On Humour

On Humour is a fascinating, beautifully written and funny book on what humour can tell us about being human. Simon Critchley skilfully probes some of the most perennial but least understood aspects of humour: why is that we mock death with laughter? If humour is uniquely human, why do we laugh at animals so much? Is joking a private matter, or do we share humour? Throughout, On Humour uses arresting examples from antiquity to modernity and from laughing at our bodies to the darker side of humour in racism and sexism. Critchley also draws on writers who have used humour, including Swift, Sterne, Bergson, Beckett and Freud, turning the comical inside out to reveal some delectable insights about what we find funny. Above all, he reveals that the humanity of humour is in being able to laugh at oneself.

Does humour make us human, or do the cats and dogs laugh along with us? On Humour is a fascinating, beautifully written and funny book on what humour can tell us about being human. Simon Critchley skilfully probes some of the most perennial but least understood aspects 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 at the darker side of humour, as rife in sexism and racism and argues that it is important for reminding us of people we would rather not be.

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;

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).