Overview
- Is the only book dealing with philosophies of humor, comedy, and laughter in the 19th Century
- Helps distinguish among aesthetic categories such as humor, comedy, laughter, irony, wit, and satire
- Considers compelling and under-researched questions in the dynamic history of 19th Century philosophy
Part of the book series: Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life (BSPR, volume 7)
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About this book
This book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th Century. It traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category inspired by Laurence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" and shows Sterne’s deep influence on German aesthetic theorists of this period. Through differentiating humor from comedy, the book suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Solger, and Jean Paul Richter. The book links Kant’s underdeveloped incongruity theory of laughter to Schopenhauer’s more complete account and identifies humor’s place in the pessimistic philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. It considers how caricature functioned at the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and ethics in Karl Rosenkranz’s work, and how Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made humor central not only to their philosophical content but also to its style. The book concludes with an explication of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s claim that laughter is a response to mechanical inelasticity.
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Keywords
Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Lydia L. Moland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. She is the author of "Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, National Identity, Cosmopolitanism" and of numerous articles on Hegel’s political philosophy and philosophy of art. She has been a recipient of fellowships from the American Academy of Berlin, the DAAD, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: All Too Human
Book Subtitle: Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
Editors: Lydia L. Moland
Series Title: Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91331-5
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-91330-8Published: 07 September 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08227-7Published: 08 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-91331-5Published: 24 August 2018
Series ISSN: 2352-8206
Series E-ISSN: 2352-8214
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 198
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations
Topics: Aesthetics, History of Philosophy, Genre