Thus Leibniz, metaphysically secure
In his conviction that the furthest fling
Of other-world imagining was sure
To vindicate the actual world and bring
Fresh proof of God’s intent. Although by pure
Hypothesis those other worlds might spring
Forth defect-free, yet we’d be premature
In thinking ours by contrast not the best
World possible. Nor should it therefore rate
Among those worlds that failed the litmus-test
Of what God in His goodness would create
And man’s God-given reason thus invest
With such necessity as must negate
All chance events or happenings that rest
In fortune’s fickle hands. It’s our innate
Defects of knowledge only, so he thought,
Not flaws in this our actual world that leave
Our powers of explanation falling short
Or faculties unable to achieve
The sovereign scope by which they might purport
To justify God’s ways to man, perceive
How our confused cross-stitching must distort
Truth’s fabric, and reveal the perfect weave
Of God’s design. For otherwise there’s no
Real obstacle to seeing how such sheer
Contingencies—simply the way things go,
For better or for worse—might reappear
Transfigured in a light that lets them show
Up minus all the gaps produced by mere
Extent of ignorance. Then what must flow
From what, once everything stands crystal-clear,
Will prove (however contrary to all
The text-book principles) that logic’s rule
Extends beyond tautologies that fall
Within the jurisdiction of those school-
Of-Ockham types still laboring in thrall
To narrow views. It reaches out, like Boole
Much later, into the expanded ball-
Park of a logic now deployed as tool
And speculative instrument to link
Up once again with everything that they,
The strict deductivists, would surely think
Off-limits. Else contingency might stray
Across that formal buffer-zone and shrink
The space of reason till it leaves no way
For them to shut and seal the growing chink
In freedom’s wall through which Ananke may
Gain entrance. Then she’ll soon put on her dress
Of science-led necessity and close
That hole again before the Trojans press
Dementedly against it in the throes
Of reason stricken by its own success
And looking on as myrmidons depose
Scientia in the terminal distress
Of every norm that once gave heart to those
Trained up in her defence. Not so for him,
Our trans-world voyager, since reason meant
To Leibniz a conjecture that could skim
On wings of thought across the full extent
Of modal logic’s most inventive whim
Or satisfy pure reason’s furthest bent
Of speculative thought in quest to limn
Not just the means by which to represent
New worlds but how things stand with them aside
From all concern with matters more germane
To us as this-world knowers. What applied
In those remoter regions must pertain
With equal force beyond the great divide
That, after Kant, would constitute the bane
Of our modernity. Thus “woe betide
The dupes of metaphysics”—Kant’s refrain—
Would cut no ice for one, like Leibniz, whose
Whole enterprise relied on jumping clean
Across those gaps the Kantian would refuse
To think of crossing once the risk had been
Made plain to all. Thus: he who misconstrues
Pure reason’s proper scope since over-keen
To find some application he can use
And cash idea as concept will then lose
Not just what any valid exercise
Of reason in its speculative mode
Might hope to yield by way of pure blue-skies
Reflection but whatever once bestowed
The knowledge-granting gift to recognize
How all our epistemic gains were owed
To reason’s incapacity to prise
Concepts from intuitions, or explode
The bounds of sense. If any concept void
Of sensuous intuition must on that
Account be deemed defective, misemployed,
Or downright empty, then—Kant’s tit-for-tat
Symmetric point—the confidence enjoyed
By Humean empiricists falls flat
Or finds its naïve certitudes destroyed
Once knocked into the opposite cocked hat
By Kant’s remark that intuitions shorn
Of concepts must infallibly be blind,
Or lacking in whatever might adorn
Mere sense with all the attributes of mind-
And-world in cognitive accord. He’d scorn
Such niceties, would Leibniz, since he’d find
Just signs of weakness in those scruples born
Of epistemic discipline combined
With displaced religiosity and then
Raised to the height of self-restrictive zeal
By Kant’s resolve to place beyond the ken
Of human knowers all that might reveal
Some occult truth. Best sublimate the yen
To know what lay beneath the seventh seal,
Whether the voice divine pronounce amen
Or reason exercise its old appeal
To metaphysical ideas that soared
Rhapsodically above the solid ground
Of thought’s perceptual anchorage, ignored
The rule he took such trouble to propound,
And so had all its high gyrations floored—
As Kant’s would-be transcendent dove soon found—
By seeking heaven-haunts that might afford
Fine views but, when push came to shove, were bound
To leave the winged enthusiast bereft
Of shove to meet its push. If Leibniz stood
High on the list of old-style rationalists left
Thus high and dry, there’s every likelihood
He’d not reject the charge of having effed
What Kant deemed the ineffable. For should
That charge not carry a much greater heft,
So he might ask, if put to those who could,
If so inclined, renounce the Kantian vow
Of epistemic abstinence, respond
To thinking’s distant call, and so allow
Philosophy to venture far beyond
Thought’s customary reach yet still kowtow
To rule-enforcers who’d themselves been conned
By some thought-neutering idea of how
Such ventures must stay closer to the monde
Quotidien. Here concepts always fit
Sense-data perfectly and intuitions match
Their concepts with no gap that might admit
Some room for change or let the knower catch
A glimpse of possibilities that split
Apart from this, our actual world, and hatch
New worlds where those old intuitions sit
Conspicuously awry. Then concepts latch
Onto their sensuous content only by
A doctrine-wrenching effort that betrays
How much has been repressed of hopes that lie
Precisely in that margin where the ways
Of indurated habit come to vie
With speculations guaranteed to craze
> (Or so Kant thought) the minds of those who try
To stretch their thinking round such out-of-phase
Or off-the-wall projections as enticed
Leibniz and company beyond the pale
Of sensuous intuitions that sufficed
To keep sound concepts safe within the scale
Of human finitude. Soon the Zeitgeist
Ensures that his idealist followers fail
To take Kant’s point and organize a heist
Of Leibniz-type ideas for Hegel’s tale
Of spirit in its onward-upward climb
From primitive sense-certainty, through each
Successive stage of consciousness, till time
Eventually sees fit for mind to reach
Its goal of Knowledge Absolute. If I’m
At risk here of appearing keen to preach
From that same Kantian rule-book or to prime
Aspiring space-doves with the truths he’d teach
To curb their soaring souls, that’s not the aim
Or any part of what I started out
To say in limning Kant’s attempt to tame
Leibnizian flights of reason that would flout
His diktat. Yet Kant’s rules defined the game
Only if he alone was fit to tout,
As truth personified, the final claim
To fix pure reason’s bounds beyond all doubt
And so place Leibniz in amongst the crew
Of dream-seers, prophets, mystagogues, plain fools,
And all those inner-light enthusiasts who
Took their own consciences to set the rules
Or with each case to legislate anew
And signal their defiance of the schools
Where conscience always calls for peer-review
By which to signify that reason pools
Its limited resources and redeems
Its good repute. Let’s take it Kant was well
Wide of the mark in bracketing the dreams
Of Swedenborg with thinkers who would tell,
Like Leibniz, truths beyond the strict regimes
Of cognitive command or such as fell
Outside our knowledge-remit since the themes
On which those speculators chose to dwell
Might always prove the sort that must transcend
Its limits. Yet, so doing, they’ll not yield
One jot of thought-precision or suspend
One rule of logic to which Kant appealed
In order for their thinking to extend
Way out beyond or way off to left field
Of everything we’re meant to comprehend
By Kant’s idea of knowledge as tight-sealed
Against such threats. They issue from a far
Away yet oddly close-up realm of what
Surpasses understanding like a star
Too many light-years off to fill a slot
In some star-gazer’s list of those that are
Worth looking out for while the rest are not
Since they’re best viewed—as Stevens’ blue guitar
Was heard—by other types whose favorite spot
For viewing lies some distance off the route
Most traveled. That’s for Kantian devotees
Of all that comes mind-processed just to suit
The epistemic need of one who sees
What’s plainly there to see or renders mute
All sounds except those pre-attuned to please
Their aural temperament. Should they impute
Tone-deafness to performers in strange keys
Called forth by the remotest overtones
Or reason’s wild excess to those who saw
A multiverse beyond the comfort-zones
Of this-world knowledge, then perhaps the flaw
May lie more with the well-adjusted clones
Of common-sense cognition than the straw-
Man target of a thinker who disowns
Allegiance to what Kantians deem a law
Of all well-regulated thought and yet
Thereby betray that really it’s their lack
Of will to think beyond the ground-rules set
Down in advance. What but their single-track
Thought processes could guarantee they get
No further than to package, then unpack
Old concepts, terms, and arguments with net
Result that they’re continually sent back
To square one of the rigmarole begun
When reason first consented to restrict
Its speculative powers, devoutly shun
The stratosphere, and heed the interdict
On all new versions of the tale once spun
By those prophetic souls keen to inflict
Their private fantasies on anyone
Willing to lend an ear. If Leibniz ticked
One box then it’s by doing what appeared
To Kant mad, bad, or dangerous—or just
Plain idiotic—since his thought-path veered
Far off the beaten track where one could trust
Sense-data to prevent things getting weird.
