Philosophy of Humor

The following work sought to explore the basic aspects of the development of thought around humor and how its bad reputation originated and led to the notion of its nature being inadequate to the Fine Arts throughout history. Through a thorough exploration of the state of the art around the subject, this basic research developed a fundamental context for future development in methodology for the analysis of humorous artistic practices.

What do philosophy and verbal humor have in common? And what about the German philos-opher G. W. F. Hegel and the Czech-German comedian Felix Holzmann? This book (The night one can bear hunt rabbits) answers these questions in a concise and rigorous manner, thus not only providing an introduction to philosophy and its problems through the comicality of lan-guage but also by a philosophical exegesis of humor on the basis of contrast and the negative conceptions of experience (“There have to be crooks in this world too,” said Švejk, lying down in his straw mattress. “If everyone were honest with each other, they’d soon start punching each other’s noses.”). In dealing with this exegesis, the book takes advantage of Hegel’s writings and, most importantly, Felix Holzmann’s sketches and dialogues.

The night during which one can go bear hunting for rabbits along with Holzmann is the night in which all cows are black, i.e. Hegel’s Absolute. In it, all conceptual differences – not only between bear and rabbit but, more generally, between true and false, beautiful and ugly, or good and bad – can vanish if one does not sufficiently value the complicated relation between language and the world. Language is not only the means for the arbitrary naming of how things are in the world (thus Engels’: “If I include a shoe-brush in the unity mammals, this does not help it to get mammary glands.”) but the medium of their meaning. Verbal humor reveals and manifests this truth that is, in fact, the truth about truth.

Contemporary comedy audiences are accused by some comedians of being too morally sensitive to appreciate humor. To get closer to an answer, I will first briefly present the argument over audience sensitivity as found in the nonphilosophical literature. Second, I then turn to the philosophical literature and begin from the idea that “funny” is a response-dependent property. I present a criticism of this response-dependence account of “funny” based in the claim that funniness is not determined by what normal audiences actually laugh at, but by what merits laughter. Third, I argue that excessive or deficient moral sensitivity distorts audience receptivity to humor. Fourth, I turn to candidates for ideally sensitive audiences. I conclude by returning to the particular cases of supposed oversensitivity or undersensitivity to jokes to see how we might judge them.

Because most theories of humour emphasize its intersubjective and/or semantic nature, they fail to fully appreciate and explain self-directed humour. Through a critical exploration of the implications of different theories of humour and satire, this paper argues that the spectrum of reflexive humour and satire can be categorized according to the figure of the satirist and the target of satire, both of whom can feature individual or collective social selves. Depending on the satirist and the scope of satire, the functions of reflexive humour may range from securing psychological homeostasis to dealing with more impersonal, social and philosophical concerns.

पुरुषांनी स्त्रियांबद्दल केलेल्या विनोदात बहुधा सत्तासंबंध असतो, असे लक्षात येते. हिंसा ही सत्ताप्राप्तीच्या प्रक्रियेत अंतर्निहित घटक म्हणून काम करते. विनोद जर सत्तासंबंध प्रस्थापित करणारी घटना ठरत असेल तर असे विनोद हिंसक मानले पाहिजेत. तसे झाले की विनोद निर्विष न ठरत विषारी व हिंसक बनतो.

"The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled but a Fire to be Kindled", and "Education is Not the Filling of Pail But the Lighting of a Fire", and ... Something About a Horse ...

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it smile? Because of the long face and all? (No, that can’t be it). Anyway, borrowing a bit from Plutarch and Yeats (maybe, there is no agreement on whether he said that about pails and fires), and some idiom from 12th Century Old English about horses walking on water, I assume, we can glean the following gem: learning requires active participation by learners. It is almost embarrassing to have to write that, but here we are with education today, mostly unloading facts into unlit receptacles. This doesn’t work, and not just because the metaphor is mixed. Genuine learning requires focus, which requires motivation, which is cultivated by interest, which needs curiosity, which is not something teachable through the typical educational curricula. I can, as Aristotle tells us, teach students the basics of some ethical theory, but I cannot make them virtuous. Ah-ha! I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make it abide by the categorical imperative (No, that’s not quite right. Although it’s true--most horses are utilitarians).

