Croce e la teoria vichiana del riso

Benedetto Croce acknowledged that Vico’s theory of laughter played a significant role and was «a serious scientific attempt». Vico, according to Croce, was the second after Hobbes to formulate such a theory, but he founded it on a different principle than Hobbes and anticipated the psychological explanation of laughter proposed by Kant in the Critique of Judgement. Apart from the fortuitous hint of these considerations, Croce thus invites us to identify a continuity not only between the theories of laughter in Vico and in Kant, but also between Vico’s austere intellectual physiognomy and Kant’s praise of the ‘melancholic type’.