We aren't naming any names, but we do know this one guy-we'll call him Reggie-who chose to be a doormat.) But we could also choose to be something else: for example, a hippie or a tax lawyer. (You may be wondering why anyone would choose to be an ashtray. Of course, we could hold ashes and butts too, but for us it would be a choice-the choice to be a human ashtray. Sartre says we humans, unlike things, have no 'predetermined essence.' There is no objective meaning to our lives, as there is to, say, an ashtray, which has a given reason to exist, namely, to hold ashes and butts. The twentieth-century existentialists-especially Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett-concluded that not only is life meaningless, it's absurd. Good question, although there is something unseemly about being called 'bozo' by an analytic philosopher. 'Hey, what is the meaning of 'meaning,' bozo?' they ask. Of course, in modern times, many analytic philosophers find the whole meaning-of-life question pretty silly. If there is no answer to this one, then asking any other philosophical questions seems kind of pointless.

The question of the meaning of life is generally considered the biggest of the big philosophical questions. In this cartoon, the prolific comedy writer and cartoonist Paul Noth pictures a God who not only embraces twentieth-century existentialism's absurdist point of view, he hopes to wring a few laughs out of it. There is nothing in the cosmos that gives us more pleasure than a cartoon that hits a philosophical idea right on the head. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Packed with dozens of witty cartoons and loaded with profound philosophical insight, I Think, Therefore I Draw will delight readers and leave them enlightened. and Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates have been a favorite of philosophers and non-philosophers alike for years. And since they explain with the help of a selection of some of the smartest cartoonists working today, you'll breeze through these weighty topics as you guffaw and slap your knee.Ĭathcart and Klein's Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. Covering topics as diverse as religion, gender, knowledge, morality, and the meaning of life (or the lack thereof), I Think, Therefore I Draw gives a thorough introduction to all of the major debates in philosophy through history and the present.

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klien have been thinking deep thoughts and writing jokes for decades, and now they are here to help us understand Philosophy through cartoons, and cartoons through Philosophy. A hilarious new exploration of philosophy through cartoons from the duo who brought you the New York Times bestselling Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar.

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