Fun and the Good Life: On Being Outmatched by a World Not on Our Side

Abstract

What role do the lighter aspects of life—humor, play, and fun—have in shaping a good life? On the one hand, these lighter aspects can seem too frivolous for such a serious question about how to live. On the other hand, a life without them—even if this absence causes no damage and all other goods are secured—strikes us as too serious to count as a good human life. This dissertation clarifies the structure of this question: how serious or how light should a good human life be? I argue, first, that the “too serious” worry cannot be resolved simply by adding moments of fun to an otherwise too serious picture of the good life, as if the picture could thereby become well-rounded again. The reason is that there is a specific kind of fun—amusement in being outmatched by the world’s challenges—whose value, despite its apparent appeal to those who laugh at their own clumsy slip, is easily dismissed by standard ethical reflection. I argue that this dismissal occurs because such fun complicates the familiar framework through which Western philosophers have approached the fundamental question of how to live in a world that is generally not on our side. Beyond the question this framework has already asked—namely, how far we should open ourselves to such a world—the phenomenon of amusing fun introduces another: when we confront the world’s challenges and find ourselves outmatched, should we experience this as pain or as fun? I argue that the question of how to live—lightly or seriously—is thus at bottom not about whether to take things seriously or lightly, but whether to take ourselves seriously or lightly: how small we should regard ourselves in relation to the world. How far should we resemble Zhuangzi’s butterfly, having fun in being carried away by a sudden gust, lost among a thousand flowers, without resentment or distress? After all, it is only a little butterfly.