![]() For instance, one thing is to make fun of a privileged group, and an altogether different one is to laugh at the expense of a disadvantaged one. Mencken to quip that puritanism is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”īut setting aside puritanism, the skeptic has to deal with the fact that some jokes do appear to cross an ethical line that ought to (and often does) make people uncomfortable. Puritans of all stripes have always objected to humor on moral grounds, which famously prompted American journalist and satirist H.L. that jokes have no moral content of their own, and that applying ethical reasoning to humor is a category mistake (something akin to asking about the typical smell of triangles).Īs Carroll immediately pointed out, historically humor and ethics have often come into contact - and conflict. Carroll set out to explore the ethics of humor, and particularly to examine what he called the “skeptic’s” position that humor is a-moral, i.e. ![]() ![]() The bartender gave the philosopher a quizzical look, and Plato said, “What can I say? She looked better in the cave.” The relationship between humor and philosophy has been explored for a long time, with the authors of the popular Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar.: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart, arguing that good jokes are structurally similar to good philosophical arguments: they start with a familiar, apparently non-threatening, situation lead the listener toward a path he thinks he can see and then they suddenly take a sharp turn to deliver either the punchline or a surprising conclusion.īut I was reminded of a different connection between humor and philosophy this past semester, while listening to a fascinating (and funny!) talk by my colleague at CUNY’s Graduate Center, Noël Carroll (who, interestingly, holds not only a PhD in philosophy, but one in cinema studies).
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