PUFF [BUT NOT THE MAGIC DRAGON]

On the theory that one scratched back deserves another, I hereby post the blurb of a new e-book written [or assembled] by fellow philosopher Gerald Dworkin.  I have looked at a selection of the contents, and they are great fun.

"This commonplace book (a book in which extracts are organised for personal use), compiled by Gerald Dworkin, collects aphorisms, jests, put-downs, jokes, epigrams, apercus, and longer (but shortish) reflections, definitions, meta-philosophical observations, insights and words of wisdom from, and about, philosophy and philosophers. Such collections of other people's writings were very common in the 17th century and were notebooks in which writers and scholars accumulated material for future reference and for re-reading.

It contains extracts, comments and jokes from philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hume, Dewey, Russell, Kant, Leibniz, Rousseau, as well as from contemporary thinkers such as Jerry Fodor, Thomas Nagel, Richard Rorty, Gerald Dworkin, and many others. It also contains remarks from novelists, playwrights, poets, and comedians such as Woody Allen, Oscar Wilde, Graham Greene, Chesterton, Brecht and Stoppard.

It may not be completely correct that, as Wittgenstein said, a serious and good philosophy book could be written entirely consisting of jokes, but for me any piece of philosophy writing is more attractive when laced with wit and humour. 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.

Philosophy: A Commonplace Book is intended to provide amusement as well as enlightenment about Philosophy in general and Morality in particular."