One way that seems to work in piquing student interest in learning philosophy is to use humor as you make the case that a philosophical attitude is very similar to a humorous attitude. Both rely heavily on questioning our collective presuppositions, both cultivate rational skepticism, and both are never content with accepting traditions and values that are mindlessly received. I’ve got it now: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it an iconoclast! (still not it).
Friedrich Nietzsche published a book in 1889 titled Twilight of the Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. This was during his most frenetic and fecund period, just before the syphilis set in rendering him somewhat less than his lauded Ubermensch. The “Idols” for Nietzsche were “false gods” or the ubiquitous errors that philosophy should expose. He is likely borrowing (without citation!) from sir Francis Bacon, whose “idols” are fetishes which can divert us from the pursuit of truth.  Learning is hard, but it doesn’t have to be gloomy, hence, I advocate for a different sort of hammer to act as a “tuning-fork” sounding out the hollow and dangerous idols handed down to us that have passed for sagacity.
The squeaky plastic hammer, when wielded in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons, to invoke Aristotle, can crack open the most serious attitudes and prime students for philosophical analysis and reflection. This multifaceted mirth-making-mallet can pass pupils through three stages of philosophical enlightenment, not necessarily in this order: students are amused, bemused, and finally disabused of their prior mistaken assumptions. The expression “hammer home the point” exposes the limitations with force-feeding learners facts via direct and blunt force instruments; “hammering” the truth into them is ineffective at best, at worst it kills whatever inclination there might have been to actively learn. The toy hammer championed here, on the other hand, can act as a prod, not mere prop, an indirect means to stoke the flames of discovery.

We seek to present a reading of Henri Bergson’s 1900 work, Le Rire ( Laughter ). The primary theme of this book is the comic phenomenon, as expressed through the bodily element of laughter. What interests Bergson is the evolutionary role of laughter in social regulation. As the vitalist philosopher sees things, society is perpetually threatened by the danger of rigidity. Society is always in danger of regressing into a machinic, static, rigid state. We laugh at living human beings who behave automatically and machinically. Hence, laughter is a form of punishment, designed to compel individuals to behave more organically. Subsequent authors on humor have extensively critiqued Bergson’s rather narrow equation of humor with punishment, drawing attention to the wide variety of comic types. What especially interests us is how Le Rire can be read as part of a broader vitalist concern with the maintenance of an organicity always under threat from its own tendencies. Finally, we also interp...

American Philosophical Association, 2021 Eastern division meeting (via Zoom)
Jan. 15, 2021, 11am EST session (= program update).
In this session of the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor, I’ll briefly present some ideas from Kant’s Humorous Writings (2020).

Innovative musician, producer and songwriter Walter Becker (1950-2017) wielded humor to distance himself from a traumatic childhood and to bind himself to a peer group that shared his skewed, wry worldview. Following years of struggle at the fringes of the music business, Becker achieved worldwide success as co-founder of the platinum-selling band Steely Dan. By the end of the 1970s, however, Steely Dan was defunct, and Becker retreated to the Polynesian-American subculture of Maui, Hawaii, where he continued to write and record songs that tackled the orientalist theme of "East meets West" in his inimitable droll style. This chapter takes up Eysenck's psychology of humor as well as various social theorists' assessments of Romantic irony as spectacles through which to view Walter Becker's lifelong struggle to bend his potentially ego-diminishing sardonicism into positive relations with self and others. Positive Psychology 2.0 (PP2) will be called upon to frame the chapter's discussion section, in which it is concluded that Becker was able to mitigate the self-other corrosion that emanated from his hipster-satirist persona by integrating into his art the more earnest, sincere sentiments that sprang from life on his Maui estate, where sustained interaction with family, friends, and artistic collaborators reflected his embrace of a slow-paced, pastoral culture that the Manhattan-born bohemian had earlier dismissed as shallow and vacuous.

