Sonya: ...What prevents you from murdering somebody?
Boris: Murder is immoral.
Sonya: Immorality is subjective.
Boris: Objectivity is subjective.
Sonya: Not in the irrational scheme of perception.
Boris: Perception is irrational. It implies immanence.
Sonya: But judgment of any system or a priori relation of phenomena exists in any rational or metaphysical or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract and empirical concept such as being or to be or to occur in the thing itself or of the thing itself!
Boris: I’ve said that many times...

I left out what Sonya says about God just before these lines. if there is no God and man does as he pleases... as this statement has its own flaws. God says man can do as he pleases also. Leaving that aside,

*Murder is immoral.*
*Immorality is subjective.*
So far so good... society decides morality, and it is subjective.

*Subjectivity is objective*...really? We can argue that to us objectivity is subjective, but does that mean there is no objective reality outside of ourselves... What if there is and we try to meet it as close as we can, which brings us to Sonya’s point.

*Not in the irrational scheme of perception...*
We cannot achieve objectivity because of perception which is subjective and a distortion of reality. None of our subjective experiences perfectly align with reality.

*Perception is irrational. It implies immanence.*
Boris is speaking nonsense... He says he is happy to have deep conversations with Sonya, but he is out of his league... In traditional thinking perception is neither rational or irrational... BUT this is part of Woody’s genius screenplay, recent philosophers at Harvard 2017 published a book arguing that perception itself CAN be irrational because of irrational influences. So is that Woody being completely ironic and/or ahead of his time?

But then Boris goes on to say that irrationality implies immanence, which is also hilariously absurd when the opposite would be true. First, why does Boris bring in the idea of God when he has already argued against God’s existence? Second if God is an ever present guide, wouldn’t God ensure that perception is rational, not irrational?

Boris can only repeat what he has heard (murder is immoral) but even these basic ideas are just inherited, left unexamined. As the argument gets deeper he falls apart or sounds like a child... or both... remember “the way I see it the universe is big fish eating little fish, plants eating plants... it’s like an enormous restaurant. That’s the way I see it.” This is also brilliant because Woody can pull things apart and go into one of his typical irreverent comic routines...

And that’s not even Sonya’s major point that follows... Her words sound gorgeous and poetic (with quick delivery), and she is serious and absolutely out of his league and over his head. I think she says that there is a paradox in the abstract concepts of existence or occurrences and the judgment of phenomena within that existence is like a chicken and en egg. There is an inherent contradiction between existence and judgment.

Her words and delivery are like so many of the classical philosophers, excessively fancy like a textbook or a dictionary definition or even a treatise, for example “being or to be or to occur in the thing itself or of the thing itself.” And I think the genius writer Woody Allen and the genius deliverer Diane Keaton are doing a damn good mockery of that point, at the same time that Sonja beats Boris. After all as he observes in this same scene with admiration, “Hey, you’ve been going to finishing school!”

Because Boris made Sonya’s language like a treatise, he mocks the fact that no one actually talks that way. “I’ve said that many times...”

Hope I did this justice... one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite films of all time...