Humor and Religious Insight: Humor as a Celebratory Appreciation of Life and the World

Discussions of religion as having a humorous dimension typically try to show that religious perspectives express a celebratory view of life as joyously meaningful. Chapter 19 argues that this view in its traditional scholarly forms is generally not well thought through. These accounts are in some ways incoherent; and they do not show how humor itself reveals the truth of this joyous character rather than simply expressing it as a pre-given conviction. They also often leave aside what is humorous in the sense of being specifically funny, at best confusing it with what is good-humored in the sense of being light-hearted and sympathetic. The chapter argues, however, that through the truth-manifesting character and logic which the book argues of humor in the sense of what is funny, humor in that sense does offer and in fact justifies this celebratory view.