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Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters
Abe and his friend Sol are out for a walk together in a part of town they haven't been in before. Passing a Christian church, they notice a curious sign in front that says "$1,000 to anyone who will convert." "I wonder what that's about," says Abe. "I think I'll go in and have a look. I'll be back in a minute; just wait for me."
Sol sits on the sidewalk bench and waits patiently for nearly half an hour. Finally, Abe reappears.
"Well," asks Sol, "what are they up to? Who are they trying to convert? Why do they care? Did you get the $1,000?"
Indignantly Abe replies, "Money. That's all you people care about."
Ted Cohen thinks that's not a bad joke. But he also doesn't think it's an easy joke. For a listener or reader to laugh at Abe's conversion, a complicated set of conditions must be met. First, a listener has to recognize that Abe and Sol are Jewish names. Second, that listener has to be familiar with the widespread idea that Jews are more interested in money than anything else. And finally, the listener needs to know this information in advance of the joke, and without anyone telling him or her. Jokes, in short, are complicated transactions in which communities are forged, intimacy is offered, and otherwise offensive stereotypes and cliches lose their sting—at least sometimes.
Jokes is a book of jokes and a book about them. Cohen loves a good laugh, but as a philosopher, he is also interested in how jokes work, why they work, and when they don't. The delight at the end of a joke is the result of a complex set of conditions and processes, and Cohen takes us through these conditions in a philosophical exploration of humor. He considers questions of audience, selection of joke topics, the ethnic character of jokes, and their morality, all with plenty of examples that will make you either chuckle or wince. more humorous than other philosophy books, more philosophical than other humor books.
"Befitting its subject, this study of jokes is . . . light, funny, and thought-provoking. . . . [T]he method fits the material, allowing the author to pepper the book with a diversity of jokes without flattening their humor as a steamroller theory might. Such a book is only as good as its jokes, and most of his are good. . . . [E]ntertainment and ideas in one gossamer package."— Kirkus Reviews
"One of the many triumphs of Ted Cohen's Jokes-apart from the not incidental fact that the jokes are so good that he doesn't bother to compete with them-is that it never tries to sound more profound than the jokes it tells. . . . [H]e makes you feel he is doing an unusual kind of philosophy. As though he has managed to turn J. L. Austin into one of the Marx Brothers. . . . Reading Jokes makes you feel that being genial is the most profound thing we ever do-which is something jokes also make us feel-and that doing philosophy is as natural as being amused."—Adam Phillips, London Review of Books
"[A] lucid and jargon-free study of the remarkable fact that we divert each other with stories meant to make us laugh. . . . An illuminating study, replete with killer jokes."—Kevin McCardle, The Herald (Glasgow)
"Cohen is an ardent joke-maker, keen to offer us a glimpse of how jokes are crafted and to have us dwell rather longer on their effects."—Barry C. Smith, Times Literary Supplement
"Because Ted Cohen loves jokes, we come to appreciate them more, and perhaps think further about the quality of good humor and the appropriateness of laughter in our lives."—Steve Carlson, Christian Science Monitor
Sol sits on the sidewalk bench and waits patiently for nearly half an hour. Finally, Abe reappears.
"Well," asks Sol, "what are they up to? Who are they trying to convert? Why do they care? Did you get the $1,000?"
Indignantly Abe replies, "Money. That's all you people care about."
Ted Cohen thinks that's not a bad joke. But he also doesn't think it's an easy joke. For a listener or reader to laugh at Abe's conversion, a complicated set of conditions must be met. First, a listener has to recognize that Abe and Sol are Jewish names. Second, that listener has to be familiar with the widespread idea that Jews are more interested in money than anything else. And finally, the listener needs to know this information in advance of the joke, and without anyone telling him or her. Jokes, in short, are complicated transactions in which communities are forged, intimacy is offered, and otherwise offensive stereotypes and cliches lose their sting—at least sometimes.
