Socrates Café by Christopher Phillips

of the hamburger as ‘good’ a what? Or if I rescue someone from possibly drowning and my deed is described as a ‘good deed,’ is this good a what?” The engineer looks baffled. Raul comes to his aid. “The deed itself is a what,” he says. “Just as the hamburger itself is a what. But the good isn’t a what. The good is just a quality of the material substance.” “Just a quality?” I say. “Isn’t a quality a what? Isn’t the quality of the hamburger or the quality of the deed of rescuing a person who is drowning also a what?” The woman who earlier characterized this discussion as mental masturbation says, “It is indeed a what.” Looking at the engineer, she says, “You’re a materialist. But things that aren’t material are whats too. A quality is every bit as much of a what as anything else under the sun. Everything that exists is a what. In fact, qualities are what make whats whats. All whats have qualities, all qualities have whats.” She pauses to collect her thoughts and then says, “If I look at you and say, ‘You’re handsome,’ then I’m saying that handsome is a what every bit as much as I’m saying that you are a what. If the quality handsome were not a what, then I wouldn’t be able to use it. Handsome is a word that describes you. A word is an entity, a what, used for a specific purpose, to communicate. So these words that we share, words like good or handsome, are also whats. I’m an English teacher and I teach people to work with words. Every single word they work with are whats. Words