Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else

AHMED. After everything I’ve told you, after everything I haven’t told you, and which is at least as important, after everything you’ve said to yourselves, in your bed, last night, after the evening prayer to Allah the God of camels and throat cutters; or to Buddha who doesn’t drink water, even in times of famine, on account of the holy frogs that might be living in there; or to Yahweh who has his chosen people, the advantage for other peoples being that he hasn’t chosen them; or to Jesus who turns his left cheek when you kick him in the rear, and who lights a few stakes to barbecue those who turned the right cheek; or no prayer at all, here we’re secular whether we like it or not; after all that and quite a few other things besides, you’re going to take an oral comprehensive examination that will count for one-eighth of the intermediate grade on the qualifying examination for the upper-level class. Out of respect for the fundamental principle of republicanism in the schools, the principle of equality in testing, it will be the same question for everyone. Out of respect for the fundamental principle of participatory and democratic pedagogy, the principle “if I’m the one who says it, it’s more authentic than if somebody else does,” each of you may speak when someone else has finished answering. So this is the day of reckoning. You must give it your all and let burst forth from your brains the creative spark forged by two trimesters of devotion to the disciplined awakening of your critical spirit. The question is: “What is philosophy?” Pupil Rhubarb, you have the floor.

RHUBARB. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Wisdom means being humane in all human relationships. Humane relationships means respecting the difference of the other. The difference of the other is that he isn’t like me. And me is what’s at the basis of all existence. Therefore, philosophy is the love of what’s different from what’s at the basis of all existence.¹⁹

AHMED (threateningly). Does any of you want to make a comment before I rip into that eminently Rhubarbesque answer?

MOUSTACHE (spitting on the ground). And what if I don’t love what’s different from my basis? What if I shit on its face? What’s philosophy gonna say about that?

FENDA. The best thing you can do, pal, is to stick yourself on a spit like a suckling pig and philosophically shut your nasty trap.

AHMED. Silence in the ranks! Rhubarb, I’m giving you a grade of three out of twenty. No doubt about it, you’ve learned your philosophy from the newspapers! Pupil Pompestan, what is philosophy?

MADAME POMPESTAN. Edouard always says: “Philosophy is the art of using up leftovers.” And I’ve taken to answering: “Those are some meaty-looking leftovers on you, Edouard, I wouldn’t mind using them up.”

MADAME POMPESTAN. Half-wit! Culture’s what’s left over when you’ve forgotten everything. Therefore, philosophy is what uses up the leftovers of culture, the leftovers from what’s left when you’ve forgotten everything. So there!

MOUSTACHE (spitting on the ground). And what if I don’t give a rat’s ass about your culture? What if I think it’s a load of crap? What with all these intellectuals who everybody knows are a bunch of Arabs or faggots or Arab faggots, something you wouldn’t have thought could have existed in Sarges-les-Corneilles? Yeah, right, the philosophy of the French nation is in great shape.

FENDA. If somebody doesn’t make this fat pig shut up, I’m going to rip his head off! Not that there’s anything in it.

AHMED. Could we calm down, please? Madame Pompestan, three out of twenty. The word culture is the emptiest and most insidious of modern times. Say art, say science, say politics, say love, even say desire if that’s your thing, and obviously it is, say thought, say whatever you want, but I absolutely forbid this lazy flinging around of the word culture. This word is already a predigested leftover, so you can just imagine what the leftover of that leftover is going to taste like! And you, Fenda, since you’re so talkative, tell us what philosophy is.

FENDA. Philosophy is a subtle invention on the part of some delicate men, intended first of all to please women, thus analogous to the billing and cooing of the wood pigeon or the strutting of the peacock. And, second of all, as for the rest of it, philosophy is a just an ingenious technique for making a piece of cow leather look like some glittering fabric.

MADAME POMPESTAN (malevolently). I know of a girl who, for lack of education, flies into the trap the minute the philosopher–wood pigeon starts whistling at her. The dynamic, modern woman has been wise to this game for some time now!

FENDA. You said it, honey! Swing your deputay’s skirts in front of the young male executives in your Edouard’s office, Madame Pompestan! The philosopher sure won’t be singing his melody of glittering concepts for you!

