Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

A light introduction to philosophy that explains ideas through jokes, subtitled Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. Cathcart and Klein, who both studied philosophy before going on to other careers, argue that jokes and philosophy share a structure: both set up one way of seeing the world and then overturn it. After an introduction they call "Philogagging", the chapters run through metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, existentialism, philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, relativity and meta-philosophy. Readers meet teleology and essence, fallacies and paradoxes, rationalism, empiricism and scepticism, divine command theory, utilitarianism and Kant, arguments for God, Kierkegaard and Sartre, and the ordinary language school. Each idea gets a short, plain explanation and at least one joke, many of them old vaudeville gags, followed by the point the joke makes. The book ends with a mock final exam and a list of "great moments" in the history of philosophy.

It makes the vocabulary of philosophy easy to remember, and it shows how many arguments turn on the same twists of logic that make a joke work.