Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T11:08:59.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A distance theory of humour1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2009

Brian Ribeiro
Get access

Abstract

Brian Ribeiro offers a sketch of a new theory of humour, pitched at roughly the same level of detail, and intended to have roughly the same level of inclusiveness, as the other available philosophical ‘theories’ of humour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 6 , Issue 17-18 , Spring 2008 , pp. 139 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note

2 Hobbes, Thomas, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Molesworth, William (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1966). See III: 46; IV: 45–47, 454–455.Google Scholar

3 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgement, trans. Meredith, J. C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). See §54: 196–203.Google Scholar

4 Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Strachey, James (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).Google Scholar

5 This idea comes from Critchley, Simon's On Humour (New York: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar: Chapter 3. This, along with various other scattered remarks in the book, helped me to begin to see the outlines of the distance theory as a theory of humour capable of explaining a diverse range of phenomena, from crass bodily humour to observational comedy.