Two Laughs

Consider two laughs. The first comes at a dead end. Someone has tried everything that could be tried; the last road has closed; he sits down and tells himself: there is nothing left. A while later he notices that he is still thinking, still looking around, still running some matter through his head in another way. He laughs.

The second comes very late. My father used to say, “To be safe and well is a blessing,” and as a boy I nodded when I heard it. Once I had things of my own that I was afraid to lose, one day I suddenly understood, and gave a little laugh. This one is a constructed case from the fourth paper of the Laughter Series.

The first, if it meets the four conditions set out below, is what the paper calls the laughter of despair; the second is the knowing smile. Both are at 15DD. SAE’s Methodological Overview, §1.7, defines 15DD as non dubito: “Not only I am an end.” It acknowledges that the other, too, is an end in itself; but the acknowledgment is unidirectional: “I acknowledge you, but you have not chiseled me back.” Its revision note states that 15DD is one subject’s not doubting that the other is an end in itself, a cut this subject itself makes, not a norm holding horizontally between subjects.

SAE’s Psychoanalysis IV develops this layer in terms of psychic structure and calls it Cert, written as two components: non dubito about one’s own purpose, plus the unidirectional confirmation of others as independent ends. “Non dubito is not firm belief; a firm belief may be a delusion.” It is not “I have no doubts” but rather: “doubts are present, remainders are present, the construct’s gaps are present, yet I do not doubt.” “Impossible to complete, yet possible to be certain.” The two components cannot be separated: a “non dubito” that can be maintained only by denying the other’s independence is not non dubito but forced closure of the construct.

Psychoanalysis IV also gives four minimum criteria that distinguish non dubito from delusional conviction, stubborn fixation and colonized mission-zeal. It survives repeated remainder-impacts without withdrawing, but sustains itself by acknowledging the remainder, not by blocking feedback or refusing questions. It allows the other’s direction not to serve my direction. It is certain about the direction and keeps an ordinary uncertainty about specific outcomes. It does not withdraw before costs, but not through self-coercion: the costs are there, yet no extra effort is needed to “persevere.” Both laughs below have to be checked against these four.

Nothing Left

The paper’s definition: “when the subject is convinced that at this moment no choice whatever remains, he discovers, unexpectedly, that he is still searching after all.” It has little to do with whether there really is a way out. The construct laughed at is the subject’s present grasp of his own situation: “there is nothing left.” What this grasp says is precisely “there is no remainder here”: “it takes the list of ways out for the whole of the situation.” What laughter sees is that it still has such a remainder: the self that is still searching, the one still thinking, still trying, still looking.

Three things must be kept apart: the set of ways out, the grasp of the situation, and the seeker. “No choice whatever,” taken as a judgment about ways out, may at this moment be right or wrong; its validity is judged separately. What laughter sees is not a way out but the seeker, whom that grasp failed to take in. “Still” hangs on the construct, in the senses of presence and being in use: at this moment he is still convinced there is nothing left, the grasp is still before him, and he still views his situation by it. The construct is not overturned by the laugh, nor is the seeker erased; no one loses.

So the laughter of despair is the limiting case of the formula. “That every construct has a remainder is, elsewhere, a general proposition; here it is seen on the spot, on a grasp that claims to have taken in everything.”

Nor is the laughter of despair finding a way out. It is common enough, after the laugh, suddenly to find there is a way after all; but that comes after the laugh and does not reach back to change what the laugh was. A person may save himself, may make peace with the situation, or nothing at all may happen; all of this comes after the laugh and is not its content. In the same situation, when attention lands on “there is nothing left,” one weeps; when it lands on “still searching, after all,” one laughs. The two often alternate, and can accompany each other; the laughter of despair does not deny that bout of weeping.

After All

“Unexpected” is not a figure of speech. On the Overview’s seeing grid, this is a laugh of suddenness within one person: the I of a moment ago, standing inside “there is nothing left,” did not see that it was still searching; now it sees, and the gap closes in an instant. If it were not a discovery but a decision, “I will keep on searching,” that would be will, not laughter.

“Unexpected” carries a further weight. If the searching were held up by gritted teeth and willpower, one would have known all along that one was searching, and there could be no “still searching, after all.” That the searching is discovered rather than decided suggests it is not held up by will: “the direction is moving on its own, with no one pushing it.” So the paper takes “unexpected discovery” as the marker that this direction is not held up by gritting one’s teeth. What it addresses is the original object of the fourth criterion of non dubito: how the direction is maintained.

