Immanuel Kant’s Theory of Laughter and Philosophical Irony

Abstract

Today, the Kantian understanding of laughter has gained in the philosophical literature an almost textbook status. This situation does not take into account the polysemantic nature of philosophical quotes in general and Kantian statements about laughter, in particular. Moreover, in the literature, prevails the tendency for a mono-paradigmatic interpretation of the great German philosopher’s point of view. Most often, his views are classified as belonging to the Incongruence theory. Overcoming this approach, we propose a more contextually adequate heterogeneous theory. Moreover, we see Kant's theory not only as poly-paradigmatic, but also dynamic, manifesting the process of development. The contemporary philosophy enables us to see some contradictions in Kant’s views, the reasons for which we will try to understand by means of explication of some a priori moral attitudes of the philosopher. In addition to interpreting Kant's immediate statements about the phenomenon of laughter, we will try to take the problem a little deeper. We propose a hypothesis suggesting an essential relationship between Kant's critical method and his specific philosophical irony.