And right on the heels of my brilliant observation that silly-seeming thought-experiments tend to be mildly whimsical, this from Alan Moore in the Guardian:
I like Jacques Derrida, I think he’s funny. I like my philosophy with a few jokes and puns. I know that that offends other philosophers; they think he’s not taking things seriously, but he comes up with some marvellous puns. Why shouldn’t you have a bit of fun while dealing with the deepest issues of the mind?
As an accomplished Derrida-disliker, I am obliged to set Moore straight. It isn’t that he told jokes but how that bothered analytic critics. Searle said Derrida didn’t get Austin’s arguments, which was true. But the thing that bothered him – but he couldn’t just say this is what bothered him – was that, as a result, Derrida couldn’t ‘tell it right’. (I said all this somewhere else, long ago. Well, I’ll just say it again.) Reading Austin for the Nietzschean spark is like reading Wodehouse for its Kafkaesque quality.
In general, Derrida is obviously extremely concerned to collect applause for his punchline – coup de don, etc. Which often comes right at the start. And it doesn’t work as a ‘snapper’, not just because he tells it at the start, but also because ‘I’m telling a joke and it’s going to be very funny!’ is painted all over his face.
That sort of obviousness about the fact that you are joking limits the styles of humor you can pull off. Analytic philosophy consists of jokes that can only be told in a more understated style.
The analytic-continental split, in philosophy, is a side-effect of different styles of joke-telling. Continental means not telling jokes: Heidegger. Or: telling Heidegger’s jokes in a French style. Analytic means not telling jokes: logic. Or: telling logic jokes.
UPDATE: The deepest issues of the mind arise equally in both traditions, but that tail can’t really wag both shaggy dogs, as it were.
{ 62 comments }
Anderson 12.01.13 at 3:27 am
Nietzsche can be funny. “Will to power – hence an occasional will to stupidity.” “Everything unconditional belongs to pathology.”
There is substance in Derrida, I think, but he’s like Kierkegaard in believing himself far more fun to read than he actually is? Or perhaps I but confess my own linguistic and cognitive deficiencies.
Anderson 12.01.13 at 3:32 am
Btw, you have also made me ponder a Kafka parody where Bertie wakes up to find himself an enormous insect, just when Aunt Agatha is coming over to discuss his inheritance.
Anderson 12.01.13 at 3:44 am
That’s when it hit me: barmy though she was, not even Sybil would marry me while I was in this distinctly unconnubial form. I would have smiled at the thought, had anything in what passed for my phiz been cut out for flashing the old beam. Surely despite my evident communicatory impediment – not even a cup of tea could I wheedle out of Jeeves in this state – his renowned bean would sprout the notion of unveiling me to Sybil in all my scuttling chitinous horror, with a suitably glum pronouncement that there was No Hope. Not that I believed anything of the sort of course. Old Jeeves, who actually read books about insects for the fun of it, would doubtless think of some antidote, such that y.t. could go back to being a metaphorical insect on the hide of Society rather than the boringly literally six-legged version I presently found myself to be.
mattski 12.01.13 at 3:51 am
Anderson, I am inclined to believe that liquor agrees with you!
Anderson 12.01.13 at 3:54 am
Mattski, I blush to disclose that the Teacher’s entirely endorses your suggestion. And now I will stop for the evening. Commenting, that is.
Ronan(rf) 12.01.13 at 4:34 am
What if the spirit of Michael Oakeshott possessed Kate Bush during the chorus to wuthering heights to relay a message to Andrew Sullivan to stop misquoting him in arguments with Jonah Goldberg?
“Andrew, it’s me, Mikey, about Jonah
Dooooon’t even go there ”
Anyone? No?
Mark 12.01.13 at 4:58 am
Logic jokes, subset “5th grade level”:
Q: What did the sign say outside the single working restroom at the overfull logician’s conference?
A: If pee, then queue.
In comparison to Anderson’s masterful showing, this joke seems even sadder.
nnyhav 12.01.13 at 5:04 am
I wonder if anyone ever interrupted John Searles expostulating the Chinese Room argument by saying “You’re telling it wrong!”
Quine has an interesting take on translation, but the bit about gavagai is just splitting hares.
combo 12.01.13 at 5:59 am
Analytic philosophers are always trying to give writing advice to continentals.
Analytic philosophers also have a really hard time understanding why so many people think thought experiments are godawful philosophical writing.
