e laughter, which is not prompted at others’ expense or contrived. It must be a spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction. Nietzsche claims that we need the “liberating abandon of laughter.” The laughter of the gods is existence in its essential and liberated form, for the gods are affirming and celebrating life. This type of laughter is based in the moment, and for a moment it consumes our existence, releasing us into freedom, for we are not in control. Laughter is not only release but also an affirmation, for it has positive effects on the physical and mental well-being. “We thus attain a positive and negative definition for laughter analogous to Kant’s logical requirements of freedom from … and freedom for” (Kimmel). According to Kant, negative freedom is freedom from heteronomy while a positive freedom is self-assertion as a free causality, autonomy. We affirm life and death and our temporal relationship with the world; we have the capacity to laugh at even disaster, and by this we are free, by this we can affirm life. ***************************Combining Nietzsche and Heidegger’s views of Being and consciousness with Kimmel’s view on laughter’s necessity in our existence, it becomes apparent that laughter is our purest language. Laughter is a discourse of Being which is not a project; it just occurs. Perhaps it is an example of authentic language … perhaps authentic language does not need to have words, for Nietzsche believes that when we use language to communicate we lose our true thoughts. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche speaks of the Dionysian mode of existence; he mentions art as an example of the Dionysian energy, for the Dionysian energy is the initial impulse of art. It is an intoxicated reality unhindered by culture and man’s consciousness of it, man is truly a part of nature. With laughter, man is...
