Nietzsche frequently laughs and he especially recommends laughing at oneself. He does not speak of just any laugh, but of a laugh that comes from the depths of man. It is from that depth that one must learn to laugh the superhuman laugh. This laughter arises from the state of anguish and suffering.   

Indeed, comedy must be included within the very art that Nietzsche proclaims is: “the highest task and the true metaphysical activity of this life.”

This is important for those who want to ask clear-eyed questions about the values, phenomena, institutions, and people that they cherish. Laughter makes it possible – if only briefly – to achieve some distance from things one loves, thereby enabling a less biased evaluation of their true worth. It enables one to take oneself less seriously and admit that some of one's cherished beliefs are most likely false.

Perhaps best expressed in his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the prophet Zarathustra, talks about the “laughter of the herd” and the “laughter of the height”. Other books worthy of mention are: The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and The Will to Power.

Zarathustrian laughter highlights the sense of humour's potential to make your world bigger from your childlike “new beginning” of being amenable to seeing things in a new way, or from a new perspective, and to realise that there are more ways of looking at the world than you previously acknowledged or of which you were even aware of.

It is closely tied to the figure of the child (the final metamorphosis) and amor fati. For Nietzsche, it is vitally important to understand that the tragic and the comic are not polar opposite, but inter-linked modes of experience.

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⌛ Timestamps

0:00 Introduction

1:50 Laughter of the Height and Laughter of the Herd

5:06 The Three Metamorphoses

8:10 Becoming Who One Is

11:20 Social aspects of Humour

12:26 Tragedy and Comedy

14:41 Conclusion