Boaz Faraday Schuman

Boaz Faraday Schuman: The Scholar Who Finds the Punchline in Scholastic Philosophy

By Isabel Inzunza Gomez

November 2024 – When you picture a medieval philosopher, what comes to mind? A stern figure bent over a candlelit desk, perhaps, meticulously ruminating on the metaphysical status of angels or the divisions of Hell. What probably doesn’t spring to mind is a figure cracking a joke about clerical celibacy, or pausing an argument about the existence of God for a wink and a nudge. Enter Boaz Faraday Schuman, the medievalist who insists that the Middle Ages weren’t all fire and brimstone and syllogistic logic—they were also surprisingly funny.

Bo is currently a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, where he’s working on indirect proof. (What is indirect proof, you ask? It’s the art of refuting a claim by showing it leads to an impossibility—like proving someone didn’t eat the last cookie because the cookie jar never existed.) His passion lies in medieval logic and its history, a field he approaches with precision, creativity, and a talent for uncovering the humor nestled within even the densest philosophical texts.

This month, IPM sat down with Bo over a matcha and a coffee to talk about a topic as niche as it is delightful: humor in medieval philosophy. At first glance, humor and academia might seem like oil and water—and throwing in the Middle Ages seems like a recipe for total incompatibility. But Bo challenges us to think again.

In his article Scholastic Humor: Ready Wit as a Virtue in Theory and Practice, Bo uncovers a side of medieval thought that most of us didn’t even know existed. Here’s the pitch: Aristotle himself listed “ready wit” (eutrapelia) among the virtues, a mean between the excess of constant joking, and the defect of being a humorless buzzkill. He also thinks it’s a kind of cultured insolence. The scholastics, who took Aristotle very seriously, didn’t just theorize about humor—they practiced it, often to hilarious effect. As Bo puts it, “Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny.” The abstract of his article teases examples of irony, wit, and even outright jokes embedded in medieval philosophical debates. One highlight? A subtle bit of irony from Thomas Aquinas, who managed to sneak a punchline into his famous arguments for the existence of God.

And what about Bo himself? He defended his dissertation, Modality and Validity in the Logic of John Buridan, at the University of Toronto in 2021 under Peter King’s supervision—an accomplishment that cements him as an expert on a figure whose arguments occasionally veered into “you’re a donkey”-level absurdity. Bo’s academic journey has taken him across the globe, from teaching Latin in Toronto to research stints in Copenhagen, Cambridge, and Auckland. These days, he is also studying Classical Arabic through the Qasid Institute, which is based in Amman, Jordan. Along the way, Bo has translated hefty medieval texts, maintained a YouTube channel (Logic with Bo), and become a minor Twitter sensation with his account @MedievalLatin.

If Bo’s career proves anything, it’s that laughter and learning go hand in hand. His work doesn’t just add to our understanding of the Middle Ages—it reminds us that humor has always been a uniquely human way of grappling with the big questions. And honestly, if Thomas Aquinas can make us chuckle while contemplating the divine, maybe there was a sharp wit beneath his scholastic hat.

The Interview

Isabel Inzunza Gomez: Your work primarily focuses on logic, yet you’ve also explored the philosophy of humor in your article “Scholastic Humor.” What drew you to this topic, and what inspired you to connect it with your broader research?

Boaz Faraday Schuman: First of all, thanks for having me on. It’s a great thing you’re doing here at IPM, and I’m happy to be part of it.

Logic is my main game, but I started noticing early on that it’s not all hardcore semantics and syllogisms. There’s actually quite a bit of humor in medieval logical traditions, especially in the sophismata tradition. These were exercises in logic that often ended with hilariously absurd conclusions like, “You’re going to be thrown off a bridge,” “You ate raw meat,” or the classic, “You’re a donkey, and your father is a dog.” It’s a kind of rough, no-frills humor, but it’s there.

The first Scholastic joke that really grabbed me, though, came from Aquinas. I was a master’s student, working my way through the Summa Theologiae, when I stumbled across his remark that “an argument from authority is the weakest kind of argument.” And to support this claim? He cites the authority of Boethius. I sat back and thought, “Wait a minute… is this a joke?” Aquinas had slipped in a punchline, and it caught me completely off guard.

From then on, I started keeping an eye out for jokes and other evidence. I found Aquinas’s claim that a lack of humor is actually a sin—so, good news for comedians everywhere—and Bonaventure’s hilarious comment about chastity, which I discovered in an article by Pavel Blažek. Over time, I noticed a pattern: the Scholastics didn’t just talk about humor as a virtue; they actually practiced it, sneaking in jokes to engage their audiences or lighten the tone of serious discussions.