“Write in a good way,” the analytic philosopher says to the continental, “like us!”
There’s really not much to be done about it, I guess.
John Holbo 12.01.13 at 10:27 am
Thanks for that great bit, Anderson. (I’ve got a good Lovecraft-Wodehouse spoof on my shelf, “Scream For Jeeves”. But it’s not any better than yours, just more full length.) But be it noted: this is Kafka with the spirit of Wodehouse. What is yet more elusive is the ability to really read Wodehouse as if it were, always already, Kafkaesque. That’s the trick. Try it.
“I wonder if anyone ever interrupted John Searles expostulating the Chinese Room argument by saying “You’re telling it wrong!—
No, because he always told it right, at least when I heard him at Berkeley. You have to say: “the ROOM doesn’t understand Chinese” in just the right way, for example. Also: “just so many meaningless squiggles.” Your voice needs to drop on ‘squ’, because it’s a funny sound. You have to get across just the right pitch of genial disgust with all these damned squiggles around the place. Where do they come from, do you suppose? Plus he has a way of saying “I’ll bet you’ve never heard this sentence before” and then using the same sentence, year after year. (Damned if I can remember what it was, now.) Very much a ‘stop me if you’ve heard this one before,’ sort of folksy delivery style. Makes you feel right at home, just not in a Heideggerian sense.
“Analytic philosophers are always trying to give writing advice to continentals.”
Well, sometimes. Are they wrong to do so?
“Analytic philosophers also have a really hard time understanding why so many people think thought experiments are godawful philosophical writing.”
I really don’t think this is right. It isn’t very hard to understand why so many people think so, after all. (Whether they are right to think so? That’s the tricky one.)
“There’s really not much to be done about it, I guess.”
What sort of thing should be done, if it could be, per impossibile, do you think?
Metatone 12.01.13 at 10:58 am
Wait – are you seriously suggesting that you don’t see the Kafka-esque nightmare that is Jeeves’ existence?
Ben 12.01.13 at 11:42 am
“Isn’t funny when preceded by its quotation” isn’t funny when preceded by its quotation
dk 12.01.13 at 12:30 pm
“is the reference implementation of the self-referential shaggy-dog story” is the reference implementation of the self-referential shaggy-dog story.
Mark English 12.01.13 at 12:55 pm
All this joking around obscures a serious and important question. That is, is the deepest reality (however deep or shallow that may be), is that level of reality totally serious or not totally serious?
In other words, are we not to take life too seriously because it is not too serious or just because we function better if we don’t?
There’s a big difference, don’t you see, and all this joke-telling just for the fun of it misses the point entirely!
SusanC 12.01.13 at 1:14 pm
I get the impression that in Analytical philosophy, the joke is supposed to be incidental to the point (e.g. you could describe the trolley problem in a manner that is less reminiscent of a Tom and Jerry cartoon; the implicit — and highly questionable — assumption is that this would have no affect on our moral intuitions). Whereas in Continental philosophy, the instability of language that underlies many jokes (“Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What it was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know.”) is seen as also being inherently present in philosophical arguments — which have to be carried out in some human language. The Freudian aspect of the joke also gets carried into Continental philosophy (cf. Belle on “rigour”…).
The Road Runner cartoon possibly lends itself to both:
[Wile E Coyote runs off the the edge of a cliff, but does not yet start to fall]
Road Runner: Don’t you know that God is dead?
[Wile E Coyote looks down, realises that he is not standing on anything, and a mournful expression comes over his face]
Jamie Dreier 12.01.13 at 1:40 pm
“Preceded by its own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is” preceded by its own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is “‘Preceded by its own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is’ preceded by it own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is ‘”Preceded by its own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is” preceded by its own quotation begins a shaggy dog story whose first sentence is…'”
AJtron the Invincible 12.01.13 at 2:35 pm
@15 – SusanC captures it exactly.
The basic problem with Continental philosophy is that it is hard to know where the joke stopped and where the philosophy began.
@14 – I don’t know if you are being serious or not. It doesn’t look like you are.
In fact, I don’t know whether to take this post seriously or not.
John Holbo 12.01.13 at 3:11 pm
“In fact, I don’t know whether to take this post seriously or not.”
Well, I wouldn’t advise it. Still, every good joke has a grain of truth.
mattski 12.01.13 at 4:09 pm
There are two (2) moods of man. Laughter and philosophy. The rapidity of their oscillation gives rise to many confusions.
