Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor develops an inclusive theory that integrates psychological, aesthetic, and ethical issues relating to humor Offers an enlightening and accessible foray into the serious business of humor Reveals how standard theories of humor fail to explain its true nature and actually support traditional prejudices against humor as being antisocial, irrational, and foolish Argues that humor’s benefits overlap significantly with those of philosophy Includes a foreword by Robert Mankoff, Cartoon (...) Editor of The New Yorker. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they believe (...) it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

Is the Concept of Incongruity Still a Useful Construct for the Advancement of Humor Research?The perception of incongruity is considered to be a necessary, though not sufficient, component of the humor experience. Incongruity has been investigated in the philosophical tradition for centuries, and it goes back as far as Aristotle's definition of the comic as based on a particular form of απάτη (surprise and deception). In modern times, many theoretical models, as well as empirical works, are based on (...) this concept. The question is here raised whether the concept of incongruity has already been examined and exploited to its full potential, and nothing new, of theoretical or experimental usefulness, may be drawn from it. It is proposed to conceptualize incongruity as follows: a stimulus is perceived as incongruous when it diverts from the cognitive model of reference. In this perspective, a number of observations are advanced which point to a heuristic property of incongruity still open to interesting developments, both for theory and for applications. (shrink)

Any analysis of "In the Company of Men" is forced to answer three questions of central importance to the ethics of humor: What does it mean to find sexist humor funny? What are the various sources of humor? And, can moral flaws with attempts at humor increase their humorousness? I argued that although merely finding a joke funny in a neutral context cannot tell you anything reliable about a person's beliefs, in context, a joke may reveal (...) a great deal about one’s social attitudes, or feelings of insecurity. Especially in its portrayal of Howard, the film exposes the role of insecurity as a source of humor. Not only can insecurity make one more prone to laugh, but it can also make someone seem funnier in some contexts. I contended that this shows that a strong version of the superiority theory of humor is clearly wrong. Furthermore, the disparate audience reactions to Chad's jokes showed that the morally sensitive who were aware of the purpose of his jokes would see them as ethically flawed. Rather than making the jokes more amusing, the fact that the jokes were considered to be ethically flawed made them less funny. Hence, immoralism is most likely false. (shrink)

I defend the Ubiquity of Humor thesis (UH), according to which every situation admits of a perspective from which its humorous features become visible. I argue that humor, on any plausible theory, attaches to relational features present in every actual situation, and that the perspectives required to perceive them are always available. Accepting this explains why we speak of humor as something one has a “sense” for, why a good sense of humor is an aesthetic accomplishment, (...) why funniness connects unstably to truth, and why the capacity we admire in those who find adversity funny is the one we condemn in those amused when they shouldn’t. Alternatives to UH either fail to account for these things or are otherwise flawed. I also address the most pressing objections, including that UH implausibly classifies horrific or mundane cases as funny and that its reasoning overgeneralizes to all aesthetic value. (shrink)

While the loss of the second book of the Poetics has deprived us of Aristotle’s most extensive account of laughter and comedy, his discussion of eutrapelia (wittiness) as a virtue in his ethical works and in the Rhetoric points toward the importance of humor for his ethical and political thought. This article offers a reconstruction of Aristotle’s account of wittiness and attempts to explain how the virtue of wittiness would animate the everyday interactions of ordinary citizens. Placing Aristotle’s account (...) of wittiness in dialogue with recent work within the ethical turn in contemporary political theory can help articulate what a late-modern ethos of democratic laughter might look like. (shrink)

In a series of important papers, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson argue that all extant neo-sentimentalists are guilty of a conflation error that they call the moralistic fallacy. One commits the moralistic fallacy when one infers from the fact that it would be morally wrong to experience an affective attitude—e.g., it would be wrong to be amused—that the attitude does not fit its object—e.g., that it is not funny. Such inferences, they argue, conflate the appropriateness conditions of attitudinal responses with (...) the fittingness conditions of the associated evaluative properties. Further, they argue that moral considerations are irrelevant for determining if amusement fits its object. We agree that a strong moralizing of humor is wrongheaded and that jokes can be quite funny even in cases where we have a compelling moral reason to not be amused. However, we argue that pace D’Arms and Jacobson moral considerations can be relevant for property ascription. On our view, in order for a joke to be funny, a properly sensitive agent must take herself to have a contributory reason to be amused, and in some cases that she lacks such a reason is best explained by appeal to moral considerations. We use this constraint as the basis of what we call our modest proposal for a modest sentimentalism. (shrink)

This chapter traces the history of the diverse meanings of the word humor from ancient times to its modern association with amusement and funniness. Then it presents the four dominant theories of humor and the problems they face. The most promising of the four is the Incongruity Theory, it argues, though that theory needs a defense against the charge that it makes humor seem irrational. Here the Play Theory comes to the rescue.

