PHIL 369 Philosophy of Humor

Humor deserves to be taken seriously. This course takes it seriously by working through what philosophers have said about it across the four branches of the discipline: metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics. We begin by asking what makes things funny. Does the funny let us express superiority over others, register the incongruities of our world, or relieve psychic tension? Or is it just a byproduct of human evolution? We then turn to the relationship between joking and truth. Is it really funny because it's true, or does joking belong to the domain of the absurd? Next, we ask how a joke's funniness relates to its immorality. Some philosophers hold that immorality never touches funniness; others hold that it does, and they disagree about whether it makes jokes funnier or less funny. We close with a sustained look at what we owe one another when we tell jokes. By the end of the term, students will have a firmer grasp of the four branches of philosophy and of humanity's most joyous enterprise.