Positive Liberty

My National Novel Writing Month is almost over. Oddly, it’s given me new enthusiasm for doing plain-old vanilla blogging again, and some topics are just too good to pass up. I know, I know, I’ve missed a lot of big stories this month, passed up many interesting discussions, and probably alienated a number of bloggers who might otherwise have been friendly. For that I offer my sincere apologies. With that said, though, I’m almost back in the saddle. Outside the novel, here is what’s been on my mind recently:

I belong to a generation whose earliest political memories include scenes of Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, of the largely peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe, and of the Berlin Wall coming down. For us at least, there is still something satisfying, something almost too good to be true about the end of the Cold War.

When we see history repeating itself–as it now seems to be doing in Ukraine–there can be no doubt about what we’re going to think. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and others–We’re all with the opposition here. The real test of a democracy is whether the people are willing to take to the streets to protect it, because ultimately nothing else will do. Worthless as it may sound, I wish the Ukrainians all the best, and if anyone knows of a way to help more directly, please let me know. I will be sure to pass it along.

While the Ukrainians fight for even the basics of a limited government, over here we are arguing about the implementation, and I find these arguments no less fascinating. I speak, of course, of Raich vs. Ashcroft, which has the potential to become one of the biggest court cases of the new century. At issue is whether federal law may prohibit a private individual from growing and consuming marijuana for personal medical reasons.

It’s a gripping case on many different levels. Angel Raich’s doctor has declared to the courts that Raich risks death if she stops using marijuana to treat her chronic pain, nausea, and paralysis. She has tried dozens of other remedies, all to no avail. Only cannabis works, and, in her case at least, it appears to work remarkably well. On the other side, outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft is shown precisely at his reactionary worst–a tyrant, taking medicine away from a desperately ill and remarkably law-abiding woman.

The Supreme Court is no doubt cognizant of these facts, but the real question lies elsewhere, and it may be stated as follows: Does the federal government possess the power to regulate the private growth and consumption of cannabis under the interstate commerce clause, even when no interstate transportation or commercial activity is present?

Frankly, historical precedent favors Mr. Ashcroft. In Wickard vs. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court issued a ruling that is likely to control in this situation: Responding to a petitioner who argued that the Agricultural Adjustment Act’s wheat quotas did not apply to wheat that was never intended for sale, the Court ruled that even non-commercial activity could be regulated under the interstate commerce clause, provided that it exercised an indirect effect upon interstate commerce.

Upon the thin reed of indirect economic effects, a mountain of jurisprudence has arisen. Not only has this case spawned virtually the entire federal regulatory regime of the intervening years, but it has also been the basis for, improbably enough, the civil rights cases of the mid-20th century: Because discrimination in some way alters interstate commerce, and because, in the case of purely in-state actions, discrimination indirectly alters interstate commerce, it has been found that Congress has the power to regulate racially discriminatory practices.

While racial discrimination may be despicable, and while prohibiting it may be a legitimate government action–and I do agree on both counts–still, one has to wonder whether the interstate commerce clause was the best justification that the government could find. Not only does it feel ad hoc, it exposes the sheer unlimited power of the clause as it is now interpreted.

Under decisions like these, the interstate commerce clause has grown enormously in scope, and it seems that by now it can be used to justify the regulation of virtually anything. If noncommercial wheat and marijuana are both subject to congressional control, then one may easily imagine Congress re-enacting an alcohol prohibition, too: If the commerce clause truly possesses such sweeping power, then the Eighteenth Amendment is unnecessary–and the Twenty-First is entirely moot.

As I see it, the entire conundrum rests on two tragic errors.

First, it’s time to admit, I think, that Wickard was wrongly decided. Yes, a tremendous weight of settled law rests upon this case. But rather than bolstering the need for Wickard, these subsequent cases have only demonstrated the vast scope of the underlying error: If Congress can regulate anything with indirect effects upon interstate commerce, then Congress can regulate anything, period.

Under Wickard, there is no sphere of human activity where we citizens are truly at liberty. This cannot possibly reflect the spirit of our Constitution, whose every concern elsewhere is for the setting of proper limits on the federal government’s intrusive power. The commerce clause must not be understood in isolation; properly speaking, it can only be read in light of the document that bears it, and the many limitations that the document elsewhere demands.

With one exception–1995’s U.S. vs. Lopez (Er, two exceptions, including U.S. vs. Morrison in 2000)–post-Wickard jurisprudence has done nothing to rein in the ever-expanding bubble of federal power that has emerged in the meantime. As a result, the government in Washington has become a vast, glitzy dispensary of regulatory favor. Only the inveterate tendency of all Americans to organize into competing interest groups has allowed for some check on the expanding powers of Congress, as that body is forced, by dint of competition among lobbyists, to reach compromises that do not quite give away the farm. So far it has managed, but barely.

