Elaine Decker

Making Sense with the Sense of Humor: Exploring Humor's Hermeneutic Potential Elaine Decker

Philosopher Martin Heidegger said we are "thrown" into the world, then left to our own devices to make sense of that world and our place in it. But the world is a volatile and confounding place, and the challenge of how best to live can be daunting. This book explores the contribution of the sense of humor to this sense-making work. Most major humor theories have focussed on the causes of humor and diminished its implications and utility. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides an alternative resource to explore how humor helps us to understand, supporting the argument that the sense of humor can be harnessed as a powerful tool for the interpretive work of being fully human. Considering the role of education in supporting students to "make sense" of self and the world, the pedagogical potential of humor is examined.