Free Speech, Comedy, and Publicly Engaged Philosophy
Luke Brunning sat down with Simon Kirchin, the Director of IDEA: The Ethics Centre, to explore what publicly engaged philosophy looks like in practice, why it matters, and what insights it can generate. Drawing on a long-standing partnership with a group of professional comedians, Simon published The Philosophy of Comedy last year with Cambridge University Press. The edited collection showcases a rich and deeply collaborative set of articles and conversations between philosophers and comedians on philosophical topics in aesthetics, politics, and epistemology.
Luke Brunning: Thank you for being here, Simon. I want to ask you about your recently published collection on comedy and philosophy. What's the book about?
Simon Kirchin: Okay, so it's an edited collection. There are a range of papers from different authors–philosophers–thinking about different aspects of comedic, professional practice. So, there's a paper about whether comedy itself can be a form of philosophy, and there's questions about comedy and free speech, why swearing is funny, and topics like that.
What's really interesting is it came out of a project where I was working with a group of philosophers, but also professional comedians, both people you might have heard of, but also some club circuit comics. We had a range of sessions where we were exploring these topics. In the book, as well as the six papers from the philosophers, when the papers were in draft, we circulated them and we had a range of meetings where myself and the author and some comedians would get together and talk about the various issues that were raised. Each of the papers is paired with this dialogue of about 8,000-10,000 words from me, the author, and some comedians.
LB: What did having comedians on the project bring that you might not get with a bunch of boring philosophy people?
SK: Ha! So, one thing that was really interesting about all the events is, in the first hour or so, typically the philosophers would tell jokes and try and be funny, and the comedians would use lots of long words and name-drop philosophers, but after a while it settled down.
What's really interesting is that many comedians–obviously, we picked particular people, invited them–think in very similar ways to philosophers. So they're thinking about a topic, analysing it, looking at it from different points of view–trying to get something across to an audience. Obviously, the endpoint might be different. We're trying to get some sort of, as philosophers, understanding or argument across, whereas comedians are trying to get a laugh. But they might also be trying to get a thought across. And, actually, there's something quite similar in the way that comedians and philosophers' minds work.
So, what was really interesting is seeing topics that philosophers would raise, and then talk about in a kind of philosophical way, but actually getting their perspective about what actual comedic practice is like. So, to give you an example, often philosophers might think quite loftily about what it is to be a comedian and being at the forefront of free speech wars and all that sort of thing, whereas comedians often say, actually, what we're trying to do is pay the mortgage or pay the rent. Actually, we're just self-employed entrepreneurs – they were bringing it down a little bit and trying to understand what it's like to actually be a comedian, wondering about invites, being canceled, those kind of topics that we talked about.
LB: Great. I know one of the questions you were exploring was whether comedy could be understood as a kind of philosophy. What's your take on that? Do you think that it can be?
SK: I think it definitely can. The paper that deals with that is by Julian Baggini who is at the forefront of making philosophy quite popular in this country. Julian picks the Simpsons and Monty Python as his main examples. And, if you go through quite a few examples, Simpsons, particularly the Golden Age, and many examples of Monty Python sketches, it's clear that some interesting philosophy is going on, says Julian, around language and around perspectives and so on.
The idea is not just that there's a philosophical idea and it's filmed in a certain way, but that comedy itself can be a type of philosophy, just as any sort of writing in a philosophy article or a book might be, or filming a philosophy lecture. It trades on the debate, which has been common in aesthetics and philosophy in film for the last 10-15 years, about whether films – so, normal, typical, Hollywood cinema films – can be a form of philosophy. Not all of them are, obviously, but they can be. A lot of that debate centres on what the essential aims of films are. Some people think, the essential aims of films go against so much of philosophy – namely entertainment, perhaps a bit of deception. Philosophy is about, understanding, truth, and so on. Some people disagree with that. So, obviously there's a debate there.
In our discussion that we had about Julian's paper, some people were making the same points about comedy. Perhaps the essential aims of comedy are entertainment – making people laugh, not about understanding and truth. We had that debate – well, actually comedy, whilst making you laugh can shed light on interesting topics in interesting ways.
LB: So are there any areas of philosophy you think comedy bears on in particular? You've mentioned things like free speech. We might think of political topics, maybe issues in aesthetics might be at the forefront of this, but there are other areas of philosophy as well?
