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

by ThomasCathcart (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2008

  $4.20

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $4.95

  This lively crash course in philosophy takes us on a hilarious - and at the same time, profound - tour through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts and thinkers. All with a light touch. As if being led on an intellectual adventure by a brilliant stand-up comic, the reader experiences light-hearted excursions through this weightiest of disciplines - laughing all the way. A ribald refresher course for those in-the-know or hilarious starter class, this makes Big Ideas a hoot to understand. Topics include: Logic (Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything!), analogies, fallacies, circular arguments, paradoxes Kant's antinomies, Social & Political Philosophy (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were probably nudists!), Philosophy of Religion (a priest and a rabbi are stranded on a desert island...), Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Ethics and Aesthetics (a dog and a cat are sitting in this tree...), Epistemology (how do you know that you know the stuff you know?), Language ( it depends what your definition of is ) and more...