I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons by Thomas Cathcart

I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons Reviews

• 
  Indy

  Philosophy always seems like a big subject to me, especially when it's written in a second language. However, this book enables me to understand basics of philosophy with modern cartoons. For each piece of cartoon, there is a simple philosophical issue or question involved. Author then uses his witty narration to describe what is portrayed in the cartoon, followed by a right to point elaboration of the philosophical theory. At the end of the book, there is a collection of short biographies of various dominant philosophers in time, giving you a simple crash course on philosophy.
  
  I sincerely adore this book as it approaches a big topic with fun and easy to understand method.
• 
  Mehwish Mughal

  Very refreshing and entertaining.
  Who knew Metaphilosophy was a thing!
• 
  Alexander Keysor

  While it may not delve too in-depth into philosophy, it’s oddly comforting to have topics that are generally so depressing discussed in a light and humorous fashion.
• 
  Monique

  3.5
  Contrary to expectations, this book shows a cartoon and goes on to explain the cartoon itself using philosophy and not the other way around. So I didn’t find it useful in a philosophical sense to actually learn and connect more concepts. I wanted to use the book to complement some philosophy classes I teach but was unable to because although it’s a light and funny read, it does require some background otherwise the jokes won’t make sense to a beginner.
  
  Overall, good for entertainment and general knowledge, did make me laugh a few times :). 3.5 stars.
• 
  Cristina

  Great compilation of cartoons and the philosophical stories behind them. Each one of the drawings hits you first with their comical side and afterwards it takes you into their deep waters.
  Loved it.
• 
  Dan

  This was a fun, short, easy read. Some of the philosophical points were a bit dry to read through, but overall I found more to like than dislike. It is a very accessible entry into some philosophical ideas that I may be looking more into from other sources.
• 
  Karen Carlson

  It’s cute, it’s funny, it’s a nice little Philosophy’s Greatest Hits in a Nutshell book. But it’s like candy: fun to eat, but not much nutrition. Maybe I’m just an old grump.
  
  FMI see my
  blog post at A Just Recompense.
• 
  Ambrose Miles

  I've spent my life explaining things with cartoons. Though funny to me, they did not always tickle others funny bones or help the explanation. The problem being, of course, if you have to explain what it means it stops being funny. This book is great, though sometimes there was a tad of too much explanation. I assume that's the problem of philosophy.
• 
  Joséphine (Word Revel)

  Initial thoughts: Two days shy of a year — FI-NAL-LY! Yes, it took me that long to read this book cover to cover.
  
  You know that disappointment when you don't want to accept that reality and expectation didn't match up? That's what I felt with I Think, Therefore I Draw. That's also why it took me so long to slog through, even though it wan't by any means a terrible book. I also didn't have much appreciation for the authors' brand of humour.
  
  The writing style was such that the book was meant to be read like a conversation with the authors, which's all well and good when the there's depth to the subject matter. Sadly, rather than a primer to philosophy, I felt like this was merely a preface, and for a preface, 302 pages are way too much.
  
  That being said, I did enjoy the choice of cartoons to illustrate the various philosophical ideas. I also found the biosketches very useful in providing an overview of the philosophers covered in this book. It's sad though that I had to get to the appendix before I started to actually enjoy this book.
• 
  A Man Called Ove

  A fun, breezy read about philosophy like the author's famous
  Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes . This one has cartoons instead of jokes and the cartoons were much better than the jokes.
  Also, I liked the lesser known by the same author ->
  Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between on death much better.
• 
  Nikita Nautiyal

  3.8
  
  
• 
  Clau

  No es que sea ninguna maravilla, pero cuenta con diferentes viñetas graciosas que ilustran diversos temas filosóficos y, para un público no especializado cumple su función. Da una visión general de la Historia de la filosofía con un tono ameno y divertido.
• 
  Julie Tedjeske Crane

  This book was a 100% impulse buy--I saw it in Barnes & Noble and added it to what I was purchasing. It is a short, easy, and enjoyable read.
  
  The format of the book is set up so that a cartoon is presented and then there is a discussion of a one or more philosophers or philosophical schools that is somehow tied back to the meaning of the cartoon. Often it seemed like the philosophical discussion was only vaguely related to the cartoon in question, and the attempts to make the two parts of the book relate to one another sometimes felt forced. Also, the philosophical discussions were at a really broad level.
  
