In the conclusion to the first book of the Treatise, Hume's skeptical reflections have plunged him into melancholy. He then proceeds through a complex series of stages, resulting in renewed interest in philosophy. Interpreters have struggled to explain the connection between the stages. I argue that Hume's repeated invocation of the four humors of ancient and medieval medicine explains the succession, and sheds a new light on the significance of skepticism. The humoral context not only reveals that Hume conceives of (...) skepticism primarily as a temperament, not a philosophical view or system. It also resolves a puzzle about how Hume can view skepticism as both an illness and a cure. The skeptical temperament can, depending on its degree of predominance, either contribute to or upset the balance of temperaments required for proper mental functioning. (shrink)

The concept of humoral control--the direction of bodily processes by complex organic fluids--has gained ascendancy in recent decades, and enlisted the interest of more than humoral specialists.

By pushing Descartes to more clearly explain the union of body and soul beyond the functioning of a ‘strong’ passion, namely sadness, Elisabeth wants Descartes to review his idea of the passions, and his understanding of the ‘theory of the four humors’. This chapter aims at showing that Descartes turns away from Galen’s theory of the humors, which he globally adopts in the 1633 Treatise of Man. With the shift in his conceptualization of the humors between this Treatise and the (...) Treatise of the Passions (1649), Descartes analyzed more specifically the inner feelings, consciousness, and the passions, by considering that a man is not simply a body, but a psychophysical being, with a body and a soul. (shrink)

This paper examines Albert the Great’s conception of the body’s humoral complexion to consider not only the manner in which it presents in individuals, but also the manner in which it defines entire peoples or communities to produce a rudimentary ethnoanthropology in support of theological goals. In particular, I shall examine efforts to identify a sanguineous human complexion as best, leading to a logical inference that both Jesus and the Virgin Mary possessed this complexion. Then, I shall explore efforts to (...) identify diaspora Jews in general as possessors of an inferior, melancholy complexion, which effectively dejudaizes Jesus and Mary. Last, I shall examine attempts to depict the Jews’ complexion as uniquely incapable of alteration, perpetuating a distempered complexion that distances them from both the supralapsarian Adamic body and from the corporeal balance and harmony of the ideal Christian body. (shrink)

This essay examines the results of my attempt to use humorous video clips in a course taught in the Fall of 2010 and 2011. The regular display of these clips was designed to enhance my students' understanding of the central concepts of the course, participation in class discussions and to encourage them to think more critically and creatively. The results of a survey I administered at the end of the semester suggest that there is a positive correlation between the use (...) of the humorous clips and my students' understanding of the content, engagement in the lessons and ability to think critically. Both the quantitative and qualitative results of the survey as well as other methods of data collection indicate that watching and analyzing the humorous clips provided the students with a very valuable perspective that illuminated the ideas that we read. The results of this study also suggest that a course on the philosophy of humor and laughter can be very effective in getting students to think philosophically and appreciate the value of philosophy for their lives. (shrink)

Commonly regarded as one of the most serious philosophers of all time (this is a man who took his daily walk at precisely the same time each day), Kant's Humorous Writings explores a dimension of Kant's work that has hitherto been almost entirely ignored but which casts his philosophy into a new light. With entirely new translations of Kant's bon mots, quips, and anecdotes, supplemented by historical commentary and numerous illustrations, this guide outlines just why these pieces were important to (...) both the man and his work. (shrink)

This article focuses on the structures of humor and joke telling that require particular kinds of attentiveness and particular relationships between speaker and audience, or more specifically, between classmates. First, I will analyze the pedagogical and relational preconditions that are necessary for humor to work. If humor is to work well, the person engaging in humor needs to gauge their interlocutors carefully. I discuss, too, the kinds of listening necessary for listening for the joke, including attentiveness to complex possibilities for (...) meaning. This attentiveness to complexity is linked to curiosity and a willingness to be startled, two qualities that are central to the risk and pleasure of learning discussed by Socrates and Maria Lugones. Examining the place of risk in Socrates’ teaching and the place of serious play in Maria Lugones’ discussion of difference, I suggest that humor can help to illuminate complicities and invite more robust interactions with difference, creating pleasurable encounters to work through difficult social divisions. (shrink)

