Two characteristics that are highly regarded in this house: critical thinking and a good sense of humor. Who’d have thought they’d be so perfectly melded in a single book?

Plato and Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes was truly one of the most entertaining and enlightening books I’ve read this year. And considering I stick almost exclusively to non-fiction by authors like Michael Shermer and Malcolm Gladwell, it’s not as if I’m comparing this book to the latest and greatest from Danielle Steel (or even Dan Brown).

Philosophy, in any of its incarnations, is not an easy concept to grasp. In my first semester of college, I took a Social Philosophy course, which prompted me to avoid the topic altogether until I read The Fountainhead a few years later. I then read Atlas Shrugged and Anthem, and then moved on to Rand’s non-fiction primer on philosophy, entitled Philosophy: Who Needs It? Her collection of essays helped illuminate the subject much better than my freshman year professor ever did.

Even so, besides being full of multisyllabic words that aren’t easily defined (epistemology? existentialism?) and Latin phrases (a priori? a posteriori?), the abstractness of philosophy makes it difficult to comprehend. Hence, the use of jokes by way of examples is a brilliant means of illustrating philosophical concepts.

Want some examples? Here are a few good jokes instead.

Teleology - “The meaning of life”, a la Aristotle:

Mrs. Goldstein was walking down the street with her two grandchildren. A friend stopped to ask her how old they were.

She replied, “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.”

Utilitarianism - “The end justifies the means”, a la John Stuart Mill:

Mrs. O’Callahan instructed the artist painting her portrait to add to it a gold bracelet on each of her wrists, a strand of pearls around her neck, ruby earrings, and a diamond tiara.

The artist pointed out that would be tantamount to lying.

Said Mrs. O’Callahan, “Look, my husband’s running around with a young blonde. After I die, I want her to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”

Relativity and absolutism - “Self-evident truths”, a la John Locke and Thomas Jefferson:

The lookout on a battleship spies a light ahead off the starboard bow. 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. He signals, “I am a captain. We are on a collision course. 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. He signals, “I am a battleship!”

The answer comes back, “I am a lighthouse.”

While reading Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar will not adequately prepare you for an intellectual debate, it’s likely to spark enough interest in various philosophical concepts that you might check out the works of some of the philosophers highlighted in the book, particularly the more modern ones such as Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir, or especially well-known ones like Machiavelli, Pascal, and Nietzsche.

And if nothing else, some of the Latin phrases “can help you get lucky at a party.” Better than a worn-out cheesy pick-up line, I suppose.