Earlier this summer, I was a prisoner of summer school. One class was fun (Film), the other, not so fun (Politics). I literally would stay up all night compiling notes on Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Hobbes, etc. (Seriously, you name the theorist, I’ve read it.)
One day, after a brain melt down, a friend of mine, my sister and myself went to Borders to relax. (We do that.) My brain was in desperate need for something else to read (A book that didn’t contain the words, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.) and my sister notices a book she thought I’d enjoy purely because the title had the word platypus. (I love odd animals!)
The book is titled: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar… This is seriously one of the best books I’ve read in a while. For anyone who is interested in philosophy and its theories, it explains everything through jokes. There wasn’t a joke I didn’t laugh at in the book. It covers all ares of philosophy: metaphysics, logic, ethics, language, religion, basically, anything you can think of! (It was refreshing reading Machiavellian theories with a couple of jokes thrown in.)
I feel this is an interesting way to learn. I did a little digging to understand why the authors chose to teach this way. (Well, not a lot of digging, I just went to their website.) This how they explain it:
“The construction and payoff of jokes and the construction and payoff of philosophical concepts are made out of the same stuff. They tease the mind in the same ways…philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life. What the philosopher calls an insight, the gagster calls a zinger.”
Even if you don’t like philosophy, pick up the book because you can at least learn a couple of good jokes to tell your friends. I’m currently reading Aristotle and an Aardvark go to Washington… (another book written by these fabulous authors!) and I can’t put it down! I’ll tell you all about it when I’m done!
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