Cover art for On Humour
Published
Routledge, May 2002
ISBN
9780415251211
Format
Softcover, 144 pages
Dimensions
19.8cm × 12.9cm

On Humour

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On Humour is a fascinating, beautifully written and funny book on what humour can tell us about being human. Simon Critchley skilfully probes some of the most perennial but least understood aspects of humour: why is that we mock death with laughter? If humour is uniquely human, why do we laugh at animals so much?

Is joking a private matter, or do we share humour? Throughout, On Humour uses arresting examples from antiquity to modernity and from laughing at our bodies to the darker side of humour in racism and sexism. Critchley also draws on writers who have used humour, including Swift, Sterne, Bergson, Beckett and Freud, turning the comical inside out to reveal some delectable insights about what we find funny. Above all, he reveals that the humanity of humour is in being able to laugh at oneself.

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