Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar

Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

11/4/2007

Throughout my educational life I avoided philosophy classes - not intentionally. I just never found time to include them in my schedule. Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar gives me Philosophy 101 with humor. Now I have a better understanding of the field of philosophy. No, I still can't answer those philosophical questions such as "What is the meaning of life?", but have a grasp of what the questioner is asking and how philosophers answer that question.

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein keep their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks throughout Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. Yet the jokes and their own humorous writing makes the study and areas of philosophy understandable to us people who ponder philosophical questions but don't really want to study philosophy.

Their ten chapters study 1) Metaphysics, 2) Logic, 3) Epistemology, 4) Ethics, 5) Philosophy of Religion, 6) Existentialism, 7) Philosophy of Language, 8) Social and Political Philosophy, 9) Relativity, and 10) Meta-Philosophy. Each chapter starts with an amusing byplay between their two alter-egos, Tasso and Dmitri. The book gives brief insights into the thoughts of some of the world's greatest philosophers, such as Kant, Descartes, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Gautama the Budda, Nietzsche, and Marx (both Karl and Groucho). All the different philosophical thoughts can be illustrated through jokes. They are what makes this a readable book that gets its point through to the reader. Those of us who need a bit of assistance (OK, a lot of assistance) understanding the principles of the different philosophical thinking can get good, understandable analogies through the jokes Cathcart and Klein use.

Cathcart and Klein write with a light touch. I like this statement about their field that is found early in Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. "Down through the centuries, much philosophical ink has been spilled over the question of whether human beings are free to decide and act or whether our decisions and actions are determined by external forces: heredity, environment, history, fate, Microsoft." Huh? Microsoft?

You can find more about this book at .

Provided for review