But it is only a marker, and is not certified by the feeling of unexpectedness itself. Gritting one’s teeth needs a marker of its own; it cannot be inferred backwards from whether there was a jolt. The paper asks two questions. Was the searching discovered, or watched over and pushed by will all along? That is answered from what the person said and did beforehand. At that moment, did the share of attention resting on the seeker need extra effort to hold it up? That serves only as corroboration, for one can look without effort at something itself held up by gritted teeth. Attention can also be mixed: at one moment one share may grit its teeth while another looks. If someone sees only afterwards that his searching through those days had been held up by gritted teeth all along, then even if he laughed at that moment, it was not the laughter of despair in the paper’s sense, and is recorded by where he stood at that moment.

A Futile Self, One’s Own Direction

In the same impasse, someone at 13DD can also laugh at himself: “Look at me: I know there’s no way out, and I’m still searching.” The construct of this laugh is “I know there is no way out,” and its remainder is “still searching,” the same structure as the laughter of despair. It is the self-mockery of 13DD. The difference lies not in the construct but in what the seeker is seen as. The seeker that self-mockery sees is a ridiculous, futile self; the seeker that the laughter of despair sees is one’s own direction. Same structure, same remainder, different layer, because what activates a layer is what is faced at that moment, not the construct laughed at.

The paper defines the laughter of despair by four conditions: the seeker is seen as one’s own direction; this direction is not held up by gritting one’s teeth, with “unexpected discovery” as its marker, a marker that must be checked separately; it is open to the future self and does not require it to make good on today’s direction; this direction does not require others to submit to it. All four are features of non dubito, so under this definition the laughter of despair is at 15DD. When the four are not met, the laughter of despair in the paper’s sense does not occur, and there is no question of its “dropping to some layer”; any other laugh in the same situation is another laugh, recorded by its own standing.

Here the paper is candid: “exclusivity is carried by this definition, not derived from within a laugh.” Imagine a person whose direction itself must be sustained by others’ submission. He too, in an impasse, may discover unexpectedly that he is still searching, see the searching as his own direction, not grit his teeth, and be open to his future self. Judged by that moment alone, he is indistinguishable from the laughter of despair. The fourth condition is what keeps such a case out: the fault lies in the very direction he takes as his own. This exclusion can rest only on the definition, not on how that moment looks.

What can be tested is whether other standings can see the seeker this way. 13DD can see itself reflexively but has no direction of its own, so there is no question of its seeing the seeker as its own direction; what it sees is mostly a trapped, futile self, either in self-mockery or sinking into “the more you observe, the more anxious you become.” At 14DD the self is grasped through purpose; once the subject is convinced there is no way, purpose can hardly operate, and to keep the direction it will mostly have to be held up by will, which fails the second condition. A 14DD purpose can be very firm, but firmness is not the same as not relying on self-coercion; wry laughter is possible because purpose is still operating. The non dubito of 15DD keeps its direction without extra effort, while allowing the future self to change course or stop, and without requiring others to submit. The paper also states when this would have to be narrowed: in both of its falsification conditions the antecedent must be judged from words and deeds outside the laugh, not inferred backwards from whether the laugh occurred.

What is laughed at is the 13DD subject’s grasp of his situation, yet the one who judges stands at 15DD. Counted by the layer of the construct laughed at, it would fall back to 13DD, which does not fit its structure; this is exactly why the Overview holds that a laugh goes with the one who laughs. The laughter of despair does not revoke subjecthood: the 13DD subject is still there, still convinced there is no way forward; what changes is the position from which one looks, from being trapped in that conviction to seeing the one trapped in it and still searching.

The paper gives one example, as illustration only. Reportedly, as Jin Shengtan faced execution, he was still telling people that two particular ordinary foods, chewed together, have a flavour all their own. The versions differ on which two foods he named, and the paper takes only the structure. At the execution ground there was no choice; yet he was still tasting, still discovering, still telling others what he had discovered, which is to say still searching. If what his laugh saw at that moment was the self still savouring the world, and the four conditions are met, that is the laughter of despair in the paper’s sense: the cost is his life, and the remainder is the self still searching. A legend cannot supply the standing the four conditions require; what a reader can draw from it is only the structure, and a witticism at the execution ground does not by itself certify 15DD.

