Rethinking the Humour Amusement Link

Abstract Philosophers of humour standardly assume that there is an essential connection between humour and amusement. Amusement is, in some way, regarded as essential to humour. However, anti-essentialist sceptics have recently called the ‘orthodox’ formulation of essentialism into question. Orthodox essentialists have argued that humorous acts are acts intended to amuse and that humour is nothing more than the practice of those acts. Anti-essentialists argue that much humour does not involve any intentions to amuse. These sceptics are motivated by a conception of humour as a robust and varied social practice. The aim of this paper is to show how we might defend a version of essentialism that accepts this conception of humour as a robust social practice. I argue that amusement is the emotional core of humour where humour is understood as an aesthetic practice in the sense described by aesthetic communitarians.