Learning Philosophy Through Humor

If you want to get an overview of major themes in Philosophy and giggle quite a bit at the same time, this is your book.  Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein received Philosophy degrees from Harvard, then "pursued the usual careers" afterward: working with street gangs, designing gags for Candid Camera, that kind of thing.  However lucrative those jobs may have been, the authors have made a considerable contribution to the general understanding of philosophy through Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar... 

Each chapter uses jokes and cartoons to illustrate particular philosophical questions in areas such as ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.  The book opens with my favorite philosophical/astronomical joke: What holds up the world?  A turtle.  What does the turtle stand on?  Another turtle.  And what does that turtle stand on?  It's turtles all the way down, of course!  (Okay, it might not be a knee-slapper, but just try to imagine it!)  Cathcart and Klein go on to explain that this particular joke relates to the philosophical idea of infinite regress, an aspect of the discussion regarding a First Cause (for the universe, time and space, etc.).  Of course, a sense of humor is necessary to receive the maximum benefit from this book, especially the Philosophy of Religion chapter.  The approach is certainly irreverent, but the point of philosophy is to ask questions about what we believe and how it is that we can believe what we decide on, if we actually reach that point.

The jokes provide the authors a common reference to work from for each philosophical idea, almost like a case study, and propel the discussion of what could be rather esoteric subjects, like stoicism, forward.  (The one about the dentist and his "stoic" patient is priceless!)  Since many jokes are necessarily ironic, the section on the nature of irony provides some of the best.  Between the giggle and guffaws, Cathcart and Klein provide succinct descriptions of philosophers' contributions to the problems of existence, justice, and how we express ourselves.  Similarities in Eastern and Western philosophy are demonstrated through discussing such notions as Shopenhauer's relationship to Buddhism, which comes down to a question of resignation or release.  It's a simple concept with significant room for meditation, or may just be semantic.  Whether you're in it for the serious analysis or just the funny bits, this book will give you what you want, along with much we all need.