Philosophers on Failure: Is that funny? Thinking about jokes and paradox

Leading philosophers from King’s College London discuss aspects of failure in a series of informal and inclusive Salons (on Tuesday 22nd / Wednesday 23rd  and Thursday 24th October).

At Tuesday’s Salon, join Professor M.M. McCabe for a discussion on the failure of paradox:

Some jokes have a peculiarly philosophical character; they work like paradoxes.  But how? What happens when we find something funny? What happens when the joke fails? And why should we think that something so trivial matters?

Professor MM McCabe

Professor McCabe was educated at Oxford High School for Girls and Newnham College Cambridge. From 1981-1990 she was Fellow in Classics at New Hall, University of Cambridge; she moved to King’s College London in October 1990. She has spent some extended periods in the USA; at Harvard, at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, and at Princeton. From 2005-2008 she was a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow. In 2009 she was elected President of the British Philosophical Association.  She is the general editor of the Cambridge University Press series Studies in the Dialogues of Plato.

Prof M.M. McCabe

Main image credit: Somerset House, courtesy of Somerset House Trust