#stand-up philosopher

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [to Immanuel Kant in his clown costume]: You're not really cut out for the show business are you?

KANT: I'm practising.

[He lifts his arms and his trousers fall down, revealing polka-dotted underpants. He lowers his arms and the trousers fly back up.]

FLOSTRE: Pas mal, mais… a bit… crude, n'est-ce pas?

KANT [looks sheepish]: It's what she wanted.

FLOSTRE and SOCRATES (a ventriloquist's dummy) [in unison]: She?

SOCRATES [aside]: Some ventriloquism, eh?

FLOSTRE: Is there something you aren't telling us, Manny?

KANT [wistfully]: "Manny"… she calls me that. Sometimes.

SOCRATES: And at other times?

KANT [sniggers]: Snooky.

FLOSTRE: What is this all about? Who is "she", and what has she got to do with you?

KANT: All right, I'll tell you. It was like this… I was taking my walk around Königsberg, and I noticed a new theatre had opened. [Pause] It seems to have been what they call a burlesque theatre.

FLOSTRE [to Socrates]: Don't say a word!

SOCRATES: Never crossed my mind. Carry on, Kant, old fellow. [Mutters] Dirty old man!

KANT: So I went in, out of curiosity. No a priori knowledge of this sort of thing, you see.

FLOSTRE: You might say you were obeying a Hypothetical Imperative.

KANT: Uh, yeah, right. So anyway, there she was, doing a sort of dance. Fifi!

SOCRATES: You've got to be kidding!

FLOSTRE [to Kant]: Ignore him. Then what happened?

KANT [looking increasingly embarrassed]: It seems that during the performance, she threw some… undergarment… towards me. It appeared to amuse the audience. I can't imagine why. But after the exhibition ended, I felt it my duty to go backstage and return the… item. And that's how we met. And it turned out she was a most intelligent young woman, who gave me some new insights into phenomenology. But when I offered to give her some private tuition, she explained that she was going abroad, and I wouldn't be able to go with her unless I joined the show, and all they could offer me was this clown's part.

FLOSTRE: I see. And where is your Fifi now?

KANT [sadly]: I don't know. We were playing the Hackney Empire. I woke up late one morning, and she'd gone. Somebody told me that she was with this show, so that's why I'm here.

FLOSTRE: This is all a bit Der blaue Engel, isn't it?

KANT: Angel? Yes, my Fifi is an angel.

FLOSTRE: It ends badly.

KANT: I don't care. Have you seen her?

SOCRATES: Try the dancing girls' dressing room. That way!

[Kant starts to rush off, but falls over his flapping shoes, then struggles to his feet and exits.]

FLOSTRE [shaking his head]: Poor chap. Frau Blücher will eat him alive.

[Sounds of an altercation from backstage. Kant re-enters. His wig is awry, and he has lost his trousers.]

FLOSTRE: Any luck?

KANT: Do you know what that woman told me? She said Fifi had gone off with a saxophone player.

SOCRATES [insincerely]: Aww, too bad.

FLOSTRE [sympathetically patting Kant on the shoulder]: Go home and try to forget it. Do some more work on that Critique of Pure Reason thing. It could do with a bit of editing.

KANT: You're probably right. I'll go now. [Exits, muttering.] A saxophone player. A saxophone player.

[juststuffivefoundintersting]

coalescing the vapor of human experience into a viable and logical comprehension

[fromthemotionpicture]

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE: Mesdames et messieurs, Je suis vraiment désolé. These impertinent interruptions have distracted me from my purpose here tonight, which is to talk to you about la philosophie. So now, to rectify matters, I bring you my next guest, a man who I am sure will have much to say on the subject, that central thinker of the Enlightenment… Immanuel Kant.

[Some reluctant applause. A short man with a bulging forehead enters, dressed in baggy trousers and a tailcoat, under which he wears a polka dotted waistcoat. On his head is an undersized bowler hat, with a large daisy flower drooping from the brim. Huge clumsy shoes are on his feet. His face is painted white, his mouth is outlined in a bright red frown. A horn or hooter dangles from his belt. The applause swells, accompanied by raucous laughter.]

FLOSTRE [taken aback]: You are… you are Immanuel Kant, aren't you?

KANT: I most certainly am. [He lifts his hat and pulls out a playing card.] My card. [He holds it out without looking at it.] Ace of Spades!

FLOSTRE [confused]: Pardonnez, mais… Immanuel Kant is famous for his strictly ordered life. With respect, sir, you do not seem so orderly tonight.

KANT You mean that business about the folk in Königsberg setting their watches by the time I went past on my walk? [He pulls an enormous cardboard watch from his waistcoat pocket] Ha! Five minutes past Tuesday already. Oh well, they'll just have to ask a policeman.

FLOSTRE: Mais pourquoi…? Why this sudden change?

KANT [twirls his watch before dropping it back in its pocket]: Don't you think a man might get tired of it?

FLOSTRE: But you have made such a contribution to philosophy. The Categorical Imperative, for a start.

KANT: Oh, that! Just something I made up. After all, how often in life do you need to decide whether to tell a potential murderer where his victim is? Sounds impressive, though, doesn't it?