Jokes is a book of jokes and a book about them. Cohen loves a good laugh, but as a philosopher, he is also interested in how jokes work, why they work, and when they don't. The delight at the end of a joke is the result of a complex set of conditions and processes, and Cohen takes us through these conditions in a philosophical exploration of humor. He considers questions of audience, selection of joke topics, the ethnic character of jokes, and their morality, all with plenty of examples that will make you either chuckle or wince. more humorous than other philosophy books, more philosophical than other humor books.
"Befitting its subject, this study of jokes is . . . light, funny, and thought-provoking. . . . [T]he method fits the material, allowing the author to pepper the book with a diversity of jokes without flattening their humor as a steamroller theory might. Such a book is only as good as its jokes, and most of his are good. . . . [E]ntertainment and ideas in one gossamer package."— Kirkus Reviews
"One of the many triumphs of Ted Cohen's Jokes-apart from the not incidental fact that the jokes are so good that he doesn't bother to compete with them-is that it never tries to sound more profound than the jokes it tells. . . . [H]e makes you feel he is doing an unusual kind of philosophy. As though he has managed to turn J. L. Austin into one of the Marx Brothers. . . . Reading Jokes makes you feel that being genial is the most profound thing we ever do-which is something jokes also make us feel-and that doing philosophy is as natural as being amused."—Adam Phillips, London Review of Books
"[A] lucid and jargon-free study of the remarkable fact that we divert each other with stories meant to make us laugh. . . . An illuminating study, replete with killer jokes."—Kevin McCardle, The Herald (Glasgow)
"Cohen is an ardent joke-maker, keen to offer us a glimpse of how jokes are crafted and to have us dwell rather longer on their effects."—Barry C. Smith, Times Literary Supplement
"Because Ted Cohen loves jokes, we come to appreciate them more, and perhaps think further about the quality of good humor and the appropriateness of laughter in our lives."—Steve Carlson, Christian Science Monitor
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 13, 2018
The humor felt more than twenty years out of date. As I read Cohen's examples of jokes, I kept thinking about how they might sound in my mouth and whom I could even tell them to, in 2018, as an Asian-American. They would sound strange. Almost certainly offensive. One of Cohen's arguments validated, I suppose: yep, context matters.
Autobiographically speaking, I loved jokes as a kid. Joke-books and sitcoms taught me how to interpret the world around me and how to make friends.
Cohen asks the right questions about how jokes matter. I'm not satisfied with his answers. How do they work? (build camaraderie) Do they necessarily trade in and promote stereotypes? (usually not, b/c jokes are fictional and not taken seriously) Can a joke be funny but immoral? (yes, and: it's fine to tell folks not to tell jokes because they're hurtful, but hurtfulness can be judged independently)
It's interesting to me how this particular scholarly analysis of humor takes the mid-20th c ethnic joke as its ideal type (vs. the pun, hyperbole, cosmic absurdity, deflating human pompousness, variations on all of which Cohen comments on in passing). What Cohen's 'jokes' are ultimately 'about,' in my reading, is a kind of processing of the violence of American ethnic segregation, of which an urban Jewish American intellectual's experience can serve as metonym. I think that could be why Cohen ends contemplating the offensiveness of a joke about young urban black men and the hopefulness of a joke about the Chicago Police Department, as related by a CPD officer. I want to be generous in my reading, but this was probably disturbing then and is even more disturbing today. ("I don't think that's very funny. Or probative," I hear myself, suddenly a humorless PC scold addressing the book.)
I enjoyed the culture of courageous, free-speech absolutism at Chicago while I was there. But it's not without tremendous blind spots. In my judgement, Cohen is correct in identifying jokes as a special genre of fiction. The next step, for him, is to say, well then, because they are products of poesis abstracted from the real world, we can aestheticize them and contemplate them cooly. The next step for me, I think, would be to acknowledge that fiction has its uses in the real world, including composing it, reshaping it. Are jokes drugs? tools? weapons? Who tells them to whom and what happens as a result? I wish I had read this book twenty years earlier so I could have gone pestering Cohen about it!
Autobiographically speaking, I loved jokes as a kid. Joke-books and sitcoms taught me how to interpret the world around me and how to make friends.
