Humor as a Privileged Grasp of Goodness and Meaningfulness I: Humor’s Grasp of Deep Value

Chapter 4 turns to the connection between humor’s access to truth and its access to value. It tries to show that, because of and built into the way humor gives us (and in fact partly consists in) access to deep truth, it also gives us (and partly consists in) a uniquely privileged access to value at a deep level. The chapter ends with a brief account of the nature of laughter as an expression of the relation of humor to deep truth and value.