The Future Self

The definition of 15DD itself contains an other: one does not doubt that the other is an end, unidirectionally. When the laughter of despair occurs there is often no one else around; who is its other? The paper’s answer: the future self. It notes that this is the series’ extended reading: the other of the Methodological Overview, §1.7, has “I acknowledge you” as its example, and means another person; the series extends it to the future self. The other of the knowing smile is another person and falls directly under the definition; the other of the laughter of despair falls here by this extension.

What is seen at this moment is that I am still searching; “this act of looking is the present I opening itself to the future self.” The future self may carry on along today’s searching, or change course, or stop; it need not prove itself by making good on today’s direction. I do not decide for it, nor do I require it to line up with the I of today.

The tense must be kept. What is seen at this moment is only “I am still searching,” in the present tense; “the confirmation of the future self is an opening toward it, not a prescription for it.” Expectation and demand must be kept apart. “I believe my future self will certainly find it” is an estimate of the outcome, an overconfident one, checked separately; only if one goes further and demands that the future self make good on that outcome is it a prescription imposed on another. The paper sets a pressure case: someone notices that he is still searching, without having forced himself to notice, yet demands that his future self complete today’s direction. He has made a demand on the future self and cannot laugh the laughter of despair in the paper’s sense; if he still laughs, it may be self-mockery, seeing a self bound never to make good, or something like wry laughter, checked separately by his standing.

Matched criterion by criterion: the remainder-impact is the conviction “there is nothing left” itself; the subject admits there is nothing, does not pretend to a way out, yet the direction is not withdrawn. Toward others, the direction requires no submission; toward the future self, changing course or stopping need not make good on today. Certain about the direction, uncertain about the outcome: he is convinced there is nothing left, yet has not stopped looking, thinking, trying, and does not say “I will certainly find it.” And the searching is not held up by gritted teeth. The paper also notes that Psychoanalysis IV discusses neither laughter nor the future self; it only borrows those four criteria to test one claim of the Laughter Series, and extends nothing on that paper’s behalf.

Founding Nothing, Looking Down on No One

The laughter of despair shares a structure of discovery with Descartes’ cogito: Descartes, doubting everything, discovered the self that was doing the doubting; the laughter of despair, convinced that no choice remains, discovers the self that is doing the searching. In both, from inside a situation that seemed sealed shut, something within it is seen to be still operating. The divergence must be stated precisely. Having made sure that I am, for as long as I am thinking, Descartes did not stop; he went on to ask what I am, and rebuilt knowledge on this certain point. The boundary is not whether questioning continues after certainty, but use: Descartes uses the certain point as the foundation of a reconstruction and derives a thinking thing; the laughter of despair founds nothing on the laugh, derives no substance and rebuilds nothing; it only sees that the searching is still there. “The searching is itself a construct and has its remainders too”; the future self may change course or stop.

Freud’s gallows humour was kept open between two places in the third essay; here only its difference from the laughter of despair matters. In Freud, the superego comforts the frightened ego as an adult comforts a child, viewing the world as a child’s game, so that the danger is made small and the claims of reality are repudiated; on this point the original is explicit, the consolation is genuine, and the paper does not soften it on his behalf. The laughter of despair does not shrink the situation: the subject is still convinced, at this moment, that there is nothing left, and the grasp is still before him. The structure differs too: the superego comforts the present ego from above; in the laughter of despair there is no party looking down; the present I opens toward the future self, and that self is not above but ahead.

Schopenhauer sets humour against irony: irony is jest hidden behind seriousness, humour is seriousness hidden behind jest; it springs from a subjective, earnest and lofty mood that comes, against its will, into conflict with a commonplace external world, a world it cannot escape and will not yield to. This comes close to the laughter of despair. The paper’s distinction: Schopenhauer describes a lasting conflict between a mood and the world; the laughter of despair describes a suddenness, the seeker seen on a construct that claims to have no remainder. The two can alternate in one person, and may even be two descriptions of one laugh; the paper does not judge them exclusive on the strength of a difference in wording.

Plessner, in Laughing and Crying, as the paper has it from memory and secondhand accounts, regards laughing and weeping as responses in which the body takes over, in boundary situations where a person can no longer answer by action or speech. He shares one observation with the series: laughing and weeping occur in the same kind of boundary situation. The paper turns the disagreement into a question still to be checked: which capacity for response does the body take over, and does that exclude judgment? The series’ claim is that the failure of response by action and speech, and the loss of bodily control, are not logically exclusive of judgment still going on within. Until the original has been read, the paper does not use this comparison to decide who wins.