Cohen asks the right questions about how jokes matter. I'm not satisfied with his answers. How do they work? (build camaraderie) Do they necessarily trade in and promote stereotypes? (usually not, b/c jokes are fictional and not taken seriously) Can a joke be funny but immoral? (yes, and: it's fine to tell folks not to tell jokes because they're hurtful, but hurtfulness can be judged independently)
It's interesting to me how this particular scholarly analysis of humor takes the mid-20th c ethnic joke as its ideal type (vs. the pun, hyperbole, cosmic absurdity, deflating human pompousness, variations on all of which Cohen comments on in passing). What Cohen's 'jokes' are ultimately 'about,' in my reading, is a kind of processing of the violence of American ethnic segregation, of which an urban Jewish American intellectual's experience can serve as metonym. I think that could be why Cohen ends contemplating the offensiveness of a joke about young urban black men and the hopefulness of a joke about the Chicago Police Department, as related by a CPD officer. I want to be generous in my reading, but this was probably disturbing then and is even more disturbing today. ("I don't think that's very funny. Or probative," I hear myself, suddenly a humorless PC scold addressing the book.)
I enjoyed the culture of courageous, free-speech absolutism at Chicago while I was there. But it's not without tremendous blind spots. In my judgement, Cohen is correct in identifying jokes as a special genre of fiction. The next step, for him, is to say, well then, because they are products of poesis abstracted from the real world, we can aestheticize them and contemplate them cooly. The next step for me, I think, would be to acknowledge that fiction has its uses in the real world, including composing it, reshaping it. Are jokes drugs? tools? weapons? Who tells them to whom and what happens as a result? I wish I had read this book twenty years earlier so I could have gone pestering Cohen about it!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2022
Wanted to read something about jokes after the Will Smith incident and picked this up. Felt it's half-baked and unable to explain the ideas well. Often succumbed to simple "I don't" or "I do" instead of the whys. Tinges of sexism and racism, too, towards the end. Some good jokes as examples, some cringy.
March 10, 2017
Absolutely one of the best books I have ever read about jokes and it hits on a surprising aspect, that of intimacy between those who "get" the joke. A very studied author, but not pretentious or esoteric at all. A lover and student of jokes with some unique and interesting perspectives. He has some killer jokes too, veering toward the religious/ Jewish side a bit. Wonderful and honest examination of ethic jokes and is it ok for jokes to offend and upset and disturb us? This is a guy I would like to hang out with and have a few drinks and listen and tell some jokes. Lord, how I love a good joke and so does Ted Cohen!
November 14, 2019
Rather wonderful in its unobtrusive way. Fine explanation of the inner workings of successful and unsuccessful jokes. But best on the function of jokes, among which is creating intimacy and solidarity.
Contains lots of jokes, of course, of all sizes. Here's a short one: "Q. What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? A. The same middle name."
Contains lots of jokes, of course, of all sizes. Here's a short one: "Q. What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? A. The same middle name."
March 26, 2025
Cohen's big idea is that jokes rely on the teller and hearing having "a shared background, a background of awareness that you both are already in possession of, and bring to the joke." The laughter the joke generates creates an intimacy between teller and listener, based on their membership in a community of shared knowledge, belief or disposition. I find this basic idea plausible and thought-provoking. But while the book has some funny jokes as examples, he includes so many examples that it comes off as unnecessary padding, and suggests the book should have been an article.
The basic kind of joke Cohen is concerned with also seem old-fashioned, in the sense that it is a little story with an elaborate set-ups before a punchline (e.g. "a man walks into a bar . . . "). I have the image of people in the 1950s memorizing longwinded jokes like that so they could have something funny to say at social gatherings. I think of contemporary humor as punchier and more spontaneous, as people now are more likely to come up with something quick and funny on the spot. I was also surprised by how much Cohen loves ethnic jokes, which the book contains a ton of. I wasn't so much offended by this as I though it again involved a kind of humor that is generally unfunny and again seems out of date. The book was published in 1999, but Cohen's sense of humor seems decades older.
