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Stand-up comedians - such as Doug Stanhope, Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Sarah Silverman, Ricky Gervais, Amy Schumer and Bill Burr - frequently work in a philosophical realm, in that they reflect upon our foibles and in doing so generate insights into the human condition. At their best, they offer a refined and accessible philosophy for the masses which seeks to penetrate the noise of cultural conflict; to offer distilled comprehension of what we're doing to ourselves and to each other, to offer insight as to why we do it, and even to suggest how we might improve. They tackle many of the big themes, including (but far from limited to) religion, politics, sexuality, purpose, competition, parenthood, childhood, love, hate, mortality, violence, morality, fear, grief, meaning, education, hypocrisy, apathy and addiction.

Has anyone written in depth about the philosophical role, contribution, status, value, dynamic of stand-up comedy? It's an old art form, and I suspect it has served a philosophical purpose for a long time.

Lintott (2017), asks why stand-up comedy has not received greater attention in philosophy of art and makes a case for its philosophical interest. It is not a formal literature review however, and she provides only two citations; Bicknell (2007), and Carroll (2014).

References

Bicknell, Jeanette. (2007). “What’s Offensive About Offensive Humor?”. Philosophy Today 51(4):458-465.

Carroll, Noel. (2014). “Ethics and Comic Amusement”. British Journal of Aesthetics 54(2):241-253.

Lintott, Sheila, Why (not) philosophy of stand-up comedy? (2017).Faculty Contributions to Books. 110. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_books/110

Philip Klöcking
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Futilitarian
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    I subscribe to what can be called the "Mistake" theory of humor: that we evolved to laugh when we see someone else make a surprising mistake so that we remember not to make that mistake ourselves. A (funny) mistake involves a setup familiar to us, the part that might follow from the setup in a mistaken, surprising way, and something "bad" or socially inappropriate. – causative Sep 16 '22 at 00:20
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    All of these elements make it more important for us to remember the mistake so we don't do it ourselves. A familiar setup means we might encounter the situation ourselves, a more surprising mistake means we weren't enough on guard against the mistake and therefore should try harder to remember it, and greater resulting harm means it is more important to avoid that mistake. – causative Sep 16 '22 at 00:21
  • @causative. I hadn't thought of it that way (although I'm trying to get into the habit of considering all behaviour from tge perspective of evolutionary psychology). Google throws up a couple of articles which may be of interest. Relatively little from academia though. Just found [this](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/) at SEP. Should have checked there first, I suppose. – Futilitarian Sep 16 '22 at 01:30
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    Re the 'opinion-based' close vote... I explicitly asked for sources, not opinion. Also, re. the 'guideline' close vote, I'd appreciate being told which guideline I breached. – Futilitarian Sep 16 '22 at 01:35
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    Court Jester? Heyokha? Judy Tenuta? – Scott Rowe Sep 16 '22 at 02:10
  • 1) This is out of topic: the question subject is _philosophy by means of stand-up comedy_, which is not part of philosophy, but moreover of communication theory. 2) A completely different matter is the _philiosophy of stand-up comedy_, equivalent to the _philosophy of COBOL programming language_: those are philosophical perspectives of such disciplines, not commonly addressed in general philosophy, but on each specific discipline. – RodolfoAP Sep 26 '22 at 11:08
  • Thanks for the feedback @RodolfoAP. – Futilitarian Sep 26 '22 at 11:36
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    There is enough philosophy of art which is about finding new ways of expressing truth. I do not see any reason why the question as it stands should not be answerable in the context of philosophy. From the [Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356217628_Oldest_Systematic_Program_of_German_Idealism_Translation_and_Notes) over critical theory and philosophy of humour up to contemporary sources there should be plenty of philosophy proper that has a say on this. – Philip Klöcking Sep 26 '22 at 15:03
  • @PhilipKlöcking. Just read the original essay. I won't pretend to have any certainty as to what the writer was trying say (I haven't read the full article yet, which would likely help), but I see the relevance to questions which seek to identify how philosophy interacts with creativity/aesthetics/humour (the author even refers to 'wit'). Thanks. – Futilitarian Sep 28 '22 at 11:14
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    I wrote a bit about the programme fragment [here](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/36916/17209). – Philip Klöcking Sep 28 '22 at 15:39

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