In Beckett’s novel Watt the character Arsene has a monologue on laughter that distinguishes three laughs: the bitter laugh, at what is not good, the ethical laugh; the hollow laugh, at what is not true, the intellectual laugh; and the mirthless laugh, at what is unhappy, which he calls the dianoetic laugh and ranks highest, a laugh that laughs at the laugh itself. The paper gives this from memory and secondhand accounts, the original still to be checked. The series leaves the word “mirthless” to Beckett’s own sense and borrows it for none of its own laughs: Beckett’s mirthless laugh laughs at unhappiness itself; the laughter of despair laughs not at unhappiness but at the self still searching within it. A reflexivity that steps back layer upon layer is, by the series’ account, already present at 13DD; the laughter of despair does not step back but looks forward.

So This Is What He Meant

Back to “To be safe and well is a blessing.” The paper’s definition: the knowing smile is “having understood what another has been saying all along, I finally arrive at the place he had spoken of long before, in words I had heard but not understood”; I arrive, and I let that place remain his. Not doubting that every subject who reaches this point, earlier or later, would see it this way is how this shows itself in a laugh.

Taken apart by the formula. The construct is my old grasp of the saying: heard long ago, repeatable, not understood. The remainder is what the old grasp failed to take in: “It is not merely the content of the words; it is the place where he stood when he said them.” The gap is sudden within one person, once heard and not understood, now arrived at; between persons it is persistent, for he has long been standing there. “Still” is presence: the old grasp can still be looked back on at this moment. Whether the original words hold and whether the old grasp was correct are checked separately, and the former is not used to vouch for the latter.

On the seeing grid, the knowing smile can be a crossing from one cell to another: he has long been in the row “the other sees,” and only now do I cross from “I do not see” to “I see.” But the crossing alone is not enough: “getting a friend’s joke five seconds late is the same kind of crossing.” The Chinese name of the knowing smile speaks of meeting another’s heart; in the series it further requires a layer of non dubito.

Psychoanalysis IV distinguishes three postures toward the other: “I understand you” is the empathy of 13DD; “I do things for you” is the investment of 14DD; only “I confirm you are an independent end” is 15DD. If the knowing smile had only understanding, understanding his words and knowing too that he walked there himself, all this together could still be mere understanding: knowing is a cognitive grasp, not yet a posture toward him. The further layer of the knowing smile is this: the place seen is one that those who arrive have each walked to; it belongs to their own lives and is not a road laid for me; “I let it remain theirs: I do not co-opt it as my achievement, do not put it to use, and do not need anyone to turn back and acknowledge that I have arrived.” This is where “not doubting that the other is an end” lands in this laugh.

The constructed case lands here. The saying still has such a remainder: the fear beneath the words. “That fear belonged to his whole life; it is not a maxim to be judged right or wrong.” Anyone who reaches this point, who has come to understand the saying through having things he fears to lose, would see it this way; my father had long been there. I do not use that fear to prove that I have understood at last, nor do I finish telling that life on his behalf; it remains his. The remainder is concrete, not a general proposition such as “truth always has something left unexhausted”; it can be said, and it can be pointed out to others.

This non dubito about “whoever arrives here” covers only those who have reached this point. Those who have not arrived are not included, my own former self among them, who heard but did not understand; so it makes no demand on anyone. It must be kept apart from Kant: Kant imputes agreement to everyone (§8) and says everyone ought to agree (§19); the knowing smile holds its non dubito only toward subjects who have reached this point. It is non dubito, not prediction; it does not say they will certainly say the same thing; doubts are present, remainders are present, and it stays open to questioning.

“Mere arrival-laughter,” with understanding but without this layer of non dubito, can occur all the same; it is not called the knowing smile. The paper imagines a dominator who finally understands the other’s consistent refusal, and knows too that it was not said for his sake; he may even understand that the refusal is something the other walked to himself, and that anyone who walked to that point would see it this way. But he treats the understanding as usable intelligence and uses it to control the other; he does not let that place remain the other’s. “What he lacks is not one more proposition understood, but the not co-opting itself”; if he laughs, it is an instance of mere arrival-laughter.

The Raised Flower

What the knowing smile judges is not a gain of one’s own; this is its boundary with the laughter of triumph at 14DD. What it judges is: “So this is what he meant”; that place is one he walked to himself, and anyone who arrives here would see it this way. The emotions that come along can be of many kinds: gratitude, a sense of shame, joy; if the speaker is no longer living, a wistful sorrow. These are all emotions, which may or may not come, and they are not evidence. “Not delighting in gain” does not mean “mirthless” either; that word has been left to Beckett.

