What do smart people laugh at?

In *What Do Intelligent People Laugh About?*, Manfred Geier rediscovers the joy of comedy in Western philosophical thought. Drawing on classical antiquity, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, and even Karl Valentin—who intensified philosophical astonishment in the face of laughter—Geier integrates humor into academic thought in a hilarious and entertaining way.

For centuries, laughter, joking, and mockery were considered obstacles on the path to philosophical enlightenment. A work of the devil, a grimace that disfigures human beings and brings them closer to apes, laughter was also a sign of vulgarity and rudeness. Jokes were something to be avoided at all costs.

Wouldn't humor, then, have a place in philosophy? Wouldn't there be intelligent people adept at the outward manifestation of human joy? Philosopher and philologist Manfred Geier shows that, despite the purge of the serious Plato and his countless successors in academic philosophy, laughter found its place in philosophical truth.

Laughter is vital to the human condition, yet humor is rarely chosen as a topic for serious historical research. Here, the author examines the subject as a key to understanding cultures, religions, social groups, and professions, and places it at the center of human cultural and social history.

*What Intelligent People Laugh At* tells a delightful story of humor in philosophy by tracing the trajectory of laughter in Western society. It also shows what thinkers like Rabelais, Kant, and St. Hopenhauer laughed at in their respective eras.

Geier contrasts Platonian ideals with the ideas of the smiling Dernocritus. He recaps their beliefs and describes what the great philosophers think about humor. He explains why Plato studied the idea of the ridiculous but didn't find it funny. And why human nature is defined not only by knowing how to laugh—but also by being condemned to be a laughingstock itself.