What Is Humor? | Luvell Anderson Artwork

What Is X?

“What Is X?” has been described as “a cross between a Platonic dialogue and ‘The Price Is Right.’” It combines dialectical inquiry of the sort perfected by Socrates and his interlocutors with a distinctly ludic spirit. Here’s how it works: For each episode, host Justin E. H. Smith invites on a guest distinguished in their field (or occasionally a “regular” person who really likes to talk). Smith asks the guest to answer a question of the form “What is X?” (for example, “What is beauty?” “What is nature?” “What are dreams?”), after which the two partners in dialogue undertake a Socratic inquiry into the nature of X, in search of a definition that satisfies both of them. There are three possible outcomes: agreement, disagreement, and aporia (Greek for “dead end”), each with its own sound effect: if we arrive at agreement, a church bell will chime; disagreement is signaled by a bleating goat; if aporia is the best we can do, we will hear naught but a gust of wind. Rigorous but freewheeling, fun and serious at once, accessibly highbrow, these conversations model rational inquiry in a new way, providing answers for truth-seekers... or perhaps just more questions. /// Host: Justin E.H. Smith (justinehsmith.substack.com) /// Presented by The Point Magazine (thepointmag.com)

All Episodes

What Is X?

What Is Humor? | Luvell Anderson

April 16, 2022 • Justin E.H. Smith | The Point Magazine • Season 2 • Episode 6

Longtime Point readers may remember that Justin E.H. Smith contributed to our issue 14 “What is comedy for?” symposium back in 2017. He now returns to the subject for us with this episode of “What Is X?” on humor. Joining him is Luvell Anderson, a philosophy professor at Syracuse currently at work on a book on the ethics of racial humor, from its dangers and transgressions to its progressive potential. Humor, Luvell tells Justin, is “a kind of dialogue with its culture, the cultural milieu in which it’s set.” So how, his project asks, should ethical considerations and cultural context bear on our judgments of what’s funny? What are the advantages and disadvantages of crude and less “respectable” humor, and what do we miss when we ignore their function as highly ritualized practices? What forms of communication is humor capable of that conventionally rational argument is not? To explore these questions, Justin and Luvell tackle a number of topics: the limits of satire, the tense relationship between humor and morality, and what Dave Chappelle and Hannah Gadsby have in common. Along the way, they also discuss why the Greeks thought lettuce was so funny, the tragedy of Richard Pryor, and whether a theorist of comedy needs a good sense of humor.