Feminists have long argued that humor can serve as a tool of empowerment. In the face of histories of violence and abuse, humor gains force precisely when it is not innocent of the social fields in which it operates. Challenging philosophical and cultural dualisms, we revisit the four dominant theories that have explained laughter and comedy and replace them through a feminist lens that brings into focus laughter as leveling of social hierarchies, collective catharsis, transgression of oppressive norms, (...) and social play. We argue that it is a strategy for expressing outrage and truth telling, an antidote to shame and fear, a source of joy and friendship, a cathartic treatment that is personal and collective, and a means of empathetic connection and alliance. The result is a revolution of form in which humor offers connection, not detachment. (shrink)

The article identifies essential features characteristic of different stages of development and types of humor, and discusses the role of humor in historical changes, social and cul­tural evolution. Humor gets external definitions and criteria that allow to distinguish two stages of proto-humor, and the criterion of full-fledged humor is set. The classical theo­ries of humor (superiority, relief, and incongruity) and main modern theories (benign vio­lation, appropriate incongruity, false alarm, attitude shift, etc.) treat diverse phenomena (...) but have definite invariants. Successful humor episodes (when people involuntarily laugh at an amusing combination of meanings) have main features of interactive rituals (E. Durkheim, E. Goffman, R. Collins), which allows us to reconstruct the hidden mean­ings and bases of participants’ reactions. Such well-known phenomena as joint intention­ality, synchronization of emotional states, bursts of emotional energy, positive reinforce­ment, group membership dynamics, etc. are significant in each successful humor episode. The main features of the combination of meanings in the stimulus of humor according to the most plausible theories, taken disjunctively, form a “confusion” as a basic comic factor. Humor manages to survive in human prehistory and history because its functiona­lity as a provision for individual, group, as well as long-term social needs and concerns. Humor makes a significant impact in affirmation of social norms, orders, and cultural pat­terns by hidden symbols of worship in humor episodes as interactive rituals. At the same time, laughter and humor play a substantial role for loosening and changing orders, and these processes have attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. A sketch model presents how laughter and humor act in “strengthening” and “undermining” roles in dif­ferent phases of historical cycles and the evolutionary spiral. (shrink)

In 2020 Guy McPherson published an academic satire, Academic Pursuits, that was strikingly similar to Richard Russo’s acclaimed 1997 novel Straight Man. It is widely believed by philosophers who study comedy that when two humorous works closely resemble each other there is prima facie reason to believe that the producer of the later work has done something wrong. But while this general view of the wrong of apparently derivative humour is widespread no argument has yet been offered for it. This (...) paper will rectify this omission. After developing a novel account of why plagiarism is wrongful that explains the distinctive wrong of the plagiarism of humorous works it will draw on this account to explain why the production and publication of both derivative and apparently derivative works of humor is wrong. (shrink)

“ A man orders a whole pizza pie for himself and is asked whether he would like it cut into eight or four slices. He responds, ‘Four, I’m on a diet ”’ (Noël Carroll) -/- While not hilarious --so funny that it induces chortling punctuated with outrageous vomiting--this little gem is amusing. We recognize that something has gone wrong. On a first reading it might not compute, something doesn’t quite make sense. Then, aha! , we understand the hapless dieter has (...) misapplied general rules of thumb, mental short-cuts, or heuristics, that we were also initially committed to and that would usually be good enough to rely upon— fewer slices equals fewer calories; diets require fewer calories, etc—but in this particular case they fail, and the feeling of mirth is our reward for making this discovery. We don’t say all of that after a punchline, of course, but that’s what is happening according to the Humor as Error-Detection Theory : our sense of humor can sense our errors. This chapter will focus on the overlap and benefits of a humorous and philosophical attitude toward the world and our place in it. The historian of philosophy Will Durant tells us that genuine philosophy begins when one learns to doubt; we can say something similar with humor--trust me. (shrink)

Rewiev of Amir, L. (2014). Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. Albany: State University of New York Press.

