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In A Philosophy of Humour, Alan Roberts presents a brief but extremely well-resourced overview of the history of the philosophy of humor (I will omit “u” for brevity, the soul of wit), and offers a new theory of humor focusing on the role of amusement. This text does not assume any prior acquaintance with theories of humor or philosophy, and in light of this, Roberts does well to define, either in the text or a brief note, the philosophical concepts necessary to help the reader follow along. Even though the text is relatively short, Roberts covers a surprising amount of philosophical ground on humor including a considerable number of counterarguments from multiple disciplines. This is important as humor is not explicable from a single field of study, as it is a subject that is interwoven in just about every intellectual (and non-intellectual) domain. Those well-versed in the philosophy of humor might be inclined to skip to the final chapter that introduces a new theoretical framework. This would be a mistake. For one thing, you would miss out on the oldest joke in the world (a fart joke, of course) and the oldest joke in English (a dick joke, of course) (28n3). But there are other, perhaps even more important, reasons. Essential conceptual analysis in the early chapters sets the scaffolding for the later fully developed theory. For instance, in Chapter 2, Roberts makes integral distinctions among “amusement,” “funniness,” and “humor” where other theorists have lumped them together, often to the detriment of their own arguments. When those 4 elements are conflated it becomes difficult to avoid circular and/or vacuous definitions (see 4, 14– 16). Furthermore, Roberts makes a critical distinction between the normative and descriptive assumptions of funniness, a difference other well-known theorists, such as Noël Carroll, Aaron Smuts, and Berys Gaut, fail to make. When we claim that a statement is funny, we are not merely describing some facet of reality, or describing anything at all; rather, Roberts contends, we are making a normative or evaluative claim, we are “endors[ing] a response of amusement towards it” (13). This leads Roberts to his “Theory of Funniness: Object O is funny if and only if O merits amusement” (14). And this will eventually take us to his “Theory of Humor: Object O is humor if and only if O is intended to elicit amusement” (17). This means the role and mental states of the wit, in addition to those of the audience, is crucial to any evaluation of humor.1

Chris A. Kramer: A Philosophy of Humour, Alan Roberts. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. pp. ix +133.