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and undermines reasonable debate among citizens regarding policies that matter: the justice system, welfare, inequality, and race, for example. Some of Chappelle’s humor, especially in his most recent Netflix specials, but also in his earlier standup performances and his series The Chappelle Show, is akin to art that appeals to emotion in the ways suggested by Du Bois in “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Beauty is essential to art, but, “I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent” (p. 22). The “one side” is that which appears to extoll American ideals, but in reality undermines them, perpetuating the subordinate status of “the other”--black citizens. Replace “beauty” with “humor” or “funny”, and we see striking parallels between Chappelle’s socio-political performances and Du Bois’ call for positive propaganda, each of which constitute “civic rhetoric” broadly construed. We no longer live in Du Bois’ America of explicit denial of rights. In many ways our situation is worse, as the mechanisms of exclusion are implicit, difficult to dislodge, because they are invisible. Chappelles’ humor draws attention to subtle undermining-propaganda in our liberal democracy, transforming it through his counter-propaganda into the spectacle that it should be; ubiquitous democracy-denying propaganda should be as obvious to whites as it is to minorities. In his words, we should all see that “that shit is fucking incredible” (Killin’ Them Softly).

This chapter studies the relationship between dark humor, addiction, and abjection. As a case study, it examines a stand-up routine by comic Craig Ferguson in which the comedian touches on such varied topics as peeing his pants, vulnerable populations, and alcoholic amnesia, noting how each relates to abjection. Since drunkenness frequently leads to vomiting and accidental urination, those examples provide the clearest cases of how alcoholism connects gross-out humor to bodily abjection. Ferguson also discusses how addicts form vulnerable populations, which demonstrates a social understanding of abjection as people left behind by society. Finally, Scepanski investigates drunken blackouts as temporal abjection. Since memory is so fundamental to understanding oneself, blackouts create an alienating disconnect between present and past.

In this chapter, I defend a version of moderate comic immoralism. According to this view, sometimes jokes are made funnier because they are immoral. Moderate comic immoralism, on its face, is much more plausible, intuitive, and defensible than strong comic immoralism. All that is required to show that moderate comic immoralism is true is a single instance in which a joke is made funnier because it is immoral. Since I am an overachiever, I will provide two examples in which jokes are made more amusing because they are immoral and explain why their amusement is enhanced specifically by their immorality. In due course, I anticipate some objections to moderate comic immoralism and put them to rest. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to justify your belief in what you already knew to be true about the relationship between immorality and funniness. You’re welcome.

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.

This is an examination of humor, broken into two sections concerned respectively with what we find funny, and why we find things funny at all. I look at various competing theories, comparing them with each other and testing them against a number of pre-theoretical instances of humor, favoring in the end a version of what has been called 'Incongruity-Resolution Theory'. I also take some first steps towards a tentative phenomenology of humor, which may be expanded upon in the future.

Abstract:Human is a private entity who tries to make sense its existence and the nature, the world, universe thanks to mind power and who builts on value and belief system and who founds civilization and produces cultures. This private entity has been in search of a reality to today this day exist. In thesearch of truth has created the world of meanings different two called as of humor and philosophy. It is said to mean that the philosophy of the world this meaning to get accurate information about them to see things existing and look at the form of critically to happening in society and in the world, in the universe. The concept of humor can be defined as a discipline trying to demonstrate the seeking of reality as an action comedy inside of cultural structure. In this context philosophy and humor, use the belief and values system and mindset of the period existing in seeking the truth of man as a tool. In this process, It enables the people to look from a different paradigm to truth of people by exceeding the limit meaning of civilization and culture. Thus it allows the people to get one step closer to reality by arousing from their deep dogmatic sleep. Keywords: Human, Cultura, Philosophy, Humor, Reality.

La investigación que está volcada en este libro propone una lectura novedosa para decodificar la manera en que se relacionan la música y el humor en la obra de Les Luthiers, grupo argentino creado en 1967 y actualmente en actividad. La característica fundamental de este grupo es ofrecer espectáculos en los que se generan eventos humorísticos, tanto en el transcurso de la ejecución de las obras como en sus intersticios, mediante la ejecución de obras propias que remiten a géneros musicales pertenecientes a los ámbitos de las llamadas “música académica”, “música folclórica” y “música popular”.
A partir de la premisa según la cual Les Luthiers establece con su audiencia una situación comunicativa, es posible explicar la emergencia del humor como resultante de la articulación entre los que se consideran cuatro recursos principales: los “instrumentos informales”, las herramientas lingüísticas, las presentaciones y los géneros musicales. En este libro, la autora defiende la idea de que el humor es un evento. La propuesta de comprender el humor de esta manera permite incluir los recursos mencionados, las acciones de los sujetos intervinientes y otros procesos que serán analizados para dar cuenta de este fenómeno complejo. En consecuencia, esta perspectiva más que abordar el estudio del humor como una propiedad de un objeto o de un agente –como lo ha estudiado hasta ahora la musicología–, concibe el humor-música de Les Luthiers como un evento, una instancia comunicativa que acaece en un tiempo y espacio específicos en la cual el grupo encuentra la complicidad de su público.