. Usually the ethics of humor revolves around the content of humor. After giving a synopsis and exposing some shortcomings of the recent controversies, this paper takes into account additional aspects and proposes a change of perspective from token to type level and deploys tools of the philosophy of language to tackle the question whether a joke as a type can be considered morally flawed irrespective of its tokens. After exploring possible ways one can think of to furnish (...) evidence for the opposite position, two novel lines of argumentation based on counterfactual conditionals and speech act theory are provided to show that these ways aren’t viable and that joke as types are ethically neutral. Moreover, the presented approach increases the resolution of the debate and provides a framework to capture other hitherto neglected questions of the philosophy of humor as well. (shrink)

There is no generally accepted theory of humor in psychology. In the context of linguistic work on jokes, there are a few formal theories. There is very little research on humor in clinical contexts, and even less in neuroscience. What about humor makes it so difficult to study scientifically, and especially from the perspective of mechanistic explanatory frameworks embraced in contemporary neuroscience? This chapter explores the idea that current research on humor in the neurosciences suffers because (...) prominent theories of humor in psychology and linguistics were first articulated in the terms provided by cognitive schema theories, which typically de-emphasize the social and emotional aspects of humor, and expressly disavow commitments regarding neurological implementation. When investigations pursued by neuroscientists have been successful, it appears that they are focused on the mechanisms of amusement in ways designed to bridge the gap between humor’s cognitive and neurophysiological dimensions. (shrink)

In this chapter I address a shift that has taken place in attitudes about nihilism over the past few decades. Whereas in previous times nihilism was most commonly treated as a wholly negative phenomenon, in recent times it has undergone a reassessment, with many philosophers, scholars, and the general public increasingly coming to consider it as unthreatening, and even beneficial. This shift makes it easier than ever to understand how humor rather than despair is a possible, appropriate, and desirable (...) response to nihilism. I argue that nihilism is structured in terms of a particular kind of incongruity that I call “nihilistic incongruity.” Since nihilistic incongruity has come to be perceived as less of a threat than ever before, and since humor rests on the recognition of non-threatening incongruities, I conclude that it has today become easier and more appropriate than ever to adopt a humorous attitude toward nihilism. (shrink)

This book looks closely at three first-order reflexive emotions--shame, humor and humility--that are shown to be not only exclusively human, but definitive of major aspects of human selfhood, agency and normativity. A separate chapter that covers second-order emotions, shows that when negative, they display a crucial and equally exclusive aspect of human normative self-critique. In addition to jointly delineating agency, sapience, normativity, rationality, and the ability to critically self-reflect, this book further demonstrates the inevitable role of the we in (...) the I (to paraphrase Axel Honneth), namely, how realizing one's full human potential necessarily requires engaging others. This book appeals to students as well as researchers and looks closely at how these three reflexive emotions bestow categorical value on otherness, rendering normative diversity not merely something to be tolerated or rationally overcome, but a rare and necessary blessing. (shrink)

Almost 175 years ago, Congressman Davy Crockett encountered a Massachusetts colleague in Washington. The New Englander, pointing to a farmer driving some mules along Pennsylvania Avenue, quipped: “Hello, there, Crockett, here’s a lot of your constituents on parade. Where are they going?” The Tennessee frontiersman shot back, “They are going to Massachusetts to teach school.” Ever since Crockett’s day, Volunteer State politicians have used humor to deflate their rivals, garner votes, and keep the public amused. Often the public has (...) laughed at them—sometimes even when they were not telling jokes. This book, the first of its kind for Tennessee, offers a broad sampling of that wonderful comic lore, enriched over the years by Democrats and Republicans alike. The stories range from extended anecdotes and tall tales to one-line “zingers.” Local politics, statewide races, judicial decisions, and Capitol Hill maneuverings are all covered. Occasionally, names have been changed to protect the guilty, but more times than not, real names are used: Howard Baker, Al Gore (Senior and Junior), Estes Kefauver, and Lamar Alexander are just a few of the pols who cross these pages. There are many books about politics, but few books reveal, much less revel in, what makes politics and public service lively and fun. Tennessee Political Humor is a delightful exception—a book that invites us not just to read the stories but to tell them out loud. The Authors: Roy Herron, an attorney from Dresden, Tennessee, serves in the Tennessee Senate. He is the author of Things Held Dear: Soul Stories for My Sons. L. H. “Cotton” Ivy, who lives in Decaturville, Tennessee, has served in the Tennessee House of Representatives and was commissioner of agriculture under Gov. Ned McWherter. (shrink)

