OL12794012W Origin-contact Origin-note Physical items are owned or controlled by and digitized by Internet Archive Origin-organization Internet Archive Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 92.11 Pages 232 Ppi 500 Related-external-id urn:isbn:1613120354 Urn:lcp:platoandplatypus00cath:epub:dd7e6e97-12ff-4718-b64d-88578dff7a27 Extramarc The Indiana University Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Homepage This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Urn:lcp:platoandplatypus00cath:lcpdf:29404e30-adc5-438b-b235-53d1f7143557 Plato And A Platypus Walk Into A Bar 10 NIGHTS IN A BAR-ROOM & WHAT - This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. He was fond of my all-time favorite quotation about philosophy (attributed to Feigl): "Philosophy is the disease for which it ought to be the cure." This book is a cure.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 17:34:09 Boxid IA173201 Boxid_2 BL11203T Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York External-identifier And it wasn't even that funny.My father taught philosophy for 35 years. By the time I got to the end and tried to read one of the stories aloud to my husband, I could hardly get the words out between gasps and tears. It was good for a change just to go ahead and laugh. My daytime sofa read is currently a very serious history of postwar Japan, and my bedtime novel is Adam Bede (1859), full of George Eliot's gently but deftly ironic observations on human nature, but nonetheless with a plot revolving around some deep and earnest characters who don't seem to see much humor in things. Instead I read the timeline of the history of philosophy, which set me off all over again.I picked up this small orange-covered volume on a whim a few days ago, and it proved a nice break from far heavier stuff. Resisting my native compulsions, I went on past it without completing the assignment. Their approach is unabashedly entertaining, and I wish I'd had this light-hearted treatment on hand when I was a philosophy student but it also rests on a very sound premise for which I've always had immense respect, namely, the efficacy of humor as a vehicle for truth: something cartoonists and satirists know very well.Watch out, though: there are pop quizzes along the way and a three-point exam at the end. It's their gift to be able to encapsulate the chief ideas of several branches of philosophy-metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, and so on-and convey their essential qualities through jokes. But I loved this little book.What that cow story has to do with existentialism may not be immediately apparent, but the authors will make it clear. There's a lot of supposed comedy that I just don't care for at all. People's senses of humor are pretty idiosyncratic, after all. If you're giggling too, then you and I have something in common.If you think it's just dumb, well, never mind. But this silly two-liner on page 120 just struck me as hilarious. "I'm a helicopter."There's humor in much of what I read, but it's usually of the cerebral variety, mild irony or absurdity, witty turns of phrase, that sort of thing even Harry Dresden's wisecracks aren't usually laugh-out-loud funny. One says to the other, "What do you think about this mad cow disease?""What do I care?" says the other. Extended review:Do you think this is funny? Two cows are standing in a field. Six-word review: Wisdom is a fool in motley.
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