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A laughing philosopher (Democritus)
Democritus laughed at human folly—not out of contempt, but because he saw the world more clearly.

Philosophers are not generally renowned for their sense of humour. They spend their days pondering free will, personal identity, and whether the external world really exists. Yet philosophy has always had a playful side. Socrates delighted in teasing his companions, Diogenes made a career out of puncturing pretension, and Zen masters often concealed profound truths inside what seemed to be little more than jokes. According to one tradition, Chrysippus the Stoic saw a donkey eating figs, gave it wine to wash them down, and laughed himself to death.

Despite all his outstanding achievements, the people of his native Miletus mocked Thales for his material poverty. So, one year, having predicted a bumper crop of olives, he took out a lease on all the olive presses on Miletus and made himself a fortune. “You see,” he said, “a philosopher could easily be rich if only he did not have better things to do with his time.”

Xanthippe, after berating Socrates at length, emptied a chamber pot over his head. Wiping himself dry, Socrates remarked, “After thunder comes rain.”

Aristippus was the first of the Socratics to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas to tutor a man’s son, the man protested, “For that much money, I could buy a slave!” “Go ahead,” replied Aristippus. “Then you’ll have two.”

When someone chided Aristippus for his extravagant catering, he replied, “Wouldn’t you have bought this yourself if you could have had it for three obols? … Very well then, it is not I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.”

When Dionysus I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked Aristippus why he had come to his court, he replied, “When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”

Although he prized reason, Diogenes despised the abstract philosophy practised at Plato’s Academy. When, to great acclaim, Plato defined a human being as ‘a featherless biped’, Diogenes plucked a chicken, carried it into the Academy, and declared, “Behold! Plato’s man.” Plato is said to have amended his definition by adding, ‘with broad nails.’

One day, Diogenes asked Plato for a handful of figs from his garden. When Plato had a whole bushel sent out, he muttered, “Typical Plato.”

Diogenes used to wander about Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lamp. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I am looking for a human being.” 

Diogenes delighted in walking backwards through the streets or entering the theatre against the tide of people leaving. Once a crowd had gathered to laugh at him, he turned on his heel and said, “Why do you mock me, when you’ve spent your whole lives walking backwards? At least I can turn around.”

When a young man asked to study under him, Diogenes handed him a fish and told him to carry it around the city. Ashamed, the young man threw it away and fled. Some time later, Diogenes met him in the agora and remarked, “Fancy—our friendship was ended by a fish.”

Epictetus neither married nor had children, despite urging others to do so. When he reproached his friend and pupil Demonax for remaining unmarried, Demonax replied, “Very well, then. Will you give me one of your daughters for a wife?”

Descartes invites his date, Jeanne, to a fine restaurant for her birthday. The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne chooses the most expensive Burgundy. “I think not!” exclaims an indignant Descartes. Poof. He disappears.

Kant once joked: A man tried to arrange a solemn funeral for a wealthy relative, but failed. “The more I paid the mourners,” he complained, “the merrier they looked.”

On another occasion, Kant joked: A merchant returned from India with a great fortune, but, caught in a violent storm, was forced to throw all his cargo overboard. The shock was so great that his wig turned grey overnight.

A student lent his copy of Objects of Thought by A. N. Prior to his tutor. At their next meeting, the tutor said that he had browsed the book and left it in the student’s pigeonhole. Some time later, the student burst into his office crying, “Professor, Professor! Someone’s stolen my Prior!” The old man calmly replied, “You’d be lucky around here if they hadn’t taken your posterior as well.”

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes nudges Watson awake and says, “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions of stars, my dear Holmes.” “And what do you infer from these stars?” “Well, a number of things,” he says, lighting his pipe. “Astronomically, I observe that there are millions of galaxies and billions of stars and planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I expect that the weather will be fine and clear. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and man, his creation, small and insignificant. What about you, Holmes?” “Watson, you fool! Someone has stolen our tent!”

A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe as his boss lectured and answered difficult questions about the nature of things and the meaning of life. Then, one day, the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he would be willing to switch roles for just one evening. The philosopher agreed, and, for a while, the driver acquitted himself remarkably well. However, when the time came for questions, someone at the back of the room asked, “Is the epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse compatible with a teleological account of the universe?” “That’s an extremely simple question,” replied the driver. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer it.”

Two behaviourists meet in the street. “Hello,” says one. “How am I feeling today?” 

Some months later, the two behaviourists have sex. One turns to the other and says, “That was good for you. How was it for me?”

Upon waking, a woman said to her husband, “I dreamt that you gave me a necklace of pearls. What do you think it means?” The man smiled and kissed his wife. “You’ll know tonight,” he whispered. That evening, he came home with a small package. She eagerly unwrapped it. Inside was a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.

Seeing the Zen master on the other side of a raging torrent, a student shouted, “Master! Master! How do I get to the other side?” The master smiled. “You are on the other side.”