The second great error goes back to the original draft of the Constitution itself–and to a set of attitudes that long predate it. In 1787, economics was still very much a mysterious science. The Wealth of Nations was only eleven years old, and economic fallacy was far more common than economic wisdom, even among the self-proclaimed experts of the day.

One of the most pervasive misconceptions of the time was the idea that “commerce” represented a discrete sphere of human action. In truth, commerce is no such thing, then or now, but the governments of the age seldom understood commerce as it should be. Hence the government of England passed the Corn Laws, which spawned pernicious effects in areas where they least were expected; hence the government of France proclaimed that nobles would forfeit their titles if they ever engaged in the vulgar practice of “commerce”–while the nobles themselves constantly invented new ways of engaging in commerce without violating the ever-too-narrow laws of derogation. They bought shares in joint stock companies, which themselves were a new invention; they managed the so-called property of others at a compensation of 100% profit; they obtained exemptions to declare a given activity “non-commercial” wherever such exemptions were possible. In short, they did whatever they could to enter commerce, and they found that doing it was easier than anyone had guessed.

To later economic thinkers, these actions proved beyond a shadow of doubt that all things can be made into commerce: All human activity goes on in a seamless web of give and take, sometimes with money, sometimes without. Today we understand that “commerce” is not so much a separate sphere of human activity as it is a way of thinking about our actions. We now view economics as a tool for analyzing the entire interconnected web of human behavior–much as we also view anthropology, psychology, or comparative history, each of which approaches that web from a different perspective.

Indeed, we would find it absurd to ask which behaviors were not psychological or historical. To us, all action has a psychological dimension, and all action is a part of history, for all human action may properly be considered from a psychological or a historical standpoint. We would never dream of giving Congress the power to regulate all psychological activity–and yet, in giving Congress the power to regulate all economic activity, we have done precisely the same.

But in 1787, it was taken virtually for granted that economics was merely a thing to be done in the marketplace, and that “commerce” was best understood in isolation from the rest of human life. The contradictions to this worldview were piling up all around, but the new insight had not yet arrived. Conventional wisdom, from the dawn of the so-called ‘political arithmetic’ in the seventeenth century, all the way through the late Enlightenment, held that “commerce” was a limited thing.

In other words, today’s trouble with the commerce clause rests on a misunderstanding that predates the republic. Within their limited worldview, the framers intended nothing more than to give Congress a well-defined power over one branch of human life–and that only in one special instance. They never dreamed that two centuries of new social insight would turn the interstate commerce clause into the most powerful sixteen words in the entire Constitution.

The remedy for this situation is far from clear. One might conceivably go back to pre-Wickard jurisprudence (as this brief argues), but having to argue and re-argue all of the subsequent precedents must really be a fearsome deterrent to this idea. One might attempt to find some new, post-Wickard way of limiting the scope of the commerce clause, but it seems to me at least that any such limitation would have to be entirely arbitrary.

And then there is the ultimate remedy, amending the Constitution. I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a wide-ranging prediction: I predict that within fifty years, the Constitution will be amended to replace or to radically alter the interstate commerce clause, a provision that is flawed in the extreme and ultimately unworkable from the standpoint of limited government. Failing this prediction, I envision that the regulatory state will encompass every sphere of human life, leading to nothing less than a de facto communism. And the rest of the Constitution–crafted with the clear intent of limiting federal power–will be nothing more than a long list of pleasant wishes.

Can one badly decided case, based on a badly worded section of the Constitution, which itself rests on an archaic view of human nature–can the weight of these errors really be enough to deprive Angel Raich of the medicine she needs to stay alive? That’s the short-term question. The long view is, if anything, even more distressing: Can this train of misunderstanding really be enough to wipe out the clear intent of virtually every other clause in the Constitution? I should hope not. But then, marijuana is some scary stuff, and you can never be too careful.

Update: Thanks to Kip Esquire and In The Agora for the links. Legal Theory Blog has a rough account of the oral arguments. Randy Barnett, arguing Raich’s case, did not make the far-reaching argument I’ve outlined above; this type of thing doesn’t win Supreme Court cases until it’s been percolating through law schools for at least a couple of decades. On the contrary, Barnett insisted that the activity in question was not fundamentally economic. The government argued the opposite–and that, if anything, the powers granted under Wickard did not go far enough. So much for small-government, states’-rights Republicans. Dahlia Lithwick covers the arguments in the Raich case with a bit more snark in “Dude, Where’s My Integrity?” [Bumped to the top; this post is getting a lot of attention, and I'd be happy if it got more.]

