Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates
Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Featuring Freud! Groucho Marx! Socrates! Lily Tomlin! Kierkegaard! Buddha! New Yorker cartoonists! Zombies! And of course, Heidegger!
Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart first made a name for themselves with the outrageously funny New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. Now they turn their attention to the Big D and share the timeless wisdom of the great philosophers, theologians, psychotherapists and wiseguys.
From angels to zombies and everything in between, Klein and Cathcart offer a fearless and irreverent history of how we approach death, why we embrace life, and whether there really is a hereafter.
As hilarious as it is enlightening, Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates is a must-read for anyone and everyone who ever expects to die.
Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart have known each other since they were philosophy students at Harvard. They have written several bestsellers together, including Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar and Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington. Danny’s other books include Travels with Epicurus and Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life They Change It. Tom is the author of The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Did you know that Heidegger's notion of living in the shadow of death has its most profound articulation in a country and western song by Tim McGraw? Or what Law and Order has in common with theologian Paul Tillich's view of eternity? Such are the nuggets of wisdom found in this smart and lighthearted consideration of the philosophical dimensions of death. Cathcart and Klein (coauthors of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar) take readers on a whirlwind tour of anthropological, philosophical and theological theories of why and how we avoid accepting our own mortality. The authors demonstrate how humor allows us to express our fears about death "while defusing anxiety." Succinct accounts of Kierkegaard's notion of embracing angst, Schopenhauer's notion of undying will and Descartes on mind-body dualism are thus all peppered by comic asides (Leibnitz "maintained that Mind and Matter don't actually get into each others knickers"). This little book is an entertaining and surprisingly informative survey of the "Big D" and its centrality in human life. .
