Reason, desire and the ridiculous

Prof. Amir has written a rich, complex and searching book with a vast scholarly range that defies the poor reviewer. I shall confine myself to an overview of the main theory, the worldview Homo risibilis, as well as a few of the claims she makes about its promise. I have some questions too about the dialectical logic by which we are to obtain the promised relief. I end with a brief discussion of a Theravada Buddhism perspective on desire and compassion, an alleged rival to Amir’s theory, and ask how well it fits into Amir’s typology of opposing solutions. A worldview is a theory of the human condition. As such, Homo risibilis strives to be a “traditional philosophy,” setting itself in competition with world religions and other world historic philosophies. Prof. Amir’s ambition is not so much to frame a correct theory of humor, but to apply what she takes to be a correct theory of humor (she focuses on a self-referential version of the incongruity theory) to an understanding of the human condition. Among the advantages she touts of her theory are its minimalist epistemic and metaphysical commitments, which set it above its idealist and religious rivals. Moreover, in the book’s final two chapters, a case is laid out for a suite of personal and social benefits of the worldview. In particular, an egalitarian ethics of compassion is arrived at (though at times it seems to need to be as much an input as an outcome). Though I speak here of a theory of the human condition, we are clearly not dealing with any straight forwardly verifiable empirical theory that stands or falls with consensus evidence. The proof of Homo risibilis, if it is to have one, will be shown by its fitness in our lives, by its use to readers in coping with, and reconciling with (what in technical language is known as) the shit that happens. Indeed, Amir sets the bar high, hoping to rival world religions and once “mighty philosophies.”