Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar… has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors—and born vaudevillians—Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar… is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism (What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?) to Logic (Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to read—and finally, it all makes sense! Source
This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they’d had in school.
This is how this book is described, which has indeed become a bestseller after its publication 20 years ago. I certainly never had a proper philosophy class in school, which might have kept me from enjoying this book fully. Nevertheless, my boyfriend studied philosophy and… also didn’t like the concept of this book. So, I am very confused about where this book would have found its target group. Don’t get me wrong, I was familiar with quite some of the concepts, but the jokes rarely underlined or supported my understanding of them. Instead, they seemed at times random… or maybe just to high for me. Once I felt like grasping an idea, we were already moving on to the next concept or philosopher who had something to say about it.
Short and not extensive in its content
I certainly hoped for some more depth at a lot of places within this book. The chapters and concepts were quite well chosen, but the engagement with them was more like brushing over what could be interesting. The whole book reads like an introduction to philosophy at large, allowing readers to maybe get interested in one or another concept and then keep reading up on it after finishing this book. Otherwise, it might be a good read to be able to recognize some concepts or big names, but deeper engagement with them was missing. The jokes mostly broke through the investigation of a philosophical standpoint before we moved on with the next. More than informative, I felt like the authors tried to be forcefully funny.
In conclusion,
I felt like I was picking up on some already familiar concepts and names again but not like I will remember any of them in the long term. The same is unfortunately true for the jokes. I mostly will remember those I knew before, while this book did not increase or improve my understanding of what I couldn’t grasp beforehand either. Maybe this book is more fun for people deep into philosophy… but I doubt it.
The authors:
Tom Cathcart spent most of his career in health care, including directing a boarding home for people with HIV/AIDS in Portland, Maine. His old college pal, Danny Klein, enlisted him as co-author of a book about how jokes can illuminate philosophical ideas. To their shock, after being rejected by 40 publishers, „Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar“ became an international bestseller. Three more joint books followed. In the meantime, Cathcart published two solo books, „The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge?“ and „There is No God, and Mary Is His Mother,“ a serious exploration of „religionless Christianity.“ Tom is married to Eloise Balasco Cathcart, who coordinates the graduate program in nursing administration at NYU. His daughter Esther is a mental health worker in western Massachusetts. Source