“I laughed, I learned, I loved it.” -Roy Blount, Jr. “The zaniest bestseller of the year.” - The Boston Globe "What happens when you mix corny jokes, one-liners and vaudeville humour with some of life's great lessons? You get an extraordinary read you'll want to share with as many people as possible." - Orlando Sentinel Love art in all its forms." know their stuff, and wear their learnedness lightly, and Plato and a Platypus is a pleasure to read.…I can't help but love this book, and I have been quoting liberally from it" - Philosophy Now Teacher of writing at Heartland Community College. Writer of poetry, novels and short stories. Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they’d had in school. I plan to put it into several Christmas stockings this season. Plato and the Platypus is pure pleasure the type of book you can discuss with friends late into the night over a good bottle of wine. Secretary: “Doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.” The German philosopher Immanual Kant thought that knowledge of the external world could only come through the senses and that we could know nothing about things as they are in themselves (their essence). Here’s another example of the book’s side-splitting, philosophical humor. The joke pokes fun at how we are contradictory in life the Irishman is both a drinker and a non-drinker, alone and together. “No,” says the Irishman, “I joined the church and I can’t drink anymore.” The bartender thinks one of the brothers must have died. Several months later, the Irishman returns to the bar and asks for only two pints. “Oh,” says the Irishman, “these two are for my brothers we promised we’d drink together when we were alone.” The bartender asks why he’s taking one sip from each. To illustrate the Law of Noncontradiction, which says nothing can both be so and not be so at the same time, the authors tell this story….Īn Irishman orders three pints of Guinnes, takes just one sip from each, and then repeats. Think you can’t comprehend metaphysics, logic, existentialism, rationalism think again. Plato and Platypus explores serious human questions in a way that one not only understands them, but also embraces them with humor and intelligibility. The pages are simply a hoot, laugh-out-loud entertainment while also being a crash course in a subject you probably thought your could never fathom. In here too are some of life’s greatest lessons made comprehensible and laughable by two very clever authors. Actually, this non-fiction best seller is really a thought provoking, sophisticated jester of a book with a byproduct: understanding the great thinkers of the world as never before. If you never cared to read a philosophy book, but wondered about the BIG QUESTIONS this is the book for you. And for the second time in my life, I am enjoying philosophy, with humor to boot. But, alas decades later, I hold in my hand, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein, a New York Times bestseller about understanding philosophy through stories and jokes. Trying to grasp the perplexing questions of life like, “Why are we here?” and “What’s it all about?” hardly seemed a subject for humor. analyzed and interpreted by the super thinkers in history like Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Sartre, and Kierkegaard seemed anything but humorous. Metaphysics, logic, rationalism and existentialism etc. Being a Philosophy major in college, I never thought there was anything funny about the subject of philosophy.
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