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Rousseau, Molière, and the Ethics of Laughter

Rousseau attacks comedy on the grounds that it is bad for our morals. He tries to show that to make a comedy moral is to take the fun out of it. No one would deny that some jokes are bad, and bad for us. But I think Rousseau is mistaken in his belief that the fun of comedy depends on the bad sort of joke. In this essay I examine the ethics of laughter and the techniques of comedy, and find them rooted in a common metaphysics of human nature. It turns out, if I am right, that the most effective comic techniques are the most innocent.