Laughter in the Dark: The Consolation of Comedy

The Center for Ethics and Values presents an Eminent Scholar Lecture with Kieran Setiya, Peter de Florez Professor of Philosophy at MIT, who will speak on Laughter in the Dark: The Consolation of Comedy.

Can humour help us cope with hardship without distancing or denial? Does laughter at misfortune manifest what Bergson called “a momentary anesthesia of the heart”—or worse? This talk takes up a puzzle about confessional comedy: why isn’t it vicious to draw pleasure from another’s suffering, as we do when comics joke about trauma? The answer turns on the fine structure of empathy; and the upshot is a theory of confessional stand-up as bespoke theodicy: a temporary, interpersonal solution to the emotional problem of evil. This solution is one we can administer to ourselves, using humor to confront adversity. Content note: violence and sexual assault.

Kieran Setiya is Peter de Florez Professor of Philosophy at MIT, where he works on ethics and related questions about human agency and human knowledge. He is the author of Reasons without Rationalism, Knowing Right From Wrong, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, which was selected as a Best Book of 2022 by The Economist and The New Yorker. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, the LA Review of Books, the TLS, the London Review of Books, the Boston Review, The Atlantic, Aeon, and The Yale Review, as well as numerous academic journals. He is working on a book about laughter as a guide to life.