Following on from the very funny binary joke in the last post, what are some funny bits in philosophy? ‘Philosophy’ here should be thought in the widest possible sense, so as to cast a wider net and thus ensare more jokes.
This question involves a few fields, some of which overlap, listed in no particular order. I’d love to hear references to things which fall under any and all of them.
1. Bits where philosophers are funny
2. Bits where philosophers are funny on purpose
3. Bits where philosophers are funny on accident (such as, for instance, bits where philosophers are laughable)
4. Bits where philosophers tell jokes
5. Bits where philosophers tell jokes which are funny
6. Bits where philosophers tell jokes which are not funny
#1 contains 2, 3, and 5. #2 contains 5. #4 contains 5 and 6. Anyone able to do any kind of mathematical or other formal notation of these relationships? Just curious. I’m most interested, in order, in 5, 2, and 6.
I think Russell is funny where (where?) he says something about the truth value-less statements “the present king of france is bald” and “the present king of france has hair” that “A Hegelian, who prefers a synthesis, will say he wears a toupee.” (sp?)
I think Austin is funny when he uses the phrases “let my cats onto the table” an his example of a non-christening, with someone stealing the smashing the champaign bottle and shouting “I name this boat the Generalissimo Stalin!”
I think Marx is unfunny when he makes anti-semitic jokes.
I think Althusser is funny when he talks about philosophies having behinds, but I don’t think Deleuze is very funny with his metaphor of buggery.
I don’t think Schmitt is funny cuz he’s a dirty fucking nazi. Ditto Heidegger.
There’s an essay by Davidson that’s funny but if memory serves it’s all in the quotes. I think it’s called “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.”
Angela tells me that Hegel has funny comments on phrenology.
My friends Colin and Andy claimed once that Kant once made a joke and that it wasn’t very funny.
I think Agamben is HILARIOUS. That was a joke.
I’m told that Freud’s jokebook is funny. I keep forgetting to check that one out of the library.
I once read a fragment from either Pythagoras or a member of the Pythagoreans, which said that people were not supposed to eat beans because if one chews up a bean then spits it out and leaves it in the sun it will come to smell like semen. I though that was kind of funny, though I don’t think it was intended to be so. I generally think that how something smells after it has been sitting in the sun after being chewed up and spat out is a funny principle for use in deciding what to eat.
I think Lewis Carroll’s dialog “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” is hilarious, as is the rest of his work but this work is inarguably philosophy.
Kant has a number of jokes - including trader’s whose wigs turn white and an indian who doesn’t understand how liquids get into bottles. He wasn’t very funny. Hardt & Negri’s crack about people like Bono and those Christian groups who buy slaves - “mendicant orders of Empire” - is always good.
Most humour appears in nasty, sarcastic restatements: when someone, like Laclau and Mouffe, write a book and then someone with more ego than brains, like Geras, reads and doesn’t understand and writes a long, critical essay on it, and then the original authors “reply” with what amounts to a lesson in Marxology 101 and Epistemology 101, then that can be quite funny.
Comment by Craig — September 28, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
nate, you’re funny as fuck.
for me, cause i’m a mean person generally, is when a philosopher says something about another philosopher and you’re all like -SNAP!- he got you good. like what hegel said about spinoza, i think.
Comment by geo — September 29, 2006 @ 3:28 pm
I like those moments but I think they’re rarely laugh out loud funny. The whole “night when all cows are black” or grey or whatever thing, that’s _kinda_ funny, but just kinda. It’d be better if there was a crew of some sort at the same time, to make the SNAP! explicit, “aww damn!” “BURNED!” etc. You know what, you should start recording passages like that and add in tracks with that stuff in the background and put them out as mp3s.
Comment by Nate — September 30, 2006 @ 7:54 pm