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. _Jokes:_ 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_ "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_. (shrink)

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. _Jokes:_ 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_ "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_. (shrink)

I want to suggest a point in metaphor which is independent of the question of its cognitivity and which has nothing to do with its aesthetical character. I think of this point as the achievement of intimacy. There is a unique way in which the maker and the appreciator of a metaphor are drawn closer to one another. Three aspects are involved: the speaker issues a kind of concealed invitation; the hearer expends a special effort to accept the invitation; and (...) this transaction constitutes the acknowledgement of a community. All three are involved in any communication, but in ordinary literal discourse their involvement is so persuasive and routine that they go unremarked. The use of metaphor throws them into relief, and there is a point in that. An appreciator of a metaphor must do two things: he must realize that the expression is a metaphor, and he must figure out the point of the expression. His former accomplishment induces him to undertake the latter. Realizing the metaphorical character of an expression is often easy enough; it requires only the assumption that the speaker is not simply speaking absurdly or uttering a patent falsehood. But it can be a more formidable task: not every figurative expression which can survive a literal reading is a mere play on words. Ted Cohen is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has written on language, aesthetics, and taste and has coedited a collection entitled Essays on Kant's Aesthetics. His contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost", was written with Joel Snyder in the Winter 1980 issue. (shrink)

This article consists of two important parts. The first is a specific defense of some of the central claims made by stanley cavell in "must we mean what we say" against the criticisms of fodor and katz in "the availability of what we say." the major issue concerns the question of whether evidence of some sort is needed to support a claim by a native speaker about what we mean when we say something. Further speculations on this topic occupy the (...) other part of the paper. (shrink)

What does the faculty of Understanding do during the execution of a judgement of taste? How are singular judgements of beauty related to general judgements of beauty? For what reason is beauty the symbol of morality? The first question has a tentative answer, although one not obviously congenial to Kant. The second two questions have no compelling answers.

In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor. To be able to see oneself as someone else, whether the someone else is a real person or a fictional character, is to exercise the ability to deal with metaphor and other figurative language. The underlying faculty, (...) Cohen argues, is the same--simply the ability to think of one thing as another when it plainly is not. In an engaging style, Cohen explores this idea by examining various occasions for identifying with others, including reading fiction, enjoying sports, making moral arguments, estimating one's future self, and imagining how one appears to others. Using many literary examples, Cohen argues that we can engage with fictional characters just as intensely as we do with real people, and he looks at some of the ways literature itself takes up the question of interpersonal identification and understanding. An original meditation on the necessity of imagination to moral and aesthetic life, Thinking of Others is an important contribution to philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor. To be able to see oneself as someone else, whether the someone else is a real person or a fictional character, is to exercise the ability to deal with metaphor and other figurative language. The underlying faculty, (...) Cohen argues, is the same--simply the ability to think of one thing as another when it plainly is not. In an engaging style, Cohen explores this idea by examining various occasions for identifying with others, including reading fiction, enjoying sports, making moral arguments, estimating one's future self, and imagining how one appears to others. Using many literary examples, Cohen argues that we can engage with fictional characters just as intensely as we do with real people, and he looks at some of the ways literature itself takes up the question of interpersonal identification and understanding. An original meditation on the necessity of imagination to moral and aesthetic life, Thinking of Others is an important contribution to philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

Surely [John R.] Searle must rely on a stable, formal conception of the point of view. He sets Las Meninas on a par with the antimony of the liar and the paradoxes of set theory. But nothing is an antimony or a paradox just because it seems so or just because it is confusing or difficult, even if it seems so to everyone. To deserve such a description, a thing must be, so to speak, intrinsically intractable, not merely resistant when (...) looked at in a particular way. If a man says "I do not believe I am alive," that would be odd, and it would be hard to understand just what he means, and it may even be hard or impossible to believe that he is telling the truth; but there is no antimony. If a man says "I am lying," then we have a primitive version of the antimony of the liar. Given the meaning of this utterance—and nothing else—there is no way to get a grip on it. If what the man says is true, then it's false; if what he says is false, then it's true. Joel Snyder, a practicing photographer, is associate professor of humanities and of art and design at the University of Chicago. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Photography, Vision, and Representation," written with Neil Walsh Allen , and "Picturing Vision" . Ted Cohen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, has written on language, aesthetics, and taste. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy," appeared in the Autumn 1978 issue. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Logic of Freedom The Logic of Denial Conclusion.

John McCumber is right to think that analytic philosophy has had a particularly central and dominating position in American philosophy, and that philosophy is less significant in American public life than in the public life of many European countries. I believe he is wrong to think that American philosophers have turned to analytical work in order to escape being politically relevant, and that he is wrong to suppose that prominent academic philosophy is something to wish for.

I first read Collingwood about 25 years ago, when The Principles of Art was a staple in classes in the philosophy of art, along with books by Santayana, Dewey, and Croce. Since then, all these books have lost currency among American philosophers of art, and not only among those who are “analytic” philosophers. The wholesale abandonment of the history of the subject which was a feature of work in the philosophy of art during the 1960’s and 1970’s is not a (...) characteristic of contemporary work, and yet Collingwood has not been well served by recent developments. The 1980’s have seen a renewal of interest in leading works in the tradition, even a kind of renaissance, especially with regard to philosophers of the 18th century, Kant in particular. The earlier general neglect had placed Collingwood along with Croce, Hegel, Kant, and the rest, including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hume, and even Aristotle, and consigned the lot to some earlier, benighted philosophical time devoid of standards of rigor, precision, verification, and, indeed, sense. Although current attitudes are not so crude and harsh, the rediscovery of Kant’s aesthetics has not been propitious for Collingwood. There is now wide agreement that there are marvelous ideas and arguments in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, but the adherents of this appraisal locate Kant’s achievements differently. One group thinks that Kant virtually invents and discovers the major themes of modern philosophy of art, setting them with a depth that guarantees enduring riches. The other group thinks that Kant’s best ideas are already present in Hume and that Kant’s main contribution has been the arrogance, pomposity, and obscurity that perennially seduce readers into imagining that they are in the presence of profundity. Both groups agree, however, that after Kant it is a swift fall down the mountain into the disastrous philosophical rubble of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the fall from the sweet, promising light of the Enlightenment to the terrifying nightmare of ideologies that either brought philosophy to an end or made it worth ending. (shrink)

North by Northwest -- Metaphor and the cultivation of intimacy -- Notes on metaphor -- What's special about photography? -- Sports and art -- Clay for contemplation -- There are no ties at first base -- A driving examination -- Objects of appreciation -- And what if they don't laugh? -- Liking what's good: why should we? -- Language games -- Ethics class -- Kings and salesmen -- One way to think about popular art -- Caring -- The idea of (...) absolute gin -- Playing by the rules -- Freedom from rules. (shrink)