Kant's Humorous Writings by Robert R. Clewis;

Author:Robert R. Clewis; [Clewis, Robert R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350112803
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

The thing about German food is that no matter how much you eat, an hour later you are hungry for power.114

Given the Nazi Holocaust and the horrific events of the twentieth century, it seems okay to punch up at the Germans here. In contrast, the joke Two Moneylenders (cited in No. 13) seems thoroughly problematic in that it contravenes this guideline.

Before concluding this section, I would like to mention briefly a comparison between a joke’s content and a derogatory term, say, a racial or sexist slur. If a person—even someone that is otherwise kind and gentle—uses a slur or derogatory term for a group, we would typically fault them for it. We would say that they simply should not be using the term. We reason that the meaning or reference of the word or slur matters, and that it seems nearly always inappropriate to use such a term. (To be sure, one could think of a case where something about the context makes it acceptable for someone to use it. For instance, members of a group could use a term to address each other or in order to subvert its use by an oppressive group. Or, perhaps, the term could be used for didactic-scientific purposes as noted.) But prima facie the offensive content, the hurtful denotation or connotation of the slur, makes it such that the term should never be invoked, on grounds laid out in Kant’s Ethical Principles. When it is used to label others (rather than as a form of peer address), we think that the user has done something morally unacceptable. For we think that, prima facie, i) the derogatory term should not be used, and ii) that when it is invoked the user should have known better. When they keep using the offensive language, in other words, they display a kind of epistemic failure, a failure to know what is appropriate, which leads to our moral disapproval.

Now, it seems that a controversial joke’s content, such as what happens in the joke (i.e., the narrative) and the words it employs, is in important respects like the slur or derogatory term. There can be analogous ethical concerns regarding both i) the content of the joke and ii) the joke teller (however apparently innocent or neutral their intentions). For the Kantian account, some jokes are so offensive they should prima facie never be told, and sometimes the tellers of such jokes should have known that it would have been better to have refrained from telling them. Still, even here I hesitate to attribute to the Kantian account universal prescriptions and unbending rules. For just as with slurs and labels, there can be contexts in which the telling of the controversial joke could be acceptable, namely, when the play frame allows it. As noted, it is always necessary to use one’s judgment.

In short, Kant’s position is able to accommodate the intuition that we should not tell jokes that promote racism and sexism (etc.) by endorsing racist/sexist beliefs or leading others to endorse them, or that do actual harm to people or wrong them (including the teller and audience).

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