcoming nihilism, but stops short of

offering a practical program for the attainment of this "ideal." A parallel reading of The Gay Science and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious illuminates one possible approach to this task. The Ubermensch, as a "gay scientist," is a laughing, curious and creative explorer who faces the world armed with a humorous attitude. This attitude offers him an "elevated" perspective from where he surveys his surrounding and transforms the world's dangers into adventurous pleasure. Freud's distinction between jokes, the comic and humor help to clarify and underscore the necessary conditions for the adoption of a humorous attitude and so offer a useful compliment to a reading of Nietzsche.
Notes: Part One (1) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p.164 (2) Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study, (New York: W.W. Norton and Compnay, Inc., 1952), p.114. (3) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 172. (4) Ibid, p. 84. (5) Ibid, p. 84. (6) Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1960), p. 120. (7) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 315. (8) Ibid, p. 176. (9) Ibid, p. 175. (10) Kant, for example, asked not if we know things about the world, but how we know things about the world. This emphasis is evidenced in the area of naturalized epistemology as a remedy to skepticism. Marxism and Darwinism likewise represent attempts, in different areas, to explain the necessity of current states of history. When this tendency leads to the resistance of further change, Nietzsche calls it "Antiquarian"; The Use and Abuse of History, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1957. p. 20). (11) Idem, The Gay Science, p. 266. (12) Ibid, p. 287. (13) Freud, Jokes, p. 253. (14) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 315. (15) Freud, Jokes, p. 120. (16) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 33. Notes: Part Two (1) Freud, Jokes, p. 58. (2) Ibid, p. 182. (3) Ibid, p. 185. (4) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 257. (5) Freud, Jokes, p. 225. (6) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 77. (7) Freud, Jokes, p. 279. (8) Ibid, p. 242. (9) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 255. (10) Sigmund Freud, Humor, in John Morreall, Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 113. (11) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 232. (12) Ibid, p. 207.

(13) Freud, Humor, p. 112. (14) Ibid, p. 113. (15) Ibid, p. 113. Notes: Part Three (1) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 375. (2) Ibid, p. 168. (3) Ibid, p. 121. (4) Ibid, p. 121. (5) Ibid, p. 73. (6) Ibid, p. 88. (7) Ibid, p. 92. (8) Ibid, p. 288. (9) Ibid, p. 174. (10) Ibid, p. 301. (11) Ibid, p. 168. (12) Ibid, p. 85. (13) Ibid, p. 305. (14) Ibid, p. 298. (15) Ibid, p. 291. (16) Ibid, p. 282. (17) Ibid, p. 98. (18) Freud, Humor, p. 116. (19) Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 246.