Luvell Anderson is a professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, where he’s also an affiliate faculty member of Women’s and Gender Studies and African American Studies. He is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race and the soon-to-be-released Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language. He is also currently working on a book about the philosophy of humor—The Ethics of Racial Humor—which is the topic of this episode. After beginning with a discussion of just what humor is, Luvell and Robinson move on to the distinction between racial and racist humor, Dave Chappelle, the ethics of roasting, what makes comedy human, and more. You can keep up with Luvell at andersonluvell.weebly.com and through his Twitter account, @luvell_anderson.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

00:28 Introduction

3:05 Luvell’s Interest in Comedy

5:32 What is Humor?

12:22 Slurs and Hate Speech

17:45 Is Humor Uniquely Human?

23:32 Racial Humor and Racist Humor

32:48 Sexist Humor

38:51 Dave Chappelle

44:05 Roasting Ethics

53:05 A Genetic Approach to Comedy

59:12 Horror and Humor

1:05:15 Comedy, Connection, and Progressive Change

1:09:40 What Makes Comedy Human

1:14:03 Audience Sensitivity

1:17:56 Humor and Media Psychology

1:21:54 Laughing With and Laughing At

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.