In the book Poetic Humor in Vasko Popa’s Oeuvre, the author endeavors to identify and describe basic methodical and theoretical terms, assertions and devices necessary for studying the humor as a phenomenon in poetry on the one hand, and then to apply those concepts to appropriate features of Popa’s poetic oeuvre on the other. According to the aforementioned, the study is composed of a prologue or introduction, three major parts concerning different themes, and an epilogue or conclusion.

In the prologue, the author provides a brief survey of Vasko Popa’s work, giving at the same time certain assumptions concerning specifi­c development of the poet’s authentic poetics. Describing some particular changes Popa had made over the years in his first two collections of poems, the author tries to indicate three significant keystones for interpreting and deciphering Popa’s poetics. In his further investigation attention is directed toward one of these three keystones –the role and significance of humor in the poetry.

The first part of the study looks into relevant theories of humor. In this chapter, the author provides a spectrum of various ideas from aestheticians of Antique period (Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero), via periods of Renaissance and Romanticism (Ben Johnson, Francis Hutcheson, Fridrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tick and Novalis) to the 19th and the 20th century philosophers and contemporary literary theorists (Arthur Schopenhauer, Theodor Lipps, Henri Bergson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Niklâvs Hartmanis, Gerard Genete, and Umb­erto Eco). Although historical in its form, this survey of theories of humor is debate-triggering in its essence, since it directly links ideas, opinions and convictions from various, frequently very distant epochs. At the same time the author consistently delineates shapes of different phenomena of laughter, and subsequently, where humor as category gets the central place. Particular attention is dedicated to the description and critical comments on Bergson’s theory of humor, as well as to Wittgenstein’s insights concerning phenomena of thinking and language use, in order to establish author’s own concept of humor as an emotion and a language phenomenon connected with the structure and meaning of the poetic statement. This connection is perceived in its whole potential interdisciplinary and semantic multiplicity, although striving to avoid imposing one universal, overall and general definition of verbal, emotional, or performative essence of humor.

Starting from Bergson’s idea of "comical nonsense,“ in the part of the study named The Mechanisms of Analysis and The Analysis of the Mechanisms of Popa’s Poetic Humor, the author shows the way in which the verbal pun can be connected with the analysis of mechanisms of poetic humor, and how it can be applied to Popa’s poetics. Poet’s specific language strategies are embodied primarily in diverse disorganization of common logical and semantic relations, which brings the absurd and the comical closer together. These strategies are observed through a prism of usage of numerous rhetorical figures and devices (antithesis, oxymoron, paradox, inversion, chiasmus, personification, dehumanization, antropomorphization, mechaniz­ation). The analyses the author provided in this chapter of the tripartite study gradually lead to the primary subject of research in the third chapter of the study – the grotesque – which is seen as a superordinate concept in relation to the described procedures of producing humor effects by and through language.

In the third chapter, named Analysis of the Emerging Modes of Popa’s Poetic Humor, the author presents several theoretical approaches to the grotesque, like in the case of theories of humor in the first chapter, inclining finally to the view of Kaiser’s theory and his typology of grotesque humor, expanding it further. In the light of this approach, the author distinguishes several kinds of the grotesque in the poetry of Vasko Popa (play with the absurd; play of poetic swear words/defense mechanism of using the grotesque image; ironic and parodic ways of using the grotesque), which are being examined in selected concrete examples. Simultaneously, the synchronic considerations of Popa’s poetry are brought in relation with the adequate methods and genres present in the Serbian poetic tradition.

The conclusion generalizes the analysis incorporated in the study, marking off the two categories of humor in the Vasko Popa’s poetry. The first humor is benign one, the one that sometimes even disturbs accepted views on the arrangement of the world, but does not destroy them. The second one is sharper, a humor of lost values, of "disorientation“, a humor that gets features of satire, irony, grotesque, absurd and parody. Finally, presenting specific characteristics and possibilities of mixing and combining with other types of humor, the author describes the curve, which the spectrum of Popa’s poetic humor makes.