FLOSTRE: As I understand it, it is about morality being an a priori concept. So, perhaps you would like to tell us something about a priori and a posteriori reasoning.

KANT: Well, you see, it's about dinosaurs. [Puzzled looks all round.] The great big huge dinosaurs, like brontosaurus, had two brains. One was in the head, the other at the base of the tail. And so they became extinct from trying to reason a priori and a posteriori at the same time.[Honks horn twice.] I stole that joke from a Scotsman.

FLOSTRE: David Hume?

KANT: No, he's out, but I'll tell him when he gets back. [Honks horn again.] Hume, home. Get it?

SOCRATES [the ventriloquist's dummy who has been sitting silently on Flostre's knee]: Nah, it doesn't work. Leave the bad jokes to Aristotle.

KANT: [sniffs] Well, he's had longer to practise.

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [sadly watching Kant leave the stage]: Poor chap. I hope he'll get over it.

SOCRATES (the ventriloquist's dummy sitting on Flostre's knee): Never mind him. What about these dancing girls you keep promising us?

[Enter Friedrich Nietzsche, more wild-eyed than ever.]

FLOSTRE: Mon Dieu! Le voilà qui revient!

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls are dead.

SOCRATES: What?

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls remain dead.

FLOSTRE: What?

NIETZSCHE: And we have killed them. How shall we comfort ourselves?

SOCRATES and FLOSTRE: WHAT?

NIETZSCHE [patiently]: It's a metaphor. I don't mean we've actually murdered all the dancing girls.

FLOSTRE: Bon sang! I should hope not. This isn't that kind of show. We leave that to the opera.

NIETZSCHE: I'm simply saying that all our philosophy has made the idea of a troupe of dancing girls no longer necessary.

SOCRATES: That's what you say!

NIETZSCHE: The dancing girls no longer have a hold on the imagination.

SOCRATES: Speak for yourself!

NIETZSCHE: But that's an old idea. The point is really…

FLOSTRE: Quoi?

NIETZSCHE [dramatically]: Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?

SOCRATES: That depends.

FLOSTRE: On what?

SOCRATES: On whether or not this guy is totally bonkers. I know what I think.

NIETZSCHE [ignoring him]: Must we ourselves not become dancing girls simply to appear worthy of this great deed?

[Nietzsche tears open his shirt to reveal a tight spandex vest with a large letter Ü emblazened on the front. He dashes off-stage and almost immediately re-emerges wearing his underpants over his trousers and a pair of high-heeled sandals.]

NIETZSCHE: Behold! The über-dancing girl!

[As he starts to kick his leg up in the air, two burly men in white coats stride onstage, pick him up by the elbows and carry him off.]

SOCRATES: Is it my imagination, or is this place full of fruitcakes?

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [to the ventriloquist's dummy on his knee]: Before we got distracted, we were speaking of Descartes, were we not?

SOCRATES: Were we?

FLOSTRE: It just so happens that René Descartes is here with us tonight. Please welcome that other great French philosopher, Monsieur René Descartes.

[Desultory applause greets the entrance of a short man with shoulder-length dark hair and a neat mustache. He is dressed in the 17th century style.]

DESCARTES: 'Allo everybody. I am zo 'appy to be 'ere.

SOCRATES: Wait a minute! Your face seems familiar.

DESCARTES [modestly]: I am ze seminal figure in ze modern philosophy. You 'ave per'aps seen my portrait, no?

SOCRATES: No, that's not it. Come to think of it, you look a lot like that Nietzche chap who was here before. And that wig you have on is as phoney as your French accent. Are you sure you are René Descartes?

DESCARTES: Maze of course. And I can prove it by ze logic: Cogito, ergo sum.

SOCRATES: What's that supposed to mean?

DESCARTES: 'I zink zerefore I am.'

SOCRATES: You zink? That doesn't mean anything.

DESCARTES: It does too mean something. It's logic. It has a 'therefore' in it.

SOCRATES: What happened to that ropey French accent suddenly?

[DESCARTES draws himself up to his full height and tosses his head disdainfully. His wig falls off. As he scrabbles to retrieve it, his mustache slips and attaches itself to his nose.]

SOCRATES: Aha! Now you do look familiar! Let me think… You were in the panto with Plato up in Cleethorpes, weren't you? He sent me a picture of the cast. That was you in the back row. Now, what was the name…?

DESCARTES: The name is Lionel Unthanke. A name that was mentioned prominently in all the reviews.

SOCRATES: I suppose you were the best we could get.

LIONEL: Listen Shorty, you were lucky to get me. I had other offers, you know. The RSC wanted me for Fourth Citizen in Julius Caesar at the Barbican.

SOCRATES: So what are you doing in this clambake? Was the other part too big for you?

LIONEL: Since you ask, I took this job on the basis of certain promises made to me by [jabs thumb in Flostre's direction] this person. Guaranteed appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Probable TV series. Fame and fortune. And look where we are now. Half a dozen different parts every performance, no credit, and anybody's guess when I'll get paid. Well, this … person's insults are the end. M. Flostre: I quit.