The Gateless Barrier, case 6, records that at the assembly on Vulture Peak the World-Honoured One held up a flower before the assembly; all were silent; only the Venerable Mahākāśyapa broke into a smile; and the World-Honoured One then said that he had the treasury of the true Dharma eye, and entrusted it to Mahākāśyapa. On the paper’s reading, this is a positive instance of the knowing smile. Holding up the flower is the World-Honoured One’s “saying.” The reading makes a further assumption, which the case does not supply on its own: Mahākāśyapa had long since heard the earlier teachings; the construct is his old grasp of them, and the remainder is the place where the World-Honoured One stood when he taught; at the moment the flower was held up, he arrived. As for the assembly, the original records only their silence, and the paper does not rewrite it as “not seeing.”

Mahākāśyapa’s breaking into a smile is his arriving where the World-Honoured One was; on the paper’s reading, the smile also lets that place remain the World-Honoured One’s, not doubting that whoever reaches this point would see it so. The smile is unidirectional: the original records only Mahākāśyapa’s smile, not that the World-Honoured One smiled, and nothing explicit about the two looking at each other and laughing. The transmission that follows, if read as a confirmation of Mahākāśyapa, is done in words, by handing on the Dharma, not by two people laughing at each other; whether it amounts to mutual non dubito belongs to 16DD, and the series does not judge it.

Chan has another often-quoted passage, from Qingyuan Weixin: “Thirty years ago, before I, this old monk, had studied Chan, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. Later, when I had met a true teacher in person and found a way in, I saw mountains as not mountains and waters as not waters. Now that I have found a place of rest, as before I see mountains just as mountains and waters just as waters.” The original does not mention laughter, nor say what that teacher had said; what follows is the paper’s reading, not load-bearing. If there is a laugh, it comes in the third stage: “as before” means having walked for thirty years and arrived at the place heard of and pointed to back then. It is not the reversal of the second stage, “so mountains are not mountains after all,” but seeing that mountains are still mountains while knowing they are not only that. A place of rest is not a gain but a place where one can stop.

Immediately after the passage the original continues: “Great assembly: these three views, are they the same or different?” Weixin hands the three stages over to the assembly to question. This fits the openness to being questioned described in the Overview; the paper borrows it without making it load-bearing.

The knowing smile is often silent. In the Overview’s inner–outer grid, the cell “laughs inwardly, does not laugh outwardly” holds, besides suppressed laughter, knowing without showing. This is not laughter held down; the laugh simply has no need of expression. It lets the places of those who arrive remain theirs, does not doubt those who have arrived, yet requires no one to arrive; nor does it require the one who said the words to turn back and confirm me.

Looking at Each Other and Laughing

Two people laughing at the same point can be doing three different things. Laughing at the same thing: two subjects each judge and each laugh; each judgment is their own, each counted at the layer where each stands, within the scope. Tacit understanding: laughing at the same thing plus common knowledge, I know that you know and you know that I know; still each at their own layer. Looking at each other and laughing: mutual non dubito, each taking the other as an end; in laughter, I do not doubt that you will laugh, and you do not doubt that I will. That is 16DD, outside the scope.

What separates looking at each other and laughing from tacit understanding is precisely non dubito. “Mutual knowledge does not yield mutual non dubito.” Two children who bully another exchange a glance of tacit understanding over the child they are bullying, and burst out laughing; they each know, and perhaps each is sure the other will laugh. If this sureness can be sustained only by treating the one laughed at as material, then a “non dubito” maintained only by denying the other’s independence is not non dubito but forced closure; the glance belongs to the middle case, tacit understanding, probably each child’s own 14DD derision.

“Nor is non dubito prediction.” “He laughs every time” is a grasp of behaviour; the “will laugh” in looking at each other and laughing refers to inner laughter, the jolt of cannot-not, not to a movement. The jolt within another person cannot be lived through by me in his stead; the expression I see and the guesses I make do not claim it for him either. I can hear his report and let it correct my understanding; non dubito here means not letting my own expectation occupy that place, which is to say acknowledgment. So to say I do not doubt that you will laugh is to acknowledge that the jolt within you is yours. If you do not laugh outwardly, that does not touch it; if you say you did not laugh within, I take your word for it, and I do not judge that you failed to see. Not doubting a feeling that only the other can live through is acknowledging the other as the subject of that feeling; two people acknowledging each other in this way is how each taking the other as an end shows itself in laughter. The paper says plainly that linking this abstention from writing the other’s feeling in for him to the full relation of mutual ends is a claim of the series, and whether it suffices is still to be argued.

