Woody Allen - Getting Even

One day, Hess took the Fuhrer’s bottle of Vitalis and set out in a plane for England. The German high command was furious. They felt Hess planned to give it to the Allies in return for amnesty for himself. Hitler was particularly enraged when he heard the news, as he had just stepped out of the shower and was about to do his hair. (Hess later explained at Nuremberg that his plan was to give Churchill a scalp treatment in an effort to end the war. He had got as far as bending Churchill over a basin when he was apprehended.)

Late in 1944, Goring grew a mustache, causing talk that he was soon to replace Hitler. Hitler was furious and accused Goring of disloyalty. “There must be only one mustache among the leaders of the Reich, and it shall be mine!” he cried. Goring argued that two mustaches might give the German people a greater sense of hope about the war, which was going poorly, but Hitler thought not. Then, in January of 1945, a plot by several generals to shave Hitler’s mustache in his sleep and proclaim Doenitz the new leader failed when von Stauffenberg, in the darkness of Hitler’s bedroom, shaved off one of the Fuhrer’s eyebrows instead. A state of emergency was proclaimed, and suddenly Goebbels appeared at my shop. “An attempt was just made on the Fuhrer’s mustache; but it was unsuccessful,” he said, trembling. Goebbels arranged for me to go on radio and address the German people, which I did, with a minimum of notes. “The Fuhrer is all right,” I assured them. “He still has his mustache. Repeat. The Fuhrer still has his mustache. A plot to shave it has failed.”

Near the end, I came to Hitler’s bunker. The Allied armies were closing in on Berlin, and Hitler felt that if the Russians got there first he would need a full haircut but if the Americans did he could get by with a light trim. Everyone quarrelled. In the midst of all this, Bormann wanted a shave, and I promised him I would get to work on some blueprints. Hitler grew morose and remote. He talked of parting his hair from ear to ear and then claimed that the development of the electric razor would turn the war for Germany. “We will be able to shave in seconds, eh, Schmeed?” he muttered. He mentioned other wild schemes and said that someday he would have his hair not just cut but shaped. Obsessed as usual by sheer size, he vowed he would eventually have a huge pompadour-“one that will make the world tremble and will require an honor guard to comb.” Finally, we shook hands and I gave him a last trim. He tipped me one pfennig. “I wish it could be more,” he said, “but ever since the Allies have overrun Europe I’ve been a little short.”

The development of my philosophy came about as follows: My wife, inviting me to sample her very first souffle, accidentally dropped a spoonful of it on my foot, fracturing several small bones. Doctors were called in, X-rays taken and examined, and I was ordered to bed for a month. During this convalescence, I turned to the works of some of Western society’s most formidable thinkers-a stack of books I had laid aside for just such an eventuality. Scorning chronological order, I began with Kierkegaard and Sartre, then moved quickly to Spinoza, Hume, Kafka, and Camus. I was not bored, as I had feared I might be; rather, I found myself fascinated by the alacrity with which these great minds unflinchingly attacked morality, art, ethics, life, and death. I remember my reaction to a typically luminous observation of Kierkegaard’s: “Such a relation which relates itself to its own self (that is to say, a self) must either have constituted itself or have been constituted by another.” The concept brought tears to my eyes. My word, I thought, to be that clever! (I’m a man who has trouble writing two meaningful sentences on “My Day at the Zoo.”) True, the passage was totally incomprehensible to me, but what of it as long as Kierkegaard was having fun? Suddenly confident that metaphysics was the work I had always been meant to do, I took up my pen and began at once to jot down the first of my own musings. The work proceeded apace, and in a mere two afternoons-with time out for dozing and trying to get the two little BBs into the eyes of the bear-I had completed the philosophical work that I am hoping will not be uncovered until after my death, or until the year 3000 (whichever comes first), and which I modestly believe will assure me a place of reverence among history’s weightiest thinkers. Here is but a small sample of the main body of intellectual treasure that I leave for posterity, or until the cleaning woman comes.

I. Critique of Pure Dread

In formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, “My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.” By “knowable,” incidentally, I do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be Known or to possess a Knownness or Knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.

Can we actually “know” the universe? My God, it’s hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown. The point, however, is: Is there anything out there? And why? And must they be so noisy? Finally, there can be no doubt that the one characteristic of “reality” is that it lacks essence. That is not to say it has no essence, but merely lacks it. (The reality I speak of here is the same one Hobbes described, but a little smaller.) Therefore the Cartesian dictum “I think, therefore I am” might better be expressed “Hey, there goes Edna with a saxophone!” So, then, to know a substance or an idea we must doubt it, and thus, doubting it, come to perceive the qualities it possesses in its finite state, which are truly “in the thing itself,” or “of the thing itself,” or of something or nothing. If this is clear, we can leave epistemology for the moment.

II. Eschatological Dialectics As a Means of Coping

with Shingles

We can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call “atoms,” or else we will call it “monads.” Democritus called it atoms. Leibnitz called it monads. Fortunately, the two men never met, or there would have been a very dull argument. These “particles” were set in motion by some cause or underlying principle, or perhaps something fell someplace. The point is that it’s too late to do anything about it now, except possibly to eat plenty of raw fish. This, of course, does not explain why the soul is immortal. Nor does it say anything about an afterlife, or about the feeling my Uncle Sender has that he is being followed by Albanians. The causal relationship between the first principle (i.e., God, or a strong wind) and any teleological concept of being (Being) is, according to Pascal, “so ludicrous that it’s not even funny (Funny).” Schopenhauer called this “will,” but his physician diagnosed it as hay fever. In his later years, he became embittered by it, or more likely because of his increasing suspicion that he was not Mozart.

III. The Cosmos on Five Dollars a Day

What, then, is “beautiful”? The merging of harmony with the just, or the merging of harmony with something that just sounds like “the just”? Possibly harmony should have been merged with “the crust” and this is what’s been giving us our trouble. Truth, to be sure, is beauty-or “the necessary.” That is, what is good or possessing the qualities of “the good” results in “truth.” If it doesn’t, you can bet the thing is not beautiful, although it may still be waterproof. I am beginning to think I was right in the first place and that everything should be merged with the crust. Oh, well.