Eventually, I realized I had enough material to write about it. One passage in particular in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was key. He treats humor as a virtue that lies between two extremes: buffoonery (joking too much, like the guy who never knows when to quit) and boorishness (never joking at all and being annoyed when others do). The Latin translations take this idea even further—if you’re humorless, you’re called a ruricola or an agrios, which basically means “bumpkin.” It’s like the Aristoteles Latinus is saying, “Get a sense of humor; you’ll seem more urbane.”

What really kept me hooked, though, was the contrast. Logic is supposed to be dry and serious, while humor is playful and subversive. Yet the two intersect in surprising ways, and exploring that intersection has been incredibly rewarding.

I should also mention my reliance on the sort of Descartes-Werner Herzog approach to reading: it’s best to have a highly varied diet, so to speak. So I’ll read all kinds of stuff, from medieval philosophy to books about buckets—yes, I recently read one about buckets in the Middle Ages. And get this: it gave me a nice example of a natural language sentence, which I use in my current book: “Buckets raise all kinds of questions.” You never know where inspiration will come from.

In the end, humor and logic are both fun in their own ways. Combining them has been a great chance to laugh while working on serious philosophical topics.

IIG: Humor is often viewed as a tool for diffusing tension or fostering inclusivity. How do you think the Scholastic understanding of humor as a mean between extremes could inform contemporary ethical debates about humor, such as its role in addressing sensitive or controversial topics?

BFS: Humor, as Aristotle points out, is all about balance. It’s a virtue that lies between two extremes: on one side, you’ve got the bomolochos, who jokes recklessly and doesn’t care about the harm they might cause. On the other side, you’ve got the person who never jokes, who’s perpetually annoyed when others do—basically, a buzzkill. The ideal is what Aristotle calls eutrapelia, or ready wit: the ability to joke in a way that’s lighthearted and pleasing without crossing the line.

This idea feels especially relevant today, but there’s a key difference between us and the medievals: the Scholastics lived in a much more oral culture. Most of their humor would presumably have been delivered face-to-face, where tone and intent were easier to pick up on. If a joke landed, you’d know it from the immediate feedback—that is, ideally, laughter. And if a joke didn’t land—dead silence—, you could adjust in real time, maybe throw in a self-deprecating remark to smooth things over.

Contrast that with our world, which is so much more text-driven. Articles, emails, tweets, social media posts—it’s all so stripped of context and tone. A joke in an email can come off as rude or dismissive, even if you didn’t mean it that way. Honestly, I think that’s why emojis are so important and ubiquitous: they’re an attempt to fill in the tonal gaps. A well-placed “🙂” in an academic email? Lifesaver. Without it, a brief reply like “That’s fine” might sound passive-aggressive. With it? Suddenly, it’s more friendly. (I actually published something on this a few years back, in connection with teaching online).

This disconnect makes navigating sensitive topics especially tricky. Humor relies on trust—you have to believe the person joking with you isn’t trying to hurt you. That’s one thing that makes comedians so impressive: they walk into a room full of strangers and immediately earn that trust. But in a world where so much communication happens through text, it’s harder to establish that trust. The Scholastics had it easier—they joked in person, in front of live audiences.

So if we’re talking about how the Scholastics’ understanding of humor might inform modern ethical debates, I’d say their biggest piece of advice would be this: most joking should be done in person. It’s not that written jokes are impossible—it’s just that they’re much riskier. You lose so much of the pragmatics—tone, expression, context—that humor becomes harder to navigate. But when done well, humor can still foster connection, even in delicate situations. As Aristotle says, humor shows that you don’t have a one-track mind. It’s a way of being versatile, engaging, and approachable. It’s also a way of showing goodwill to your audience—whether that’s a classroom, a conference room, a quodlibet, or just a group of friends. The key, as always, is balance: joke enough to connect, but not so much (and on such topics) that you risk offending.

IIG: Humor can sometimes be seen as trivializing serious matters. How do you navigate the balance between using humor to illuminate philosophical ideas without undermining their gravity?

BFS: That’s a great question, and it’s a tricky one. Humor can easily feel like it’s undermining a serious topic, but I think the key is demarcation. It’s about drawing clear lines between when you’re being playful and when you’re being serious.

