You take me seriously because you find me attractive or whatever. Because you think I have allure. I’m fascinating for the moment, right? Because I make you think things. Because I’m the occasion for your thoughts. Because you like to be in love, or whatever. You like to be yourself in love. You like to like yourself like that. It’s a novelty to you, philosopher … Is that how you think of yourself: as a philosopher?

It’s for others to decide.

Do you think you’ve earnt the accolade?

It’s for others to say.

Who, like, a philosophical committee? Journal editors? Like, whose approval do you seek? Who’s actually going to read you work and deem you worthy?

No one reads my work. No one gives a fuck about anything I write.

 

Do you ever dream one of your readers might fall in love with you? That they might fall for the genius they know you to be? Someone who’d appreciate you? I’ll bet you do … Well, I’m not that woman. That’s not – fucking – me.

You don’t say.

You must take yourself very seriously.

Hardly.

But ultimately, you do. Ultimately you think you’re a serious man engaged in a serious task, and that it’s the only thing worthwhile.

I think it’s the only thing I can try to do. Because I don’t like anything else. Because I feel like a stranger on this Earth …

How melodramatic.

Well I do.

That does that qualify you for philosophy? Maybe it does.

It just disqualifies you from anything else.

Like I said: melodrama. But strangely attractive melodrama. Maybe I’m with a genius after all …

 

I’m trying to get into the head of a philosopher. I’m trying to think like a philosopher thinks. I’ll bet you think I’m too stupid for that.

 

Is there such a thing as a comic philosophy? A philosophy that laughs?

 

You should want to leave it, philosophy. Leave it all behind. Do your own unnamed thing.

Not to philosophise is still to philosophise.

Do you believe that? That philosophy swallows all? That it always has the last very serious word? Fuck.