  That said, I give the book 4 stars because the cartoons in it were great. In fact, I will be keeping my copy of the book for awhile because I like the cartoons so much.
• 
  Maria Popovtseva

  Loved funny cartoons and useful information that reminded some of the questions.
• 
  Lim

  A succinct and engaging way of presenting central philosophical questions and insights. Using the cartoons was a great idea. Each chapter, not more than 3 pages, was easy to read and allowed me the space to ponder.
• 
  Brian Callahan

  Pretty interesting read. I would recommend it if you want to gain a general awareness of what philosophy is about.
• 
  Anas

  too advanced for me
• 
  kitabimkahvem

  Karikatürler, filozofların sayfalarca anlatacağı cümleleri tek bir kareye nasıl sığdırır.. İşte bu kitapla anladım ki, iyi bir karikatür felsefeyi soyuttan somuta ulaştırır.
• 
  Indah Threez Lestari

  19 - 2019
• 
  Madhusree

  I loved this book. Cartoons are a good way to approach philosophy. I enjoyed reading this book and it is wonderful book to dip into off and on.
• 
  Richard

  So many years ago my daughter bought me two books by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. I know that I learned more about philosophy in those two books than I did getting a BA in Philosophy (apologizes to my favorite philosophy teacher, Dr. Ben Richards). Since then I have read several other books that this pair of Harvard philosophers wrote - both individually and together - and enjoyed them greatly.
  
  I Think, Therefore I Draw is the latest in their series and it could be their best. As a play on Sartre’s, “I think, therefore I am”, Cathcart and Klein become the leading, and only, comic philosophers. In each section they take a one panel cartoon and, in two to three pages, show how it addresses some deep philosophical question. By deep I mean; What’s the Meaning of Life, The New World of Gender Philosophy, Capitalism, Marxism, and Libertarianism, Cosmology and Other Metaphysics, The Philosophy of Law and Moral Authority, Theism, Proofs, and Strategies, Metaphilosophy, and more!
  
  Whether or not the individual cartoonists meant to be this deep, Cathcart and Klein show that each cartoon is worth a semester’s study of one or more schools of Philosophy. Of course, not only is there a lot of knowledge in these pages, there are a lot of jokes, sarcasm, and painful realism.
  
  While Cathcart and Klein, only somewhat facetiously, claim than a degree in philosophy only qualifies you to teach philosophy or work at Starbucks or McDonald’s, this book shows you that philosophy is all about looking deeply at the life in front of you. Socrates said that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Centuries later, Bertrand Russell revisited the same idea with, “Through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great.”
  
  I cannot promise you a great mind after reading this book but it definitely will make you think and laugh. When you think about it, that isn’t such a bad combination.
• 
  Mehmet Gozaydin

  Cartoons has always been the most interesting "medium" for me.
  You only have one sentence a handful of brush strokes to make your statement, and awe the audience at the same time.
  Perhaps the key to all these mind-blowing one liners is this limitation of resources.
  
  Yes, if you have 800 pages to spare, you can talk about "Being and Nothingness" as much as you want. But can you create a gist of it in a corner column of a magazine with 20k less words and 1 extra drawing? Minimalism at work indeed.
  
  This book sees the premise of cartoons, curates them and uses them as a gateway drug to talk about philosophy of things. I say "things", because it covers a huge ground from gender roles to Metaphilosophy. I'll admit some meanings put into the cartoons are a bit of a stretch, but that's the salt an pepper of it.
  
  But fair warning, take this book as a fun introduction to philosophy. Don't expect to learn in depth about a specific subject. That being said, if you wanna start reading about philosophy, this might be a good start. I'm doing the same at the moment, will let you know in 10 years.
  
  I also would like to talk about the last section of the book, namely "Biosketches". It takes a bunch of big thinkers, and in a paragraph or two, talks about their life and thoughts. It is a really good place to look for who to get acquainted further.
  
  Enjoy!
  
  "Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that consisted entirely of jokes.(He was not trying to be funny at the time). Undoubtedly, if Wittgenstein's subscription to 'Punch' hadn't lapsed, he would have featured cartoons in his pronouncement"
• 
  Yvo Hunink

  After some heavy reads, this book was a very welcome change. A very light way to bring the world of philosophy into my brain, with the help of cartoons. I always felt that communicating opinions on complex matter through cartoons was a powerful tool that could assist system change. This power is seen in the fact that people are killed over them..
  
