The Morality of Laughter

There is a rebirth of interest in the emotions. Surprisingly, however, one of the most powerful and delightful expressions of emotion - laughter - has largely gone unnoticed. Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bergson puzzled over what makes us laugh. Darwin was fascinated by laughter and Freud wrote a book on wit. But laughter has received insufficient scholarly attention since Bergson's Le rire a century ago. In The Morality of Laughter, F.H. Bradley poses the questions of how laughter changes the way we live and think and how philosophy is different when the philosopher has a sense of humor.