A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement

Zoe Walker

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Chapter 8 A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement

In: Philosophy of Humour

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Zoe Walker

Zoe Walker
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 129–141

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004548817_010

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Abstract

In this chapter, I am interested in the relationship between one’s moral beliefs and attitudes, on the one hand, and what one finds funny, on the other. There are some philosophers who hold that one cannot find a joke funny if one morally disagrees with it – so one’s sense of humour reveals one’s moral beliefs. I think this is wrong – and yet, contra others, I do think there is an important relationship between sense of humour and character. I start by noting what existing views cannot capture about the sense of humour: the phenomenon of unwilling complicity in unethical comedy. To remedy this, I propose a more developed account of sense of humour that pays attention to its emotional, perceptual and motivational aspects. This involves taking seriously the notion of a sense of humour, understood as a sensibility or taste, and I develop this account by building on Anne Eaton’s work on the related phenomenon of erotic taste. Finally, I go on to argue that this comic taste develops by habituation, and that a central way in which we are habituated to find things funny is through representations (for example, sitcoms and stand-up comedy), which foreground certain aspects of something and frame them as funny. This sheds light on how one might change one’s sense of humour in a more egalitarian direction.

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Philosophy of Humour

New Perspectives

Series: Value Inquiry Book Series, Volume: 389

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004548817

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 04 Jul 2023

Subjects
- Philosophy
  - Philosophy of Mind
  - Anthropology

Front Matter

Part 1 Humour and the History of Philosophy

Part 2 New Theoretical Contributions

Part 3 Humour, Morality, Feminism and Politics

Back Matter

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Chapter 8 A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement

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Philosophy of Humour

New Perspectives

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