  The writers of this book have done a great job of linking cartoons to different branches of philosophy, that is, if the purpose is to explain those branches of philosophy. In a smooth manner, they guide the reader through several ways of thinking and sketch a broad overview of the thinkers that made to branches come to existence. Whether it is the ancient greek/roman thinkers, or more modern ones.
  
  What I felt the writers did not do, is capture the actual meaning and context of the cartoons themselves. Sometimes I felt that they set out to find cartoons that fit their pre-made list of philosophies, no matter the context they were written in. To me, at times, it obscured what the cartoonist had actually meant to communicate, and were rather used by the writers of the book to toy around. While this is perhaps oke and maybe even desirable to do with cartoons, apply your own meaning, however it felt less of a lesson in cartoons, and more of a lesson in philosophy.
  
  What the book has done, is that is sparked my interest in and introduced me to philosophers and I basically made an extensive list of thinkers that I wish to still read in my lifetime, which that they have introduced to me.
• 
  Jim Thompson

  So, I've really liked all these books-- "Plato and a Platypus...," "Heidigger and a Hippo...," "Aristotle and an Aardvark," and now this.
  
  This wasn't my favorite.
  
  The other three books were focused on jokes (typically fairly bad jokes that made my wife and kids groan when I repeated them over and over again). This one's cartoons. Funny cartoons. Lots of New Yorker stuff.
  
  I expected something more like the other books, but somehow this one is more "surface," if you will. Not that the others did huge deep dives, but they at least gave a particular notion more than a sentence or two. This one covers lots and lots of ground, lots of different sub-areas of philosophy, but it just barely touches on each before moving right along. Some of the cartoons were great and honestly, there could have been really, really in depth (and funny) discussions, but the authors were too quick to move on to the next thing.
  
  That doesn't make this a bad book. Just not the book I was hoping for.
  
  I enjoyed it.
  
  It's a quick read, and if you're a philosophy junkie it's fun to even briefly touch on all these ideas again. If you're new to the philosophy world, it's like a quick overview of the big themes in European and American philosophy for the past few thousand years.
• 
  Kamil

  Thomas Cathcart ve Daniel Klein. Harvard üniversitesinden iki felsefe profesörü. İlk yazdıkları "Platon bir gün kolunda bir ornitorenkle bara girer" adlı kitapla tanındılar ve kitap hızlı bir şekilde çok satarlar listesine girdi. Felsefi konuları kendilerine özgü "matrak" bir şekilde ele aldıkları kitaplar ilk kitabın başarısı üzerine devam etti. Son olarak da "Platon bir gün bir karikatür çizer" çevrildi dilimize. Karikatürün ve dolayısı ile genel olarak mizahın felsefi boyutları, ya da esprinin hangi felsefe konusunu dolaylı ya da direkt olarak ele aldığına değiniyorlar yazarlar, kendi "matrak" tarzları ile.
  Tabii bu kitaplar yine aynı "matrak" tarzları nedeni ile eleştiri de aldılar. Felsefenin derin konularını dalgaya alıp eğlence konusu gibi ele aldıkları için.
  Felsefi kavramlardan eğlenceli bir şekilde "haberdar olmak" için ideal bir seri. Ama daha ötesi değil...
• 
  April

  The book wasn't what I expected. Instead of a serious conversation about life and philosophy, I've encountered multiple comics with humorous comments based on philosophical theories. Honestly, I didn't understand the majorities of theories and philosophies. Rarely, when I found some philosophers that I've already known, such as Plato and Socrates, I could chuckle a bit. You can imagine losing yourself in a labyrinth of foreign streets. (Here, the foreign streets are the philosophical theories.)
  
  The book gave me a comprehensive exposure to a different horizon of knowledge - viewpoints from many thought-leaders throughout the centuries. I am still lost and mostly confused, yet I begin to wonder whether this post-reading feeling can be readjusted if I become older and re-read this book.
• 
  Alexander

  Philosophy is a subject I've been wanting to study for a long time now and so I decided to start reading philosophy books from my local library, which is Dewey decimal numbers 100 - 149. I started with this one because it's at the beginning of that section (100).
  
  The layout leaves something to be desired; each cartoon takes up an entire page when there is enough space to begin that article on it on the same page. Sometimes, cartoons are also on the right-hand page, even though the article will start on the left-hand page overleaf, so I'm already thinking about that cartoon when I'm still finishing the article on the previous cartoon. It's just a lot of wasted space.
  
  But it's a good introduction to philosophy and I understand that subject a lot more now.