FLOSTRE: Du calme Lionel! There's no need for you to quit. I apologise for Socrates. He knows nothing – he'd be the first to admit it. I know that you are a great artist, and I will do everything in my power to make the rest of the world recognise it. Je te jure, we will go to Edinburgh, and put on a proper show, with a full cast and hundreds of dancing girls.

SOCRATES: Ha! Fat chance – they've got no shoes.

LIONEL: Well…

FLOSTRE [Pats him on the shoulder]: Voilà, c'est réglé.

SOCRATES: That's what you think.

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [to the scruffy dummy on his knee]: Tell me Aristotle, among all your groundbreaking contributions to philosophy, what would you say was the greatest?

ARISTOTLE: Greatest contribution?

FLOSTRE: Among the many.

ARISTOTLE [thinks hard]: Swallows!

FLOSTRE: Your greatest contribution to philosophy was swallows?

ARISTOTLE: Yep. What I said about swallows.

FLOSTRE: Now I remember. Weren't you the first person to say that one swallow doesn't make a spring?

ARISTOTLE: Yep, that was me. Greatest contribution.

FLOSTRE: Have you anything to add to it?

ARISTOTLE [thinks some more]: Get two swallows together, and they'll make you a spring.

FLOSTRE: You're saying that two swallows make a spring, then?

ARISTOTLE: Don't know how they do it, but it happens every year.

FLOSTRE: Fascinating. And didn't you claim that at the end of the summer, the swallows turn into fish and burrow into the mud at the bottom of lakes and rivers?

ARISTOTLE: Nope. Never said that.

FLOSTRE: Everyone thinks you did.

ARISTOTLE: Think I said they turn into fishes? Nah!

FLOSTRE: What did you say about the swallows, then?

ARISTOTLE: Just that they shed their feathers and hide in cavities for the winter.

FLOSTRE: Is there any proof of that?

ARISTOTLE: What sort of proof?

FLOSTRE: You could have gone out in the winter and looked for some featherless swallows in cavities, n'est-ce pas?

ARISTOTLE [looks surprised]: Gone and looked for them?

FLOSTRE: Bien sur

ARISTOTLE [thinks for a long moment]: Never thought of that.

FLOSTRE [containing his exasperation]: Well if you had, you wouldn't have found any, because we know that swallows fly to Africa for the winter, and return each year in the spring.

ARISTOTLE: Africa? Where's that?

FLOSTRE [sarcastically]: South of here.

ARISTOTLE: Down Basingstoke way?

FLOSTRE: A lot further south than that.

ARISTOTLE: Sounds like a long way to go.

FLOSTRE: Thousands of miles.

ARISTOTLE: Don't know why they didn't stay here and hide in cavities. Plenty of cavities in Basingstoke, too.

[novelties-and-notions]

FLOSTRE [addressing the dummy known as Socrates]: Is that all you learned from your reading: philosophy had got absolutely nowhere in three thousand years?

SOCRATES: Well, I only dipped in to the book here and there. I read about somebody called Descartes.

FLOSTRE: Did you come across his mind body problem?

SOCRATES: Yes, I did.

FLOSTRE: Et qu'en pensez vous?

SOCRATES: I pense I've got the mind and you've got the body.

FLOSTRE: Is that a problem?

SOCRATES: I should say it's a problem for you, if you want to go on calling yourself a philosopher.

FLOSTRE: But you surely have no problem without a body.

SOCRATES: There are some, shall we say, limitations.

FLOSTRE: Surely Socrates, you would not wish to have to eat and drink, or suffer colds and flu, to mention just a few of the disadvantages of being embodied? And was it not you who said that escaping from (ahem) l'amour was like escaping from a mad and furious master?

SOCRATES: That was SoPHOCLes, not SoCRATes, dolt. Different chap entirely. They used to call him laugh-a-minute Sophocles back in ancient Athens. That Oedipus thing of his had them rolling in the aisles.

FLOSTRE: I always thought it was a tragedy.

SOCRATES: You're thinking of the revised version. The original was hilarious. That scene with the hats… I still have to chuckle thinking about it. But after Aristotle lost his treatise of comedy – and forgot what was in it, for goodness' sake – and came out with all that stuff about the supremacy of tragedy instead, the whole thing got rewritten, and now everyone thinks they ought to have a miserable time when they go to a play. That's what's really tragic if you ask me.

FLOSTRE: But let's get back to the mind body problem.

SOCRATES: It's like this: Being almost pure mind, I crave a meeting of the minds. You can understand that.

FLOSTRE: Anyone's mind in particular?

SOCRATES: Do you know that little dancing girl who's second on the left? The one with the red hair?

FLOSTRE: Certainement, I know her well.

SOCRATES: Then I'm sure you know what a fine mind she has.

FLOSTRE: That was the first thing I noticed about her.

SOCRATES: Me too. And so I thought how nice it would be to get to know her. On an intellectual level, as befits my present state. But that's a little difficult in my condition. So I'm wondering whether perhaps you could ask her round to your place for cocktails and bring me along with you. Would you do that?

FLOSTRE: As it happens, I did ask her round last week.

SOCRATES [eagerly]: And what happened?

FLOSTRE: She said "Get lost, creep!"