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Philosophy: A Commonplace Book, Vol. II
This is a companion volume to Gerald Dworkin’s A Commonplace Book, also available for Kindle. Collections of other people’s writings like these were very common in the 17th century and were notebooks in which writers and scholars accumulated material for future reference and for re-reading.
This volume contains extracts, comments and jokes from philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hume, Russell, and Wittgenstein, as well as from contemporary thinkers such as Jerry Fodor, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and many others. It also contains remarks from novelists, playwrights, poets, and comedians such as Steve Martin, Oscar Wilde, Susan Sontag, Lydia Davis, and Edward St. Aubyn.
Dworkin himself has pointed out that it may not be completely correct that, as Wittgenstein said, a serious and good philosophy book could be written entirely consisting of jokes, but that any piece of philosophy writing is more attractive when laced with wit and humor. While every discipline has its jokes – mathematicians, lawyers, economists – philosophers seem particularly prone to wit; perhaps because so much of the writing is critical in nature and hence open to sarcasm, irony, and other forms of intellectual assault.
A Commonplace Book, Volume II is intended to provide amusement as well as enlightenment about Philosophy in general and Morality in particular.
This volume contains extracts, comments and jokes from philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hume, Russell, and Wittgenstein, as well as from contemporary thinkers such as Jerry Fodor, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and many others. It also contains remarks from novelists, playwrights, poets, and comedians such as Steve Martin, Oscar Wilde, Susan Sontag, Lydia Davis, and Edward St. Aubyn.
Dworkin himself has pointed out that it may not be completely correct that, as Wittgenstein said, a serious and good philosophy book could be written entirely consisting of jokes, but that any piece of philosophy writing is more attractive when laced with wit and humor. While every discipline has its jokes – mathematicians, lawyers, economists – philosophers seem particularly prone to wit; perhaps because so much of the writing is critical in nature and hence open to sarcasm, irony, and other forms of intellectual assault.
A Commonplace Book, Volume II is intended to provide amusement as well as enlightenment about Philosophy in general and Morality in particular.
57 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 17, 2017
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