Lydia Amir

The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Humor gathers the best scholars in this now well-established field in order to fill a significant lacuna: to provide an accurate explanation of philosophers’ attitudes toward humor as an umbrella term, both historically and thematically. To that purpose, it addresses not only humor, but also laughter and the comical, as well as related terms, such as smiling, wit, jokes, caricature, irony and stand-up comedy. The first part of the handbook is historical and presents the main philosophers and the major philosophic schools which have taken humor seriously. It clarifies the ways in which humor has been interpreted through various periods in Western history, and engages with the various spiritual traditions and diverse cultures within which humor has been significant. Parts 2, 3 and 4 examine key themes. Part 2 disambiguates the main notions which are associated with humor as an umbrella term, and emphasizes their role in philosophy. Part 3 explores how humor has been understood, approaching it through various lenses. Finally, Part 4 addresses the main questions in the ethics of humor, such as its capacity to offend and its potential to be virtuous, and the strong ties between humor and the human predicament. This handbook is essential reading for all scholars, researchers, and advanced students of the philosophy of humor and of humor studies. It is also of interest to scholars in related fields including aesthetics, moral psychology, ethics, and the history of philosophy.

The Handbook offers a theoretical and practical guide to transformative philosophies, drawing on past theories still viable today and on contemporary approaches which prioritize key transformative notions. Bringing together international top scholars, this handbook breaks ground in its scope and depth, its erudition and originality, its theory and practice. The new field it defines ultimately addresses the question of what philosophy is, what it has been, and what it can be. Part I offers historical perspectives on the transformative power of philosophy from antiquity to the 21st century. Addressing first various epochs in Western philosophy (Ancient and Hellenistic Philosophies; Late modern and Medieval; Renaissance and modern philosophies), it also formulates the impact that Eastern philosophies, chiefly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, had on the west, and without which the last two centuries of transformative philosophy cannot be understood. Part II is divided thematically rather than historically and focuses on contemporary approaches to transformative philosophies. Each chapter addresses in depth one central notion, which, when brought to bear on practice, helps to define a new field in transformative philosophy. They include awareness, wonder, imagination, will, decision, experience, understanding, birth, autonomy, love, integrity, self-esteem, meaning, joy, humor, and happiness. By unraveling the transformative power of philosophy, this handbook hopes to strengthen philosophy’s place in the academe as a force to reckon with. By enabling personal change for the benefit of the individual and the society in which we live, it answers contemporary concerns. By making explicit the transformative power of various philosophies, of different philosophic notions, and of philosophy itself as an ambitious discipline which critically changes one’s mind through the mixture of rational and non-rational elements, the Transformative Philosophy Handbook lays the ground for a new philosophic field, whose influence will transcend narrow concerns. This Handbook appeals to students and researchers in academic philosophy and related disciplines.

Should philosophers address the needs of their societies? If the answer is affirmative, and if today's needs are being inadequately answered within the New Age movement for lack of viable alternatives, philosophers' minimal response could be teaching critical thinking outside the academe, and maximal response would be providing relevant wisdom for the world. The first option requires construing logic and epistemology as practical fields. The second requires reforming part of Philosophy as social thinking which provides relevant wisdom for the world. I expose here the maximal response based on an analysis of society's needs forcosmology and spirituality, the New Age Movement's role in providing for those needs, its dangers and imperviousness to criticism, and philosophers' possible responsibility for and interest in answering the needs for a synoptic vision.

Philosophical practice or counseling has been described as a cluster of meth­ods for treating everyday problems and predicaments through philosophical means. Not­withstanding the variety of methods, philosophical counselors seem to share the following tenets: 1. The counselee is autonomous; 2. Philosophical counseling differs from psychological counseling and 3. Philosophical counseling is effective in solving predicaments. A critical examination shows these to be problematic at both theoretical and practical levels. As I believe that philosophical practice is a valuable contribution both to philosophy and to psychology, though not devoid of potential dangers and misuses, I suggest that philosoph­ical counselors reconsider the theoretical and empirical validity of their tenets. Using my experience as a philosophical counselor, I attempt in this paper to contribute to this task while introducing the reader to what are, in my opinion, the main problems in the field.

In this paper I continue to probe the roles of philosophy and psychology in moral education. In a previous article published in this journal, I criticized the moral views of various schools of psychotherapy, and argued that philosophers are the sole professionals equipped to teach normative morality in a pluralistic, critical, and reasoned way. In this paper, I argue that effective moral education involves emotional education; that philosophers’ views of emotions tend to be reductive, and when they are not, they point to an irreducibility of affectivity which is not amenable to philosophical investigation. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, philosophers seem poorly equipped for the former. Psychotherapists are trained in educating emotions and in attending the irreducible affectivity of individual emotions. Interested as we might be in psychotherapists’ specialization in emotional education, we cannot dissociate it from moral education, as emotional education is not value-free. Recalling that psychological theories involve views of morality which do not withstand critical examination, we are reluctant to entrust psychotherapists with moral education. Turning once again to psychology, we realize that we have added a new complexity to the initial problematic status of psychological moral education. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, the untenable situation that obtains is that philosophers educate us morally while psychologists educate us emotionally. Moral education is impaired whether it is left to psychotherapists or to philosophers. I conclude by sharing some thoughts on the possibilities of amending this situation.