Philosophy Prof Illustrates Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the Style of Dr. Seuss

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John Holbo, a philosophy prof at the National University of Singapore, recently gave the world a free illustrated edition of three dialogues by Plato (get it as a free PDF, or via Amazon). Now he’s embarking on a new creative project called On Beyond Zarathustra.

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Over on the Crooked Timber blog, Holbo light-heartedly launched the project with these words:

Ever since Plato wrote Socrates “Will You Please Go Now!” and “If I Ran The Polis!” great philosophers have mostly started out as authors of (what we would now call) Dr. Seuss-style children’s books. A lot of this old stuff has been lost. Scholars have neglected it. But I’m undertaking a project of restoration and study, starting with Nietzsche.

I’ll be posting updates regularly to the Flickr page – few pages a week as my work proceeds. We’re just getting to the good bits: The Rope Dancer and the Last Man!

Please do feel to share with any friends who may have a scholarly interest in the historiography of philosophy. (I’ll have some more notes about that soon.)

We’ve posted here the first four pages of Holbo’s new graphical project.

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To see how the project unfolds, you can regularly visit this album on Flickr. The are currently 22 pages, with the promise of many more to come soon.

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And, take note, once he’s done with Friedrich, Holbo promises to turn to Descartes and Kierkegaard and give them the same Dr. Seuss treatment. Enjoy the ride.

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via Daily Nous

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Comments (6)
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  • nathan says:

    I’ve created a graphic novel of Zarathustra (all four parts) as one half of my research degree. Always interesting to see other interpretations of one of my favourite books.
    There’s a few pages from my version in the Illustrations and Comics section of my blog (address above) and the full graphic novel is available on Kindle.

  • Yohannes Hailu says:

    I appreciate your scholarly concerns.

  • Borsippian says:

    Nathan, how can I find your book on amazon?

  • Scott Marshall says:

    Very cool. I, too, am illustrating a highly edited version of Zarathustra, a little at a time, as a multi-year project.

  • John Warrington says:

    Why’d he get demoted from professor to prof?

  • Charles LLano says:

    Is it OK not to understand the point of this effort?

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