The purpose of this work consists of analyzing the place that the big’s and people’s conflict, circumscribed by the theory of humors, occupies in Machiavelli’s political thought and to investigate its relationship with the political freedom. The central hypothesis is that the freedom can only be reached by a balance point among the forces in conflict. For that, it is necessary that the conflict, not being annulled, be rationally regulated and normalized by the republican institutions, changing from negative force into (...) force capable to converge in the State the commonwealth, the social order and the freedom of the whole political body. The republican law, born of the permanent confrontation of the antagonistic desires, subverts the negative character of the humors of big and people and it channels the force for the political life, demanding active citizenship of their members, it means, the participation of both humors in the public space as political agents for the maintenance of the freedom. To make it clear, we tried to demonstrate the characteristics of the conflict of the humors, in agreement with those which the desire of the big gets confused with a desire of power, while the desire of the people is associated to freedom. For Machiavelli, the true political freedom is only possible when the antagonistic humors can relieve their desires through the participation in the public space of debates and collective decisions, what can only happen in a republican regime. (shrink)

This discussion of Infinitely Demanding explores the terms of the paradox with which Critchley is centrally concerned: how an ethico-politics can at once begin in disappointment and yet allow for engagement, the infinite renewal of commitment and optimism. Placing this in critical relation to the paradox Rorty meets with his account of the "private ironist and public liberal" in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, I argue that Critchley's ethico-politics invokes the possibility of a non-ironical categorical imperative, at the meeting point of finitude (...) and the infinite and at the heart of what is also a political space of intersubjectivity. I examine the logic of humour and of commitment within the Kantian frame thus suggested, arguing for their relevance to certain aspects of anarcho-activism, but also for their limitations in desperate circumstances, posing the risk that Critchley's preferred politics falls back into liberal complacency. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the potential of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories to contribute to the enrichment of contemporary democratic theory. In opposition to both of the major groups of current interpreters of this text—those who see it as representative of a conservative turn in Machiavelli’s thought grounded in a newfound skepticism regarding popular political competencies, and those who see it as merely a re-presentation of the republican commitments of the Discourses on Livy—I argue that it reveals to us a unique (...) political potentiality, but one that is essential for the construction of an internally consistent Machiavellian theory of democracy. Specifically, through disclosing the historicity and contingency of the humors of the parts of the city, the Histories suggests the possibility of concretely actualizing a condition of social equality, thus overcoming the main democratic deficit of the Discourses—the perpetuation of inequality, as represented in the preservation of the existence of a class with a desire to oppress. (shrink)

(2008). A Case of Melancholic Humors and Dilucida Intervalla. Intellectual History Review: Vol. 18, Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era, pp. 139-154.

Humoralism, the view that the human body is composed of a limited number of elementary fluids, is one of the most characteristic aspects of ancient medicine. The psychological dimension of humoral theory in the ancient world has thus far received a relatively small amount of scholarly attention. Medical psychology in the ancient world can only be correctly understood by relating it to psychological thought in other fields, such as ethics and rhetoric. The concept that ties these various domains together is (...) character (êthos), which involves a view of human beings focused on clearly distinguishable psychological types that can be recognized on the basis of external signs. Psychological ideas based on humoral theory remained influential well into the early modern period. Yet, in 17th-century medicine and philosophy, humoral physiology and psychology started to lose ground to other theoretical perspectives on the mind and its relation to the body. This decline of humoralist medical psychology can be related to a broader reorientation of psychological thought in which the traditional concept of character lost its central position. Instead of the focus on types and stable character traits, a perspective emerged that was primarily concerned with individuality and transient passions. (shrink)

(2008). Caravaggio’s Complexion: The Humoral Characterization of Artists in the Early Modern Period∗. Intellectual History Review: Vol. 18, Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era, pp. 61-74.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo apresentar o aspecto revolucionário do pessimismo e da melancolia de Walter Benjamin. Para tanto, realizamos um resgate histórico do conceito de melancolia, desde a teoria hipocrática dos humores, passando pelo "Problema XXX" de Aristóteles, até "Luto e Melancolia", de Freud. Em seguida, realizamos uma exposição de um excerto da obra "Origem do drama trágico alemão", onde Walter Benjamin apresenta uma breve análise da noção de melancolia no período Barroco, sobre o qual seu texto (...) se detém. Finalmente, analisamos o ensaio "O surrealismo: o último instantâneo da inteligência europeia", de autoria de Walter Benjamin, onde cremos estar presente a gênese dos elementos que virão a ser a base do entendimento do autor sobre a melancolia, fundamentalmente a ideia de uma necessária organização do pessimismo, visando à revolução. Ao distanciar-se das noções sobre o sentimento melancólico previamente concebidas, Walter Benjamin inaugura uma nova visão sobre a melancolia, não mais apática, mas ativa e revolucionária. (shrink)