The basic kind of joke Cohen is concerned with also seem old-fashioned, in the sense that it is a little story with an elaborate set-ups before a punchline (e.g. "a man walks into a bar . . . "). I have the image of people in the 1950s memorizing longwinded jokes like that so they could have something funny to say at social gatherings. I think of contemporary humor as punchier and more spontaneous, as people now are more likely to come up with something quick and funny on the spot. I was also surprised by how much Cohen loves ethnic jokes, which the book contains a ton of. I wasn't so much offended by this as I though it again involved a kind of humor that is generally unfunny and again seems out of date. The book was published in 1999, but Cohen's sense of humor seems decades older.
April 26, 2025
I feel as though this book was possibly a product of it's time (1999) as I found the jokes included regarding different subsets of people (mainly based on ethnicity) to be uncomfortable and not funny - Ted does offer some commentary on this at the end which i found interesting, but prior to this it did feel like they were trying hard to justify finding problematic (racially charged) jokes to be funny. I struggled too with the large number of examples given which were not always necessary.
I gave it 3 stars because i did find it an interesting read still and had some good perspectives and insights scattered throughout.
I gave it 3 stars because i did find it an interesting read still and had some good perspectives and insights scattered throughout.
June 26, 2020
A quick read with some good jokes, but also a good deal of philosophizing about jokes. The most interesting part is the last chapter, reflecting on what to make of immoral jokes, or jokes that play on unfortunate stereotypes. The author tries to keep moral separate from funny--and avoid the inference from immoral/stereotyped to not funny. This reminds me of a parallel question: Can we keep moral separate from meaningful? I think we should avoid the inference from evil life to (therefore) not a meaningful life.
February 7, 2021
So many ethnic and Jewish "jokes". Like the jokes aren't even funny, what I wanted to read is something about comedy, or what is the reasoning why we think something as funny or humor. What I got was trash, couldn't even finish it. Stopped 1/4 the way through.
October 15, 2025
I don't know, I didn't learn much about jokes. Jokes are all conditional, jokes are about the absurdity in the world, some jokes are offensive, sure.
There are some reasonably funny jokes in it though.
There are some reasonably funny jokes in it though.
January 17, 2009
A very decent and totally unpretentious book that looks deeply at jokes from a number of perspectives--though not too many that it becomes burdensome or difficult to piece together what Cohen is attempting.
Exploring a few of the social dynamics of jokes, and using the case of Jewish/sectarian humor as his primary example, Cohen attempts to explain the power that joking can have to foster bonds between people, or to highlight ontological, moral, or other "cultural" difference. Most interestingly, his investigation into Jewish humor leads him to look at culturally situated perspectives on language and logic. This thought-provoking, slim book should interest students of philosophy, social science, Judaica, and comedy.
If I could give it more than 5 stars I would. Plus, some of the 'jewish' jokes are hilarious and seriously stimulating by themselves.
Exploring a few of the social dynamics of jokes, and using the case of Jewish/sectarian humor as his primary example, Cohen attempts to explain the power that joking can have to foster bonds between people, or to highlight ontological, moral, or other "cultural" difference. Most interestingly, his investigation into Jewish humor leads him to look at culturally situated perspectives on language and logic. This thought-provoking, slim book should interest students of philosophy, social science, Judaica, and comedy.
If I could give it more than 5 stars I would. Plus, some of the 'jewish' jokes are hilarious and seriously stimulating by themselves.
February 26, 2008
Who would guess that a professional philosopher would write something about jokes? And further, who would guess that it would be such fun? Not only are the musings on the nature of jokes interesting, but the jokes themselves are choice. I now have a few new favorites for my collection.
August 5, 2010
Though Cohen avoids the risks associated with trying to present a single unified theory of jokes he returns repeatedly to the role that jokes play in helping us identifying others as within our community.
(Thankfully the book contains some joke explanations in the back)
(Thankfully the book contains some joke explanations in the back)
December 22, 2010
A surprisingly intertaining and interesing book. In particular, I liked his discussion of Abraham and the burning bush. Isaac's name mean "laughter" — Isaac was the son who was on the verge of incineration.
December 29, 2015
Philosophical reflections on jokes and their ability to create connection and intimacy, that included many jokes. A little morally convoluted at the end as racist jokes are bad in themselves, they do not just make me feel uncomfortable.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews