For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

Said we’re most prone to miss the sacred wood

  In search of common trees, or to deprive

  Our questing souls of everything that could,

  More amply viewed, do wonders to revive

  Our sense of such things as are understood

  Only by minds at full creative stretch

  Around those possibilia. They gleam

  At every thought’s periphery and sketch,

  Each one, a world conceived as if in dream

  Yet strictly on condition that we fetch

  From reason’s store an apt projection-scheme

  By which inventive intellect can etch

  The sharpest images with laser-beam

  Intensity. Let’s anyway concede

  That Leibniz and his kind not only traced

  Alternative world-paradigms that freed

  The mind for exploration but embraced

  A here-and-now more intimately keyed

  To its nearby world-counterparts. When faced

  With these infractions of the one-world creed

  We’ll maybe come to think the actual graced,

  Not compromised, by modals that conspire

  With logic to declare ours not the sole

  Reality nor such as would require

  The sorts of zealous boundary-control

  Devised to close our minds to that entire

  Thought-multiverse where reason has a role

  Beyond what falls to it as chief supplier

  Of grounds to think what’s there for us the whole

  Of what there is. They got him wrong who took

  Exception (like Voltaire, though let’s admit

  His error made Candide a splendid book)

  To all the methods Leibniz used to fit

  The worst vicissitudes by hook or crook

  Into a meliorist scheme of things, acquit

  The deity of malice, and (what shook

  His hard-boiled critics) offer us a kit

  Of concepts and devices good for use

  In any new theodicy that sought

  To prove God’s loving-kindness. He’d deduce,

  His critics said, by exercise of thought

  Alone the perfect, ready-made excuse

  For all the grief and suffering they’d brought,

  That crew of monster deities from Zeus

  To a God who, as the Church Fathers taught,

  Reserved his choicest punishments for those

  Brave dissidents who counted it depraved,

  This worship of a psychopath who chose

  To multiply the joys of souls he’d saved

  From hellfire by consenting to disclose

  For their delight how those who’d misbehaved

  Were broiling down below. Yet should this pose

  A problem God’s apologists have slaved

  For centuries to solve, still it’s that gloss

  On Leibniz that’s gone badly off the rails

  And not his brave design to think across

  The boundaries drawn up when there prevails

  A mind-set such as couldn’t give a toss

  For any modal venture that entails

  At any rate some temporary loss

  Of bearings. Thus imagination trails

  Not clouds of glory from some dream-world past

  Remembrance but a shift of view that tropes

  The actual and allows us to contrast

  Its limiting perspective with the hopes

  (Though fears as well) that come when we recast

  Conceiving’s role from worlds with which it copes

  Familiarly to dealing with that vast

  New range that even those who know the ropes—

  Experts in modal logic, sci-fi fans,

  Or thought experimenters—may regard

  As altogether surplus to their plans

  And purposes. This means a boarding-card

  Good for some short-hop flights or day-trips sans

  Passport or papers but, it says, debarred

  From taking any longer-range or trans-

  World jaunt to someone else’s far back-yard

  Which risks the kind of compass-spin that makes

  A nonsense of our wishing to return,

  Like old Odysseus, and relieve the aches

  Of home-lament in those who’ve failed to learn

  His lesson. Yet perhaps that’s what it takes,

  That same Leibnizian readiness to burn

  All bridges leading home, refuse all stakes

  Except the riskiest, banish all concern

  With scheduling our mental flights to touch

  Down in our actual world, and so—in brief—

  Resolve, like him, to kick away the crutch

  Of common-sense perception or belief

  That’s oftenest what actualists will clutch

  Most tightly when the multiverse motif

  Looms up on thought’s horizon. If it’s such

  A threat to them, a knowledge-wrecking reef

  Of unknown possibilia, let’s not leap

  To the same false conclusion that Voltaire

  Was quick to put around and thereby keep

  Enlightened readers safe from this new snare

  Laid down, he thought, by those in whom the sleep

  Of reason bred not monsters but a rare

  And, in its way, quite monstrous will to sweep

  Aside all pains and evils because they’re

  (Or so the doctrine held) perceived as freak

  And bad occurrences only by dint

  Of our restricted knowledge and our weak

  Since human, all-too-human view asquint.