Research on humor and teaching often focuses on the students. Scholarship is rightly concerned with how students react to teachers who use humor in the classroom, the different kinds of humor teachers use, and whether humor helps student learning outcomes and emotional stability. It is rare for research projects to consider how using humor in higher education can give the teacher a beneficial, positive, or refreshed attitude toward their own identity as a teacher or professor (...) or scholar. The self-identity of professors and teachers is an important consideration in times of administrative challenges. This paper will address how we can better understand humor by and for teachers, with special attention to philosophy teachers. (shrink)

This article reflects on the oddness of humor and laughter as human behaviors. It argues against classifying humorous amusement as an emotion by contrasting amusement with standard emotions. It then examines amusement as a kind of pleasure, specifically, the enjoyment of psychological shifts. It argues that humor evolved from mock-aggressive play in pre-human apes, with laughter serving as a play signal. Understanding humor as play not only helps explain laughter but also clarifies issues in the ethics of (...) humor, such as the wrongness of racist and sexist jokes, and the question of whether a sense of humor is a virtue. (shrink)

This paper provides a defense of the thesis that God has a sense of humor. First, I sketch the four main theories of what it is to have a sense of humor that we find in the literature. Next, I argue that three arguments against the thesis that God has a sense of humor fail to convince. Then, I consider what one might take to be four biblical reasons to think that God has a sense of (...) class='Hi'>humor and argue that none of them are convincing. Subsequently, I give three philosophical reasons to think that God (if he exists) has a sense of humor, that is, reasons that any person who grasps the concept of God should be willing to embrace. These arguments differ in strength, but I argue that, jointly, they provide us with sufficient reason to think that God has a sense of humor. Finally, I spell out three implications of the idea that God has a sense of humor. (shrink)

La poesía de Rodrigo Lira está marcada por el uso del humor negro y la polifonía, tanto para referirse a la voz poética como a su contexto literario, cultural, social y político. Estas estrategias para la configuración de su identidad y posicionamiento discursivo, de carácter fragmentario, se utilizan para conjurar su sentido de despertenencia, soledad y culpa de ser.

El segundo y tercer poemario (The Fat Black Woman’s Poems [1984] y Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman [1989], respectivamente) de Grace Nichols, autora guyanesa residente en el Reino Unido desde 1977, se encuentran hermanados por el uso del humor. Criticada por valerse de este recurso, visto como un exceso de liviandad para tratar temas complejos como el pasado de esclavitud, la dura vida del inmigrante caribeño o la sexualidad femenina, Nichols revindica su utilización en tanto implica su adscripción (...) a la tradición antillana. En el presente trabajo, mediante el análisis de cuatro poemas (dos de cada libro), se explora cómo opera el humor en ambas obras y qué simplificaciones conlleva, poniendo especial énfasis en cómo la aparente liviandad que aporta es, en tanto tradición caribeña, otro modo de resistencia. (shrink)

Howard Curzer argues that Aristotle’s virtue of wit is a social virtue, a form of philia: conversation with a witty person is pleasing rather than offensive or hateful. On the basis of an analogy between wit and temperance, Curzer holds that the witty person is good at detecting (and avoiding) hateful humor but is not necessarily an expert in judging the funniness of jokes. Curzer thus defends a moderate position in contemporary philosophy of humor—a Detraction Account of hateful (...) humor—arguing that the humorousness of a joke is an aggregate plea- sure resulting from several factors in addition to funniness. While sympathetic to Curzer’s overall approach to wit, this essay criticizes the Detraction Account as inconsistent with Aristotle’s text and implausible in its own right, and suggests a friendly amendment based on those criticisms. (shrink)

