Nietzsche on Mirth and Morality
Abstract
Beginning in The Gay Science, Nietzsche repeatedly exhorts his readers to laugh. But why? I argue that Nietzsche wants us to laugh because the emotion that laughter expresses, mirth, plays an important psychological-cum-epistemological role in his attack on traditional morality. I contend that Nietzsche views mirth as an attitude that is uniquely suited to rooting out beliefs that have covertly infiltrated our psychologies. And given that Nietzsche considers morality to be insidious, or to maintain its hold over us even after we think that we have freed ourselves from it, we need mirth to expose its nefarious workings. Thus, while mirth is not the only attitude that Nietzsche recommends that we adopt toward the dictates of traditional morality – indeed, he suggests that we adopt many others as well – mirth nevertheless enjoys a privileged status within Nietzsche’s spirited polemics, which is why he dubs his philosophy a ‘gay science.’