onegoodmove

Did you hear the one about the philosopher writing a book on humour?

Simon Critchley, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, investigates humour. And tells some pretty good jokes.

Philosophy is a funny business and some philosophers are funny people. The philosopher asks you to look at the world awry, to place in question your usual habits, assumptions, prejudices and expectations. The philosopher asks you to be sceptical about all sorts of things you would ordinarily take for granted, like the reality of things in the world or whether the people around you are actually human or really robots. In this regard, the philosopher has, I think, a family resemblance with the comedian, who also asks us to look at the world askance, to imagine a topsy-turvy universe where horses and dogs talk and where lifeless objects become miraculously animated. Both the philosopher and the comedian ask you to view the world from a Martian perspective, to look at things as if you had just landed from another planet. With this rough resemblance in mind, I became interested in jokes, humour and the comic and I have just finished writing a short book on the topic.[1]