  Hence Voltaire’s charge: Leibniz was out to seek,

  In his plurality of worlds, a hint

  Of that which so transcended our oblique

  And partial knowledge as to lend a glint

  Of God’s omniscience to the otherwise

  Contingent-seeming congeries of one

  Damn thing after another without whys

  Or wherefores. His would be the story run

  By clerics through the ages who’d devise

  Some neat new twist of argument to stun

  The sceptic or seek out some novel guise

  For old theodicies that came undone

  As soon as one reflected on the plain

  Impossibility that any god

  Should have all those perfections that pertain

  To Him by definition yet should nod—

  Through boredom, inattention, or a pain-

  Approving relish—when the torture-squad

  Gets down to work. Inquisitors re-train

  And only a thick creed-protecting wad

  Of moral idiocy keeps them cocooned,

  The theologians, in their fixed idea

  That it could make no sense if one impugned

  Either God’s pure benevolence or sheer

  Omnipotence since a God-concept pruned

  Of one or other attribute would veer

  Too far off course, then finish up marooned

  In heresy and subject to severe

  Doctrinal sanctions of the sort that they,

  God’s torturers, could best root out. So if

  Voltaire and the enlighteners display

  Such animus in their satiric tiff

  With Leibniz, let’s not be too quick to say

  They’re flat wrong to pick up more than a whiff

  Of some addition to the dossier

  Of failed theodicies or some new riff

  On those repugnant doctrines that contrived

  To get God off the hook and get around

  His (let’s say) moral flaws by a revived

  And, as it seemed at least, a more profound

  Since axiom-based and logically derived

  Account of how things stood. This made it sound

  Plain rational to hold that lives deprived

  Of every good might none the less redoun
d

  To God’s eternal glory all the more

  Decisively by showing how each stroke

  Of what must seem misfortune from the store

  Prepared for our bleak lives by some baroque

  Revenger counts as something we should score

  Up, if we weren’t such simple-minded folk

  And prone to take short views, to the rapport

  Between God’s purposes and—where they poke

  Satiric fun most sharply—all that goes

  To make the sum of human good viewed sub

  Specie aeternitatis. Just dispose

  Contingent this-world facts around the hub

  Of rational necessity that shows

  What’s trans-world valid and you’ll have the nub

  Of his case, as the Voltaire faction chose

  To take it, for aspiring to the club

  Of near-angelic intellect. They claimed

  A moral standpoint hugely in advance

  Of those poor sufferers at whom were aimed

  Catastrophes they’d put down to mere chance

  But which, once their occurrences were tamed

  By reason’s higher law, worked to enhance

  God’s rule as supreme arbiter unblamed

  For all our human woes. These, at first glance,

  Might logically be blamed on God alone

  Since His combined perfections left no gap

  Or wriggle-room whereby He might disown

  Responsibility and spring the trap

  Set by the humanists and others prone

  At every opportunity to cap

  Their arguments by picking that old bone

  Anent how those perfections must run slap

  Into some version of the paradox

  Or downright contradiction pointed out

  By Schopenhauer. His metaphor still mocks

  The God-defenders and ensures the rout

  Of all theodicies that tick each box—

  Omnipotence, omniscience about

  The future, and (the one that really knocks

  A hole in their defences) what they tout

  As the benevolence that must belong

  To God’s prime attributes—since, if you try

  To square them, you’ll encounter something wrong

  Or some pair of them logically awry

  (Here Schopenhauer again) whichever prong

  Of this or that dilemma may supply

  Your hoped-for means of exit from the throng

  Of those left unresolved. Let’s not deny,

  In view of this, that they possessed at least

  Some warrant for adopting such a note

  Of fierce disdain for Leibniz as high priest

  And architect of all that underwrote

  The creed of those whose finer feelings ceased

  At just the point where thoughts of God demote

  Thoughts of humanity to a decreased,

  Then obsolescent role which (to misquote

  Voltaire) lifts all restrictions on the grand

  Inquisitors and thumbscrew-twisters sold

  On credo quia absurdum who’d expand

  Their repertoire. For they’ve thrown off the hold

  Of reason or the need to understand

  Such elementary truths as might be told,

  So long as reason keeps the upper hand,

  By thoughts of how both parties are enrolled,

  Victim and persecutor, in a shared

  Though for the moment skewed predicament

  That only those with sympathies impaired

  By some inhuman dogma could prevent

  From showing how they might at last be spared

  Yet more such grief if only they’d assent

  To reason’s view of them as deeply snared

  In a warped actuality. This lent

  To all their partial outlooks the same hue

  Of darkness, paranoia, or the blind

  Insensate rage of those whose one-world view

