Though vainly, reason’s undiminished thirst
For all the variations it might play
On every long-familiar theme rehearsed
By dwellers in what actualists regard
As the one world exclusively composed
Of stuff not just dreamed up. For their trump card
Of common-sense won’t make it seem case-closed
If we continue to reflect how hard
It is, despite the perils Kant exposed
Along pure reason’s (by his lights) ill-starred
Trajectory, to think he diagnosed
Them spot-on so that in all conscience we’re
Best off not venturing past the limits drawn
By wise epistemologists who fear
To tread where metaphysics may yet spawn
Dream-monsters. Yet beyond that same frontier,
As Kant well knew, while thought-abysses yawn
On every hand, still we can learn to steer
A course that might just bring us to the dawn
Of an enlightenment not pre-assigned
Its concepts, values, or ideas of how
The term “enlightenment” should be defined,
Since—Kant again—its use must disallow
Our falling-back on thoughts of any mind
That’s not our own, or willingness to bow
To any master-thinker of the kind
Whose influence we’d have to disavow
If we’re to honour Kant’s injunction: “Dare
To know,” “Think for yourself,” “Let no one tell
You what or how to think.” Some say that there
Can be no reading of it where all’s well
About a statement that would somehow square
Its saying that we should no longer dwell
In passive tutelage and—doctrinaire
As ever—making it his task to spell
This out as an imperative imbued
With all the moral force deployed to thwart
Our natural inclinations or preclude
That bunch from jury service in the court
Of reason. That’s how justice looks when viewed
On terms that all too strikingly comport,
As Lacan said, with those to which the lewd
Or lunatic mass-torturers resort
In Sade’s more graphic renderings of the scene
Where reason’s laws are finally enthroned
And execute their verdicts with machine-
Like force, precision, and a finely-honed
Ignatian knowledge of just which routine
Of long-drawn suffering or death postponed
Might, in each case, most aptly intervene
To capture all the impulses disowned
By fragile ego, twist them into vile
Self-replicators, and ensure they’re spliced,
As Sade decreed, tormentor/victim-style
In pairs whose mere proximity sufficed
To set things off in that most versatile
Of choreographies. It’s just how Kleist
Supposed the power of dance might so beguile
The viewer that they’re finally enticed
By its perfected form into a state
Of transcendental apathy, while Keats,
That rapt hellenophile, would correlate
His urn-tale with the way that art depletes
The living energies of those who wait,
Like his two lovers, till desire that heats
Their youthful blood must suddenly abate,
Pure form take hold, and the age-old defeats
Of life by art be pictured in the frieze
That graced his pot. There’s the epitome
Of a “cold pastoral” whose devotees,
We’re left to think, may now at last be free
Of sexual craving and the long disease
Of unrequited lust yet cannot be
Admired or envied since the art that frees
Them is, Keats tells us, also that which we
Urn-fanciers falsely think provides the one
Escape-route from those sundry ills that vex
Our creature-lives. For then we’ll simply run
To it, like his poor lovers, because sex—
The act itself, not its preamble spun
Out to infinity—might unperplex
Their act-delaying hang-ups so that none
Of art’s old power remains to charm or hex
His endless chase, her endless flight, the two
Of them caught momentarily in that
Suspended instant when he can pursue,
She slip his grasp, and we still marvel at
This wonder-working gift that can undo
Time’s passage till, at last, its concordat
With life deferred becomes the déjà vu
Of death-in-life and their long lover’s spat
Turns lethal. Sex and violence in suspense,
Unravished still: surely the best of ways
For well-wrought urn or poem to condense
The lesson to be read in our four K’s—
Kant, Kleist, Keats, and (in the most literal sense)
The parable of Kafka that conveys
How law inscribes the prisoner’s offence
Directly on his flesh and so displays
To maximum effect the law that binds
Together charge and judgment, sentence and
Its mode of execution. Whence the kinds
Of penalty meticulously planned
Not only by administrative minds
In Kafka’s tale but—if it were close-scanned
For evidence—by everything that finds
A lead role on the inner witness-stand
Of his self-prosecuting need to press
Such charges and unflinchingly exact
Such retribution as reflected less
Some fitting verdict on some proven fact
Of guilt but more the craving to confess
Sins without limit, crimes of thought un-backed
By evidence, and a will to transgress
Whatever laws of conscience might be stacked
Against him by a superego drilled
In the old penitential exercise
Of Kant’s deontic court. Here reason grilled
Most fiercely anyone it might chastise
For mere benevolence or an unskilled
(From reason’s standpoint) effort to devise
Some ethic based on that which best fulfilled
The human need for all that might comprise
A life worth living and—here back to Hume,
Kant’s waker-up—worth living only on
Condition that it not so far presume
As to place all its eggs in some foregone
Or a priori basket with no room
For instinct’s prompting or for other non-
Rule-governed ways of thought. So those to whom
Such rules seem all that we can count upon
For guidance in deciding just which course
Of action to adopt, or how to judge
A tricky case, or which one to endorse
When two rules clash, will find a moral fudge
In any notion that the surest source
Of goodness is a willingness to budge
From principles and precepts. These enforce
A rule too often grounded in some grudge
Against a view of things that would eschew
Such self-inflicted quandaries and pin
Its social hopes—its moral values too,
Since (thus construed) all ethics must begin
And end in interests shared—to what will do
Most social good, so far as lies within
Our power to judge, when subject to review
By standards shared by us and those akin
To us. This went beyond mere common taste
In custom, m
anners, art, and all that goes
To constitute a sphere of value based
On culture-wide assent to take in those
Humanity-wide interests that replaced,
For more enlightened types, a gaze that chose
To pass no further than the limits traced
By its parochial remit to foreclose
More distant views. Yet taking this as far
As Kant toward the a priori heights
Where reason does its utmost to debar
All feelings best assigned, by its own lights,
To mankind’s lower nature leaves ajar
The door to Kafka’s world where law invites
Us all, men from the country, to co-star
In a production where the hand that writes
Our part does nothing more than execute
That perfect choreography that made
Kleist’s Marionettentheater so suit
The idea of a moral order played
Out solely through a register of brute
Legality where no compunction stayed
The lethal hand of justice. Still it’s moot,
So some will say, whether the Kant-brigade
With all their rules and precepts have done more
Real moral harm than those who took their lead
From Hume and so allowed the close rapport
Of those well-placed as arbiters to plead
Their privilege as keepers of the score
Who’d naturally incline, through simple need
Of peer-group approbation, to opt for
Whatever sorts of judgment best agreed
With views upheld by qualified, i.e.,
Worth-listening-to and reputable guides
To judgment. Then what counts is how to be
Both things in virtue of (here bona fides
Become more tenuous) the bourgeoisie
And their idea that really what decides
Our judgment in such matters is the pre-
Established set of values that provides
Good warrant should we be required to make
Our case. Thus any doubters who resist
The currency of taste or so mistake
Their proper role as to suppose we’ve missed
The point, us dull conformists, and should wake
Up now at their sharp prompting must exist,
Or so it’s held, in some place where to shake
Things up means treating everything as grist
To this or that consensus-grinding mill
From which appear such alien sorts of stuff
As have no role to play or slot to fill
In any scheme of things that’s close enough
To ours for us to recognize it still,
Or it to have at any rate a rough
Equivalent in ours that, with some skill
In concept-navigation, won’t rebuff
Our good-willed efforts. Yet that Humean slant
Toward consensus as the bottom line
In all such matters makes it seem we can’t
Intelligibly hope to redefine,
As Leibniz did, the very terms that grant
Pure reason its own licence to assign
Truth-values across worlds in ways that Kant,
And after him the sceptic Wittgenstein,
Would count mere products of a mind unhinged,
Or else put down to the malign effect
Of language-games that had for too long binged
On metaphysics. Thus they’d left unchecked
That power of conjuration that infringed
The boundary-lines Kant set up to protect
Our faculties against all that impinged
On them from worlds unable to connect
With ours by any mind-route other than
The speculative one that took so wild
A course and whose world-divagations ran
So far from home that nothing reconciled
Its devotees, once voyaging began,
To making sure a logbook was compiled
So that the journey back should go to plan
Since every outbound world-change had been filed
For homebound reference. I’ve taken here
Some likewise lengthy, even (be it said)
Some flighty ways around to show that we’re
Not always or predictably misled
By thought-experiments that leave the sphere
Of this-world epistemic grasp and head
Out into waters where the buccaneer
Of counterfactual travel grasps instead
What’s gained when thought foregoes the comfort-zone
Of a priori knowledge or the just
As reassuring world where things are known
Or held-true simply through a Humean trust
In the deliverances of those who’ve shown
Good judgment when such matters are discussed.
Theirs are the verdicts other folk then own
As principles that all good judges must,
If they’re to count as such, find everywhere
Borne out by commonsense and the appeal
To (what else?) plain good judgment since to share
Consensus views and values is to feel
On that account entitled to declare
How surely one’s convictions have the seal
Of best authority. They stand foursquare
With what a well-run survey would reveal
Of attitudes on every question deemed,
By them and by their peer-group, worth the time
It takes for such a sample of esteemed
Respondents to ensure their voices chime
Note-perfectly in any discourse themed
To suit (the beautiful and the sublime
Old favorites). Should this latter bit have seemed
A string of mere tautologies where rhyme
Made up (perhaps) for the conspicuous lack
Of argument or content, then you’ve got
My point: that making truth in judgment track
What’s held true by the highest-rated lot
Of savants or some other well-placed claque
Of focus-groupies makes us apt to trot
Out the same answers with no more to back
Them up than a straightforward appeal to what
Best fits the currency of best belief
And so lets our truth-values circulate
With maximum liquidity the chief
Concern. Let’s say the Kantians overrate
Pure reason’s vigil as a watching brief
And veto-wielding power to legislate
In every case where truth might come to grief
On error’s shoal. Yet, if we compensate
By swinging right across to take a view
Of truth as nothing more than lets us gain
Or share the sorts of approbation due
To those who’d let like-mindedness constrain
Their judgment, or the wish to think on cue
Whatever some new Zeitgeist might maintain,
Then we shall bid epistêmê make do
With doxa, knowledge dwell in the domain
Of falsehood, and the claim of truth retreat
From view. Then we might think the only means
To head off reason’s ultimate defeat
Is to fall back on all the stock routines
That thought adopts when judgment takes back seat
And its fine art no longer intervenes
To help ensure that reason’s standards meet
Those others set by a behind-the-scenes
Gift for imagining (and here let’s pause
To think once more of Leibniz) how the whole
Of this our actual world and all its laws
That Kant decreed our concepts should patrol
With utmost diligence might yet show flaws
In just that operation. Its chie
f role,
Let’s then suppose, is to be that which draws
A boundary to exact the heaviest toll
Within its power to levy on the likes
Of him, our space-time traveller, whose jaunts
Of reason-scripted fantasy or hikes
Throughout a modal pluriverse that haunts
Our actual world are sensed as alien strikes
By homeguard zealots. Hence the usual taunts
Of those who’d dig such world-protective dikes
Of mundane sense against a view that flaunts
Its multiplicity of worlds to bring
More vividly to mind how premature
Is any thought that sutures any thing
To those known attributes that would secure
Its this-world status safe from any fling
Of trans-world voyaging. For it’s by pure
Conjecture that new worlds contrive to spring
The mind-forged traps that otherwise ensure
We won’t risk cutting loose the apron-string
Of common-sense by some unscheduled tour
Of terra incognita where we’ll cling
Less tightly to those limits we endure,
Truth is, because they draw the conscience-sting
Of knowing how closed world-views may inure
Us finally to hope’s unraveling
As more worlds vanish from its quadrature.
BEACH SCENE: MÉDUSÉ
Beach scene, good colour snap, you in (I guess)
Your mid-late twenties, head back, curly hair
Like now, full-face to camera, your dress-
Code enigmatic: necklace, sort you’d wear
For parties, skimpy briefs, a slight ‘don’t mess
With me’ look in your eyes, tanned top half bare,
Breasts small and perfect, body language less
A come-on or a keep-off than a dare
To boyfriend, husband maybe: ‘sexy, yes,
And necklace quite a turn-on, but take care,
Don’t blow your chances - no hope of success
If that bold glance becomes a lengthy stare,
If lust turns dull with craving to possess,
Or this, my self-arousal, fails to scare
You off the very thought that I might bless
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 19