Przedstawione w książce zagadnienia nawiązują do idei integracji międzykulturowej i budowania wspólnoty poprzez radosny śmiech - zwłaszcza w odniesieniu do fascynującej, choć trudnej przeszłości. Ich podstawą jest komizm zawarty w żydowskich dowcipach i anegdotach o edukacji oraz wspólnota śmiechu i humoru ukształtowana w rozmaitych okolicznościach. W poprzedzającym część antologiczną eseju popularnonaukowym, zostały przedstawione argumenty potwierdzające tezę, że w zróżnicowanym kulturowo środowisku, dowcip i towarzyszący mu śmiech mogą stanowić czynnik dialogu międzykulturowego oraz narzędzie edukacji międzykulturowej. Zamiarem zespołu opracowującego niniejszą książkę była popularyzacja działalności Fundacji dla Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego w bydgoskim Fordonie i zachęcenie do współpracy poprzez zainteresowanie wspólnym dziedzictwem kulturowym.

cytowanie: P.P.Grzybowski: Morycek w szkole. Żydowskie dowcipy o edukacji, w dialogu międzykulturowym. Fundacja dla Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz 2016, 178 s., ISBN 978-83-927223-0-4 (patronat medialny: Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls)

słowa kluczowe: śmiech, humor, dowcip, anegdota, edukacja międzykulturowa, dziedzictwo kulturowe, kultura żydowska, Żydzi, edukacja

Preface to Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 25:1 (winter 2022): 5-24. In this essay, a revised version of my lecture at the 2021 conference of the Society of G. K. Chesterton, I look at Newman and Chesterton as both practitioners and theorists of satire, with special attention to the spiritual and theological implications of satire and humor. Included as always in the preface are summaries of the articles in the issue.

Although it has been an almost ubiquitous discourse from ancient times to the present, satirists and critics do not agree on a single definition of satire. A synthetic definition of satire could be reached through a critical survey of its various definitions. Accordingly, satire is a discursive practice in a Foucauldian sense to which four elements, with varying degrees, are essential: attack or aggression, laughter or humor, play, and judgment. Defining satire as a Foucauldian discourse allows the critical analysis of its interactions with other discourses within respective power structures. Therefore, a general discursive model of satire is deduced according to which the discourse of satire not only shapes, but is also shaped by, five major discourses—namely discourses of economy, politics, morality, patriarchy, as well as learning and knowledge—through their negotiations and transactions within specific epistemes.

Working towards a multifaceted debate on humor and related phenomena, this book is a comprehensive reflection of the contributors’ shared interest in various dimensions of humor and its manifold applications. It is composed of a selection of writings that provide important insights into language used for humorous purposes. Theoretical discussions are complemented by an assortment of case studies in linguistics, culture, literature, and translation, as well as in visual and media studies.

Essay on music and humor with special and sometimes humorous attention to humoralistic (humor-pathological) paradigms.

Published in: Matthias Haldemann/Kunsthaus Zug (Ed.): Komödie des Daseins. Kunst und Humor von der Antike bis heute, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern/Ruit 2018, pp. 414-435.

En este trabajo presentamos una visión filosófica del humor y de su relación con la risa. Lo hacemos ayudándonos de la introducción del concepto de Juegos humorísticos en analogía a los Juegos de lenguaje de Wittgenstein. Según nuestra concepción, no es posible la identificación de un elemento universal, común a todas las concepciones y manifestaciones del sentido del humor, haciéndose por tanto necesaria la adquisición de un marco teórico que se ajuste a la flexibilidad del fenómeno del humor como fenómeno cultural y por tanto educable y moldeable.

