The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Humour

The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Humour gathers the best scholars in this emerging field in order to fill a significant lacuna: to provide an accurate explanation of philosophers’ attitudes toward humour as an umbrella term, both historically and thematically. To that purpose, it addresses not only humour, but also laughter, the comic and related terms, such as smiling, wit, jokes, caricature, irony and stand-up comedy.

The historic part of the Handbook presents the main philosophers and the major philosophic schools which have taken humour seriously, clarifying the ways in which it was interpreted through various periods in Western history, engaging with spiritual traditions and diverse cultures in which humour was significant.

The thematic part, further divided into three sections, disambiguates main notions which are associated with humour as an umbrella term, and emphasizes their role in philosophy (Humour and Related Terms); it promotes the understanding of humour by approaching it through various lenses, (Understanding Humour); it addresses main questions in the ethics of humour, such as its capacity to offend and its potential as a virtue, it gives advice on how best to use it, and sheds light on the strong ties between humour and the human predicament, and on how humour may alleviate it (Humour, Ethics, and the Human Condition).

Lydia Amir teaches at the Department of Philosophy at Tufts University, USA. Among publications in other fields, her monographs on humor include Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard (2014), Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter: Bataille, Deleuze, and Rosset (2021) and the forthcoming works, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana , The Incongruous Human Being: Homo Risibilis (Palgrave Macmillan) and Philosophy and the Comic: Ten Traditions from Antiquity to Postmodernism .

She serves as President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor, which she founded ten years ago. She edits two journals on humor, one of which she founded ( The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook ) along with De Gruyter Series in Philosophy of Humor , among additional book series.