Schtitt & Mario's walk: except the chance to play

Pressed on whether vanquishing the self is the same as destroying it — whether tennis and suicide finally differ — Schtitt concedes "maybe no different," then finds the one exception and roars with delight at it: "except the chance to play." The whole grim self-competitive metaphysics resolves, at the ice-cream table, into an affirmation: what redeems the war against the self is the playing of it. The doctrine's dark logic and its saving clause stated in the same breath.