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The Human Condition

What Makes This Question Funny?

Jeffrey Gordon delivers the punch line.

To undertake an analysis of the essence of humor risks being boorish. After all, analysis brings to humor the very spirit of seriousness humor intends to dispel. The enterprise seems therefore gauche, unappreciative, intellectually purblind – in short, humorless. But surely this situation is nothing new for philosophers. If to analyze some aspect of human experience is to be willing to sacrifice natural pleasure for clarity, then philosophers are by nature spoilers of fun.

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