Thus it claimed access to such truths as must
Hold good for any world where reason steered
The questing intellect beyond earth’s crust,
Our actual world among them but construed
As full of mere contingencies and hence
Just one amongst the branching multitude
Of worlds whose past, present or future-tense
Existence no logician could exclude
From being real. This not in some loose sense
With scare-quotes or as philosophic food
For thought but as entitled to dispense
With proofs empirical and use the case
Of mathematics to convince the crowd
Of sceptics that there’s room in reason’s space,
Objectively conceived, for what’s allowed
(Like numbers, sets and functions) its own place
Among the items rightfully endowed
With a reality whose knowledge-base
Can be as apodictically avowed
As any formal axiom or proof
Demonstrative. Raise questions if you will
Regarding whether thought should stay aloof
From factual truths or circumstances; still
There’s no good reason to suppose we’ll goof,
As Kant believed, if we rely on skill
In speculative thought to lift the roof
On earthbound actuality, instill
A sense of worlds elsewhere, and thus promote,
Along with that, a feeling for what sets
The actual world apart from those that float
Before our mental eyes when reason lets
Us think or dream them up. Best we devote,
As Leibniz did, our minds to that which gets
Us out of using “actual” to denote
“The only world on which to place our bets”
And shows us how the others might be real
As ours although non-actual while to them,
Those other-world inhabitants, the deal
Works in reverse. Why, then, should we condemn
A thinker whose one aim was to reveal
How rich an actuality might stem
From our existing in a world that we’ll
Perhaps, as thinkers, not allow to hem
Our modal speculations or dictate
The scope of our conceiving yet whose own
Intramundane complexities we’ll rate
More highly once we’ve seen how all that’s known
Of this world might get lost when we translate
To those for which there’s no Rosetta Stone,
No laws of thought or world that commutate
Except (so Leibniz held) what could be shown
To have the trans-world necessary kind
> Of a priori warrant that obtained
For truthful statements formally defined,
Like those of maths and logic. So what’s gained
By actualists through thinking truths assigned
To sundry worlds unknown is best explained
As what serves most distinctly to remind
Us stay-at-homes with expectations trained
On this-world evidence that worlds elsewhere
Are, now as always, how we get a fix
On all things actual, and how far they square
With things in modal logic’s bag of tricks.
Then—for those brave enough to go compare—
The question’s what, in the resultant mix
Of world-constituents, might come to bear
The hopes of those whose world-allegiance sticks
This side of Shangri-La but never yields
So far to pessimism as to take
The kind of this-world-only line that wields
Its actualism as a means to make
Hope’s countervailing drive desert the fields
Of open possibility and shake
All confidence in everything that shields
The hoper from a knowledge that would break
Their world-inventive nerve or strike them dumb
When faced with actuality’s long haul
Of factual hope-defeaters. Lest we come
Around to such a verdict let’s not fall
Back on the sage advice of those who’d drum
Into our heads the cynic siren-call
Of that long-serving actualist rule-of-thumb
Which says we’re best advised to just play ball
With this-world norms. Then no thought would betray
The slightest hint of what might yet unfold
As possible beyond what points the way
To some result reliably foretold
By reason’s basic remit to convey
Its wordly truth as prudently enrolled
On actualism’s side and keep at bay
All thoughts that Ockham’s acolytes would scold
As empty metaphysics. Where they drive
The point too hard, those sticklers for the good
Of thought’s self-discipline, is just where I’ve
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 17
