8. Dezember 2025
Prof. Dr. Peter Gordon
Laughter and Humanity
Prof. Dr. Peter Gordon, Amabel B. James Professor of History and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy, German, and Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: »Like a court jester at the king’s side, laughter has remained a faithful companion to humanity across culture and time. In the Hebrew Bible, the miracle of Isaac’s birth prompts his elderly parents to laugh. For Erasmus, foolishness and laughter were at once low and high, a thorn in the side to worldly arrogance and a sign of divine innocence. For Kant, what provokes laughter reduces meaning itself to nothingness. And in the history of art, from Rembrandt to Dada, laughter becomes the very signature of both our humanity and our fallibility. To laugh at ourselves and even the norms we hold most sacred can alert us to an ongoing miracle: the making and unmaking of meaning itself. In this lecture, I will guide through a philosophical history of humor, its politics, its iconography, and significance in both logic and life.«
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf führt in den Abend ein.