![]() ![]() I find this all the more surprising because Daniel Klein has written that wise and far from facetious book “Travels with Epicurus” (see my Amazon review). Some of the jokes are very funny, others only mildly so a few are groan-inducing many are bawdy some are shaggy-dog stories quite a few are Jewish.įew philosophers display any sense of humour in their writing, alas - but then, in my opinion, our two gagmeisters here rather overdo the facetiousness. But often their connection with the exposition is more stream-of-consciousness than anything else. Sometimes they do that: particularly apposite are those in the chapter dealing with logical fallacies. The expositions are themselves generally jokey in tone, with some excruciating puns and they are interlarded with lots of jokes which are supposed to illustrate them. That might make it quite a useful little introduction for people who would find other introductions rather too heavy for them. The book outlines a large number of philosophical issues in simple and understandable terms. I recommend this book for its humour and light approach to a very weighty subject – but don’t expect to emerge being able to pass Philosophy 101. He signals, “I am a battleship!” The answer comes back, “I am a lighthouse.” Alter your course twenty degrees now!” The answer comes back, “I am a seaman second class, and I strongly urge you to alter your course twenty degrees.” Now the captain is beside himself with rage. The captain tells him to signal the other vessel, “Advise you change course twenty degrees immediately!” The answer comes back, “Advise you change course twenty degrees immediately!” The captain is furious. The lookout on a battleship spies a light ahead off the starboard bow. “We may attribute relativity to something that is absolute. One of my favourites – to illustrate relativity: The one time it was correctly done, was with “Übermensch” Nietzsche’s Superman) – what does that say?īut, apart from that, I loved the book – so many laugh-out-loud moments, and my husband was heartily sick of me reading out nearly every joke. It is “das Ding an sich” – not “das ding”, and “Einfühlung”. One rather pedantry irritation I have with the book, is its failure to correctly quote most German phrases. This is not a fault of the book – rather my innate ability to immediately purge my mind of any philosophical thought processes (except the ones directly relating to mathematics). I have finished the book, can remember the jokes, but still have almost no idea of which philosopher had which philosophy, or why. I think I understood most of the concepts mentioned and how each of the jokes illuminated the given philosophy. I have never been interested in philosophy, but felt that perhaps I ought to know a little – and this book seemed like the perfect introduction: lots of humour and little effort required. Until reading this book, my entire knowledge of philosophers came from the Monty Python “Philosophers’ Song”. ![]()
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