From the start, I found it to be a delight. The subtitle of the book gives the concept: explaining philosophy through jokes. One day, I was exploring around the philosophy section of the Waterstones flagship store in Piccadilly I spotted it out of the corner of my eye. It’s a book that I had been after for some years, but could never find it for a reasonable price. Just saying 😉.This was my “coffee table” book that I dipped into every now and then, after finishing Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. Also, there are a ton of jokes, about one on each page, and some of them actually made me giggle. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for an intelligent but humorous walk through philosophy. It’s a keeper and a definite re-read for me. Not at all! If you read in in smaller bites it’s even easier to comprehend. before diving into “Plato and a platypus ”. I don’t think you need to know a lot about philosophy or Heidegger/Kierkegaard/etc. But if you’re looking to get a better idea of what everyone is on about, this would be my go-to book.
I wouldn’t call it suitable for writing long essays for university. The format of the book makes it seem like a breeze to run through all the philosophers and their ideas. Not only was it entertaining but it is informative without ever getting boring. It’s been a super fun read and I’m happy I picked it up. Exactly as you’d expect from two philosophy nerds writing about how jokes are philosophy and vice versa. Granted, not all of them made me laugh, but they all had that tongue-in-cheek geeky air around them. I’ve always been terrible at matching up who said what and when.īut here in this little book, is basically everything I had to read about at university! Just explained through very tangible examples that most people actually understand jokes. I did remember some things, but mostly just the names. I thought it looked fun at the time and it can never hurt brushing up on the old philosophers, right?Īs I’ve encountered most of the commonly known philosophies of life through university courses, it wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me. I picked this one up at an airport (I don’t recall which one) because it said “Plato and a platypus ”. That’s really all there is to summarize! Verdict They do it through jokes and fun facts, just like promised. SummaryĬathcart and Klein takes us through all sorts of different branches of philosophy.
As the surtitle on the book-cover states, it’s a book about “understanding philosophy through jokes”. Here is my review of “Plato and a platypus walk into a bar…” by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein.
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