Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar – Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Penguin paperback Cover
Author	Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
Cover artist	Paul Buckley
Genre	Comedy
Publisher	Abrams Image (hardcover) Penguin Group (paperback)
Publication date	May 1, 2007
Publication place	United States
Pages	208
ISBN	978-0-8109-1493-3
OCLC	71312724
Dewey Decimal	102/.07 22
LC Class	BD31 .C38 2006

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar – Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes is a 2007 book by Thomas Wilson Cathcart and Daniel Martin Klein that explains several philosophical concepts with the help of jokes that serve to illustrate the points in the book.

The concept behind the book in the Introduction: "The construction and payoff of jokes and the construction and payoff of philosophical concepts are made out of the same stuff. They tease the mind in the same ways…philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life. What the philosopher calls an insight, the gagster calls a zinger."^[1]