ABSTRACT
The chapter looks at Ágnes Heller’s philosophy of comedy. It discusses her book Immortal Comedy along with her theories of rationality, personality, and temporality, and the contribution of these theories to her theory of comedy. The chapter focusses on the political dimension of comedy. It looks at the split in modern politics between liberal-conservative and liberal-progressive outlooks, and how that split is reflected in comic temperament. The relation between wit and politics is explored, along with comedy’s hostility to fanaticism, tyranny, and bureaucratic banality. The article concludes with a discussion of comedy’s adhesion to the contrary ‘law of contradiction’ and the related idea that comic paradox functions as a social ontology and a pivot of social creation.
