They tease the mind in the same ways…philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life.

"[1] In an interview with NPR host Liane Hansen, Klein stated that when he and Cathcart were studying philosophy at university, they noticed many similarities to the structure of jokes, which lead to the idea for the book.

He hoped readers of the book would come away "with a good general background" of the subject, stating "it's kind of [like] Philosophy 101".

The question is about the existential circumstances in the here-and-now, but the answer is from a grand, universal vantage point, what the latter-day Hegelian Bette Midler called “seeing the world from a distance."

[3] A successor, Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, was published on January 1, 2008, and uses the same structure and theme of the first book to explore a variety of logical fallacies, using statements from prominent American political figures as examples.