One fish head is exposed to air while the other is submerged in water. For example, a chapter entitled “OY, Vey!” examines philosophical pessimism and the belief that human life has any inherent meaning whatsoever, beginning with a cartoon by Bradford Veley that depicts two fish squeezed into a pint glass. It is not quite the members of Monty Python dressed as the Bruces, all members of an Australian philosophy department who share the same name, singing their “Philosopher’s Song,” but I Think, Therefore I Draw prompts its share of laughs and knowledge while providing direction for the curious toward more challenging texts.Ĭartoons lead each section of the book’s eighteen chapters, providing a catalyst for philosophical discussion. With wit and humor, Klein and Cathcart build a bridge between intellectual rigor and accessibility. Together they recognize the one-panel brilliance of a roster of acclaimed international cartoonists who have examined the great questions such as being in the world, god, the absence of the divine and what exactly is philosophy through the juxtaposition of image and word. They both contemplated the meaning of life and the grand design, if any, of the universe, but Klein made funny a profession, having written material for Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson. This is the purpose of I Think, Therefore I Draw, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, two old friends who studied philosophy together at Harvard and have found that no one more adroitly expresses the finer points of the discipline of philosophy like a cartoonist having a day.

You need a form that is both lightweight and poignant to ease into the great philosophers and nothing fits that bill quite like a cartoon. Likewise, you don’t tackle Das Kapital as your first foray even though it was your New Year’s resolution. You don’t walk into the gym and bench 250 on the first day. Reading these works is an exercise for the eyes and brain and it requires resistance training. Almost all of these men enjoyed the sound of their own voices, the scratch of quill on parchment or the clack of the typewriter because they would take an idea, exhaust it and then start anew. To seek out Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Derrida, Foucault and Descartes, to name but a handful, is certainly an act of self-improvement, but the ponderousness of the material, both intellectually and by length of essay, often leads to frustration. Whether it’s the woes of the American education system or the fear of teaching any line of thought that questions or contradicts accepted nationalist or religious dogma, philosophy and the history of ideas have become niche pursuits for Humanities majors and freshmen hoping for an interesting 101 elective.

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