The good, the bad and the funny

Monist

Volumn 88, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 121-134

  Conolly, Oliver ^a   Haydar, Bashshar ^b  

^a American University of Beirut ^*

^b AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT   (Lebanon)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949577204     PISSN: 00269662     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/monist20058817     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. See John Morreal, ed. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987), an anthology on this tradition
2. See Henri Bergson, Le Rire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France)
3. trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell in Comedy, ed. W. Sypher (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956) for a classic account of the nature of humour
4. See, e.g., F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 2003)
5. See Berys Gaut, "Art and Ethics," in Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 341-52, for an overview of such theories
6. For a fascinating collection on the politicisation and censorship of humour, see Index on Censorship, vol. 29, no. 6, November/December 2000, Issue 197, The Last Laugh
7. Ethicism about jokes is held by Berys Gaut, "Just Joking: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor," Philosophy and Literature, 22 (1998), pp. 51-68
8. Amoralism about jokes is held by Daniel Jacobson, "In Praise of Immoral Art," Philosophical Topics, 25 1, (1997), pp. 155-99. We will focus on the arguments advanced by these authors, but will consider other arguments for their respective positions
9. Gaut, "Just Joking: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor," (cited in n. 11, above), p. 58
10. Gaut, "Just Joking; The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor," (cited in n. 11, above), p. 57
11. Gaut, "Art and Ethics," (cited in n. 5, above), p. 347. Gaut makes the analogy in the context of discussing ethicism about art, but it is applicable to jokes too, which he discusses on the next page. In any event, Gaut sees jokes and artworks as in some respects parallel. His remarks on one can thus be shifted onto the other without misrepresentation
12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre," in Politics and the Arts, trans. Allan Bloom (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1960), pp. 36-37
13. This view is defended by, for instance, Arnold Isenberg, "The Problem of Belief," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 13, 3 (1955), pp. 395-407
14. On the notion of quasi-emotions in relation to responses to fiction, see Kendall Walton, Mimesis and Make-Believe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 243-52