<i>RIDO DUNQUE POTREI ESSERE. LA SINGOLARITÀ E LE CONSEGUENZE DEL COMICO</i>

Abstract

The present article discusses laughter and comedy from an anthropological and metaphysical perspective. Moving from Porphyry of Tyre’s definition of laughter as what is properly, uniquely (idíon) human, the author argues that laughter questions the binary distinctions upon which the dominant intellectualistic current of Western philosophy grounds its under­standing of man. Through laughter, human beings are granted the ca­paci­ty to distance themselves from the domains of heroic individuality, reality, and necessity, typical of both metaphysics and tragedy, and to access those of singularity, contingency, and possibility.