Home How Can Philosophy Improve Your Sense of Humor?
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

How Can Philosophy Improve Your Sense of Humor?

  • Lydia Amir

    Tufts University, USA;

    EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 11, 2024
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

It is often said that humor is a powerful tool that is helpful for living a good life. When saying this, we assume that humor is used sporadically for chance encounters with the spontaneously funny. In what follows, however, I lay out the educational premises of a new worldview, which, by making systematic use of self-referential humor in order to handle events that are not immediately funny, leads to a stable state which philosophers call the good life. The multifaceted philosophic notion of the “good life” will be reduced to the principles proposed below; but humor as presented here can help achieve any philosophical ideal, even one that is not in the spirit of the view articulated here.

      However, the form of philosophic humor that I advance in this article requires education, mainly self-education, as is often the case with much successful education. Thus, as intimated by existential philosophers, I maintain, first, that laughter can and should be learned; and second, that the discipline of laughter is philosophically significant because laughter enables to endorse new norms and to change one’s attitude towards oneself, others, and the world. To achieve the educational aims of this article, the theoretical clarification of the worldview that I introduce, Homo risibilis or the ridiculous human being, is illustrated by exercises that help implementing it.

About the author

Lydia Amir

Tufts University, USA;

References

Agassi, Joseph, and Ian C. Jarvie. 2008. A Critical Rationalist Aesthetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789401205597Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2002. “Pride, Humiliation and Humility: Humor as a Virtue.” International Journal of Philosophical Practice 1(3): 1 – 22.10.5840/ijpp2002139Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2012. “Humor in Philosophy––Theory and Practice.” Philosophical Practice 7(3): 1015 – 29.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2013. “Philosophy's Attitude towards the Comic. A Reevaluation.” European Journal of Humor Research 1(1): 6 – 21.10.7592/EJHR2013.1.1.amirSearch in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2014a. Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.10.1515/9781438449388Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2014b. “Taking the History of Philosophy on Humor and Laughter Seriously.” The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal 5: 43 – 87.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2014c. “Homo Risibilis.” Philosophical Practice 9(3): 1487 – 97.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2015a. “The Tragic Sense of the Good Life.” In Socratic Handbook: Methods and Manuals for Applied Ethics and Philosophical Practice, edited by Michael Weiss, 97 – 128. Münster: Lit Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2015b. “Humor and the Good Life.” The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal. Special Issue on the Philosophy of Humor 2: 62 – 73.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2015c. “A Practical Philosophy of Vulnerability, Fallibility and Finitude.” In Practicing Philosophy, edited by Aleksandar Fatic and Lydia Amir. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2018. Taking Philosophy Seriously. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2019. Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-3-030-32671-5Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2022. “Justice and Other Illusions.” Philosophical Practice 17(1): 2855 – 69.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2023a. “A New Model of Rationality: Conceptualizing Humor as a Philosophic Tool.” In Bioethics and Aporia of Psyche, edited by Luka Janeš, 331 – 48. Zagreb: FFRZ Press.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. 2023b. “How Philosophy Can Develop Your Sense of Humor?” Humor Mekuvvan: A Scholarly Journal in Humor 20: 34 – 56.Search in Google Scholar

Amir, Lydia. Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, (Bergson). (Work under contact for SUNY Press).Search in Google Scholar

Apter, Michael. 1982. The Experience of Motivation: The Theory of Psychological Reversals. London: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Argyle, Michael. 2001. The Psychology of Happiness. 2nd edition. Hove: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Baudelaire, Charles. 1968. “De l’essence du rire, et généralement du comique dans les arts plastiques.” In Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Seuil.Search in Google Scholar

Baumeister, Roy F. 1989. “The Optimal Margin of Illusion.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 8(2): 176 – 89.10.1521/jscp.1989.8.2.176Search in Google Scholar

Beattie, James. 1776. “On Laughter and Ludicrous Composition.” In Essays, by James Beattie, 583 – 706. Edinburgh: William Creech.Search in Google Scholar

