The <i>Classic of Changes</i> in Cultural Context: A Textual Archaeology of the <i>Yi jing</i>
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The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Ar ...

Chapter 1:  Uproarious Prologue
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In a philosophical anthropology treating positionality of living organisms in relation to their physical, structural boundaries, laughter and crying are understood as boundary events, showing “loss of control, a breakdown of the equilibrium between man and his physical existence” (65).

The living transparency of the body reaches its lowest point in them. Bodily reactions emancipate themselves; man is shaken by them, buffeted, made breathless. He has lost the relation to his physical existence; it withdraws from him and does with him more or less what it will. At the same time we feel this loss as the expression of, and the answer to, a particular kind of situation. Our internal equilibrium is also at an end, but this time the “minus” is debited to the soul-body unit and not to the person [. . .] By [. . .] a process opaque in itself which runs its course compulsively, by the disorganization of his inner balance, man at once forfeits the relation to his body and reestablishes it. (66)

The phenomenon of laughter involves intensifying human positional eccentricity: “We move inwardly away from ourselves and come to have an objective distance from ourselves” (112). Laughter “is doubtless to be found in that aesthetic distance which lays claim only to our contemplation and apprehension and even lets us sit in the orchestra while we ourselves stand on the stage” (113). Although the final revelation of eccentricity, it emerges through its abdication: “Laughter is pleasurable and ‘healthy’ as a reaction of letting oneself go in a physical automatism, as a surrender of the controlled unity of man and body, which demands a constant expenditure in inhibition and in drives” (114).

When a man laughs, he gives way to his own body and thus foregoes unity with it and control over it. With this capitulation as a unity of ensouled body and mind, he asserts himself as a person. The body, fallen out of relation to the person, takes over the answer for him, no longer as an instrument for acting, speaking, gesturing, or posturing but in direct counteraction. In the loss of control over his body, in disorganization, man still gives evidence of his sovereignty in an impossible situation. In this situation, he