Do philosophers laugh? If so, why? If not, why not?
Posted by: Robert Sandberg in Culture, Humor, Philosophy
What makes something funny? Some years ago I picked up an anthology of pieces (they weren’t quite formal essays), by humorist S. J. Perelman. In the introduction the editor begins to answer the question but leaves off writing to attend to a laughing fit so severe he had to lie down on a couch with a cold wet cloth on his forehead.
Then there is the question of taste and political correctness. I’ll just pose the question: Why are so many jokes that many or most of us would laugh at in poor taste or politically incorrect? One person’s joke is another’s person’s “teachable moment.”
Some humorous writing or telling is good for the moment, while some pieces, episodes, images, scenes have something that triggers the humor center in generation after generation — certain lines and scenes in Shakespeare, for example, or Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels come to mind. I’m sure you can think of your own.
Here is a list of philosophical humor links selected from an even more comprehensive list at http://consc.net/phil-humor.html Some of them are sure to get you laughing or thinking about laughing (can you think and laugh at the same time?).
- Philosophical kisses
- Non-philosopher’s guide to philosophical terms
- Philosophical warning labels
- Philosophy light-bulb jokes
- A Descartes joke
- Understanding philosophy through jokes
- Brain in a vat at the wheel of a runaway trolley
- The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook
- Husserl parody
- The Postmodernism Generator
- Realists Anonymous
- Tractatus Fuselagico-Umbilicus
- Witteringswine’s Philosophical Tribulations
- A fragment of a lost Platonic dialogue
- Tech support, Nietzsche style
- History of Greek philosophy
- Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding
- A rant about Kant
- Philosophy Comics
- Principia Comica
- Philosophy Cartoons
- Lump of Clay
- Berkeley on Locke on the material world
- Kant attack ad
- Kierkegaard
- History of Western Philosophy in 90 seconds
- Monty Python’s International Philosophy sketch
- Analytic philosophy as reflected in the works of Monty Python
- I also dated Zarathustra
- Self-referential story
- Everything is equally interesting
- Socrates’ Argument Clinic
- New logical particles
- Tractatus Logico-Randomus
- Zombies on the web
- Introductory philosophy quiz
- How to be a philosopher
- Nanophilosophy
- Philosophy Action Figures
- The Metaphysics Lecture
- Philosopher Jokes
- Chomskybot
- Mathematical Jokes
- Mathematical Humor
- Physics Humor
- Psychology Humor Page
- Science Humor
- Self-Reference Jokes
- Twinkies Project
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