Anderson 12.01.13 at 4:14 pm
“What is yet more elusive is the ability to really read Wodehouse as if it were, always already, Kafkaesque. That’s the trick. Try it.”
Next time I’m feeling insufficiently depressed, sure. Will get right on it.
… We should be able to do something with our jokes and philosophy theme and Aristotle’s claim that philosophy begins in wonder. Don’t some jokes work by a kind of wonder? Is defamiliarization not a kind of wonder? Cue Hegel or Shklovsky there, according to taste.
MattF 12.01.13 at 4:51 pm
The only philosophical joke I know was, I think, unintentional. A Marxist sat down at the physicists’ lunch table and asked: “What is physics?” A physicist answered, “Physics is the study of matter.” The Marxist retorted, “No, philosophy is the study of matter.”
This actually happened, btw.
Anon 12.01.13 at 5:02 pm
This and the earlier post about humor’s relation to philosophy has me wondering about links to style of argumentation–particularly philosophical “combativeness”, as discussed here: http://www.newappsblog.com/2013/11/aristotles-notion-of-dialectic-as-a-model-for-philosophical-debate-and-inquiry.html
My sense is that philosophical combativeness is related to its sense of humor: a humor of “burns” and “zingers” and “roasts.” Not surprisingly, since the link of combativeness to truth is in exposing charlatans, destroying illusions, etc. So the “put down” is a natural method of both philosophy and comedy, and the heart of its natural tendencies toward both extremes of over-seriousness or over-whimsicality.
There’s a long history for this, of course. My students first reactions to Socrates (and Nietzsche, incidentally) are universally the same: he is either 1) an asshole, 2) a joker, or 3) a preachy bore. Socrates, like Nietzche (like most philosophers?), is funniest when he doesn’t seem to be trying to be. 1) is because, cant aside, we know he thinks he’s wiser. 2) is because, stated goal of wisdom aside, we know he’s enjoying cutting people down. 3) is because, well, 1) and 2). And yet they’re all still wrong somehow, but part of the truth.
I don’t think a balance can be struck here: one cannot be both deadly serious and very funny, and one cannot be truly combative and truly cooperative. One can’t be deadly serious without being truly combative, or very funny while being deadly serious, or cooperative while being either. And one can’t do philosophy without all of the above.
I think this is part of the background to the war between Socrates and Sophistry: Socrates’ conviction in part of the ground of making the weaker argument appear stronger isn’t simply the point that the average citizen cannot tell the subtle differnces between philosophy and sophistry, but that there may not be any essential difference, simply contextual, precarious differences.
Maybe: philosophy is humor directed against humor, being an asshole to assholes, sophistry turned against sophists. All of which add up to comedy that isn’t funny.
Jim Harrison 12.01.13 at 6:06 pm
There are, obviously, a lot of ways to think about what philosophy is. If you consider it, Hegel style, as the project of finding out what the individual can know as opposed to what communal forms of reason can know (the sciences, for example), you’re pretty much stuck with making jokes. The project, like the perpetual embarrassment that is human subjectivity itself, is simultaneously unavoidable and absurd. If you try to be solemn about it, you wind up being Martin Heidegger.
Nameless 12.01.13 at 6:07 pm
As an aside to the central point of the discussion, there is an argument that the works of Kafka are far more humourous than people generally give them credit for, albeit in a sense particular to Prague culture at the time.
Milan Kundera, for instance, suggested this in 1978. (About halfway down the page, in French)
novakant 12.01.13 at 6:33 pm
I have never read or met a philosopher who was genuinely funny – to be funny you have to be able to laugh at yourself and I don’t think that goes well with doing philosophy. And that’s fine, people don’t expect philosophers to be funny, so I don’t know why they bother trying.
mattski 12.01.13 at 6:34 pm
The deepest issues of the mind arise equally in both traditions, but that tail can’t really wag both shaggy dogs, as it were.
My faith is this: Wisdom’s arrival is philosophy’s exit.
Alan White 12.01.13 at 9:19 pm
My entire career I’ve told students that perhaps the best reason to study philosophy is that you “get” better jokes. Seriously.
As for the question of philosophers having a sense of humor, actually most I’ve met have a really good one. This summer I attended a seminar/conference in San Francisco where from the organizer down the mood was light even when the questions got serious. We were one seriously funny fog of philosophers. (I won a contest for that best collective term for a group of philosophers BTW. Seriously.)
sam 12.01.13 at 9:45 pm
“one cannot be both deadly serious and very funny”
I once heard Quine say, in almost pure Victor Borge: “What’s the difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia? In an encyclopedia, the entries are longer.”
