About Philosophical Plays

The Author/Editor

Copyright/Permissions

All Plays/Issues

> 

Latest Play

FAQ

News

DOWNLOAD a free PDF.

ORDER a printed copy.

REVIEW copyright & permissions.

< PREVIOUS (Scene III) | NOTES | CITATION | NEXT (Scene V) >

SCENE IV. Katherine’s Real Problem

1 CHRISTIANUS. So you need to take charge of the situation, Katherine! And you need to identify your real problem.

2 KATHERINE. My real problem?

3 CHRISTIANUS. Well, although your bodily constitution, your weight, and your lack of friends and lovers certainly may seem to be causes of unhappiness for you, your real problem is of a different nature.

4 KATHERINE. It is?

5 CHRISTIANUS. Yes. But you are, of course, not the only one in the universe who has ever focused on weight-loss and amore. Many souls already have been, and surely also will be, engaged in similar questionable quests.

6 KATHERINE. What do you mean?

7 CHRISTIANUS. Well, many people are very concerned about their own physical appearance and their potential sex appeal. And they keep on searching for some simple happiness and pleasure and try to stay clear of as much unhappiness as they can. Meanwhile, they many times leave the deeper ‘existential’ issues in the closet. It actually reminds me of the story about the camel and the noodle. [19]

8 KATHERINE. Maybe we can return to the camel story some other time. What’s my so-called ‘real’ problem?

9 CHRISTIANUS. Your real problem is that you are going to die. And I think that you may have realized that, at least on some level.

10 KATHERINE. So?

11 CHRISTIANUS. What do you mean? Doesn’t that bother you?

12 KATHERINE. No.

13 CHRISTIANUS. Why not?

14 KATHERINE. It’s only natural to die.

15 CHRISTIANUS. It is also natural to sometimes get a toothache; but that doesn’t mean that we are not afraid of it, does it?

16 KATHERINE. Well, no.

17 CHRISTIANUS. And while toothaches may or may not come, death doesn’t normally not show up, does it?

18 KATHERINE. No.

19 CHRISTIANUS. And while toothaches normally can be fixed if one only has enough money to pay the dentist — or at least the nerve to go to him even though one doesn’t have enough money to pay him afterwards — death cannot be fixed by anyone, regardless of how much money one has.

20 KATHERINE. So?

21 CHRISTIANUS. So, being the pragmatic American you are, wouldn’t you then agree that, empirically and ‘scientifically’ speaking, death is among the most certain things in everyone’s life? [20] [21]

22 KATHERINE. Yes.

23 CHRISTIANUS. And you’re still not afraid of it?

24 KATHERINE. I just don’t see why I should be.

25 CHRISTIANUS. Well, then we certainly have a lot to talk about.

26 KATHERINE. We do?

27 CHRISTIANUS. Yes. But we desperately need that pizza now.

28 KATHERINE. I am sure the waiter will be here any minute.

< PREVIOUS (Scene III) | TOP | CITATION | NEXT (Scene V) >

Notes (SCENE IV)

[19] IV:7, the camel: The story of the camel and the noodle that Christianus mentions is presumably not identical with the parable mentioned in Matthew 19:23–26, where Jesus talks about the camel and the needle. However, Jesus’s parable might still be of interest to those readers who are interested in topics such as death and immortality. For example, Metzger and Murphy seem to conclude that Jesus’s point is that eternal life will be found not ‘through a ritual that wealth makes possible’, but through ‘utter dependence on God’ (1991, p. 28NT). Unfortunately, Metzger and Murphy do not explain why such ritualistic work — especially in cases where one uses substantial portions of one’s wealth — wouldn’t count as (real, substantial) service unto God, or why it wouldn’t count as being (utterly) dependent on God.

BRUCE M. METZGER and ROLAND E. MURPHY, eds. (1991), The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.

[20] IV:21, pragmatic: According to Morris (1973, pp. 1028–1029), the adjective ‘pragmatic’ may mean different things: (1) ‘Dealing with facts or actual occurrences’, or ‘[a]ctive rather than contemplative’; (2) ‘Pertaining to the study of events and historical phenomena with emphasis on their practical outcome’; (3) ‘Of or pertaining to pragmatism’. One may, perhaps, also note that Christianus has used the word ‘pragmatic’ and not the word ‘pragmatical’. Morris does not indicate any difference in meaning between these words; but H. W. Fowler (1858–1933) says: ‘In the diplomatic, historical, and philosophical senses, the -ic form is usual. In the general sense of officious or opinionated, -ical is commoner’ (1965, p. 469).

H. W. FOWLER (1965), A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Second Edition. Revised by Sir Ernest Gowers. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

WILLIAM MORRIS, ed. (1973), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co. and Houghton Mifflin Company.

[21] IV:21, pragmatic American: One may, of course, be a pragmatic American in different ways, including when one takes the word ‘pragmatic’ to point to the philosophical school of pragmatism. Famous American philosophers such as Charles Saunders Peirce (1839–1914), William James (1842–1910), and John Dewey (1859–1952) did not have an identical pragmatist philosophy; however, they all shared the idea, roughly, that consequences or effects of actions are very important: ‘what practically works’ is the pragmatist’s measure of success. The American philosopher Richard Rorty admits that the word ‘pragmatism’ names ‘the chief glory of our country’s intellectual tradition’ (1982, p. 161), but points out that Peirce’s contribution ‘was merely to have given it a name, and to have stimulated James’ (1982, pp. 161–162). This is presumably because Rorty thinks that the ‘great pragmatists’ only are those which were ‘breaking with the Kantian epistemological tradition altogether’ (1982, p. 161). Peirce himself says, ‘I devoted two hours a day to the study of Kant’s Critic of the Pure Reason for more than three years, until I almost knew the whole book by heart, and had critically examined every section of it’ (1955, p. 2); and it may be hard to claim — noting Peirce’s frequent use of Kantian-flavoured ideas in his texts — that Peirce wasn’t some sort of Kantian. In any case, Rorty thinks that ‘Peirce himself remained the most Kantian of thinkers’ (1982, p. 161); consequently, Rorty promotes James and Dewey as the ‘great pragmatists’, but demotes Peirce.

RICHARD RORTY (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972–1980. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

CHARLES SAUNDERS PEIRCE (1955), Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Selected and Edited With an Introduction by Justus Buchler. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

< PREVIOUS (Scene III) | TOP | NOTES | NEXT (Scene V) >

HOW TO CITE: Bo C. Klintberg (2008), ‘Katherine’s Real Problem’ in Katherine’s Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness. Online edition of Philosophical Plays, 1 Jan. 2008. Retrieved [today’s date] from http://philosophicalplays.googlepages.com/pgKQQv1sc04.htm.

Latest Play | All Plays/Issues | The Author/Editor
About PP | Print Edition | Online Edition | Philosophical Dialogues?
News | Copyright/Permissions | FAQ

All published material in Philosophical Plays, both in the print edition
(ISSN 1654-6296) and in the online edition (ISSN 1654-6318), is
Copyright © 2007-2008 by Bo C. Klintberg. All rights reserved.
No part of these publications may be reproduced, or re-
published, or stored in a retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from Bo C. Klintberg.

(click the W3C logos to revalidate
this page's code quality at w3.org)

Last updated: Wednesday, 27 August 2008, 22:18:17 GMT
Assembled by PPOBuild, rev. 2.022