On Humour

ISBN-13: 9780415251204 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 144 str.

Simon Critchley

Opis

Does humour makes us human, or do the cats and dogs laugh along with us? On Humour is a fascinating and beautifully written book on what philosophy can tell us about humour and about what it is to be human. Simon Critchley probes some of the most perennial but least understood features of humour, such as our tendency to laugh at animals and our bodies, why we mock death with comedy and why we think it's funny when people act like machines. He also looks as the darker side of humour, as rife in sexism and racism, and argues that is important for reminding of us of people we would rather not be. By examining what is required to laugh at oneself and the idea of humour as a form of everyday common sense, On Humour also argues that we place the comical at the very centre stage of psychology. From Aristotle, Hobbes, and Freud to Samuel Beckett, Charlie Chaplin and Will Self, On Humour reveals some delectable insights about what we find funny. Above all, Simon Critchley argues that humour can tell us much about the human condition, the meaning of life and why comedy itself begins in philosophy.

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Is Humour Human?; Chapter 3 Laughing at Your Body - Post-Colonal Theory; Chapter 4 The Laughing Machine - a Note on Bergson and Wyndham Lewis; Chapter 5 Foreigners are Funny - the Ethicity and Ethnicity of Humour; Chapter 6 The Joke's on All of Us - Humour as Sensus Communis; Chapter 7 Why the Super-Ego is Your Amigo - My Sense of Humour and Freud's;

O autorze

Simon Critchley is Professor of Philosophy and Director for the Centre of Theoretical Studies at the University of Essex. He is the author of Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity (1999) and Very LittleAlmost Nothing (Routledge, 1997). His most recent book is Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001).