[Victor Borge: “What’s the difference between a violin and a viola? A viola burns longer.”]
I got the feeling that Quine was serious, even deadly serious.
Anderson 12.01.13 at 10:38 pm
“to be funny you have to be able to laugh at yourself and I don’t think that goes well with doing philosophy.”
Sorry, I think that’s just nuts. Or reflects an unlucky sample on your part.
Shout-out to Ted Ammon, philosophy prof at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS – a funny guy. And a good teacher. “Your problem, Anderson,” he told me, “is that you’re here actually thinking you’re going to find the truth!” Alas, he was right.
Shatterface 12.01.13 at 11:07 pm
I think the joke stopped when continental philosophy declared the Gulf War wasn’t happening.
Shatterface 12.01.13 at 11:15 pm
Freud confabulated an entire epistemology based on nob-gags..
AJ 12.02.13 at 1:05 am
@18 (John Holbo) – I quite agree. There was a bit of truth to what you were saying. So I wanted to check with you.
@29- the fact is that with a bit of social science, you can get closer to the truth, get better answers, et cetera.
david 12.02.13 at 1:05 am
Something is being proved by the lack of Colin McGinn jokes or references in this thread.
Freddie deBoer 12.02.13 at 2:30 am
Of course, this post perfectly demonstrates Derrida’s enduring power: he still maintains the ability to offend, all these years after his death. You do him a great honor to still be so bothered.
Watson Ladd 12.02.13 at 3:08 am
@Anderson: And he is a philosopher? What exactly is the point of philosophy, if not to find out the truth? Does it just become a litany of recitations: Aristotle said this, Kant that, etc? Thinking about morality and the nature of things should be an unsettling experience.
John Holbo 12.02.13 at 3:08 am
“You do him a great honor to still be so bothered.”
Yes! Most of the stuff that really sets people off was written in the 60’s or 70’s. The 80’s was the high point, but the classic texts were all written by, oh, 1985. So getting worked up over Derrida is like saying: all this psychedelic rock coming out of Haight Ashbury really bothers me. Or: I hate disco! Or: I just can’t watch these A Flock of Seagulls music videos. The hairdos are just too ridiculous.
Ed Herdman 12.02.13 at 3:18 am
@ Not to find, but asymptotically approach?
Anderson 12.02.13 at 3:33 am
“@Anderson: And he is a philosopher? What exactly is the point of philosophy, if not to find out the truth?”
He was a Hume man, as I recall. But I’ll quote Nietzsche:
Whoever ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, “I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain” — will encounter a smile and two question marks from a philosopher nowadays. “Sir,” the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, “it is improbable that you are not mistaken; but why insist on the truth?” —
mattski 12.02.13 at 3:52 am
Further to 38
I have a vague notion that Wittgenstein would endorse the following:
If you think that truth can be expressed in language you have an erroneous idea of language.
John Holbo 12.02.13 at 4:22 am
“If you think that truth can be expressed in language you have an erroneous idea of language.”
I have always felt that P. G. Wodehouse expressed the spirit of Wittgenstein’s penultimate proposition, in the Tractatus, when he wrote the following:
“It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.â€
Throwing away the ladder, and all that, what?
Lawrence Stuart 12.02.13 at 4:31 am
Derrida was to the Social sciences departments in North American universities as Heracles was to the Augean stables. Great accumulations of positivist shit desperately needed flushing. I loved reading Derrida as a grad student because them thar’ funky French hermeneutics (and so why pick on just Derrida, BTW?) gave young rebels tools to challenge every construction of academic orthodoxy. That they became an orthodoxy of their own is the real joke. Or at least an irony.
But there is, dare I say it, truth in irony. Which makes me laugh, anyway.
Lawrence Stuart 12.02.13 at 5:38 am
re: truth and language. What kind of language? Rational analysis gives us concepts, ‘that which has degenerated and has been repaired’: the sort of world you can quite literally take to the bank.
Poetical language gives us an ‘eccentric path,’ or ‘askew perspective,’ to use Hölderlin’s terms, by which to approach the hen kai pan (here from Hyperion):
There is a forgetting of all existence, a hush of our being, in which we feel as if we had found everything.
There is a hush, a forgetting of all existence, in which we feel as if we had lost everything, a night of our soul in which no glimmer of any star nor even the fire from a rotting log gives us light.
The poetic experience of Being oscillates between ecstasy and despair like an erotic dynamo in language. A philosophy that gives up on this queer experience might give humanity the knowledge (the power, really) to possess and process a broken and dying world, but it can never generate the power necessary to make good for what is lost.
QS 12.02.13 at 10:24 am
Did you really just compare Derrida’s legacy to Flock of Seagulls?
John Holbo 12.02.13 at 11:48 am
“Did you really just compare Derrida’s legacy to Flock of Seagulls?”
No. I think you are confusing comparison and contrast. I was, in a sense, comparing Derrida and the Flock. But only in terms of date. I was contrasting, insofar as it is rare for me to make blog posts complaining about the Flock’s hairdos, but I do make posts complaining about Derrida from time to time. What this goes to show, as Freddie de Boer remarked, is that Derrida has a fairly enduring legacy.
But, in another sense, I was comparing, insofar as – as Lawrence remarks – Derrida’s philosophy was very much of its time and place, as was the music of A Flock of Seagulls.
Does that help?
dk 12.02.13 at 12:16 pm
Yeah, no fair. At least Flock of Seagulls had a beat and you could dance to it.
mattski 12.02.13 at 12:51 pm
“It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.â€
Is that a typo or am I too gauche to understand?
Not to be too persnickety, but I wasn’t referring to EARLY Wittgenstein. As the years went by W punted on the Tractatus, no?
Attempt at clarity: language works extremely well for everyday, provisional purposes. Philosophy, grasping after ‘big’ questions, attempts to use language for a purpose it is incapable of serving. Not that (heavy duty) truth can’t be known, it just isn’t known symbolically. Still, the approximations of big questions afforded by language are often serviceable.
Theophylact 12.02.13 at 5:18 pm
Not a typo.
JanieM 12.02.13 at 5:34 pm
I’m not a Wodehouse fan so I’m not familiar with the passage, but I assumed it meant that strong men climb trees and pull the trees up afterwards, to make sure she, or her angry passions, can’t follow.
With maybe a touch of wryness in the ambiguity of what either instance of “them” refers to.
??
Mao Cheng Ji 12.02.13 at 5:47 pm
“I have never read or met a philosopher who was genuinely funny – to be funny you have to be able to laugh at yourself and I don’t think that goes well with doing philosophy.”
Yeah? What about La Rochefoucauld?
jtroll 12.02.13 at 5:59 pm
John, do you have a link for where you explain why Derrida didn’t get Austin?
novakant 12.02.13 at 7:21 pm
Well, I haven’t read him, wasn’t he more of an essayist / homme des lettres? Anyway, if you say he’s really funny I’ll give it a shot.
Btw, I didn’t mean that philosophers as private people can’t be funny, but rather that the philosophical discourse isn’t conducive to humour and that oftentimes there is a bit of a deformation professionelle at work.
Anderson 12.02.13 at 7:58 pm
“Btw, I didn’t mean that philosophers as private people can’t be funny, but rather that the philosophical discourse isn’t conducive to humour and that oftentimes there is a bit of a deformation professionelle at work.”
This is true to a point, as for any academic discipline – what are the funny disciplines?
Nietzsche certainly complained about ponderous philosophical bores, and tried to set a better example. Schopenhauer could be witty on the page, as here:
“The reader who has got as far as the preface and been stopped by it, has bought the book for cash, and asks how he is to be indemnified. My last refuge is now to remind him that he knows how to make use of a book in several ways, without exactly reading it. It may fill a gap in his library as well as many another, where, neatly bound, it will certainly look well. Or he can lay it on the toilet-table or the tea-table of some learned lady friend. Or, finally, what certainly is best of all, and I specially advise it, he can review it.”
–from his introduction to The World as Will and Representation (or “and Idea” – not fighting that battle here).
Anderson 12.02.13 at 7:59 pm
Hit “post” too fast. One problem is that an amusing philosopher gets labeled as a “man of letters.” No true Scotsman?
GiT 12.02.13 at 8:12 pm
On funny philosophers:
“The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.”
The whole thing is great:
http://www.m14m.net/hobbes-fairies.html
burritoboy 12.02.13 at 10:39 pm
Lots of philosophers are funny. Xenophon can be hilarious. Plato certainly is. Machiavelli was a writer of comedies. The medieval biographers of Aquinas recall several of his comic quips. Didn’t Badiou write a love comedy in imitation of Marivaux? Hobbes has a really black sense of humor.