For example, the Talmud gives this great anecdote about Rabbah bar Nahmani, the great teacher of Jewish theology and law. At the outset of his class, he’d tell a joke to cheer up the room. Then he’d “sit in trepidation” and begin the serious work. There’s wisdom in that: the joke gives way to a shift in tone, as if to say, “Okay, we’ve started with something light, but now it’s time to get down to business.” I think Thomas Aquinas does something similar in his Summa Theologiae. He starts with some very serious objections to the existence of God, only to humorously dispel the tension with the ultimate authority—God Himself, speaking from the burning bush: “I am that I am.” It’s like Aquinas is giving us a little wink in the sed contra, before diving into the deep and serious philosophical arguments.

A lot of Scholastic humor works this way. The jokes often show up in the objections, or anyway before the main discussion. The objections are going to be defeated anyway, so they’re a safe place to play around a bit. It’s like a footnote in contemporary philosophy: you don’t expect the punchline to derail the main argument, so it’s a good spot for some levity.

But there’s definitely a fine line, right? Not every joke is refined or constructive. Humor, when done well, is as Aristotle says cultured insolence: it’s playful but informed, refined in that it is selective of its object, and generally respectful, in that it engages with the subject matter rather than dismissing it. A big problem comes when humor lacks that kind of engagement—when it’s just a cheap shot, unacceptably insensitive, or a parody that doesn’t really sympathize with or understand its target at all. At that point, it’s no longer witty; it’s just lazy or mean-spirited.

Ultimately, I think humor in philosophy works best when it’s used to illuminate, not to obscure. A good joke can make a serious topic more accessible, but it has to respect the gravity of the subject. And of course, some topics are just better suited to humor than others. You have to joke in the right way, about the right sort of things, and at the right times.

IIG: The article suggests that humor was more integral to the culture of medieval universities than we might imagine. Do you think the modern academic environment could benefit from a similar embrace of humor?

BFS: I think the answer is both “yes” and “we already do.” Humor absolutely has a place in the modern academic environment, particularly in its more oral context—teaching, classroom discussions, conference talks. These are places where humor already thrives to some extent, though, of course, it should always be in moderation, as Aristotle would remind us.

That said, it’s definitely harder to use humor effectively in written academic work. As we touched on earlier, tone is just so difficult to convey in text. Imagine submitting a journal article with a crying-laughing emoji (“😂”) in a footnote to clarify that what’s intended is a joke. It’s funny to think about, but I’m pretty sure it would get shot down by reviewers faster than you could say eutrapelia.

The problem is that in writing, jokes lose a lot of the immediacy and feedback you get in person. In a live setting, you can see your audience’s reactions. If they laugh, great! If they don’t, you can adjust, maybe even poke fun at yourself to recover. In text, once it’s out there, it’s out of your hands. Your readers might laugh, or they might misinterpret the tone entirely—and, well, good luck explaining it after the fact.

And in fact I think this highlights a critical component of humor: establishing common ground. Your audience has to share at least a minimum in common—which is also why, as I get older, I have for example abandoned cultural references altogether. (I did this after finding out in one of my classes that over half the students had never seen an episode of the Simpsons, and so didn’t get my reference to the opening credits—Maggie and Marge turning their steering wheels in synch—as an example of different direction of fit).

But there are still plenty of safe and shared subjects we can laugh about together. For example, when I was an undergrad, one of my professors started his first lecture every semester by complaining about the absurd state of the classroom. He’d point out a burnt-out lightbulb, the random projector sitting in the middle of the floor, and the upside-down chairs. (“What a mess! This is a disaster! How can they put us in here?”). It was hilarious and harmless—it didn’t offend anyone, and it got us all on the same page right away.

Of course, the key to successful humor in academia is knowing your audience. You never ever make jokes at your students’ expense; jokes should bring everyone together. Humor should be inclusive and disarming, not divisive. And, again thinking about this in terms of the mean: there is a cost to refusing to ever be humorous at all, under any circumstance.

So, to answer your question, yes, the modern academic environment could embrace humor more—but I also think it already does, in its own way. We may not have the same raucous oral culture of the medieval universities, but we still find ways to inject humor into teaching, discussions, and even the occasional conference talk. The difference now is that we have to be a bit more careful, which isn’t a bad thing—it just means we’re paying attention to our audiences. And hey, if that means leaving the crying-laughing emoji out of our footnotes, so be it.

IIG: John Buridan’s ironic objections and Bonaventure’s quip about chastity highlight the playfulness in Scholastic texts. Do you think these moments of humor were intended to be universally understood, or were they aimed at a more specialized audience?

BFS: I think the answer is a little nuanced because humor operates on different levels depending on the audience. Let’s start with something universal—imagine Charlie Chaplin falling down the stairs, or in some ludicrous predicament, like clinging for dear life to the hands of a tower clock. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what language you speak; there’s a fair chance you’ll find that funny. (And in fact, the films themselves are silent!). And there’s a similar kind of universality in some Scholastic humor.