As noted in the previous chapter, the preliminaries of any great adventure are always more impressive than the hard, practical, final bits. In the back room, the Grand Curate rolled up his yoga mat and placed it on a shelf. Dozens of similar shelves covered the four walls of the room; on them were books, bottles, relics, idols, charms and fetishes of every description.

“Holiness,” he said. “You can practically smell it in the air here.”

“Oh please,” I replied. “It smells of mildew and stale smoke from the incense. And you should know better, too: Yoga demands some good fresh air. Sunlight, too, if you can manage.”

“Have it your way, of course. I wouldn’t dream of anything else,” he replied.

“Oh?” I answered, “But you aren’t being properly spiritual unless you agree with precisely the way that I do the rituals.” He looked back at me and winked.

“I know that the novelty of being a full-time infidel must really be something for you. But after a while, you get used to it. It’s vulgar to look down on the beliefs of others, even if they really are completely wrong.”

He was right; I thought of the go master in the park, who had shown such patience with errors far more simple than these: The errors of the go board were the errors of a moment’s bad reflection; the errors of religion, if such are admitted to exist, must be the accumulated and reasonable-sounding detritus of the centuries, imbued in the believer from birth. The way to deal with them, if at all, was to leave them alone.

“What do you believe, really?” I asked.

“A little of everything. Not much of anything in particular,” he replied. My stomach turned. I could scarcely have imagined an answer that revolted my sensibilities more directly. But there was more.

“I’ve got a knack,” he said, “for figuring out what other people believe–and for giving it to them. I knew your type the moment you walked through the door, and I knew just what I had to say. But since you asked, I’m giving you the truth. Don’t look at the truth too closely, my friend. After all, I’m also giving you a way out of here.”

In a very important sense, I was already chafing at the idea of being an Asan heretic. Why on earth must I be responsible for the likes of my heretic, freethinking, independent peers? Why have an organization at all? Why be a part of something–when your only commonality was to insist, more strongly than others, on difference? Let’s face it, too: Even here there is no guarantee of goodness. There never is. What did it mean to be a freethinker–when free thought could lead you anywhere, even into utter indifference? I wished I could tell Claudia and Mohammed this–and maybe, in just a few moments, I just might get the chance.

Instead, I was silent for a long time. The Curate, who probably understood just what I was thinking, had at least the good sense to allow me that quiet.

“Well, here we are,” said the Curate after a few uncomfortable moments. “Time for you to be on your way.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.

“I’m going to tell you to go.”

“Go where?”

“Up.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Do it anyway.”

“You don’t expect that it will work, do you?” I asked.

“I expect quite thoroughly that it will.”

“You bend reality by the sheer power of not believing in it?”

“Why must you always see the worst in my chosen philosophy? I’m a free thinker, no? Just do what I tell you–wing it, if you must.”

I did. Much to my surprise, I ascended toward the ceiling. My body became transparent. I should have expected as much all along, like those rare moments of lucidity in a dream, where you realize in a blinding flash that everything around you really is a dream–and the knowledge gives you some secret power over the rest of the world. Spurred on perhaps by their dreams, generations had tried and failed this method in the Real World, but in the Unreal, the rules were apparently quite different. It worked, just like in the dreams.

It wasn’t a dream, though; it was still the Unreal World, and I was wide awake. I was still myself, and I was rising rapidly through the ceiling with only barely enough time to wish the Grand Curate a farewell and a thank-you–while wondering precisely how all of this had come to pass. I couldn’t explain a bit of it. Could I do this all again? Something inside me said no–that the very command of the Grand Curate, given inside his sacred retreat, had been necessary to bring on the transformation. But something else said that I could do it whenever I wanted, and that, in a way, I always could. I wondered how life would ever be the same in the Unreal World.

But there was no time for that. There was no time; I was rising. My head hit the ceiling–and failed to stop. I passed upward, through the columns and vaulted arches of the Cathedral, through the worked stone and the bedrock. I flowed through underground streams, through prehistoric refuse heaps, and through the fossilized remains of the beasts of legend. Exactly as promised, I seeped through the topsoil and out to the surface, whole in body and spirit.

Elsewhere a conspiracy was brewing.

“Even the Prudent Predator has failed us,” sad the middle-aged god. “And with all the help we gave him, too. Can’t he do anything right?”

“In a way, he should have known better–and so should we. How does he go on calling himself prudent when he acts like that? The first little bit of extra power, and it goes straight to his mortal brain, addling it,” said the old goddess.

“But… He’s not a mortal. He’s an Avatar,” said the youngest god.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s the Avatar of a perfectly mortal vice. Terminology aside, it all comes out in the wash, and the power got to his head,” said the middle-aged god. “Come to think of it, I think I’ve seen some awfully good plays on that subject, back in my day.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said the eldest. “And you’re rambling again, which suits you badly.”

