Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

by Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart

Book Overview

Here?s a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. It?s Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it?s like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081091493X
• ISBN13: 9780810914933
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.3"
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Hilarious

It dose not matter if you are a philos-elitist or just want to understand the basics of philosophy in one book. This book is hilarious, relevant, and dare I say academic?

Entertaining and educational.

"Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar" is highly entertaining, fast read that covers an astonishing range of philosophical issues with an economy of words. The authors manage their brevity by illustrating those issues with very apt stories, anecdotes and jokes. And the humor of their stories, anecdotes and jokes has sufficient range to appeal to a general audience. (If you don't like some of their jokes, don't worry -- they've got a million of 'em.) But wait! The real burning philosophical question you want answered is this: why would you want to read a book about philosophy? I mean, really, this book may be funny but you can get lots of joke books that are funnier and don't make you learn serious stuff (like philosophy, for example). I have just the answer for you. Learning philosophy can help you think better. It can help you understand why you think the way you do and give you options for expanding your possibilities. It can help you understand the ways in which others can influence and manipulate your thinking and how they may get you to believe things that are misleading, untrue, or damaging. It can help you make better judgments. It can help you influence other people's thinking and persuade them to your viewpoint. Learning philosophy can be very handy. On its serious side, "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar" is a good introduction to the main concepts of philosophy. Its entertaining and humorous side makes learning philosophy enjoyable and much easier than a textbook. And, if you are a student, the book may be an excellent companion to your textbook for a required philosophy class. [..]

Funny and Right

I wrote two intro to philosophy texts -- neither as humorous nor as clear as this gem of a book. If I were still teaching college it would be the most enjoyable required reading ever. Say, is that another philosophical contradiction: "mandatory enjoyment"?

MOVE OVER, WOODY ALLEN, HERE'S BOFFOLOSOPHY!

Ok, I admit it, I was one of those flyballs with disheveled hair in college who spewed paragraphs from Sophie's World and felt warm and fuzzy about it. Over the years, sanity would prevail and I'd adjust my diet to include relatively more benign doses of, say, Woody Allen's satire (e.g., Without Feathers, which has among the best essays I have ever read on philosophy, with tongue firmly in cheek). But it is difficult to find a book with which I could perpetuate that passion and inflict it on my Regular Bloke buddies and be assured that it'd actually be read. Well, this peppy little compilation of jokes might just be that perfect gift item. It takes philosophy to task with such flair and gusto that I nearly read it from cover to cover, not like one is supposed to savor a joke book--in sporadic doses, flicking random pages. The jokes are absolutely spot-on, definitely beyond your average "my karma ran over your dogma" variety, and often give a whole new meaning to the term "wisecrack". For instance, a Buddhist walks up to a hot-dog stand and says, "Make me one with everything". He then pays the vendor and asks for change. The vendor says, "change comes from within". This is not the funniest one, mind you, just one of the brief ones that a lazy codger such as myself will take the time to reproduce. But the romp is not merely for laughs. These cracks are organized into streams/schools of philosophies as it were, which means the book also serves as a pretty good primer in philosophy over the years. I'm one of the curious types who will read up everything possible about authors of a book that I like; knowing them adds new dimensions to what I'm reading. Turns out Tom and Daniel do understand a thing or two about philosophy, having majored in philosophy at Harvard and worked in psychedelic careers ever since, including some gigs with Chicago's mafia! Their superlative command of the field shows clearly in the way this book has been arranged. Best of both worlds: content and context. So, is it worth buying? To borrow an aphorism from the book itself, "Depends on what your definition of is is". [Translation: stop reading and get it already! You'll be reading it more than once, perhaps even passing it along.]

delightful, accessible, educational romp

A perfect match! I'm finding it such a joy to see the depth behind jokes and the levity in philosophy. I wish that "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar" had been required reading when I was in school.

A Book to Treasure

This is such a profound and hilarious treasure of a little book that I have ordered several as gifts for family and friends. Because I am long removed from the formal study of philosophy in college, I am grateful to be so smoothly and delightfully reintroduced to philosophical concepts. I intended to read only a brief section (one concept) at a time--each takes no mote than fifteen minutes-- but couldn't keep away for long, and finished the book in a day. Now I've lent my copy to a friend, but I can hardly wait to get it back and read it again. In an early 20h century Webster's, philosophy is defined as "Literally, the love of, inducing the search after, wisdom; in actual usage, the knowledge of phenomena as explained by, and resolved into, causes and reasons, powers and laws." Plato and the Platypus describes the findings of the great philosophers throughout history who have conducted the search after wisdom and taught their explanations of phenomena. And then it illustrates the causes and reasons, the powers and laws, with jokes--good jokes, relevant jokes, jokes that made me laugh aloud even as they stimulated my own search. I don't think I have ever before had such a joyful read. Peggy Smith author, Mark My Words: Instruction and Practice in Proofreading