MOUSTACHE. And what if I don’t give a shit about making like a wood pigeon for a bunch of little tramps! Hey! I’d rather show them my walnuts, if you know what I mean! Ladies! You want to see my walnuts?

RHUBARB. Monsieur Ahmed! Stop this ignominious flow of misogyny! Let us conduct this discussion with a respect for the other and with an understanding of all the cultures that are necessary for the conviviality of our global village.

FENDA. Including the agriculture of walnuts?

AHMED. The discussion is coming along nicely. The arguments are becoming more and more refined. Pupil Fenda! On the one hand, your answer drew on the real. It did not lack for grace or flavor. If these were the only criteria, it would have earned a solid sixteen out of twenty points. But, on the other hand, it was informed by a detestable antiphilosophical attitude, against which I might have been inclined to put up the barrier of a pure and simple zero. I therefore grant you an extension for further study.

FENDA. You grant me study extensions a lot more than you grant me studly extensions.

AHMED. Don’t change the subject. Pupil Moustache, what is philosophy?

MOUSTACHE. It’s when you’ve got a cushy foreman’s job, security, France for the French, the AIDS carriers in the AIDS-atoriums, like in the old days before all this decadence, when they kept all the unsanitary types in sanatoriums. It’s when it’s like when you didn’t get clobbered in soccer by a bunch of fanatical Ay-rabs from the Middle East and the Middle Ages. The philosophy from before things started going downhill, when there weren’t any drugs or homos or Ay-rabs or hep-hop or Chinks or complications or abortions or eggheads or nothing, you know what I mean? Real philosophy is when it’s like when there was nothing. But French people and the French army.

FENDA. Nitwit nation! The philosophy of the nitwit who knows nothing but nitwits!

RHUBARB. Madame Fenda, I disagree with all this violence that I’m sensing in you here. We must listen to what Monsieur Moustache is saying; we must understand the anguish that lies behind it! The anguish of a world without roots!

MADAME POMPESTAN (filing her nails and whistling insolently). Forget about it, Rhubarb, it is what it is. That’s called the principle of identity, right, Monsieur Ahmed? A is identical to A.

FENDA. One thing’s as sure as the rising of the sun over the camel-backed hills: a bitch is a bitch!

AHMED (dejectedly). Ladies! Gentlemen! We are far, very far, from philosophy … Pupil Moustache, I’m giving you a grade of zero. Your attempt at a nihilistic barroom philosophy has totally failed. It sank into what I could call existential caca. If you see what I mean.

MOUSTACHE. No, I don’t see at all.

MADAME POMPESTAN. He said you were goat shit.

RHUBARB. Professor! You’re not following the party line on the right of free speech!

FENDA. Ahmed, you’re not going to argue until sunset with these plastic specimens, are you?

AHMED. Philosophy, my dear pupils, is exactly this: a thinking whose real content is thinking itself. Or, rather, thinkings. For there are very different kinds of thinking. There’s thinking in mathematics, thinking in poetry, thinking in love, thinking in politics, when politics exists, which isn’t very often. And philosophy is when thinking agrees to confront all of these different thinkings. Thinking confronting the various thinkings. That’s philosophy. And philosophy sees that, in thinking, there’s what happens suddenly, there’s what lasts, there’s what needs to be worked on. There are the different finite moments of a sort of infinite construction. And in thinking there’s joy, there’s enthusiasm, there’s happiness, there’s pleasure. Which means that philosophy is also confronting and giving way to the joy of thinking. You haven’t been very good in this oral comprehensive examination. And the main reason seems to me to be the following: not enough joy. Not enough confidence in the joy of thinking. Too much bickering, too much bitterness, too much resentment, too much rivalry. As detestable as the world may be, and it is detestable, there’s always a point, in yourselves, a personal and obscure point, a point that’s unexpected, almost astounding even to you, which is the point of departure for thinking what is. Hold onto that point! Find it and hold onto it! Philosophy has no other goal. Let everyone find his point and hold onto it! The point in you that gives you your capacity for thinking and for its joy. The point that’s the point of view, the point that allows everyone to invent and not to repeat. For repetition is the path of imposture and pain. Stop repeating, stop stewing in your own juices. Be irreplaceable, not because you are yourself, but because you have found, in yourself, the active point, the point that separates us from our fatigue and our private monotony.