In 2017, Steven Gimbel published Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. This book proposes, among other vastly interesting notions, a definition of humor that eschews audience reactions in favor of focusing exclusively on the craft and intention of the responsible comedian. This article intends to provoke that definition and show why humorous performances cannot be crafted without an audience-centric mindset, proving Gimbel’s notion problematic at best. To poke this definition, I draw on the American (...) Folk Humor tradition and compare its historic roots with modern tourist attractions that on the surface appear to channel its spirit. These include the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue dinner show at Walt Disney World and The Brewery Follies at Virginia City, Montana. After showcasing the differences between these modern performances and the tradition they pretend to espouse, I conclude that Gimbel’s theory cannot account for the evolution of a funny genre. (shrink)

El pirronismo antiguo semeja una esfinge, pretende ser una forma de vida y de pensamiento, una narración sobre la forma individual de vida y una argumentación contra todo dogmatismo. El pirronismo, por tanto, por razón de su renuncia a toda afirmación tiene de entrada una tendencia a la narración y es un trabajador de la frontera entre filosofía y literatura. En sus lecciones de Estética, Hegel interpreta la comicidad y el humor como formas de la skepsis poético-literaria y ve (...) en la novela moderna humorística la forma suprema del arte. Hegel construye, a la luz del Tristram Shandy de Laurence Sterne un paradigma de la fantasía humorística, "negativa", antidogmática y de la moderna subjetividad como superación de la libertad pirrónica del carácter. La subjetividad moderna exige una skepsis consumada, de lo contrario no se tiene un concepto de subjetividad, pero exige asimismo el humor libre, de lo contrario no se tiene una idea justa del ser libre. En este sentido la modernidad es una época de la skepsis poética y filosófica, al mismo tiempo una época de inclusión del escepticismo. El Tristram Shandy de Sterne aparece como el prototipo de la autorrelación representante, la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel como modelo de la autorrelación pensante. La subjetividad humorística y pensante podrían ser entonces, los paradigmas de la literatura y la filosofía modernas, en las cuales el pirronismo es "superado”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconceive safety as a form of relation embedded in particular ways of speaking, listening and thinking. Moving away from safety as a relation that is achieved once and for all and afterwards remains safe avoids some of the disappointments of discourses of safety that seem to promise once a risk is taken or a gap is bridged that thereafter relations among people will be easier and calmer. This bumpier version of safety suggests that (...) humor creates the kind of instabilities in discourse that act, perhaps ironically, as an invitation to enjoy the difficulties of communicating complex and challenging ideas. Humor, then, creates a kind of safe space, not devoid of dramatic shifts or emotional response, but organized around those shifts as experiences that are moments apart from conflict. I explore the use of humor as a form of serious play in social justice classrooms, examining the strategies of indirect teaching, contradictory lessons, and jolting pleasure that more traditional pedagogical approaches are less able to create. I see in humor a complex form of address and interaction that plays on the multiple possibilities within an utterance or concept and by reminding classroom communities of those possibilities. Humor can erupt from shared moments and disjunctive understandings and can as easily be mobilized by teachers as by students. By reopening the possibilities of concepts and relations, humor shatters simplistic readings by literally playing out what might be said and what could be tried but often manages to combine a sense of safety via shared laughter with its disruptions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 169-190.

By virtue of his Essays Montaigne is rightly regarded not only as a radically modern philosopher but also as a transformative educational innovator. He confronted the extent to which pedantry and acculturation can justify cruelty by developing a conception of liberal arts education as the arts of liberation, and at the core of this education he placed the practice of essaying. This article argues that in easing us into essaying practices Montaigne qua educator makes reflexive use of three specific modes (...) of didactic humor: incongruous comparison, subversive superiority, and leveling embodiment. Humor thus emerges as a cognitive disposition and communicative mode especially appropriate to the pedagogical engagement with difference today. (shrink)

