Questions beget questions, and those questions beget another whole generation of questions. We may start with basic ones like, "What is the meaning of it all?" and, "Does God exist?" and, "How can I be true to myself?" and, "Am I in the wrong classroom?" but very quickly we discover we need to ask other questions in order to answer our original questions. This process has given rise to an array of philosophical disciplines, each delving into particular Big Questions by asking and attempting to answer the questions that underlie them.
What's so neat is that a whole bunch of jokes just happen to occupy the identical conceptual territory as these disciplines. Pure chance? Or is there an Intelligent Designer after all?
Although I have, in my time, taken actual philosophy courses from actual philosophy professors, I feel like I've learned more about Deep Thoughts from Terry Pratchett and my tax law professor. Terry Pratchett, because, well, duh, and the later mostly because I find the ramifications and implications of taxation absolutely fascinating. That's not a joke, by the way, and I'm not embarrassed about it. Booyah.
Luckily, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is more Feet of Clay than On the Social Contract, so I had a lot of fun reading it. The book is thin, and broken up into ten short chapters, which are then broken further by small topics and interspersed with jokes. Plato also won me over very early on by telling this joke, which I heard for the first time about a month ago and have been enamoured of ever since:
S: If Atlas holds up the world, what holds up Atlas?
D: Atlas stands on the back of a turtle.
S: But what does the turtle stand on?
D: Another turtle.
S: But what does that turtle stand on?
D: My dear, it's turtles all the way down!
I mean, "it's turtles all the way down" ranks right up there with my other favorite enigmatic, turtle-related phrase, from Stephen King's It: "The Turtle couldn't help us," which is where I'm stopping, both because I could go on for awhile, and also because every time I try to type out the word turtle, I misspell it.
It's a good format for talking about heavy stuff, although I did lie down on the couch for about 40 minutes in the middle of reading it, because I was struggling with "Logic". Oh, logic, why must you always defeat me? Anyway, you can't judge me until you read the section on the heterological paradox. AND THEN EXPLAIN IT TO ME, BECAUSE I STILL DON'T GET IT. I mean, I get the joke, about the barber, but the concept itself is kinda painful. For those of you who, for one reason or another, refuse to pick up the book yourself to see, the heterological problem is summarized as follows:
- A word that refers to (describes?) itself is autological. zB: Short. Polysyllabic. Seventeen-lettered.
- A word that doesn't refer to itself is heterological, i.e., monosyllabic, long, bonkers.
- If the word 'heterological' is autological, then it's heterological. If the word 'heterological' is heterological, then it's autological.
I mean, I kinda get it, but only in a really awkward way. Hence, the nap. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the barber version is: "I cut the hair of everyone who doesn't cut their own hair. Do I cut my own hair?"
But Plato manages to make this kind of strenuous concept (paradoxes make me anxious) palatable, and squishes a bunch of other highfalutin' talk in as well. In some ways, I wanted there to be more of certain topics, since this is necessarily a shallow dip in the philosophical pool. I don't have a ton of knowledge about a lot of philosophy (although most of the jokes were familiar, which I guess is good?) so it's hard to judge the quality of the discussion on those topics, but the two areas in which I have the most experience and knowledge (feminism and jurisprudence, both in the "Social and Political Philosophy" chapter) were treated pretty fairly, even if I could have wished that feminism had a higher ratio of explanation-to-jokes than it does.
I also found some things out about myself, such as the fact that I would be a really terrible philosopher, unless there is a philosophy for Detailists, who ignore the big picture because they're hung up on a joke about Mormons in Ireland. And for your information, there are Mormons in Ireland. I had to look it up because I was offended that the joke would place a Mormon in Ireland rather than Utah, because, like turtles, I prefer my stereotypes to go all the way down.
I am also clearly more of the Eastern philosophical persuasion rather than the Western. Though Cathcart and Klein do not spend a whole lot of time on the various Eastern philosophies (a ratio of . . . ennh, 90:10?) I did enjoy what I read about Zen Buddhism, which involves koans, questions like, what is the sound of one hand clapping? Which is meant to (as I understood it) briefly disrupt your thinking and upheave your world before you settle back down. I can totally get behind that. Getting my mind blown is one of my favorite feelings in the whole world. And whereas I amply demonstrated above that sustained philosophical thinking compels me to lie down and nap until it wears off, short sharp bursts of enlightenment are perfect.
All in all, I really liked this book: it doesn't pretend to much other than what it is, which is a basic philosophy primer, with jokes. I certainly felt smarter after I read it, which is always pleasant. One caution though - it may mislead you into thinking that since you enjoyed this book, studying philosophy is something you might enjoy, to which I want to reply that philosophy classes are the worst, and they really only serve to make you absolutely hate everyone who doesn't agree with you, including Rousseau, that wily fucker.
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