Hume's Fork by Ron Cooper

Author:Ron Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bancroft Press

The stadium was tremendous—a dome with a ceiling painted to look like sky and clouds so that the screens, scoreboards, and speakers seemed to float over the heads of the tens of thousands of screaming spectators. They were dressed in period costumes: ancient Greek robes and Roman tunics; monastics’ hooded cloaks; Medieval Arab turbans and pointed Persian shoes; stockings, flowing coats, and wigs of seventeenth-century noblemen; heavy nineteenth-century suits with vests and high collars; a few more recent but decidedly old-fashioned and upper class.

Each side yelled “Sophist sons of bitches!” and “Traitor bastards!” and “Monk fuckers!” at the other across the ring. Just as often, they squabbled among themselves and pointed fingers alternately at neighbors and the combatants in the ring. Fans got up and tried to enter the ring and were knocked out again, while others seem to appear from nowhere to address the crowd to boos and yeahs in various languages, all of which, inexplicably, I could understand.

Faces gradually became distinct, and I began to recognize the contestants and spectators. In one corner of the ring, dressed in wrestling tights with “Anal.” stenciled across the back and pacing around in a circle, were Moritz Schlick, Rudolph Carnap, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Their managers just outside the ropes were G. E. Moore, continuously waving to the crowd, and Bertrand Russell, wearing a ridiculously tall hat and drinking tea. In the opposite corner, looking at each other rather suspiciously, and labeled “Soft” were William James, about half the size of all the others, Martin Heidegger, stern-faced and marching stiff-kneedly in place, and Alfred North Whitehead, mostly keeping to himself and occasionally glancing across the ring at Russell. Their managers, who would not speak to each other, were Søren Kierkegaard, hopping off and on the ring apron, and Friedrich Nietzsche, wearing a CAT cap.

Every once in a while, someone from the Schlick-Carnap-Wittgenstein gang would yell a few words at the other team, and their side, which included Gottlob Frege, A. J. Ayer, Carl Hempel, and Gilbert Ryle, would stand together, cheer in unison, and moon the other side. Then someone from the James-Heidegger-Whitehead axis would speak for several minutes, and their fans, among whom I could see Edmund Husserl, John Dewey, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Karl Jaspers, would huddle up, mumble, and bicker at length, then finally do an Electric Slide sort of dance, culminating in a crotch grab.

I recognized some others who were in a section on a third side of the arena that looked neutral, sometimes cheering for one side and sometimes the other, sometimes looking confused, but more often indifferent. One set of bleachers was taken up by ancient Greeks: a bedraggled Thales; Pythagoras, confounded by a pocket calculator;Heraclitus, shifting around uncomfortably; a rotund Parmenides lecturing to a motionless Zeno; the other Zeno, nearly as static as the former; Diogenes barking insults at contestants and spectators alike;Carneades shaking his head in disbelief; and Democritus laughing at the whole bunch.

In the center section, David Hume, muttering to himself, “I can’t believe this bullshit,” sat beside a nodding-off Kant.

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