Summary The model underlying the hippocratic humoral theory, as well as the corresponding part of hippocratic aetiology is reconstructed in precise, structuralist terms. Stress is laid on the presentation of the model, historical and philological derivations are suppressed. The global net structure of humoral theory in which the different diseases are described as specializations of the basic model is worked out, and the particular metatheoretical features of ‘therapeutical’ theories, as contrasted to ‘descriptive’ theories, are exemplified and stated in general.

This article investigates the origin and the earliest, formative period of one of the major concepts in post-classical Chinese medicine, the concept of phlegm, tan 痰. It is the first study that examines both Chinese- and Sanskrit-language sources in seeking to answer the question whether the development of the concept of phlegm in Chinese medicine is owed to Indic influences. Following traditional Chinese scholarship, it argues that the initial emergence of the substance tan 痰, which later was to become “phlegm,” (...) should be understood as an indigenous development from the fluid yin 飲. The subsequent formation and development of the concept of phlegm in Chinese medicine, however, was influenced by Āyurveda. The influence hinges on the coincidence of Indic and Chinese intuitions about digestion. Previous scholarship on early Chinese Buddhist translations of Indic terms for phlegm and the tridoṣa has either claimed that variations in the terminology betrayed the Chinese translators’ poor understanding of Āyurvedic concepts or that the translators creatively manipulated the terminology with a view to the cultural background of their intended audiences. By contrast, this article argues that the early terminology the Chinese translators crafted was highly accurate and faithful to their Indic source texts. It shows, by going back to the Indic classics, that the variations in Chinese terminology reflect an ancient and long-forgotten temporal shift in the perception of humors in India itself. (shrink)

Jokes and witticisms, built of spirit, evaporate under the glare of analysis. The lightning flash of wit might suffer slow death under painstaking scrutiny. Whe.

The interplay between the virus, infected cells and immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 is still under debate. By extending the basic model of viral dynamics, we propose here a formal approach to describe neutralisation versus weak (or non-)neutralisation scenarios and compare them with the possible effects of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). The theoretical model is consistent with the data available in the literature; we show that both weakly neutralising antibodies and ADE can result in final viral clearance or disease progression, but that (...) the immunodynamics are different in each case. As a significant proportion of the world’s population is already naturally immune or vaccinated, we also discuss the implications for secondary infections after vaccination or in the presence of immune system dysfunctions. (shrink)

In this study, teachers' views are evaluated to determine whether there is a relationship between the humor styles of school principals and the health of an organization. The study is based on a mixed research approach with both quantitative and qualitative aspects. In the quantitative study, the teachers were asked to describe their principals' senses of humor using the “humor behavior scale” and to evaluate the organization in which they worked using the “organizational health inventory.” In the qualitative dimension, principals (...) working in primary schools were interviewed and asked to evaluate their own sense of humor and the school's health. When the quantitative findings were examined, the regression results showed that school principals with a cynical style of humor negatively predicts organizational health, and productive social and affirmative styles of humor positively predict organizational health. In the qualitative study, the content analysis results revealed that a school administrator who uses humor effectively is capable of effectively solving problems in the school. However, it has been stated that the humor style of the school principal can have negative effects as well as positive effects. School principals are advised to recognize the teachers with whom they work and to distinguish which teachers are receptive to humor. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how humorous leadership enhances employee workplace creativity from a novel angle of employee psychological capital (EPC). This study also explores the moderating roles of supervisor–subordinate dyadic tenure and work autonomy in the proposed model. Data from a sample of 355 supervisor-subordinate dyads working in an information technology enterprise in the People’s Republic of China were used to test the assumed moderated mediation model. The results indicate the positive relationship between humorous leadership and employee workplace creativity, (...) which is partially mediated by EPC. Moreover, work autonomy significantly moderates the relationship between EPC and employee creativity. Humorous leadership drives creativity among subordinates; this can have a significant effect on the extra-role behavior of subordinates, leading to workplace creativity. The deliberate establishment of a humorous image by leaders may encourage subordinates to achieve creative goals. Combined with traditional management practices that emphasize the supportive behaviors of leaders, leaders can use humor to provide an open and friendly atmosphere for employees, thereby encouraging creativity in the workplace. Organizations should also place greater emphasis on employee work autonomy, allowing employees flexibility on when and how they do their job; this could enhance the positive impact of other factors on employee workplace creativity. These findings carry implications for research on humorous leadership, EPC, and creativity. (shrink)