SK: Yes, so I think certainly treating comedy is an interesting activity, clearly, is a matter of aesthetics and also in politics. I think comedic practice lends itself to quite a lot of different philosophical debates. For example, epistemology: showing people through a set, through different jokes, what they know and what they think they know, but in fact they may not know everything. It can certainly highlight various political issues and moral issues in ways that philosophers might get at, or other political commentators might get at, but do it in quite a sharp way, often. Also, just interpersonal relationships, the sort of things that you're interested in, Luke. So, love and sex and friendships. Obviously, you know, that's a lot of meat and drink to many performers and their comedic personas.
LB: Can I ask what was the most surprising thing to come out of the project for you? I imagine having philosophers and comedians in the room might be quite stressful to begin with – a lot of uncertainty about where the project's going to evolve. But was there some particular feature that really caught you off guard?
SK: I wouldn't say off guard. I mean, I think surprising in that, going back to what I said previously, just how many comedians' brains work or minds work is very similar to how many philosophers' minds work, which was delightful, actually. But, ever so slightly different. So, sometimes they wouldn't quite get the argument, and sometimes we wouldn't quite follow what they were saying. But most of the time, it was just like having just interesting philosophers in the room.
LB: Yeah, I guess it's no accident that lots of comedians have degrees in philosophy from my understanding as well.
SK: Yeah, so I don't know what the percentages are. But yes, we did choose and invite some comedians who've got some philosophy degrees or similar degrees or people who are just interested in it. It is quite notable how many comedians are interested in philosophy or indeed have a degree.
LB: So, at the very beginning of the intro to the volume that you write, you talk about this investigation of comedy as being akin to dissecting a frog. Can you tell us what that means?
SK: Okay, so it's an old phrase that has been recycled many times. In the book, I do a little bit of delving and say who I think was originating it. But basically the joke goes: dissecting comedy is like dissecting a frog. At the end, the frog dies, and no one really cares anyway. And there's a danger of doing that with philosophy of comedy, and certainly philosophy of humour and philosophy of jokes. Here's how jokes work. It's actually not very funny. It's not quite what you think.
Though, I have to say to many comedians, they do care about how jokes work, and particularly circuit comedians. They might earn a bit of money by performing, but nowadays they're doing other things as well. Often they're running workshops – showing people, training people, how to do a bit of stand-up for various reasons. And so they have to understand the mechanics of jokes.
I think what we try to do in the project, and in the volume – actually there are a few jokes or a few kind of funnier asides – we try to, rather than overanalyse, let people's noses go where they want to. So, obviously, we had these discussions that were paired with the philosophy papers, but they were just the start of how we wanted the discussion to go. For example, there's a paper – quite a tightly written paper– by a fellow philosopher here at Leeds, Julian Dodd, on the general topic of art and artists – specifically thinking about Woody Allen's film Manhattan. Whether, because of Woody Allen's private life and what we might morally think of him, Manhattan changes its funniness. And we talk a bit about that particular issue. But then, we talk more generally about art and artists, and the general issue of whether you can judge the art without judging the artist. And we just let people's noses go where they wanted to without kind of overanalysing the topic, but I hope still giving a bit of insight.
LB: So we've got the collection now, is this something you're still working on or are you done and dusted with jokes for now?
SK: Oh no, definitely not done and dusted!
In about 2 or 3 weeks' time from when we're recording this, I'm hosting a one-day workshop on comedy and free speech, where again, we're going to have some philosophers and comedians coming.
Right now, I'm writing a short book on comedy and free speech – thinking about various things I've learned from comedians, but also thinking about free speech literature. And really thinking about the current moment we're in, where comedy is one of the things that's at the forefront of the culture war battles – really getting my teeth into that. Not saying this is exactly what we should think about every single joke. That would be impossible! But trying to give people some insight and understanding into why we might adopt, let's say, a liberal point of view, and what the different pros and cons are going to be, and understanding where we might land in relation to anyone's particular performance.
LB: Okay, fantastic. If you had to recommend a book or paper that isn't one that you've written or edited yourself – I know that's hard to do – is there anything that jumps to mind on this topic?
SK: So I think the really great standard philosophy book on not just comedy, but humour is John Morreall's book The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour. That's a great book.
I think another really good book is a book by a guy called Stephen Gimbel, who I don't know. He's a philosopher in the US, and has also done some amateur stand-up comedy for quite a while. It's a book called Isn't that Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. He goes through various theories of humour and thinks in particular about how he might characterise performance comedy. And he says that the main point about comedy is that it's kind of clever playfulness. And that's the way to really understand what's going on.
LB: Okay, thank you so much for sharing your project with us, and we look forward to seeing more work from you in future.
SK: Great, thanks, Luke.
If you'd like more from Simon on free speech and performance, check out episode 36 of Ethics Untangled where he chats with Jim Baxter about whether drag is problematic.