A Zen student asked the master how long it would take to attain enlightenment. “Ten years.” “And if I work twice as hard?” “Twenty years.”

For his seventieth birthday, one of his students presented the Zen master with a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was nothing. “Aha,” exclaimed the master. “Just what I wanted!”

A novice was loading the larder with flour and oil. Seeing one of the monks sitting beneath a banyan tree, he asked if he might lend a hand. “Sorry,” said the monk. “I’m busy.” “But your eyes are shut!” “Yes. I’m busy doing nothing. It’s much harder than what you’re doing. It’s what the food is for, what the kitchen is for, and why we built the temple. Don’t interrupt me again with your lardering.” Hours later, the weary novice found the monk still sitting on the bench. “Can we talk now?” he asked. “No,” he snapped, “I haven’t finished yet.”

“After twelve years of therapy,” said a man, “my psychotherapist said something that brought tears to my eyes.” “What did he say?” “No hablo inglés.”

Humour and philosophy have more in common than might first appear. Both begin by challenging what we take for granted. A joke lures us into one way of thinking before pulling the rug from under our feet; philosophy often does the same. In both cases, we emerge seeing the world a little differently.

No wonder philosophers have always been drawn to wit, irony, paradox, and satire. A good joke can expose a bad argument, puncture pomposity, or illuminate an idea more effectively than pages of solemn analysis. As Nietzsche observed, ‘It is not by wrath but by laughter that one kills.’

Perhaps, after all, laughter is simply another way of thinking.

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If you enjoyed these philosophical jokes, you might also enjoy The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, an engaging overview of the three thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy. To discover how their ideas can sharpen your own reasoning and communication, see How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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You Will Laugh and Cry

Arthur Schopenhauer in 1852, possibly the earliest philosopher to be photographed.

Whereas Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel could all count as optimists, believing that human life could improve, Schopenhauer is the first—and perhaps the last—thinker in the Western tradition to have constructed a complete and systematic philosophy of pessimism.

Despite, or because of, this, he may also have been its funniest philosopher.

He is interesting for other reasons too—some of which are close to my heart. For his Great Philosophers series (1987), Bryan Magee, who wrote a thick book on Schopenhauer, introduced him as ‘the only major Western philosopher to draw serious and interesting parallels between Western and Eastern thought’.

Magee continued: ‘He was the first major Western philosopher to be openly and explicitly atheist. He placed the arts higher in the scheme of things and had more to say about them than any other important philosopher … He was himself among the supreme writers of German prose. Many of his sentences are so brilliantly aphoristic that they’ve been torn out of context and published separately in little books of epigrams.

Schopenhauer’s Epigrams

To give you a flavour, here are a few of Schopenhauer’s many epigrams:

  • Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
  • Life is a business that does not cover its costs.
  • The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain… If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.
  • What everyone most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself.
  • Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
  • It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Probably, you chuckled while reading these aphorisms. But why did you chuckle?

Why You Laughed

Schopenhauer had his own theory of laughter, which is a version of the incongruence theory, according to which laughter arises from a contradiction between a concept (what people think is happening) and the reality (what is in fact happening)—highlighting a failure of reason over perception. Thus, when people laugh at us (rather than along with us) they are filling the gap between our idea of ourself, or people’s general idea of us, and the sad reality.

Many people who read Schopenhauer’s aphorisms laugh only half-heartedly because they feel threatened by them. But the few who laugh full-throatedly feel liberated by their insight. In this moment of pure perception, while they laugh, they escape, if only for a few seconds, from the tyranny of the Will—the blind, irrational force that, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, underlies all reality, and drives us to exist and strive and suffer without purpose.

Schopenhauer’s Theory of Weeping

Schopenhauer also had a theory of weeping.

Weeping, which is a physical expression of mental misery, is a form of self-compassion. As such, it requires an outside perspective on the self, which is why animals don’t cry, and children don’t cry if no one is watching. Schopenhauer cites the example of a person who did not think to weep over their misery until their case was summarised to them in court and they were brought to reflect upon their suffering—when they suddenly broke into a stream of tears.

When we weep, we become ‘both the sufferer and the compassionate onlooker’. Because weeping originates from self-compassion, it suggests to others that the crier is capable of compassion, and thus worthy of compassion.

Psychopaths don’t cry, or only crocodile tears.

Why Schopenhauer Matters

To me, Schopenhauer is important because he is the first philosopher since antiquity to offer a comprehensive solution to the problem of living and suffering.

As well as a great philosopher, Schopenhauer was a fine psychologist, so that we often find ourselves laughing along with him. But almost as often, we find ourselves laughing at him, owing, I think, to the incongruence between his lofty philosophy of temperance and compassion and his own bad-boy ways.

Had Schopenhauer met himself, he would have laughed.

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Schopenhauer was the first major Western philosopher to engage seriously with Indian thought. The German Greeks explores his philosophy alongside those of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, tracing the remarkable development of German philosophy from the Enlightenment to modernity.

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