RESUMENEste artículo desea defender la plena legitimidad del proceso constituyente español que condujo a la Constitución de 1978. Para ello muestro cuáles son los requisitos suficientes de un proceso constituyente y subrayo cuáles parecen prescindibles. Cifro lo propio de un proceso constituyente en que el pueblo sea plenamente autoconsciente al iniciarlo y hable de manera inequívoca y libre al aprobarlo. El primero excluye procesos sobrevenidos. El segundo va contra una representación soberana. ambas condiciones constituyentes sólo se han dado en España (...) en relación con la Constitución de 1978. Mi interpretación es que incluso el PNV habló de manera inequívoca en este asunto. Por eso no considero legitimadas sus ambigüedades políticas.PALABRAS CLAVEPODER CONSTITUYENTE, LEGITIMIDAD, CONCIENCIA POLÍTICA, DECISIÓN, ESTATUTOS, AUTONOMÍA.ABSTRACTThis article is a defence of the full legitimacy of the Spanish constituent process which led to the Constitution of 1978. In it I show which are the necessary elements of a constituent process and which would seem to be unnecessary. I also propose that an appropriate constituent process is one in which the people are fully self-aware when they initiate the process and express themselves freely and unequivocally when they ratify it. The former excludes processes which were not initially foreseen. The latter does not permit of sovereign representation. These two constituent onditions have only been satisfied in Spain at the time of the 1978 Constitution. In my view, even the PNV expressed itself unequivocally in this matter. For this reason I do not consider its political ambiguities to be legitimate.KEYWORDS CONSTITUENT POWER, LEGITIMACY, POLITICAL CONSCIENCE, DECISION, AUTONOMOUS STATUES. (shrink)

En este artículo se propone, como clave de lectura para entender la filosofía política de Maquiavelo, una síntesis, por una parte, entre la primacía del miedo identificada por Leo Strauss y, por otra parte, siguiendo a Claude Lefort, la prioridad del conflicto político causada por los humores. Se discuten las dificultades y el alcance del intento de articular las interpretaciones de Strauss y Lefort sobre Maquiavelo. Una vez mostrada la manera en que la primacía del miedo permite articular las (...) tensiones internas de la teoría de los humores, se aplica la combinación de ambas en el paradigmático discurso de Istorie fiorentine III 13, sobre la revuelta de los ciompi. (shrink)

In graphic novel format, explains the theories of various philosophers through humorous examples and anecdotes.

One of the challenges Public Service Media institutions face today is how to translate normative values such as universality and diversity into measurable and tangible content in an attempt to realize their “public value”. This contribution shows how the communicative functions of humor can help create public value by introducing audiences to minorities. As a case in point, we analyzed Taboe, a humorous human-interest program about minorities including, amongst others, the visually impaired and the obese, broadcast by Flemish public broadcaster (...) VRT in 2018. Based on in-depth interviews with program makers and participants and a qualitative content analysis of the program, the study found that humor provided the program with a positive, funny yet emotional tone of voice that attracted and kept the audience’s attention. By giving various minorities an active voice, Taboe introduced mainstream audiences to the their perspective, encouraging increased knowledge and understanding and, in turn, tolerance of, and acceptance towards, the minority groups represented. (shrink)

There Is Method in the Humorous Speaker's Madness: Humour and Grice's Model The interdependence between humour and the Cooperative Principle appears to be a bone of contention in pragmatic studies on verbal humour. The wellentrenched approach advocated by Raskin and Attardo is that jokes constitute the non-bona-fide mode of communication standing vis-à-vis the Gricean model and governed by a humour-CP, and that they violate, not merely flout, the maxims and even the CP. The aim of the article is to shed (...) new light on the interdependence between humour and the CP with a view to substantiating that the authors who regard humour as an independent communicative mode and as an intrinsic violation of maxims and the CP appear to labour under a serious misapprehension. It will be argued that the Gricean model of cooperative rationality does allow for humorous verbalisations, which normally rely on maxim flouts. (shrink)

