Philosophy Humor

Comic novelist and critic Paul McDonald explores the philosophy of humour in a book that will appeal to both philosophers and creative writers alike. There are numerous competing theories of humour and laughter, and the absence of a single theory implies the importance of assessing them all. One aim of this book is to do exactly that. It concentrates mainly on philosophical approaches to humour— including those of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Descartes, Hobbes, Bergson, Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Freud and Bakhtin. But the discussion explores other fields such as cultural studies, ...

Philosophy made fun & unforgettable!! 4+ BONUSES! Philosophy isn’t just something you read — it’s something you do. Debate Truth, Logic, Ethics, Politics, Science, God, Free Will, Happiness, Reality, the Soul & Meaning of Life From Socrates’ questions to Aristotle’s categories, from Epicurus’ garden to Stoic survival skills, you don’t just study philosophy here — you debate, laugh, question, & even quiz yourself along the way. 🏛 Inside You’ll Discover: The Big 3 Greeks—Socrates, Plato & Aristotle explained simply, clearly, & with stories that stick Epicurus, Zeno & ...

A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile, and Thurber Prize Semifinalist We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a...

Pema Chödrön, one of the West's most beloved teachers of Buddhism, makes the Tibetan vajrayana tradition accessible in today's world. Now three of her most popular teachings are available in one boxed set, The Pema Chödrön Collection, which includes: Pure Meditation—Step-by-step...

Now a new series on Peacock with Rainn Wilson, THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS is part travel memoir, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide that takes the viewer across the globe to investigate not what happiness is, but WHERE it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most...

What happens when we can’t joke about some of the most important stuff in life? In a 2019 study, 40% of people reported censoring themselves out of fear that voicing their views would alienate them from the people they care about most. Those people should probably not read this book in public...

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic...

An NPR Best Book of 2022 * One of Christian Science Monitor's 10 best books of May “This amazing new book . . . takes us on a journey through classic and contemporary philosophy powered by questions like ‘What do we have the right to do? When is it okay to do this or that?’ They explore...

The What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic listenership. Already published titles in this series include: literature, salvation, mercy, being Catholic, God, and philosophy.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Laura & Emma comes a The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. for our times: Kate Greathead's razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity, The Book of George. "Baker captures the overarching impact of the audiobook, making this listening...

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026 'The funniest and smartest novel I've read in a while' ZADIE SMITH 'Black Bag made me laugh aloud dozens and dozens of times. It's brilliant, a triumph of a book . . . I loved its inventive originality and its ambition: it is very powerfully worth your time'...

“Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?” - Last words of William Saroyan But there are no exceptions. Now what? James Scott Bell spent a good chunk of 2015 thinking and writing about that. Some famous people died that year. So did others not so famous. It doesn't matter, because each life is a story. And if we look deeply enough they all have something to say. In Some People Are Dead, Bell weaves his musings on the departed into a form of essay combining memoir and reflection, thoughts on how to live and how to die, and an ...

Death arrived on a Tuesday and seemed disappointed to find me already doing most of its work. We tend to think of death as an event waiting at the end of life. But it enters much earlier: through fear that rehearses catastrophe, exhaustion that turns survival into a full-time occupation, anonymous expectations that choose on our behalf, and the habit of abandoning whatever may one day be lost. With Socrates questioning what we pretend to know about death, Heidegger returning mortality to our own possibilities, and Nietzsche demanding that death earn its entrance, How to Die Only Once is a ...

Everyone’s favorite houseguest who never left, Leon Black (played by award-winning comedian JB Smoove on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm) drops his wisdom and good-bad advice for the masses. Learn the secrets Larry David has gleaned from the Falstaff of television. Live your best Leon. Bring the...

This funny, "extraordinary and thought-provoking" (The Wall Street Journal) book asks whether we are in fact the superior species. As it turns out, the truth is stranger—and far more interesting—than we have been led to believe. At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of...

Written in the early 16th century, The Prince remains one of the most influential and controversial works on leadership and political strategy ever created. In this groundbreaking classic, Niccolò Machiavelli strips away idealism and sentimentality to examine power as it truly operates in the real world.

Over 3,500 carefully selected quotations – real pearls of critical human thought – are logically ordered, within each of 260 topical sections, to form a quasi-continuous narrative “thread”, which reads as a virtual discussion of the topic by the wise and the witty. For this third edition, the collection underwent a thorough review. Besides that, the keystone quotes recalled most often are now typeset in boldface, and the narrative’s twists and turns within some longer threads are marked with three-asterisk lines. The book's PDF is available for free download from https://...

Embrace the serene, glorious void. Discover the profound power of doing absolutely nothing. Are you suffering from the chronic, modern condition known as "ambition"? Do you wake up early to conquer a daily to-do list that is longer than your grocery list? It is time to take a deep breath, stop striving, and actively unlearn the cultural obsession with constant progress. In The Book of Why Not, long-time entrepreneur and author Michael Markuson delivers a satirical, deeply funny, and surprisingly therapeutic manual on the art of personal deceleration. This book is a field-tested blueprint ...

This book is a collection of several months of written meditations concerning the conditions over which the author has no control, the few phenomena that author can control, and sporadic rumination about the author’s bouts of confusion, alienation, and a gradual, meandering progress toward something vaguely like equanimity (or at least something vaguely less like despair).

We live in a universe of endless potential futures. In this collection of stories, characters confront the unique dilemmas posed by the version of the future they inhabit. They struggle with dangerous technology, mysterious alien entities, gods, artificial intelligence, utopias, dystopias, and life itself. General issue science fiction stuff, in other words.