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Audiobook edition · 4 h 28 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a shared laugh is also a quiet way of telling someone to change?
In Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, Henri Bergson asks what makes us laugh and why we laugh together. A clown’s tumble, a caricature and a pun become clues. Rather than collect jokes, he looks for a common pattern beneath these familiar pleasures.
His central idea is simple: the comic appears when a living person seems rigid, mechanical or automatic. From a man stumbling in the street to a character trapped by vanity, Bergson follows that pattern through movement, language and theatre. He asks what laughter does for the people who share it.
What you’ll discover
- The need for company Explore Bergson’s conditions for laughter and his claim that the comic belongs to human life.
- When people seem mechanical See how a stumble reveals the clash between living flexibility and rigid, automatic movement.
- A gentle social correction Consider Bergson’s unsettling idea that shared laughter can serve as a quiet punishment for rigidity.
- Words and situations Follow the same comic pattern from bodily gestures and caricatures into puns and stage comedy.
- Characters caught in habits Meet the comic figure whose fixed obsession or vanity makes the surrounding world hard to see.
Who will love it
For curious listeners who love comedy, theater and jokes and want to know why they work, and for anyone who enjoys a thinker who notices ordinary life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fall opens a question
- Laughter needs distance and company
- Habit misses the living moment
- Society laughs to correct stiffness
- Living people can resemble things
- Comic plots run like toys
- Language performs its own comedy
- Character comedy exposes unseeing habits
- One pattern connects comic effects
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Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
by Henri Bergson · 1900
A man slips on the street and a crowd laughs, and Bergson asks what the laughter is really for.
Challenging2–5 hours to read2 languages
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In short
A man runs along the street, stumbles, and falls. Passersby burst out laughing.
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 30 min1 h 55 min fast, 2 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 35,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1900by Henri Bergson
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Laughter is human, calm, and shared
Bergson opens with three observations about where the comic lives. The first is that it exists only among human beings. A landscape can be lovely or dreary, but it is never funny. People laugh at an animal only when it shows some human look or habit.
The second is that laughter needs a quiet heart. Bergson calls emotion its greatest enemy. Step back as a cool spectator, and many a drama becomes a comedy. Stop your ears to the music at a ball, and the dancers look absurd. The comic asks for a brief numbing of the heart, so that only the intelligence is left at work.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1900
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 50 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/laughter-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-the-comic.
Bergson, H. (2026). Laughter: An essay on the meaning of the comic. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/laughter-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-the-comic (Original work published 1900)
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/laughter-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-the-comic.
@book{bergson2026laughter,
author = {Bergson, Henri},
title = {Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/laughter-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-the-comic},
note = {First published 1900}
}
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What is Bergson's Laughter about?
It is an essay on why people laugh. Bergson follows the comic from faces and gestures to situations, words and character, and claims that we laugh at rigidity or mechanical behavior in living people, with laughter acting as a social correction.
What is Bergson's theory of laughter?
Bergson holds that something mechanical laid over something living is funny. When a person acts like a machine through habit, absentmindedness or stiffness, society answers with laughter, a gentle humiliation that nudges that person back toward flexibility.
Why does Bergson say laughter is social?
He observes that people laugh together and rarely alone. Laughter needs an echo among a group, depends on shared customs, and serves a purpose in common life, which is to keep people attentive and adaptable to one another.
The author
Henri Bergson
1859–1941 · French philosopher
Henri Bergson was a French philosopher and Nobel laureate whose ideas about time, intuition, and creativity made him one of the most influential thinkers of his day. Laughter, his celebrated essay on comedy, asks why we laugh and what humor reveals about being human.
More by Henri Bergson
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