George asked:

Wittgenstein said that he wished he could write a philosophic text entirely in jokes, but sadly, he was
not very funny. My question: Why aren't philosophers funnier? (Russell would seem an exception —
can you cite others?) I'm aware that Plato and Socrates would have severely regulated laughter —
did they set philosophy on a somber course?

============

I didn't know Wittgenstein said that — Wittgenstein himself can actually be pretty funny too. For
example there was a remark of his posted on these pages a while ago to the tune that he once heard
about a Frenchman who said that French was the best language to speak, because the words come
in the order in which you think them. If you know anything about Wittgenstein's later philosophy then
that comment is certainly amusing. Also, a bit of Wittgensteinian thinking inspires the philosophers'
gag about the solipsist who couldn't understand why other people refused to accept his arguments as
valid. And so on. These kinds of joke aren't quite funny in the normal sense however. Monty Python's
Meaning of Lifecontains a very funny scene about philosophers who have the letter 's' in their name.
At the very least, the subject can generate a bit of humour.

Philosopher Ted Cohen has written a book called Jokesin which he tries to explore why jokes are
funny. Quite sensibly, he offers "no comprehensive theory of jokes,'' contented rather to remark about
how some jokes work and `what their existence may show about those of us who love them.' He
claims that a joke is a particular kind of contrivance, but suggests that sometimes a joke "embodies
some profound understanding of things".

I suspect that it is the subject matter of philosophy that can be the problem. It is often hard to
generate humour from philosophy, certainly not because jokes would 'trivialise' the issues on hand,
but because the issues themselves that philosophers concern themselves with just aren't very funny
to start with. It is very hard to think of a good punchline to the Problem of Universals, or a funny
solution to what you'd get if you crossed a Hegelian with an anomalous monist. Some philosophers —
Sartre, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel etc. — also come across as rather serious and a bit gloomy.
I think continental philosophy has given the subject a bad name in that sense.

On the other hand, Gilbert Ryle is very enjoyable to read because his prose is so crisp and
humorous, likewise Russell — as you mentioned. Simon Blackburn has written some immensely
funny reviews of Heidegger and Umberto Eco for The New Republic's website...the list goes on! So
the image of philosophers as gloomy and in need of cheering up is not quite right.

Aristotle thought that comedy could be as cathartic as tragedy; I don't think his approach would have
set philosophy on a sombre course. His approach is not as severe as that of Plato, whom I am sure
would have thought that humour reflected reality at quite a few stages removed from the eternal and
immutable reality of the forms. But Plato's dialogues, ironically, can be funny — just as some of them
can be dramatic or wistful.

I think it is a good question to have asked us: philosophy can come across as very dour and dry,
when it really need not, once you are interested in the questions it poses and if you have a light
hearted disposition. It is not inconsistent to like philosophy and to be light hearted! And it seems to
me far better to answer questions in an approachable way that does not detract from the seriousness
of the issues then to write papers in which the footnotes are longer than the text.

Adam Gatward

As Lord Russell said, "The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not
worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." And that type of
work doesn't get laughs. I really don't think you can look on philosophy as being unusually un-funny,
or blame its founders. Analytic-type stuff just isn't amusing. Are mathematicians or theologians or
physicists or gardeners any funnier? Do you find cosmologists throwing witty one-liners in the middle
of their formulae? Ever come across a chemist telling you that this molecule is like his mother-in-law?
I rather think not.

Having said that, there is elephantine merit in the argument that comedy is the one great thing that
separates humans from animals, and so it should be the proper subject of philosophical enquiry.
Unfortunately the philosopher who most famously chose to take up the challenge was Henri Bergson,
whose Le Riresits very comfortably in the top ten of most boring and unfunny books ever written.
Seth Bernardete's more recent The Tragedy and Comedy of Lifeis better, it would probably only
make it into the top twenty.

So, as philosophers, how should we attack the question "is philosophy funny?". I would suggest
taking a logical-positivist approach and looking to whether the proposition "philosophy is funny" can
be verified by reference to actual experience. Well, here you go:

http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/lexicon/
http://ai.iit.nrc.ca/~andre/humour/warning.humour
http://www.uwc.edu/FondDuLac/faculty/rrigteri/Golf.htm
http://gehon.ir.miami.edu/phi/jokes.htm
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~derekr/jenny.html
http://www.manitowoc.uwc.edu/staff/awhite/phisong.htm
http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/dhm11/Deaths.html
http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/philosophy/jokes.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/4661/projoke70.htm
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/phil-humor.html
http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/sclinic.htm
http://www.ed.ac.uk/~ejua35/fun.htm
http://rex.hss.nthu.edu.tw/~phil/link_2.htm
http://www.valdosta.peachnet.edu/~rbarnett/phi/zeno.html
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/misc/univ-joke.html
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~kisserli/philosophy/jokes.html
http://www.jokester.com/jokes/philosophy.questions.html
http://www.student.smsu.edu/j/jmw894s/Jokes/philosophy.htm
http://icemcfd.com/wayne/sartre-cookbook.html
http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~okeefets/horoscope.html
http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~okeefets/soap.html
http://jokesmagazine.com/managecategory.asp?c=10.4&n=10

...and, especially for you, there's Wittgenstein at...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~spetey/phil_jokes/fog.html

Glyn Hughes

Of course, what is funny lies in the funny-bone of the beholder, as beauty lies in the eye of the
beholder. And also, to find what a philosopher says funny you have to know something about what he
is cracking about. But I think J.L. Austin was quite funny:

*
1. "Existence is not like breathing only quieter." (But you have to know something to understand why
this is funny.)

*
"Truth is more important than importance."

— And lots of others, but I can't remember them.

Kenneth Stern