Thomas Wilk's and Steven Gimbel's In on the Joke: The Ethics of Humor and Comedy, takes on a gargantuan task in less than 140 pages; although, to offer my first nitpick, the font is quite small. Too small, really. The stated objective is to provide a theoretical basis for ethical decisions regarding humor and comedy from everyday situations among non-comedians and non-philosophers to sold-out venues by well-known comedians, and likely, nonphilosophers. One thing that makes the endeavor audacious is (...) that ethics has a long history, and some quite recent as evidenced by so many first-year students in philosophy classes, of being tossed into the realm of extreme relativism and/or pure subjectivism, as if our moral sense were no different from our sense of taste. On top of this, comedy, humor in general, is often thought to be wholly subjective, and, since it is a matter of individual tastes, and there's no accounting for taste, it follows that Wilk and Gimbel are engaged in the hapless task of trying to account for pure opinion using an entirely subjective tool. I find that funny. Perhaps others do as well, but who's to say? Well, Wilk and Gimbel, for two. But, to compound the difficulties, humor is not an "ordinary" speech act with conventional rules of the sort outlined by H.P. Grice and his "Cooperative Principle", where one can be "corrected" for flaunting the conversational regulations of clarity, precision, and truth, for example. So, it is not obvious that our "ordinary" ethical assumptions can (or should at all) apply to humorous speech or performance. Yet, humor is employed everyday, likely by everyone in some fashion to some degree. We are ensconced in humor, almost as much as we are in language as such, and because of this, we might fail to recognize the moral implications of our attempts at humor. Or, if we do think about them, especially the putatively humorous acts of others that are composed of content about which we disagree, we proclaim that such acts constitute a moral harm, and we're outraged enough to jump on the hashtag-cancel-bandwagon. Or, if we happen to be superfans of the comedian in potential moral peril, we proclaim that it was "just a joke", and so it would be silly to invoke censure of any kind, much less moral. Sometimes our reactions in either case might be justified. But when and why? (shrink)

A review of John Morrreall's book Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor.

This chapter argues that we should stop thinking of humor primarily as the emotion of comic amusement and start thinking of it as a communicative tool: a kind of social technology. Rather than asking what humor is in some deep, metaphysical sense, we should ask what humor does in different communication contexts. This shift helps us make sense of humor’s double edge: how it builds solidarity and excludes, empowers and silences, how it both resists power and (...) reinforces it. (shrink)

A philosopher’s case for the importance of good—if ethically questionable—humor. A good sense of humor is key to the good life, but a joke taken too far can get anyone into trouble. Where to draw the line is not as simple as it may seem. After all, even the most innocent quips between friends rely on deception, sarcasm, and stereotypes and often run the risk of disrespect, meanness, and harm. How do we face this dilemma without taking ourselves (...) too seriously? In Wisecracks, philosopher David Shoemaker examines this interplay between humor and morality and ultimately argues that even morally suspect humor is an essential part of ethical life. Shoemaker shows how improvised “wisecracks” between family and friends—unlike scripted stand-up, sketches, or serials—help us develop a critical human skill: the ability to carry on and find the funny in tragedy. In developing a new ethics of humor in defense of questionable gibes, Wisecracks offers a powerful case for humor as a healing presence in human life. (shrink)

This essay is concerned primarily with the question of what humor is, and with the somewhat distinct question, of what the bases or grounds of humor are. Traditional theories of humor are reviewed, an analysis of humor is proposed, and the issue of goodness in humor is briefly addressed. It is argued that the essence of humor is given by none of the traditional theories or their variants, residing instead in a particular pleasurable affect,_amusement_, (...) elicited through cognition, and bearing a non-accidental relation to the behaviour known as_laughter_. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the article will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment even in adversarial audiences. The second part will be a connecting piece, arguing that subversive humor can be constructed as brief narrative thought experiments that employ the (...) use of fictionalized scenarios to facilitate an open, playful attitude, encouraging a space for collaborative interpretation. This interaction between humorist and audience is an aesthetic experience that is enjoyable in and of itself, as the feelings of mirth are intrinsically valuable. But connected to the “Ha-ha!” experience of these sorts of humorous creations is an “Aha!” or potentially revelatory experience that is a mixture of cognitive comprehension and motivated (emotional) response. The third part of the article will attempt to go beyond the consciousness-raising element with an account of how such possible worlds created in the realm of imagination through subversive humor can bleed into the real world of flesh and blood people. Finally, an example of subversive humor will be analyzed. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny. What’s more, they have good reason to be: Aristotle himself lists ready wit (eutrapelia) among the virtues, as a mean between excessive humor and its defect. Here, I assess Scholastic discussions of humor in theory, before turning to examples of it in practice. The last and finest of these is a joke, hitherto unacknowledged, which Aquinas makes in his famous Five Ways. Along the way, we’ll see (i) that the history of philosophy (...) is not so hostile to humor as is commonly supposed; and (ii) that the competing theories of humor like the Incongruity Theory and the Release Theory are not altogether incompatible. We’ll also see at least one example of an apparent attempt by modern translators to excise humor from a medieval text. Our considerations will open a window into what oral discussion and debate at medieval universities was actually like, and how we should understand the relationship between the texts we have now and the exchanges that actually occurred then. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