From its creation The Simpsons proved different, but how the irreverence of a show can be enough for the American public to select this sitcom as it preferred primetime watching time? How the show confronts capital issues of our decadent society as race, gender, religion sex and first, family and marriage. It’s not all in the humor or the quality of color or maybe selecting aggressive topics like the environment of corruption. How the gender representation in topics like homosexuality in majority of male characters on the show affect the way the audience react to them. Multiple recog-nitions around the world, but also critics about their political agenda and controversy. This show create a momentum for success on television for shows oriented to social aspect and adult anima-tion, awakening also a wave of copycats around the world. The success of the sitcom resides in big part in how the show presents actual social topics that make them attractive for all. Now society is moving on, moral decay is all around and a family show, with a very dysfunctional family, agree, it’s getting behind. Are we seeing the last of them or the team have more surprises under their hat? Will see. That’s the reason of the few ideas put together in this paper.

Azért végre ő maga is Luther, csak halála előtt azt írá, hogy aki meg akarja érteni a Virgilius Bucolicá-it, öt esztendeig pásztor legyen, és mégannyi ideig legyen szántóember, ha a Georgicá-t meg akarja érteni; az Írást pedig, úgymond, csak meg sem kóstolta, aki száz esztendeig az apostolokkal gondját nem viselte az anyaszentegyháznak. A régi szentatyák is egyenlő értelemmel tanítják, hogy igen nehéz az Írásnak értelme.

The present study investigates, from the point of view of translation, the phenomenon of standup
comedians performing in more than one language, with a specific focus on English and
Italian, and on Italian comedians performing in London. This offers the opportunity to address
questions of humour translatability, to observe how performing in a native, as opposed to a
second, language impacts performance, and to consider the role that humour and translation
can play in situations of diaspora.
For these purposes, a new type of translation needs to be conceptualised for it to be recognised
as taking place in bilingual comedy. In doing this, the starting point is the recognition that standup
comedy represents a form of oral communication, in which the presence of a written text
cannot be assumed. The type of translation putatively involved in bilingual stand-up comedy is
thus defined as “oral self-translation”. The notion of “mental text”, borrowed from the
ethnographer Honko (1996), is proposed as the source and target text of this type of translation.
The concepts of declarative and procedural memories are then deployed to offer a theoretical
model for the content of this mental text.
These challenges call for a phenomenological approach as the main method of this study, in
which the experience of a sample of ten bilingual stand-up comedians is investigated by means
of in-depth semi-structured interviews. The researcher’s own experience in performing stand-up
comedy in both Italian and English is also reflexively interrogated and compared with the
participants’ experiences, as collected in the interviews.
The results extrapolated from this data suggest that translation does occur in bilingual comedy
and that its comic efficacy is considered very satisfactory by the performers themselves, in
accordance with their interpretation of the audience’s reaction. This success seems to be
correlated with the special degree of freedom enjoyed by the self-translating comedian. The
choice of language, moreover, seems to be associated with different performing styles and
different levels of emotional involvement from the comedian. In its interaction between
performers and audience, oral self-translation of stand-up comedy is shown to partake in the
process of “identity negotiation” (Swann 1987), particularly when this interaction occurs
between members of a diaspora and members of the host community.

The aim of this dissertation is to offer a new theory of humor that takes seriously both the universality and power of humor in culture. In the first chapter, I summarize historical and contemporary theories, and show how each either 1) fails to give any definition of humor, 2) fails as a theory of humor, and/or 3) underappreciates, dismisses, or does not consider the power of humor in experience.

The second chapter explains the failures of prior theories by understanding the problem in terms of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. These forms of culture are perspectives through which we express and understand our world, and each presents its own unique perspectives through which we can understand ourselves and the world. In the third chapter, I argue that humor is one of these necessary and universal symbolic forms of culture. I argue that confusions in the philosophy of humor stem from approaches to humor that understand it as part of some other symbolic form rather than as a form itself.
In the fourth chapter, I argue for the function of humor as that which reveals and exposes epistemic vices –laziness, arrogance, and closed-minded thinking about ourselves and the world. I support this argument by showing not only that all previous theories of humor have within them epistemic revelation as a consistent commonality, but also by showing that this revelation is necessary to the form of humor while it is, at best, accidental to other forms.

In my final chapter, I suggest that we ought to approach humor objectively, and that the normativity of the symbolic forms guides us toward such an approach. I offer two objective questions to ask about a given instance of humor: 1) does the humor idealize a liberated end? and 2) does the humor fulfil the cultural function of the symbolic form it represents by disrupting epistemically vicious thinking? If the answer to both of these questions is affirmative, then it is likely that the humor in question is morally praiseworthy. I conclude by offering suggestions for further study.

