Dire il vero ridendo. Teoria e pratica dell'ironia critica in Francis Hutcheson

This essay examines Francis Hutcheson's aesthetics of laughter, showing its cognitive and psychological aspects, which in some ways anticipate Sigmund Freud's analysis of wit. It also shows how Hutcheson's Reflections Upon Laughter and his Observations on the Fable of the Bees launched a critical debate in the mid-eighteenth century that played a crucial role in the intellectual history of modernity.