Beauvoir, Simone de. 1970. The Ethics of Ambiguity, translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron. 2000. The Subtlety of Emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/6548.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Bergson, Henri. (1911) 1999. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. Los Angeles, CA: Green Interger.10.1037/13772-000Search in Google Scholar

Berlyne, Daniel E. 1972. “Humor and Its Kin.” In The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, edited by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul McGhee, 43 – 60. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-288950-9.50008-0Search in Google Scholar

Bleuler, Eugen. (1911) 1952. Dementia praecox, translated by Joseph Zinkin. New York: International Universities Press.Search in Google Scholar

Bok, Sissela. 2010. Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University.Search in Google Scholar

Booker, Christopher. 2004. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar

Burns, John. 2014. Loopholes: Reading Comically. 2nd edition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Search in Google Scholar

Camus, Albert. (1942) 1959. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books.Search in Google Scholar

Chafe, Wallace. 2007. The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling behind Laughter and Humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/ceb.3Search in Google Scholar

Cornford, Francis M. (1914) 1961. The Origin of Attic Comedy. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.Search in Google Scholar

Crossan, John D. 1976. Raid on the Inarticulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges. New York: Harper and Row.Search in Google Scholar

De Gruyter Series in Philosophy of Humor (2022–), edited by Lydia Amir. Berlin: de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Eisenberg, Nancy, and Janet Strayer, eds. 1987. Empathy and Its Development. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund. (1905) 1960. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, translated by James Strachey. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund. (1925) 1926. “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, vol. 20, 75 – 172. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1953 – 1964.Search in Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund. (1927) 1928. “Humor.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9: 1 – 6.Search in Google Scholar

Fry, William. 1987. “Humor and Paradox.” American Behavioral Scientist 30: 42 – 71.10.1177/000276487030003005Search in Google Scholar

Hamann, Johann Georg. 1949 – 1957. Sämtliche Werke, historische-kritische Ausgabe, edited by Josef Nadler. Vienna: Herder.Search in Google Scholar

Hyers, M. Conrad. 1996. The Spirituality of Comedy: Comic Heroism in a Tragic World. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Search in Google Scholar

Kant, Immanuel. (1788) 1929. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kant, Immanuel. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, translated and edited by Robert Louden with an introduction by Manfred Kuehn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kekes, John. Moral Goodness and Good Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kerr, Walter. 1967. Comedy and Tragedy. New York: Simon and Schuster.Search in Google Scholar

Kierkegaard, Søren. 1967 – 1978. Journals and Papers, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. 7 vols. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kierkegaard, Søren. 1987. Either/Or, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation. London: Pan Books.Search in Google Scholar

Kohut, Heinz. 1977. The Restoration of the Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kramer, Deirdre A. 1990. “Conceptualizing Wisdom: The Primacy of Affect-Cognition Relations.” In Wisdom: Its Nature, Origin and Development, edited by Robert J. Sternberg, 317 – 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173704.014Search in Google Scholar

Laertius, Diogenes. 1925. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, translated by Robert D. Hicks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Search in Google Scholar

Leopardi, Giacomo. 1982. Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues, translated by Giovanni Cecchetti. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520341135Search in Google Scholar

Leslie, Ian. 2011. Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit. London: Quercus.Search in Google Scholar

Lewis, Michael. 1992. Shame. New York: Free Press.Search in Google Scholar

Mandel, Oscar. 1963. “Tragic Reality.” In Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall, 60 – 65. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Search in Google Scholar

Martin, Rod A. 1998. “Approaches to the Sense of Humor: A10.1515/9783110804607.15Search in Google Scholar

Historical Review.” In The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, edited by Willibald Ruch, 15 – 60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Martin, Rod A. 2007. The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.Search in Google Scholar

Marx, Karl. 1852. “Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon. Die Revolution 1.” In Selected Works, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 3rd edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers.Search in Google Scholar