According to the standard analysis, humor theories can be classified into three neatly identifiable groups:incongruity, superiority, and relief theories. Incongruity theory is the leading approach and includes historical figures such as Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and perhaps has its origins in comments made by Aristotle in the Rhetoric. Primarily focusing on the object of humor, this school sees humor as a response to an incongruity, a term broadly used to include ambiguity, logical impossibility, irrelevance, and inappropriateness. The (...) paradigmatic Superiority theorist is Thomas Hobbes, who said that humor arises from a “sudden glory” felt when we recognize our supremacy over others. Plato and Aristotle are generally considered superiority theorists, who emphasize the aggressive feelings that fuel humor. The third group, Relief theory, is typically associated with Sigmund Freud and Herbert Spencer, who saw humor as fundamentally a way to release or save energy generated by repression. In addition, this article will explore a fourth group of theories of humor: play theory. Play theorists are not so much listing necessary conditions for something’s counting as humor, as they are asking us to look at humor as an extension of animal play. (shrink)

Although the ethics of humor is a relatively new field, it already seems to have achieved a consensus about ethics in general. In this paper, I implicitly (1) question the view of ethics that stands behind many discussions in the ethics of humor; I do this by explicitly (2) focusing on what has been a chief preoccupation in the ethics of humor: the evaluation of humor. Does the immoral content of a joke make it more or (...) less humorous? Specifically, I analyze whether a sexist joke is more humorous because of its sexism. Contra recent trends in the ethics of humor, I answer this question affirmatively. To this end, the paper presents a detailed and novel reading of Bergson's philosophy of humor, which I argue connects most easily and significantly to the alternate view of ethics I have in mind. (shrink)

In her “Humor, Belief and Prejudice”, Robin Tapley concludes: -/- "Racist/racial, sexist/gender humor is funny because we think it’s true. We know the beliefs exist in the laugher, there’s no way to philosophically maneuver around that." -/- In what follows I’ll be trying to do some philosophical maneuvering of the sort she thinks hopeless in the quote above.

Humor From The Perspective Of Positive Psychology. Implications For Research On Development In Adulthood The purpose of the article is the presentation of the ways that humor was understood within the current of positive psychology; the state and advances of research on the significance of this property in achieving and safeguarding a "good life" as well as the legitimacy and possibility of applying the theoretical and research approach devised by the mentioned orientation approaches to issues connected with (...) class='Hi'>humor to the field of developmental psychology during the life course. A conceptualisation of humor was presented as a character strength comprising the virtue of transcendence in the approach of Peterson and Seligman, a composite of wisdom in the concept of Webster and of a thinking style, experiencing and action in the theory of Martin. A review of research was then undertaken: humor as a virtue imbuing property; humor correlates understood from the perspective of positive psychology; manifestations of its regulative role and individual differences in humor as a resource contributing to individual growth. In the closing paragraphs a suggestion was formulated regarding humor research as a resource that supports positive development, namely, the fulfilment of developmental tasks, overcoming developmental crises and coping with problems connected with ageing. (shrink)

Oppression is easily recognized. That is, at least, when oppression results from overt, consciously professed racism, for example, in which violence, explicit exclusion from economic opportunities, denial of adequate legal access, and open discrimination perpetuate the subjugation of a group of people. There are relatively clear legal remedies to such oppression. But this is not the case with covert oppression where the psychological harms and resulting legal and economic exclusion are every bit as real, but caused by concealed mechanisms subtly (...) and systematically employed. In many cases, those with power and privilege use cultural stereotypes in order to sustain an unjust status quo. This is so even if the biases are implicit, automatic, and contrary to the consciously professed beliefs of the stereotyper. Furthermore, since many of these biases are not consciously reasoned into one's system of beliefs, and since they are notoriously difficult to bring to consciousness and dislodge via direct, logical confrontation, some other creative means of resistance is needed. I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious matters, but in a playful manner that fosters creative and critical thinking, and cultivates a desire and skill for recognizing incongruities between our professed ideals and a reality that does not meet those standards. Successful subversive wits create fictional scenarios that highlight such moral incongruities, but, like philosophical thought experiments, they reveal a moral truth that also holds in the real world. Such humor offers opportunities for "border crossing" where the audience is encouraged to see from the perspectives of marginalized people who, because they inhabit ambiguous spaces in between the dominant and subordinate spheres, are in an epistemically privileged position with respect to matters of oppression. Subversive humorists open their audiences to the lived experiences of others, uncover the absurdities of otherwise covert oppression, and appeal to our desire to be truthful and just. (shrink)

