Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between
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 whatLaw and Orderhas 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 ofPlato 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.(Oct).Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.