Laughter is a collection of three essays by French philosopher Henri Bergson, first published in 1900. It was written in French, the original title is Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique (Laughter, an essay on the meaning of the comic). As Mark Sinclair comments in Bergson (2020): with this essay 'Bergson belongs to the small number of major philosophers to have addressed in depth the topic of laughter and the comic as its source'. Furthermore, that the essay is 'a transitional, pivotal moment in Bergson's philosophy as a whole'.
The first essay is made up of three parts:
Du comique en général (Of the comic in general)
Le comique des formes et le comique des mouvements (The comedy of forms and the comedy of movements)
Force d’expansion du comique (The expansive force of the comic)
In a short introduction, Bergson announces that he will try to define the comic, but he does not want to give a rigid definition of the word; he wants to deal with the comic as part of human life. His ambition is also to have a better knowledge of society, of the functioning of human imagination and of collective imagination, but also of art and life.
