On Humour is a fascinating and beautifully written book on what philosophy can tell us about humor and about
what it is to be human. Simon Critchley probes some of the most perennial features of humor, 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 start
to act like machines. He also looks as the darker side of humor, as when rife with sexism and racism, and shows
how humor might remind us of people we would rather not be. Above all, Simon Critchley argues that humor can tell
us much about the human condition, the meaning of life and why comedy itself begins in philosophy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Is humour human?
3. Laughing at your body- post-colonial theory
4. The laughing machine- a note on Bergson and Wyndham Lewis
5. Foreigners are funny- the ethicity and ethnicity of humour
6. The joke's on all of us- Humour as sensus communis
7. Why the super-ego is your amigo- My sense of humour and Freud's
