BUSTLING ACTIVITY ON THE SINKING SHIP

BUSTLING ACTIVITY ON THE SINKING SHIP

What is funny about extreme busyness amid extreme danger?

Insofar as money is a something, the relativity between richer and poorer is not comic, but if it is token money, it is comic that it is a relativity. If the reason for people's hustle-bustle is a possibility of avoiding danger, the busyness is not comic; but if, for example, it is on a ship that is sinking, there is something comic in all this running around, because the contradiction is that despite all this movement they are not moving away from the site of their downfall.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript to

Philosophical Fragments 1:555 (KW 12)

[Voice: Johannes Climacus]