While univariate functional magnetic resonance imaging data analysis methods have been utilized successfully to map brain areas associated with cognitive and emotional functions during viewing of naturalistic stimuli such as movies, multivariate methods might provide the means to study how brain structures act in concert as networks during free viewing of movie clips. Here, to achieve this, we generalized the partial least squares analysis, based on correlations between voxels, experimental conditions, and behavioral measures, to identify large-scale neuronal networks activated during (...) the first time and repeated watching of three ∼5-min comedy clips. We identified networks that were similarly activated across subjects during free viewing of the movies, including the ones associated with self-rated experienced humorousness that were composed of the frontal, parietal, and temporal areas acting in concert. In conclusion, the PLS method seems to be well suited for the joint analysis of multi-subject neuroimaging and behavioral data to quantify a functionally relevant brain network activity without the need for explicit temporal models. (shrink)

Speakers of jokes are aware of the human cognitively rooted relevance-seeking inferential procedure and predict the interlocutor’s steps leading to a valid interpretation of the utterance in the joke. Specifically, speakers can predict the accessibility to certain information which builds up a proper scenario for understanding the joke, the inferential steps taken to turn the words uttered into contextualized meaningful propositions, and the awareness of cultural stereotypes regarding professions, nationalities, connoted places, sex roles, etc.. This inferred information is exploited to (...) generate humorous effects. In previous research, the Intersecting Circles Model was proposed. It comprises seven types of jokes depending on whether the joke only relies on one of or on combinations of them, which entails analyzing the extent to which play or do not play a role in the generation of humorous effects. In this paper, 1000 jokes are analyzed and fitted into a type or combinations of. Several interesting humor-generating patterns are also isolated inside the seven preliminary joke types covered by the Model. (shrink)

Philosophy often at least implicitly includes and depends on a logical structure which is also that of jokes. This is the case when philosophy involves questioning or establishing concepts in their own right, and when it involves the kinds of metaphysics which ask about reality and the world as a whole or as such. Taking this humour-like structure into account in presenting philosophy helps, among other things, to lay open part of the character of philosophy itself, to underscore the radical (...) self-perspective that is constitutive of philosophy, and to contextualise the often confusing experience of coming to grips with an unfamiliar philosophical framework. (shrink)

Albert’s anthropology places the human being at the top of a hierarchy of living things in virtue of a unique feature – namely the intellect – that offers the possibility of transcending the changing realm of nature and of assimilating its possessor to their divine creator. Even though Albert, throughout his works, often defends the independence of the human intellect from matter and consequently from the body and senses, his works on natural philosophy seem to offer a different perspective. In (...) De animalibus, Albert considers the brain to be the divine member of the body responsible for the operations of sensation and, to a certain degree, of intellection. Thus, the entire humoral activity of the human body has a direct influence on the activity of the intellect, his divine nature notwithstanding. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to point out how the classical humoral theory is integrated by Albert the Great in his physiological consideration for an explanation of the intellect placed between the murky boundaries of natural philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)

Usually, humor is not theorized specifically, but identified with the comic and laughter. This paper deals with the internal logic of humorous operations in the context of Freud's writings on humor, in order to make them productive for medial anthropology. Unlike conventional anthropologies, medial anthropology is interested in the ontologizing effects of operations that can be understood in a technical way. Correspondingly, humoresque operations are to be studied anew as techniques of the Dionysian connection of pleasure and reality principle. German (...) Humor wird gemeinhin nicht eigens theoretisiert, sondern umstandslos mit dem Komischen und dem Lachen identifiziert. In diesem Aufsatz geht es darum, die Eigenlogik von humoresken Operationen vor dem Hintergrund von Freuds Auslassungen zum Humor herauszuarbeiten und für eine mediale Anthropologie produktiv zu machen. Im Unterschied zu herkömmlichen Anthropologien interessiert sich eine mediale Anthropologie für die ontologisierenden und wirklichkeitskonstituierenden Effekte technisch zu fassender Operationen. Humoreske Operationen sind entsprechend als Techniken der dionysischen Verschaltung von Lust- und Realitätsprinzip neu zu beleuchten. (shrink)