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Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

By Daniel Klein, Thomas Cathcart

(41)

| Hardcover | 9780810914933

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Book Description

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 haContinue

Critics

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . By Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

I was lured in by the title, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . ., then totally delighted with what I heard. Authors Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein have done the undoable and amazing: They've explicated the major concepts, schools and questio ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Mon, 13 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

This is one of those books that I wanted to really like, but I liked the concept of it better than the execution of that concept. It sounds great: use jokes to relate and introduce different concepts in philosophy to readers who probably don’t have a background in the subject matter. But the entire ... (continue)

This is one of those books that I wanted to really like, but I liked the concept of it better than the execution of that concept. It sounds great: use jokes to relate and introduce different concepts in philosophy to readers who probably don’t have a background in the subject matter. But the entire book follows this same layout:
1. Introduce complex philosophical theory in short paragraph or two
2. Joke
3. A few lines or short paragraph tying the joke to complex philosophical theory
4. Joke 2
5. A couple more lines concluding the discussion on complex philosophical theory
And that’s it. Sometimes there’s a third joke, but few topics get more than a couple pages. You don’t come to an understanding (as the book’s subtitle suggests) about philosophy because nothing is explored at a length that makes understanding possible. It’s not a crash course in philosophy. It isn’t even as fleshed out as Cliffs Notes. There are quite a few laughs sprinkled throughout the book, but I don’t know that I’ll recall any of it after a week. Still, it’s a light and easy read, and while I did enjoy most of it the book doesn’t amount to much. I wanted more. Much much more.

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Cuzzin Todd said on Jan 13, 2008 | Add your feedback

Never knew that there's so much philosophy in jokes. But then again, one needs wisdom to understand jokes, and philosophy is literally "love of wisdom", so philosophy and jokes are the perfect couple.

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Holmes said on Jul 28, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Read the first two chapters this afternoon--a fun book. The authors use jokes to elucidate the meaning of certain philosophical movements and ideas. Entertaining.

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Greg Hyde, S.J. said on Mar 8, 2009 | Add your feedback

Now that's a philosophical class /bar I would love to walk into!

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Angel-a said on Nov 24, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

This book will give you a crash course of what philosophy is all what; and complete with jokes.

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Yun said on Aug 30, 2007 | Add your feedback