Intelligence And Humor

Few things can alleviate burdens and lift spirits, even if only for several moments, like humor.  Its potential benefits for mental health by no means make it some central facet of philosophical inquiry, but humor does have a higher philosophical status than is often implied by how it is trivialized outside of specific contexts.  There is more to humor than a brief, futile escape from psychological pains, and there is also more to humor on a conceptual and experiential level than simple recognition of its subjectively amusing qualities suggest on their own.  It would be easy for some people to dismiss humor as something that is always unworthy of sincere, direct philosophical analysis, but this is not so.  One does not have to falsely inflate its importance in order to not regard it as a subject to be perpetually tossed aside in a rationalistic sense.

Something about the issue that is likely to either not be thought of or not be verbally communicated is the fact that, like with all other things, reason is necessary to comprehend humor: in other words, the ability to construct or understand jokes, especially if they contain some kind of philosophical or personal depth, is related to actual intelligence.  Some linguistic and social experiences make certain jokes directly accessible to others, but, whether one is thinking about categories of events or ideas that one subjectively finds comedic or grasping elaborate, abstract, or daring jokes shared by others, a thorough grasp of reason underpins a thorough understanding of comedy as a philosophical subject and a thorough understanding of individual attempts of humor.

Making or understanding a joke that touches upon an issue or experience requires at least a minor comprehension of the nature of that issue or experience.  After all, without this, it would be impossible to even partly grasp the point and nature of the joke as either the creator or the audience.  General audiences are still philosophically dull and incompetent because most people are not rationalists concerned with truth enough to seek it out by looking to reason, yes, but it would be impossible to understand, create, and analyze the concepts behind more thoughtful humor apart from at least halfhearted contact with the laws of logic.  Contemplating the objective nature of comedy and subjective reactions and perceptions regarding it falls inevitably into the domain of rationalism.

Like sexuality, broad emotionality, and introspection, humor is only understood as it truly is thanks to the laws of logic even though it will likely never be thoroughly contemplated in the serious, rational manner it deserves except by people who are already quite rather rationalistic.  It is neither rational nor deep to pretend like humor is not a part of human life that can deserve analysis just like other parts of life.  In light of this, there is nothing shallow about appreciating what reason reveals about the capacity for finding things humorous that could so easily be completely ignored, or even directly belittled, by people who mistakenly think that one cannot be perfectly rationalistic and deeply appreciative of humor at the same time.