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Editorial

The Philosophy of Humor

by David Boersema

If a philosopher alone in the forest tells a joke and nobody laughs, is it funny? (Well, if it’s Schopenhauer, sure it would be; but let’s not go there right now.)

Despite our differences and peculiarities, there are some human universals. Some of them are biological: we all need to eat and drink, and we all need to sleep. But there are also cultural and social universals: all cultures identify food taboos, kinship relationship rules, residence rules, and others. Even if different cultures use different criteria for who is part of one’s family and who isn’t, they still all draw some distinction between who is part of one’s family and who isn’t: ‘family’ matters across cultures.

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