Even philosophers need downtime. In episode 106 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a break and chase down fun’s place in today’s world — from its aesthetic opposition to the highbrow realm of beauty, to its peculiar absence from philosophical discourse. What role does fun play in the good life? How does fun relate to art, play, and ritual? Can you really have fun by yourself? And what happens when the lines blur between the fun and the political?Check out the episode's extended cut here!Works...
Hello and welcome to Overthink, the podcast.
Where two philosophers have fun with big ideas.
I'm Dr.
Ellie Anderson.
And I'm Dr.
David Pena Guzman.
Fun is exceptionally hard to define.
There are all these concepts that are closely related to it, such as play, leisure, humor, and pleasure.
But there is not a lot out there about fun specifically.
Yeah, we decided to do this episode topic before we looked into the literature.
And then once we looked into the literature, we were like, oh, wow, okay.
There actually isn't very much of it.
And that is for reasons that we will unpack over the course of the episode.
We also did find some fun research.
Some fun, fun research.
So stay tuned for that.
But I found myself in looking into this topic doing what Socrates says is the wrong way to define something,
which is instead of giving a definition, just pointing to all the things that are fun.
Right.
Like, going to an amusement park is fun.