ABSTRACT
According to the author explanation, the origin of what causes laughter is always the paradoxical and therefore unexpected subsumption of an object under a concept that is otherwise heterogeneous to it. The greater and more unexpected, in its apprehension by the person laughing, the more intense his laughter will be. As a rule, laughter is a pleasant state: apprehension of the incongruence between what is thought and what is perceived, hence actual reality, therefore gives us pleasure, and we gladly give ourselves up to the spasmodic convulsion which this apprehension excites. Due to the lack of reason, and thus of general concepts, the animal is incapable of laughter as well as of speech. Laughter is therefore a prerogative and characteristic trait of the human being. The opposite of laughter and jokes is seriousness. This, accordingly, consists in consciousness of the complete agreement and congruence of the concept, or thought, with the perceptual, or reality.
