The best philosophical jokes tend to be evoked by the most persistent incomprehensibilities. Take the question that Martin Heidegger deemed the deepest and darkest in all philosophy: Why is there something rather than nothing? When I put this question to the great Columbia philosopher Arther Danto a few years ago, he brusquely replied< "Who says there's not nothing?" Another Columbia philosopher (and another kibbitzer of the sidewalks of Upper Broadway) the late Sidney Morgenbesser had an even better response when a student asked him the same question: "Even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"

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¶ 2:32 PM