The knowing smile and looking at each other and laughing sit exactly astride the line between 15DD and 16DD: the knowing smile is unidirectional non dubito and does not require the other to turn back; looking at each other and laughing is mutual. Zhuangzi’s chapter “The Great and Venerable Teacher” shows what this laugh looks like. Zisi, Ziyu, Zili and Zilai were talking together and said: “Who can take non-being as his head, life as his spine and death as his rump? Who knows that death and life, survival and perishing, are all one body? We will be his friends.” “The four looked at one another and laughed, with no disagreement in their hearts, and so they became friends.” On the paper’s reading: first each understood the question; “looked at one another” is the two sides’ laughter meeting in that glance; “no disagreement in their hearts” carries exactly mutual non dubito; and “so they became friends” is a 16DD relation being founded on it. The series registers it beyond the upper bound, and does not develop it.

The Asylum Roof

The paper also tries several layers on one burst of laughter. At the end of Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman has caught the Joker once again. He says he does not want to kill him, still wants to help him, hopes he can change; the Joker refuses, saying it is too late, and then tells a joke. Two inmates of an asylum want to escape and climb onto the roof; just across a narrow gap lie other rooftops. The first gets across in a single leap; the second does not dare to jump. The first offers to switch on his flashlight so the second can walk over along the beam; the second refuses: does the first take him for a fool? He would switch the light off when the second was halfway across. Then the two of them, Batman and the Joker, laugh together. This is a retelling, without quoting the original’s dialogue; the ending has long been read in different ways, and the paper takes only that laugh.

The paper’s reading rests on two premises, both readings, not plot: at that moment neither doubts that the other is an end; and what the joke says is precisely that neither can really get across, each trapped in his own condition. In the joke one man does leap across, but the one who tells it, the one who leaps and the one who dares not are all madmen. Batman is the one who got across first: he has gone one step further than the Joker, yet is still in the same asylum, and what he holds out is a light that can be switched off at any moment.

On these two premises, three layers can be tried separately in this burst of laughter, though not every layer applies to both men. Self-mockery, both have it: the two madmen are themselves, one having gone a step further, one refusing to move; each laughs at his own share of futility. The laughter of despair applies only to Batman, and only as a trial reading: he is convinced the Joker will not change, yet still hopes he will, which is precisely still searching inside “there is nothing left”; the laugh bursts out suddenly, read as his unexpectedly seeing that he is still searching; he does not settle the matter for his future self, which the plot does not supply and is the paper’s reading; and what he gives the Joker is hope, not a command. The Joker does not fit this layer: he does not want to change and has shut the door on his future self; and his direction must be sustained by treating others as material, so it fails the fourth condition.

The third layer lies between the two: at that moment neither doubts that the other is an end. The joke is about doubt, that you would switch off the flashlight; yet what they laugh out together is non dubito: I do not doubt that you will laugh, and you do not doubt that I will. That the Joker’s direction must be sustained by treating others as material rules out his laughter of despair; his non dubito at that moment toward Batman as a person has a different object, and non dubito is object-specific, so the two do not cancel out. The example illustrates and does not prove: a burst of laughter can be divided into shares, each recorded at its own layer; self-mockery and the laughter of despair can coexist in one burst; what the fourth condition rules out is a direction that must be sustained by denying others; and looking at each other and laughing can wrap 13DD and 15DD laughs in a single burst. 16DD itself is still registered only, not developed.

The Laughter Series begins with the tendency of 12DD and passes through the owner of 13DD and the purpose of 14DD to the non dubito of 15DD. From 13DD on, what laughter judges is always “the construct still has such a remainder,” and in every case no one loses; 12DD has only the material of its tendency. At looking at each other and laughing, laughter is no longer one person’s judgment alone but non dubito between two subjects. The series stops here, and leaves it as one large remainder of its own.

Back to the two laughs at the beginning. The one convinced there was nothing left sees himself still searching; the conviction is not overturned, and the seeker is not erased. The one who finally understood his father has arrived where his father long stood, and lets that place remain his father’s. Both laughs are one person’s laughter; neither asks anyone to turn back. Looking at each other and laughing comes after them.