  Of things, as they half-guessed, had so confined

  Their mental universe that all they knew

  Of other worlds was what they were inclined

  By trained predisposition to imbue

  With every bad propensity assigned

  To virtue’s other by (who else?) those fit

  For its upholding in (what else?) that sole

  Truth-territory where virtue’s friends acquit

  Themselves with every honour and extol

  The virtues that most readily admit

  Themselves alone to the exclusive role

  Of truth’s true arbiters. For here’s the bit

  They miss out, those who emphasise the toll

  Of unacknowledged suffering that craves

  No alms for our remembrance when it’s set

  Against Leibniz’s worldview, one that staves

  Off all such pointless tendencies to fret,

  Like Johnson reading Shakespeare, when the knaves

  Win out and fix things so the virtuous get

  It in the neck, no guardian angel saves

  Them as they fall, or twists of fortune let

  The best go to the wall. Yet we’ll be wide

  Of the Leibnizian mark if we allow

  The reasoned optimism of a guide

  To other worlds beyond the here-and-now

  Of this, where we deictically reside,

  To close our more parochial minds to how

  Their counter-truths proliferate beside

  A plain-fact record which they may endow

  Not with a rankling sense of what we might,

  If luckier, more gifted, more adept,

  Or better off have done as if by right

  But what contingency has so far kept,

  For us, unactualised. Let’s think, despite

  All that may disincline us to accept

  The Pangloss view, that maybe with a slight

  Yet crucial tweak his seemingly inept

  Since twittering or bright-side take on things

  Could yet turn out—when suitably expressed

  In God-free modal form—as that which brings

  No such smug doctrine that would make the test

  Of rationality its running rings

  Around whoever doubted this was best

  Of all worlds possible despite the slings

  And arrows. These could not be laid to rest

  By any sage discounting of the odds

  Against an actual world where every bad

  Event or fresh catastrophe shows God’s

  To us obscure since long-range plan to add

  Some greater good for each new case of sod’s

  Law as it seems to those struck by the sad-

  To-wretched course of every life that plods

  On doggedly as if to show God had

  No part in it. Allow yourself to strip

  The God-talk out, or grant it the degree

  Of latitude it might require to tip

  His thinking that way, and perhaps you’ll see

  How it’s those Leibniz-bashers in the grip

  Of this-world prejudice who fail to free

  Their thinking from the cynic’s wish to nip

  Hope’s prospect in the bud by harsh decree

  Of a poor metaphysics that abjures

  All thought of possibilities beyond

  The narrowest of subsets. This assures

  The Kantians that their concepts correspond

  To something really out there, while it cures

  The Leibniz-itch to wave a modal wand

  And conjure worlds enough for endless tours

  Of brainsick fabulation. Yet the bond

  Thus zealously enforced between what fits

  Our this-world concept-schemes and what pertains

  To sensuous apprehension then admits

  No slightest space for thought to break the chains

  Of a mind-forged necessity that p
its

  Brute fact against potential and campaigns

  In actualism’s cause to call it quits

  With might-have-been so long as thought refrains

  From moving on to might-yet-be. It thus

  Forgets Kant’s own imperative to think

  Things out ourselves, sole means of freeing us

  From mental tutelage, and leaves no chink

  Through which thought might acquire the impetus

  To challenge common-sense or break the link

  Imposed by mere perceptual habit plus

  Fixed notions. Else we might be on the brink

  Of some big upset to the status quo

  In all things pertinent to how we cope

  With Kant’s three questions, viz: What can we know?

  What can we thinkers reasonably hope?

  And then, transcending both, what might bestow

  Best claim to moral goodness when we grope

  Our way toward it along paths that go

  The highest route lest reason should elope

  With sensuous inclination. This would cause,

  As Kant conceives it, such a major breach

  In that whole complex edifice of laws

  He’d set in place that it would offer each

  Of us some special plea or get-out clause

  Framed so as to ensure they don’t impeach

  Our errant will but give themselves some pause

  For thought. Then we’d have ample time to reach

  A working compromise with what the strict

  Demand of conscience otherwise would deem

  Rightfully subject to its interdict

  As instinct-led, hence lacking the esteem

  Due moral agents who’d entirely kicked

  Such variants of the hedonist’s old theme

  And so, on Kant’s ascetic reckoning, licked

  Themselves into good shape. But should this seem

  Too rigorist, too anxious to inflict

  Its grim Wirklichkeitsprinzip on the dream

  Of Lustprinzip fulfilled, then we should pay

  More heed to just those thinkers, Leibniz first

  And foremost, who not only did away

  With that self-inquisition but reversed

  The rule by which Kant sought to hold at bay,