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

Summary

This New York Times bestseller from longtime philosophers and comedians Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein is an entertaining, enlightening, and engaging guide to the love of wisdom.

The great philosopher Aristotle once said, “Humor is the only test of gravity, for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious.” Taking this tenet to task, Cathcart and Klein tackle all the major philosophical perspectives—ancient and postmodern alike—and make them universally accessible through hilarious jokes that cut straight to the core of the principle. Hobbes, for instance, believed that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Why then, the authors ask, did he complain about it being short?

With their combined knowledge, wit, and whimsy, Cathcart and Klein provide a lighthearted philosophical treatise that can be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone—from the curious layman to the most well-versed professor of Nicomachean Ethics.