Miller, William I. 1997. The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674041066Search in Google Scholar

Montaigne, Michel de. 1965. Essais, edited by Pierre Ville and Verdun-Louis Saulnier. Paris: P.U.F.Search in Google Scholar

Morreall, John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Search in Google Scholar

Mulkay, Michael. 1988. On Humour. Cambridge: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1954. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In The Portable Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kauffmann. New York: Viking Press.Search in Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and Reginald J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.Search in Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1979. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books.Search in Google Scholar

The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook (2020–), edited by Lydia Amir. Berlin: de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Plato. 1966. Works, translated by Harold N. Fowler. 12 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Potkay, Adam. 2007. The Story of Joy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Rosset, Clément. 1993. Joyful Cruelty: Toward a Philosophy of the Real, edited and translated by David F. Bell. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ruch, Willibald. 2008. “The Psychology of Humor.” In The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, 17 – 100. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110198492.17Search in Google Scholar

Russell, Bertrand. 2004. Sceptical Essays. London: Routledge Classics.Search in Google Scholar

Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1943) 1957. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, translated with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes. London: Methuen.Search in Google Scholar

Seneca, Lucius A. 1995. Moral and Political Essays, edited and translated by John M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Sextus Empiricus. 2000. Outline of Scepticism, edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Solomon, Robert C. 1976. The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. New York: Doubleday.Search in Google Scholar

Spinoza, Benedict. 1985. Ethics. In vol. 1 of The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2024-06-11
Published in Print: 2024-06-11

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Titlepages
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Articles
  5. Democritus, The Laughing Philosopher
  6. The Contemptuous Laughter of Democritus and Nietzsche
  7. A Joke: On the Plurality of Worlds and Ostrichist
  8. Joke Capital vs. Punching Up/Punching Down: Accounting for the Ethical Relation between Joker and Target
  9. Humanistic Ethics of Humor: The Problematics of Punching Up and Kicking Down
  10. “You Must Be Joking!”: Theory, Religion, and The Domestication of the Ludic
  11. Humor in Chinese Traditions of Thought, Part One: Systematic Reflections in View of Ancient Confucian and Daoist Applications of Humor
  12. Discussion: Short Article for Further Debate
  13. Discussion: Short Article for Further Debate   Edited by John Marmysz
  14. The Shared Presupposition Norm of Joking: A Philosophical Exploration
  15. “I Finally Got the Joke”
  16. Do Joke-Telling Norms Apply to Laughtivism?
  17. “I’m Only Human”: A Self-Referential Sense of Humor and Meaningful Living
  18. Philosophical Satire and Criticism
  19. Philosophical Satire and Criticism   Edited by Steven Gimbel
  20. Recaptioning Cartoons from Historical Turkish Humor Magazines as Feminist Media Activism: The Case of Boşboğaz
  21. Humor in Philosophy Education
  22. Humor in Philosophy Education   Edited by Christine A. James
  23. How Can Philosophy Improve Your Sense of Humor?
  24. Symposium
  25. Symposium   Edited by Steven Gimbel   Dustin Peone. Making Philosophy Laugh: Humor, Irony, and Folly in Philosophical Thought. Cascade Books, 2023. pp. 158.   Critics
  26. In Search of a Lost Philosophical Humor
  27. The Moment of Laughter
  28. On Making Philosophy Laugh
  29. “Where the enemy is mighty, one must be clever”: Peone, Vico, and Guareschi on Power in Humor
  30. Author’s Response
  31. Author’s Response
  32. Humor Resartus
  33. Book Reviews
  34. Book Reviews   Edited by Lydia Amir With Pierre Destrée (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy) and John Marmysz (Modern and Contemporary Philosophy)
  35. Call for Papers, Book Reviews, Guidelines
  36. Call for Papers, Book Reviews, Guidelines
  37. Call for Papers
Downloaded on 26.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/phhumyb-2024-0013/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button