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.

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.

The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Contents


Introduction                                                                                     
Scholarship on the anti-Hasidic writings of Josef Perl • Hasidic hagiography and the emergence of satire • Two-fold reading of Perl’s writings and the gematriyot • Satire, literature, and history • ‘Holy Books’ and subversive books

Chapter 1: Josef Perl, Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, and the ‘Holy Books’
Prayer of the fall of Hasidism and the expungement of their books • Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht and the critique of hagiography • Sefer Sipurey Ma‘asiyot and the parodic response to it • Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, ‘heretical books’ and the ‘Holy Books’ • In praise of the true Tsaddikim • ‘Laughter of the heretics’: testimonies about the polemics against Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • ‘Holy Books’, ‘sacredness of hagiography’, and parodies of hagiography • Appendix: Parodic manuscript about an opponent of the ‘Holy Books’ who was reborn as a horse

Chapter 2: Speaking Names in Sefer Megale Temirin                             
Time of the composition of Megale Temirin, censorship, and a note on the Buch • Hasidic books and the emergence of parody • Structure of Sefer Megale Temirin • The Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin • Main Hasidic courts • The court in Żołyń (Łożne) and the peregrinations of the Buch • The court of Dishpal (Międzyboż), moneyboxes of the Besht, the holy relics • The court in Aklo (Olika) and the ritualized reading of Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • Function of the footnotes and the parodic hagiography • History of the rabbis – clandestine opponents of Hasidism • The Besht in Tarnopol • Rabbi Meir Jacob of Zasław and the letters from Galicja  • Zaddikim in Galicja • Ciphered stories • ‘Holy Places’: reincarnations of a praise from Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • The revelation of the Buch and the death of the secretary • ‘Gang of criminals’: another death and an escape to the Land of Israel • The End: Ovadia Ben Petahia and the rabbi of Opatów

Chapter 3: Joseph Perl, Hirsh of Zydaczów, and the Polemics of Gematriyot
Reb Zevi Hirsh of Zydaczów and Hasidism in Galicja • Maskilic opposition to the Zydaczówer • Letters concealed in Sefer Megale Temirin • A manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Books, education, and a note on Reb Nathan of Nemirov • Zydaczówer’s ban on the Maskilim and the first Gematria • Parodic letter of Perl and the second Gematria • About the parodic letter and the jumble of gematriyot • Denunciation and expulsions of R Zevi Hirsh • ‘Father of impurity’: Joseph Perl and the writings of the rabbi of Komarno • Final note • Appendix: Parodic letter against the Zydaczówer

Chapter 4: Speaking Names in the Book of Sefer Bohen Zaddik               
The manuscript of Sefer Bohen Zaddik and the difficulties with its publication • Structure of the book • In search for the true Zaddik and the rabbi of Opatów • Travels of Ovadia Ben Petahia between the towns of Galicja • Kromcza Ruska (Zaleszczyki) or the entrance to Galicja • ‘Briks’ (Tarnopol): Rabbi Jehoshua Heschel Babad and the school • ‘Bicik’ (Lemberg) Rabbi Jacob Orenstein and a ban on the Maskilim • ‘Abdera’ (Brody) Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margaliot and Sefer ha-Zoref • The explanation of the names of the rabbis • Utopia and dystopia • The hidden butcher and his kabbalistic writings • The discovery of the colonies • The image of the disciples of the Gaon and the ‘true Hasid’ • ‘The solution for the East’ or heterotopia •  The will to flee and the emissary

Chapter 5: The Imaginary Influence of Sefer Megale Temirin                     
The myth about the success of the book • Pamphlet Megale Sod • The manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Dialogues about Sefer Megale Temirin • For whom Sefer Megale Temirin was intended and who read it • Note concerning Sefer Megale Temirin in Yiddish • Influence real and imagined • Was Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht written by a parodist? • Temerl Bergson and Sefer Megale Temirin • Writ of defense of Hasidism • Sefer Megale Temirin and the Hebrew literature • Appendix: writ of defense of Joseph Judah Lob Sossnitz

Afterword: Note on the Anti-Hasidic Outlook                                       

Bibliographic Abbreviations   

Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/
(9) Ariel Evan Mayse, 'Review', Jewish History (2015)ת  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10835-015-9245-2
(10) Review - Gal-Ed

