{"id":33964,"date":"2026-03-01T00:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T00:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=33964"},"modified":"2026-03-05T21:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:49:11","slug":"much-a-be-about-no-thing-tristan-burts-book-for-de-gruyters-studies-in-philosophy-of-humor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/volume-21-no-1-2026\/review-essay-editor-review-volume-21-no-1-2026\/much-a-be-about-no-thing-tristan-burts-book-for-de-gruyters-studies-in-philosophy-of-humor\/","title":{"rendered":"Much A-be About No-thing: Tristan Burt\u2019s book for De Gruyter\u2019s Studies in Philosophy of Humor, “The Joke of Reality”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me commence with a juicy quote from the book at issue:<\/p>\n

[N]othing stands everything on its head. This is why it is fitting that this book forms part of what seems to be a very minor area of philosophical enquiry, i.e., the philosophy of humor. Immediately, from the perspective of the \u201csensible ham\u201d, the philosophy of humor is a footnote to a minor footnote to the main philosophical topics. The philosophy of humor is not metaphysics, or epistemology, or ethics, it is a minor inquiry into one small part of the whole. The concern of the philosophy of humor is, apparently, that limited group of things we empirically encounter which cause us to be amused; why are some things amusing and most things not? Never, in a million years, would it occur to a \u201csensible ham\u201d that looking into the phenomenon of humor would or could unveil the nature of reality. That would be absurd! If there is any hope to discover reality then it must lie down some grand avenue with a sufficiently grand-sounding name<\/em>. (JR, 195)<\/p>\n

Books can tell us many things about ourselves. Inter alia<\/em>, Tristan Burt\u2019s Joke of Reality <\/em>has told me that I have a spirited spiritual brother\u2014though maybe not a spiritual spirited brother\u2014working at an \u201cantipodean university. A marginal nobody,\u201d like myself, since I<\/em> have lived and worked for longer than twenty years in Akureyri, Iceland, close to the 65th<\/sup> parallel, i.e., one degree shorter in northern latitude than the touristically-catchy yet climatically-dismal Arctic Circle (JR, 195). Like Tristan Burt, I am no \u201crenowned Professor at a prestigious University.\u201d (JR, 195) Neither he nor I can claim to be some Peter Singer, Axel Honneth, or Martha Nussbaum. We can\u2019t even claim to be, say, John Morreall, Steven Gimbel, or Lydia Amir.<\/p>\n

Yet, like Tristan Burt, I too have come to believe with firm, rational conviction that the philosophy of humour can lead us into, pull us towards or, at least, push us onto, the deepest and\/or highest levels of metaphysical reflection, as the far-more-illustrious G.K. Chesterton and Gilles Deleuze had already asserted long before the two living \u201cmarginal nobod[ies]\u201d who were invited to participate at the 2025 ISHS annual conference in Krakow (see V1, 117\u2013124). Explicitly, in the concluding book of our multi-volume project for De Gruyter\u2019s Studies in Philosophy of Humor<\/em>, my co-author, \u00c1rs\u00e6ll M\u00e1r Arnarsson, and I had written as follows:<\/p>\n

[H]umour\u2026 grant[s] a somewhat fleeting yet intense and even cruel access\u2026 [to] a powerful and dynamic field of being, capable of creation as much as of destruction. How to best describe and understand such an onto-logical realm is a philosophically daunting matter. The options are the most diverse. It could be Schopenhauer\u2019s Wille zum Leben\u2026 [o]r Nietzsche\u2019s Wille zur Macht\u2026 Or it could be Bataille\u2019s part maudite\u2026 It could be Jung\u2019s \u201cgods\u201d, whose presence, potency, and pressures were said to be experienced psychically in sexuality as much as in spirituality. It might even be the ultimately ungraspable universal \u201corder\u201d set down by God\u2019s \u201ceternal Law\u201d, which Maritain described oxymoronically as \u201ccruel and saving\u201d at once. Or it could be the atheist Castoriadis\u2019 ontological allegory for the basis of all that of which can be conceived, however imperfectly, by human beings, i.e., the \u201cmagma\u201d \u2026 There are so many terms [that] could be seen as plausibly applicable to the ontological ground that humorous activity can both reveal and hide: \u201cBeing\u201d, \u201cGod\u201d, \u201capeiron\u201d, \u201cenergeia\u201d, \u201cthe One\u201d, \u201cnatura naturans\u201d, \u201cthe Tao\u201d. We, as authors of this volume, do not know which one would best apply<\/em>. (V3\/2, 321\u2013322)[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Unlike \u00c1rs\u00e6ll and myself, Tristan Burt claims to know which term should best apply. It is actually none of the preceding, funnily enough. Nonetheless, repeated, relevant, revelatory references are made by Tristan Burt to Nietzsche\u2019s \u201cWill to Power\u201d (JR, 219\u2013221), \u201cGod\u201d\u00a0(aka \u201cAllah\u201d or a \u201cone-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple, people eater;\u201d JR, 16), \u201cBeing\u201d (with a capital \u201cB\u201d, e.g., JR, 72), the Anaximander-esque but declaredly Deleuzian conception of the \u201cperfectly indeterminate\u201d (JR, 151), the ever-tinkered and thought-provoking descriptions of \u201cenergy\u201d developed by modern physicists (JR, 19 & 211\u2013213), and, much more flippantly or en passant<\/em>, Mount Olympus (JR, 197), Bataille (JR, 78), the Chinese word \u201cwu\u201d (JR, 103 & 125), and a 20th<\/sup>-century analogue of Telesius\u2019 16th<\/sup>-century notion of natura naturans<\/em>, i.e., Bergson\u2019s \u201ccreative evolution\u201d (JR, 225).<\/p>\n

Specifically, Tristan Burt argues that the best candidate amongst them all is the term \u201cnothing.\u201d A fortiori<\/em>, \u201cnothing\u201d is that which must now be addressed by me<\/em>, i.e., for me<\/em> to be able to offer my<\/em> critical considerations, however deficient, silly, or meaningless they may be. In short, I shall talk about \u201cnothing.\u201d I know, it sounds a bit odd, if not absurd, but philosophy is often so\u2014at times, even unintentionally so. It\u2019s dirty work, but somebody\u2019s got to do it. Bear with me, then. Don\u2019t chicken out\u2014and don\u2019t let the bear find the chicken either: It always ends badly, even if Tristan Burt writes competently about \u201cchickens and eggs\u201d (JR, 201\u2013203) In any case, consider this point: I have just read a book about \u201cnothing.\u201d And be ready for a lot of \u201cnonsense\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

\n

Synopsis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Philosophy\u2019s known beginnings are knowingly a feasible beginning. Thus, Tristan Burt begins his study of \u201cnothing\u201d proper by mentioning and discussing, among others, Parmenides\u2019 time-honoured, inspiring, yet also highly enigmatic poetic fragments, which mused on well-rehearsed, canonical, indeed foundational issues such as \u201cbeing\u201d and \u201cnon-being,\u201d i.e., as far as philosophy is historically and institutionally concerned (JR, 75). Tristan Burt does so<\/p>\n