Take John Buridan, for instance. He gives us this thought experiment: you’re at a bridge, and Plato declares, “If you say something true, you may pass. If you say something false, I’ll throw you off.” Socrates then cleverly responds, “You’ll throw me off the bridge,” springing this perfect logical trap. But even just the setup is slapstick and ludicrous. It’s the kind of humor that works even if you don’t have a PhD in philosophy—straightforward and goofy.

But not all Scholastic humor is so universally accessible. Take Bonaventure’s quip about clerical celibacy and the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. He jokes that if virtue lies in moderation, then the mean between no sex and too much sex must logically be, well, having sex with half the women in the world. Now, to find that funny, you really need to know your Aristotle. You need to understand the doctrine of the mean, the theological debates about celibacy, and the ethical tensions they were grappling with. Without that context, the humor doesn’t land—it’s like being the only person at the party who hasn’t seen the movie everyone’s quoting.

This contrast really shows that Scholastic humor comes in degrees. Some jokes, like Buridan’s ones just mentioned, are pretty universal, while others, like Bonaventure’s, require a specialized audience with a fair bit of background knowledge.

So, to answer your question, I think the humor in Scholastic texts was often intended to resonate most with those in the know, the insiders of the intellectual world. But even then, they sprinkled in some more universal humor that could make anyone chuckle, even if they weren’t deeply immersed in medieval philosophy. In short, the cultured in cultured insolence comes in degrees.

IIG: Do you remember when Jorge de Burgos in The Name of the Rose poisons Aristotle’s Comedy because laughter is a way to invite the devil in? I thought of this when you mentioned examples where humor might have been “excised” from translations of medieval texts. Do you think these editorial decisions were motivated by a similar reasoning?

BFS: Oh, absolutely. I think The Name of the Rose captures something very real about the tension surrounding humor in medieval thought. The act of poisoning Aristotle’s Comedy because laughter lets the Devil in dramatizes an actual divide in medieval intellectual culture, rooted in two competing traditions.

On one hand, you have the Aristotelian stream, which generally celebrates humor as a social virtue—a kind of intellectual quickness that keeps things lively. Aristotle even claims in the Rhetoric that humor is especially appealing to younger audiences, which makes sense if you think about the medieval university in context. Professors collected tuition directly from their students; and many arts masters would have been about the same age as undergraduates today. If humor could help attract and retain their audience, they’d have every incentive to use it. So there would probably have been a good deal of what would look like stand-up comedy, albeit in medieval Latin (if you can imagine such a thing).

On the other hand, there’s the patristic tradition, which takes a much dimmer view of humor. This perspective likely traces back to Plato, who, in the Republic and Philebus, is pretty suspicious of laughter and its potential for chaos. This more negative attitude carried through into Christian monasticism, where laughter was sometimes treated as an unacceptable disruption or even a sin. There’s even an example where having a coughing fit during the liturgy was punished just as severely as an outburst of laughter—because, let’s be honest, most “coughing fits” were probably just people covering up their giggles. So this tension between humor as a virtue and humor as a vice played out across medieval thought and practice. (And this is to say nothing of the literary humor of Boccacio, Chaucer, and Rabelais!)

What’s fascinating is how this divide impacted the philosophical texts themselves. Humor wasn’t always preserved in the final written versions of medieval works. A lot of it may well have been left out, at least partly because it didn’t fit the gravitas people expected from intellectual writings. In some cases, though, humor was probably edited out intentionally—I have found an apparent case, though in a modern translation. This brings us back to Jorge de Burgos: there was a real fear that humor might undermine the seriousness and sincerity of a text or a lesson.

But for all that, humor persisted. Medieval intellectual life wasn’t just dry debates about abstruse topics—it could be surprisingly rowdy. We have for example student songs from the period joking about drinking, discussions—in connection with Aristotle’s Politics—about what to do when everyone in the party has paid but there are drinks still unaccounted for, stories of fistfights and brawls (with teachers and administration sometimes also taking part), and even dining hall rules against throwing food. And in that raucous context, John Buridan’s slapstick examples or Bonaventure’s ironic quip show that even serious scholars could enjoy a good laugh.

But yes, I do think editorial decisions to remove humor from philosophical discussions have been sometimes motivated by this fear of trivializing the sacred or the serious. But on the flip side, the Aristotelian tradition, combined with the sheer practical necessity of keeping students engaged, ensured that humor survived and even thrived—at least in oral culture. And happily, some of that lives on today in the texts that have been handed down to us.