For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  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