ABSTRACT
Questions about what things are funny and why leads Bergson into metaphysical questions about the ontological conditions of perception and the role of time and consciousness in the operation of reason. Laughter is an essay about the workings of reason, but it is also about the nature of the social, and the relation of subjectivity and consciousness to the social forms, types and “generalities” that circulate among us. In Laughter, Bergson develops the outlines of a social and moral philosophy that anticipates the central themes of his late work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. I show how Bergson reworks elements of classical themes in the philosophy of humour, particularly themes of superiority and absurdity, and repurposes them into his social and moral philosophy of life.
