Kaykwiq
3 min readJan 24, 2023

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Who are some funny philosophers?

Diogenes the Cynic was a very funny philosopher,

An example: Diogenes would sometimes wander about the crowded marketplace in ancient Athens with a lighted lantern in broad daylight looking all around him as if looking for something. When someone asked him what he was looking for he would reply, “An honest man.”

Zeno of Elea

After learning that the philosopher Zeno was teaching that motion was not really possible, he went to the lecture hall and started wandering around the hall between the students and Zeno. When one of the students asked him to stop moving about he said, “How dare you dispute your master!”

Plato

Hearing that Plato’s academy was teaching classification of animals and had defined man as a “featherless biped.” He went to the academy and shouted “Here is Plato’s man.” and then threw a plucked chicken over the wall.

Jerry fodor

Jerry Fodor has a reputation for being funny, but when he gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, he didn’t get as many laughs as he anticipated. Afterwards, he spoke to a distinguished philosopher who had been in the audience and said, “I really thought this comment was amusing.” “Yes”, came the reply, “It was so funny that I almost laughed.” (I’ve been told that in fact, people did laugh quite a bit during his lectures, but that Fodor told this story later to a different audience to get another laugh.)

Elizabeth Anscombe

Elizabeth Anscombe once ate at a fancy restaurant where she was informed that ladies could not eat a meal wearing trousers, so she removed her trousers and ate in her underwear. When she was offered a chair at Cambridge, she was told she had to wear a skirt to deliver her inaugural lecture. So she turned up wearing a long skirt, and after she had been officially introduced, she removed the skirt to reveal a pair of trousers underneath. She once told A. J. Ayer “If you didn’t talk so quickly, people wouldn’t think you were so clever,” to which he replied “And if you didn’t talk so slowly, people wouldn’t think you were so profound.”

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