An hour for your heart and an hour for your mind

Dr. Kamal Abdulmalik

10 March 2023

My English readings of the relationship between philosophy and humor showed me that the structure of jokes and the structure of philosophical concepts are made of the same material that challenges reason in similar ways. This is because philosophy and jokes proceed from the same motive: to confuse our sense of the usual and familiar way, if not to turn our worlds upside down, and that may expose hidden, and often uncomfortable, truths about life and human ways of thinking and acting. What the philosopher calls insight, the satirical comedian calls "gafsha". These humorous philosophical dialogues can be called "comic philosophicals" because they aim to teach and entertain together in a way that we might call "an hour for your heart and an hour for your mind." This is the first episode.

Empiricism Philosophy: Empiricism

Let's start with this next classic joke from Juha's anecdotes. On the surface, it sounds just a funny idiocy, but upon closer examination, we realize that it is at the heart of the British empiricist philosophy of 18th-century Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley, which argues that all human knowledge comes mainly through the senses and experience, denies the existence of any innate ideas in man or any prior knowledge of practical experience, and begs the question: Which information about the world can we rely on?

Juha's neighbor asked to borrow his donkey, and Juha did not want to give it to him, so he said to his neighbor: "Excuse me, my dear neighbor, the donkey is not here, my son went with it to the market," and his words were almost completed until the donkey filled the house with exhaustion, and the neighbor said: "You are lying, Juha. I hear with my ears the braying of the donkey and you tell me that it is in the market?" and Juha replied, "My dear neighbor, do you believe the donkey and do not believe your neighbor and friend Juha?"

Here Juha challenges the credibility of real-life sensory experience, and raises the question of what confirmed data is and why do we consider it certain? What do we believe and what do we base the knowledge of the truth on Nadira Juha: hearing the braying of the donkey or the emotion of friendship and the principle of good neighborliness?

Sentimental Philosophy: Emotivism

Mr. Abdel Azim, a mathematics teacher, wrote a letter to the Tax Authority in which he said that he could not sleep, because he cheated the Tax Authority in 9530 pounds, which is the value of his income from private lessons, and that his conscience torments him, so he attached a check for the amount with his letter, and promised the Authority that if his conscience tortured him too much and he could not sleep after that, he would send the rest of the value of the taxes that he must pay to the Authority.

What Professor Abdel Azim did exposes his understanding that moral judgments are not right or wrong in themselves, but are just an expression of his feeling towards them and his approval or disagreement to pay the taxes due to him, and his emotional attitude refers to what was known in the middle of the 20th century as sentimental philosophy (Emotivism) when most moral philosophy tended to search for meta-ethical, instead of asking the individual himself: What is the definition of moral action? or What action can be called moral? He asked: What do we mean when we call an act morally? Does the phrase "this work is ethical" mean that I approve of it or benefit from its results? Or that judging a particular action depends on who did it, it is a moral act if the perpetrator is my friend and a dishonest act if it is done by my enemy?

This position is what Western philosophers have called "sentimentary philosophy." And to talk the rest.

Visiting Scholar at Harvard University

To read previous articles by the author, please click on their name.