Philosophical jokes

Philosophy is seen as a serious affair and also my blogs are meant to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, philosophers are as human as humans are and they, too, sometimes make jokes: philosophical jokes. Then I don’t mean philosophical views that are meant seriously but ridiculed by other philosophers. For who isn’t a Heideggerian probably will laugh at Heidegger’s statement that “the nothing nothings”? Indeed, this phrase is enough for some students of philosophy not to bother him or herself with what the master has written, though for others it is a deep philosophical, so serious, remark. The latter apparently believe in what is not, or isn’t it so?
Be that as it may (or may not), what I want to present here are “real” philosophical jokes. Now it is so that you’ll understand a joke only and you can laugh about it only, if you know what it is about. However, if it must be explained, it is not funny any longer. This is the more so for philosophical jokes that often are funny only for philosophical insiders. There is no help for that and here I’ll avoid explanations.
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Anyway, the first joke is clear without any philosophical knowledge, although I find it a bit unreal, for which philosopher can allow him or herself to have a driver? (Russell could)
– 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 was willing to switch roles for just one evening. The philosopher agreed, and, for a while, the driver handled himself remarkably well.
However, when the time came for questions, someone at the back of the room asked him, “Is the epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse compatible with a teleological account of the universe?”
“That's an extremely simple question,” he replied. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer it.” (source)

– A methodologist and his wife are out for a drive in the country. The wife says: “Oh look! Those sheep have been shorn.” “Yes,” says the methodologist. “On this side.” (source)

– An angel appears to the head of a Philosophy Department and says, “I'll grant you whichever of three blessings you choose. Wisdom, beauty, or ten million dollars.”
Immediately, the professor chooses wisdom. There is a flash of lightning, the professor is transformed, but then he just sits there, staring down at the table.
One of his colleagues whispers, “You have great wisdom. Say something!” The professor says, “I should have taken the money!” (source)

– A philosopher once had the following dream.
First Aristotle appeared, and the philosopher said to him, “Could you give me a fifteen-minute capsule sketch of your entire philosophy?” To the philosopher's surprise, Aristotle gave him an excellent exposition in which he compressed an enormous amount of material into a mere fifteen minutes. But then the philosopher raised a certain objection which Aristotle couldn’t answer. Confounded, Aristotle disappeared.
Then Plato appeared. The same thing happened again, and the philosophers’ objection to Plato was the same as his objection to Aristotle. Plato also couldn’t answer it and disappeared.
Then all the famous philosophers of history appeared one-by-one and our philosopher refuted every one with the same objection.
After the last philosopher vanished, our philosopher said to himself, “I know I'm asleep and dreaming all this. Yet I've found a universal refutation for all philosophical systems! Tomorrow when I wake up, I will probably have forgotten it, and the world will really miss something!” With an iron effort, the philosopher forced himself to wake up, rush over to his desk, and write down his universal refutation. Then he jumped back into bed with a sigh of relief.
The next morning when he awoke, he went over to the desk to see what he had written. It was, “That’s what you say.”  (source)

– A philosophy professor walks in to give his class their final. Placing his chair on his desk the professor instructs the class, “Using every applicable thing you've learned in this course, prove to me that this chair DOES NOT EXIST.”
So, pencils are writing and erasers are erasing, students are preparing to embark on novels proving that this chair doesn't exist, except for one student. He spends thirty seconds writing his answer, then turns his final in to the astonishment of his peers.
Time goes by, and the day comes when all the students get their final grades...and to the amazement of the class, the student who wrote for thirty seconds gets the highest grade in the class. His answer to the question: “What chair?” (source)

– “I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again ‘I know that that’s a tree’, pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 467.
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The jokes above may not be the funniest philosophy jokes you can find on the Internet, but I wanted the present here a few that are not only funny but that say also something about philosophy itself. Let me end with a few very short ones:
– How many Marxists does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The lightbulb contains the seed of its own revolution. (many sources)
– “Hello? Zeno taxi service? I called for a cab forever ago...”
“What do you mean he’s half way there?”
– Someone asked me to name a greater philosopher than Nietzsche. …. I. Kant
– What is Mind? No Matter. What is Body? Never Mind.
– “The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” (Bertrand Russell)
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Want to have more philosophy jokes? Just google “philosophical jokes” or visit these websites:
- Neil Burton, “Top 10 Philosophy Jokes. The ten sharpest philosophy jokes.”
- David Calmers, Philosophical Humor.
- Work Joke, Funny philosophical jokes.
- “40+ Philosophy Jokes That We Kant Stop Laughing At” 

Also these websites might be interesting:
- “Joking, and Learning, About Philosophy”
- Scotty Hendricks, “5 philosophy jokes that will actually teach you something”