A Potential Transformer. The Uncanny Book of Taking the Liberty of Thought and Difference. A Discussion: Uncanny Soulscapes in Uncustomary Dreamscope. Collected Philosophical Fragments by Giorgio Baruchello
A Potential Transformer. The Uncanny Book of Taking the Liberty of Thought and Difference. A Discussion: Uncanny Soulscapes in Uncustomary Dreamscope. Collected Philosophical Fragments by Giorgio Baruchello

Summary/Abstract: This discussion brings to the fore a philosophy of humour incursion into its philosophical and literary articulations, into the insights about the human beings and into their contemporary overall weary relation to humour. Humour is difficult to pursue nowadays as the times are particularly prone to a self-defensive and quasi-propagandistic type of reflection (or, lack of reflection). The new book of Giorgio Baruchello, titled Uncanny Soulscapes in Uncustomary Dreamscope. Collected Philosophical Fragments, engages the reader in a very surprising journey visiting as well the ontic and the oneiric realms, a book about us all and possibly about none of us with complete exactness; yet, we have here a book which is about our vulnerability, inertia and backwardness, as well as about the transforming powers of sincere humorous introspection and extrospection. We are conducting a discussion that follows such aspects and which does not quite resume the book. It is more than a review, emphasizing the Geist of the work, its meaning and importance in an evaluative essay. Along this discussion, a few other articles and books investigating humour and the philosophy of humour provide welcome referential points for a discussion that has nevertheless a philosophical character, although it is not intended as a pretentious exegesis. The book may seem to some readers pretentious, while it is just an incentive for a more complex and more qualitative vision of the world. However, as one of the well-established theories in the philosophy of humour is “superiority theory” (as found in Plato and Hobbes) and as this theory is so present in our day-to-day experiences it is pretty unavoidable that some sense of superiority in the situation of this author against his characters and readers transpires in-between the lines. But it is rather laughing at ourselves that is beneficial and it has transforming virtues as the reader should come to admit and hopefully, even rejoice.

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