Primera edición, agosto 2018
Araújo Pereira, Ricardo
La enfermedad, el sufrimiento y la muerte entran en un bar.
Una especie de manual de escritura humorística / Ricardo Araújo Pereira ; trad. de Jerónimo Pizarrro. -- Bogotá : FCE, 2018
102 p. ; 21 x 14 cm – (Colec. Tierra Firme)
Título original: A doença o sofrimento e a morte entram num bar. Uma espécie de manual de escrita humorística.
ISBN: 978-958-8249-40-7
1. Humorismo – Siglo XXI 2. Sátira 3. Literatura portuguesa –
Siglo XXI I. Pizarro, Jerónimo, tr. II. Ser. III. t.

Distribución en América y España
© 2018, Ediciones Fondo de Cultura Económica SAS Calle 11 No 5–60, Bogotá, Colombia www.fce.com.co

Este trabalho é o resultado de uma longa trajetória de pesquisa que visa entender as particularidades da relação entre o humor e os processos de serialização, relação esta que denominamos de serialização cômica. Após tentar decifrar as aspectos gerais da serialização cômica no universo das comic strips na dissertação que antecede esta tese, damos continuidade a esta pesquisa buscando agora compreender de que maneira é construída a trajetória do herói cômico em séries de humor não episódicas – formato ao qual podemos nos referir mais especificamente como serials cômicos televisivos – e como esta construção influencia na organização estrutural das séries. Nossa trajetória de pesquisa cruza então neste momento com as particularidades de um meio com o qual até então não tínhamos trabalhado a fundo: a televisão. A escolha pela análise de séries televisivas nesta nova etapa da pesquisa sobre as particularidades da serialização cômica se dão em função da riqueza de espécimes de ficções seriadas do gênero cômico neste meio e que não pode ser comparada em número ou variedade a outros – não ao menos no contexto de produção com o qual estamos trabalhando, o norte-americano. Este encontro com as particularidades da produção televisiva nos conduziu a um aprofundamento das peculiaridades da produção de séries televisivas atuais no contexto norte-americano com a declarada decadência das tradicionais comédias de situação episódicas – as populares sitcoms – em detrimento de novas séries cômicas com variados estilos de exploração do humor e tendências de serialização. Neste contexto, escolhemos a construção de personagens em séries cômicas mais serializadas – serials cômicos – como centro de nosso problema de pesquisa por acreditarmos que aqui reside uma ampla variedade de espécimes e classificações ainda pouco exploradas academicamente e que tem muito a oferecer ao enriquecimento da própria noção de serialização cômica. Para reconfigurar esta noção a partir de diferentes construções do herói cômico e de sua trajetória, propomos então uma extensa revisão bibliográfica sobre humor, narrativa cômica, serialização televisiva e construção de personagens ao longo de nossa trabalho, que pretende assim propor uma metodologia de análise capaz de dar conta da compreensão de aspectos estruturais dos chamados serials cômicos.

In this thesis, I shall be examining an aspect of the style of the Zhuangzi as providing a way to communicate a philosophy that could not be communicated in an ordinary and usual way. In particular, I will be focusing on how Zhuangzi uses the device of humour brought about by a certain language and writing style to achieve a therapeutic effect on his audiences. I will begin by introducing the kind of philosophical discourse occurring at the time of Zhuangzi and his desire to distance himself from it. Then I will discuss how he tries to contribute to the debates by employing writing techniques that result in humour. By looking at three of those techniques, I hope to illustrate exactly how Zhuangzi engages in the debate to communicate his ideas that could not be said with ordinary words.

Rhizastance talked to Chris Kramer on his dissertation, Subversive Humor where he argues 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.

In this paper I argue that by reading Plato's Republic through the ancient Greek genre of the satyr-play, new insights into his project emerge. I start by showing that the dialogue abounds with a number of hitherto unrecognized satyr-play elements. Second, I argue that the unique form of serious play, characteristic of the ancient Greek satyr-play, helps to explain the kind of stance that Plato hoped to pass on to his readers, which
includes a combination of suspicion and engagement, distance and proximity, humor and seriousness in relation to any authoritative utterance, including those coming from his character, Socrates.