Humor and Being Human

By Timothy Sandefur

People love to laugh, but exactly why they do is a puzzle that has preoccupied some of the world’s most famous philosophers. Aristotle, Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and dozens of others have sought to explain why we joke, and in his new book, Humour, literary critic Terry Eagleton briefly summarizes their insights. Yet he offers no real theory of his…