Egoismi e incongruenze. Estetiche del riso in età moderna

Through a line of investigation that, starting from Hobbes, develops in authors such as Addison, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Kant, this essay intends to reconstruct the major theories of laughter in philosophers and art theorists of the modern age. Moreover, it aims at showing the moral, social, psychological, aesthetic and cognitive relevance of a theme still at the center of the contemporary philosophical debate and that was considered in many of its problematic and categorial all through the eighteenth century.