Section 8: Good humor

Since life includes rest as well as activity, and in this is included leisure and amusement, there seems here also to be a kind of social interaction that is tasteful. There is such a thing as saying–and again listening to–what one should and as one should. _[1128a1] The kind of people one is speaking or listening to will also make a difference.

Evidently here also there is both an excess and a deficiency as compared with the mean. Those who carry humor to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons, striving after humor at all costs, and aiming rather at raising a laugh _[5] than at saying what is becoming and at avoiding pain to who they joke about. But those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do are thought to be boorish and stiff. But those who joke in a tasteful way are called “good humored,” which implies a sort of readiness to turn this way and that. _[10] For such good humor is thought to involve movement of the character, and as bodies are discriminated by their movements, so too are characters.

The ridiculous side of things is not far to seek, however, and most people delight more than they should in amusement and in joking. And so even buffoons are called “good humored” because they are found attractive. But that they differ from the good humored person, _[15] and to no small extent, is clear from what has been said.

To the middle state belongs also tact. It is the mark of a tactful person to say and listen to such things as are fitting to a good and free person. For there are some things that it befits such a person to say and to hear by way of jest, and the free person’s joking differs _[20] from that of a vulgar person, and the joking of an educated person from that of an uneducated person. One may see this even from the old and the new comedies; to the authors of the former indecency of language was amusing, to those of the latter innuendo is more so; and these differ in no small degree in respect of propriety.

Now should we define the person who jokes well _[25] by his saying what is not unbecoming to a free person, or by his not giving pain, or even giving delight, to the hearer? Or is the latter definition, at any rate, itself indefinite, since different things are hateful or pleasant to different people? The kind of jokes he will listen to will be the same, since the kind he can put up with are also the kind he seems to make. There are, then, jokes he will not make.

For a joke is a sort of abuse, and there are things that lawgivers forbid us to abuse. _[30] And they should, perhaps, have forbidden us even to make a jest of such. The refined and free person, therefore, will be as we have described, being as it were a law to himself.

Such, then, is the person who observes the mean, whether he be called tactful or ready-witted. The buffoon, on the other hand, is the slave of his sense of humor, and spares neither himself nor others if he can raise a laugh, and says things _[35] none of which a person of refinement would say, and to some of which he would not even listen. _[1128b1] The boor, again, is useless for such social intercourse; for he contributes nothing and finds fault with everything. But relaxation and amusement are thought to be a necessary element in life.

The means in life that have been described, then, are three in number, and are all concerned with an interchange of words _[5] and actions of some kind. They differ, however, in that one is concerned with truth (i.e., the virtue of genuineness), while the other two are concerned with being a pleasant person socially: one with being amusing (i.e., the virtue of good humor), and the other with social interactions in the rest of life (i.e., the virtue of friendliness).