This paper begins by taking seriously former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ response in his What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? to systematic violence and oppression. He claims that direct argumentation is not the ideal mode of resistance to oppression: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.” I will focus on a few elements of this playful mode of resistance that conflict with the more straightforward strivings for abstract, universal, objective, convergent, absolute (...) thinking that champions reason over emotion, logic over narrative, and science over lived experience. In contrast, the type of protest employed by people like Douglass can utilize aesthetics and logic, playfulness and seriousness, emotion, even anger, and reason. Douglass provides examples of humorous, sincere parrhesia, oscillating between the lexicon of the dominant sphere and the critical reflection from a trickster on the margins. This will require an analysis of Michel Foucault’s conception of parrhesia: courageous truth-telling in the face of powerful people or institutions. It is a study of humor in the parrhesiastes, an element I think neglected by Foucault. I argue that the humorous parrhesiastes offers a mode of resistance which can subvert oppressive power structures that perpetuate injustice, revealing the fact that humor can be integral in courageous truth-telling. (shrink)

I argue that most of the premodern Chinese schools of thought contain elements of humor that can be analyzed in a differentiated and systematic way. This article is the second of two parts of this investigation. The first part outlined the foundations of humor in the thought of Confucius and Zhuangzi. After an introduction that summarizes some of the systematic foundations which were already presented in more detail in the introduction to the first part, this part of the (...) investigation complements the former by directing the attention to the field of Chan Buddhism. Here, I refer to a humorous anecdote about Deng Yinfeng. To further complete the overall picture, I discuss examples of humor in other ancient schools of Chinese thought, namely in various texts of Han dynasty Confucianism, in Legalism (which also has a Daoist dimension to it), in surviving text fragments of the School of Names (which is implicitly related to Mohist thought), and in The Annals of Lü Buwei (Syncretism). The present article should be read in conjunction with the first part, which was published in last year’s issue of this yearbook. (shrink)

I argue that most of the pre-modern Chinese schools of thought contain elements of humor that can be analyzed in a differentiated and systematic manner. This article provides the first of two parts of this investigation. As a preparatory part, its scope is outlined on the basis of a traditional ideograph that represents the basic Chinese schools of thought as a whole. This is followed by an introduction to the present analytical framework. It is shown that it is compatible (...) with the most basic ancient and modern concepts in the Chinese philosophy of humor. Based on this, the investigation turns to the Analects. It is shown that Confucius uses elaborate forms of humor as an allusive manner of teaching. Afterwards, the parallel Confucian refusal of comical entertainment and mass humor is discussed. A comparative discussion of evolved forms of humor in Confucian contexts and the Daoist classic Zhuangzi provides the transition to the more specific perspectives in the narrative of “Huzi, the Face Changer.” This is followed by a further in-depth comparison of Confucius and Zhuangzi’s high-level transformative humor. This leads to the discussion of the shielding function of humor as alluded to in the Daoist story of Hundun in the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

Humorous laughter is related to the sublime experience in that it involves the transformation of a potentially unpleasant perception into a pleasurable experience. However, whereas sublimity is associated with feelings of awe and respect, humorous laughter is associated with feelings of superiority and contempt. This difference is a result of the fact that sublimity is an affective response involving an individual’s perception of vulnerability while humorous laughter is a response involving perceived invulnerability.

This article discusses four ways of understanding the concept of humor: 1) in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, as 2) a cluster concept, 3) an interpretive concept, and 4) a dual character concept. We peruse both historical and contemporary research on humor, but instead of asking “What is humor?,” we draw conclusions regarding what humor research tells us of the ways to conceptualize humor. The main merits and shortcomings of different approaches are explicated. We (...) suggest that the increased awareness of conceptual options will help the field of humor research to construct ever better theories on the elusive subject matter. (shrink)