Yes, Kafka absolutely is a comedian.
dn 12.03.13 at 2:20 am
I can’t imagine how anyone could not consider Kafka a comedian!
Anon 12.03.13 at 2:27 pm
Today everyone is always Rolling On the Floor Laughing. But humorous, witty, or amusing does not equal funny. And there are different kinds and degree of funny. The kind at issue here is surely a narrower kind.
“Fog of philosophers” is delightful and amusing, but it’s not that funny. The encyclopedia/dictionary joke is mildly humorous, but not at all funny. The studying philosophy to actually get to the truth joke is fine for what it is–typical office/profession/discipline an-easy-casual-joke-is-better-than-being-serious-all-the-time humor, but not remotely funny.
@7 “If pee, then queue” is actually the only example so far that’s funny. Silly, stupid, but funny. Silly and stupid are often funny, which is another reason why philosophers are often unfunny, since they’re unwilling to truly surrender to silliness or stupidity.
Plato is funny, but he is most certainly not “hilarious.” LaRochefoucauld is witty, and witty is almost never funny. Kafka is funny, but he is not ha ha funny, and he is most certainly not a “comedian”, which is an insult to both great literature and great comedians. Like Kierkegaard, he’s too sincere to be funny. Like Beckett (or, occasionally, Chaplin), he’s too beautiful and true to be funny. (The cliche should be: It’s not funny because it’s true!)
Yeah, I have an eccentric and narrow definition of funny. But the point is surely we need a narrower definition than one that puts in the same boat: Groucho Marx, Richard Pryor, Quine, and every joke every told at every regional annual insurance salesmen convetion.
Maybe philosophers have an impoverished definition of “funny”? As Nietzsche should have said: “A funny philosopher belongs in a comedy.” Or did Aristophanes say that? Nietzsche did say that the philosopher is the buffoon who gets himself taken seriously–that is, a failed comedian.
@27 Alan White,
“My entire career I’ve told students that perhaps the best reason to study philosophy is that you “get†better jokes. Seriously.”
I might agree with this, but only if “better” in “better jokes” means something like “more interesting”, “wittier”, “smarter”, “more satisfying” or something like that. I doubt it’s true if you just mean “funnier” jokes. Like many things, humor can be made aesthetically more satisfying by adding other elements, but it doesn’t mean its better as humor.
TheSophist 12.03.13 at 9:23 pm
David Foster Wallace had an essay (I think in Supposedly Fun Thing) about why Kafka was so funny.
Anderson 12.03.13 at 9:31 pm
58: Not funny enough, apparently.
Anon 12.03.13 at 10:30 pm
59:
Just a clarification: when I say Kafka (or others) aren’t funny, I don’t mean to imply this is a failing. Kafka’s humor is perfectly tuned to the themes and style of his work. I don’t think it tries to be hilarious or ought to be. He’s not funny enough to be a comedian, but why would I want Kafka to be anything but what he is?
58:
I’ll have to read it, but do you know if he gives examples? There’s the old story, I think from Max Brod, that Kafka would laugh over The Trial when reading it to friends. But honestly, I can’t think of any particular passage or scene that would elicit sincere, out loud laughter. (When I try, I instead think of Orson Welles’ film version, which sometimes really is Laugh Out Loud funny: “ovular”.)
novakant 12.03.13 at 11:29 pm
Anon describes what I meant by “genuinely funny”.
Anderson: of course the line between homme des lettres and philosopher is somewhat fluid, but I think we all pretty much know the difference.
Btw: any hommes des lettres among analytical philosophers?
john c. halasz 12.03.13 at 11:29 pm
No, Kafka is very funny, as well as, very funny: i.e. darkly comedic and queer. To cite the most famous example, much of the “force” of the story derives from the sentimental schlock story of Gregor Samsa, commercial traveler, who only wishes his distant family well in his enforced loneliness, until, by virtue of a suddenly reified metaphoric intervention, almost divine, the horror-comedy ensues, following out its implications with naturalistic imperturbability. More generally, the sociological-naturalistic and religious-metaphysical interpretations are always mutually undermining each other, in an ironical tension that “swings”. It’s kinda the divine comedy in reverse. (As an aside, I just recently learned that it was Boccaccio who supplied the epithet “divina” to Dante’s “commedia”.)
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