Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates

You might not see the of philosophy of death as a particularly amusing subject, but Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein think otherwise. In Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between they look at what philosophers have said about various aspects of death, but instead of dry passages of text the book seems to consist mostly of jokes.

The book includes the thoughts Plato, Wittgenstein, Shopenhauer and of course Heidigger. There are also quite a few quotes from A.S. Köisberg (better known as Woody Allen). There's the religious aspect of death - does the promise (or threat) of an afterlife influence the way people approach death? Or should we try to find ways to live forever here on earth? Would eternal life be so great anyway. Maybe we should just live for the moment - but even that isn't as simple as it sounds.

I'm not convinced that this is a particularly good way to learn philosophy, but maybe it gives an easy way to look a bit deeper into a difficult subject and it certainly provides an amusing way to while away an hour or two.