“Oh, wait! I’m getting something,” said the young god. He raised his white eyebrows as though straining to hear.

“Got him?” said the old goddess. She licked her fangs in anticipation.

“Yup,” said the middle-aged one. “I’ve got a lock on him too. He’s gone ethereal.”

“Now,” said the ancient goddess.

A wash of divine power streaked across the planes of existence. I never noticed a thing.

I stood on solid ground, in the middle of a rolling mountain meadow. It was cold; the wind cut through my thin shirt as though it wasn’t even there, and my jacket had been so torn from the adventures of the past few days that it did very little good either. The daisies whipped sideways with each new gust. Below me, the meadow gave way to an awe-inspiring view of the city of Chateauna. I was in the Elrin Mountains, nearing the far end of the Lands of Pure Fantasy. Beyond these peaks lay only the Wastelands of Surrealism, and I had no desire at all to go visiting there.

Especially not today of all days, because the Citadel was right in front of me.

Whether the door was locked or not, whether I had the key or not, even the fact that I had traded the key to an untrustworthy imp in return for my freedom some time ago–all of it was forgotten. I ran toward my goal, unaware of these concerns–and unaware of the divine intervention that was about to render them all entirely beside the point. Oblivious, then, I ran to the door.

I should have recognized that things were amiss. In front of me was not the thick, impervious castle door of my earlier encounter. Instead, I beheld a soft, leather-coated executive boardroom door, circa 1973, with a plush-handled knocker directly in the center. There was no need for a key; there never is when you enter the boardroom of the Inner Unethical Council. The way is always straight and easy–and before you can even knock, Sycophancy opens up every door.

In retrospect, my failure to notice the difference must surely have been the result of one last drop from that surge of divine intervention just previous. Once the door is open, however, you have very little choice in the matter: The demands of politeness, custom, and good form all demand no less than that you sit down at the long mahogany table, put your feet up, and have a cigar. And as the nicotine massages your brain, someone–probably False Seeming–will pour you a chilled glass of absinthe, and your feet will rise off the hand-knotted Afghan rug, made by the slave labor of children, and decadently alight on the mahogany table itself. And you will say, against every moral fiber in your being:

“God damn, it’s good to be back.” Which is exactly what I said.

“We missed you,” said Amour-Propre. “You always did light up our little conversations.” He put down the Sanskrit text that he was pretending to read, and I remembered to be wary. I could trust not a thing I heard in the room–though a lot of it would surely appeal to me.

“Cupcake?” asked Sloth, pushing a plate in my direction.

“No thank you,” I replied.

“Fine,” said Spite. “I don’t know why I even bother to bake the damn things.”

“So, gentlemen, what are we here for? I trust you know that you aren’t the ones I was looking for.”

“I’m never good enough for you, am I?” asked Self-Pity.

“Don’t take it so personally. I was on a quest to find your counterparts, who, for reasons unknown to me, have gone entirely missing. I’ve crossed the Unreal World from Mount Technos in the west to the Elrins in the east, and I’ve seen not a hint of them. My two friends, Claudia and Mohammed, have likewise disappeared, and I’m worried that you–or someone in your pay–has been behind their disappearance, behind my imprisonment twice, behind all the misfortunes I’ve been having on this long miserable trip.”

“Don’t look at us,” replied Amour-Propre. “We are entirely blameless.”

I took a puff from my cigar and contemplated my reply. I would be best, I thought as I took a sip, not to drink too much absinthe in the next few minutes.

“I want to know what to do, and I’m afraid that at the moment you’re all I’ve got. Now, I’ve had quite an adventure these past few days, one that I never planned on having. I wanted to know whether to write a novel this month, but I’m coming to realize that I should probably write my book next month, because there isn’t much time left in November to accomplish anything anymore.”

“How time does fly,” said Self-Pity.

“I had a question in mind that I wanted to ask, um, the good guys. I still want to ask it, but I don’t know where to find them. Keep in mind that I am not accusing you, but I would like to know where they are.”

“Why don’t you just ask us your question?” said Amour-Propre. “I’m sure we could supply an answer.”

“Or possibly several answers,” added False Seeming.

“Thank you for your offer. But no. Just tell me where they are.”

“No,” said Spite. Simultaneously, Amour-Propre asked: “What’s in it for us?” Sloth yawned ostentatiously. Lust grinned at me, ever the hopeful.

“Nothing.” I replied. “I offer you nothing, except for this: I won’t tell a soul about your meddling with me, or with my friends.”

“You are inviting us to become Prudent Predators?” said False Seeming. “I like it already.”

“Quite the contrary. I am offering you my forgiveness in advance.” Then a new connection fell into place.
“You know the Prudent Predator?” I nearly choked on my absinthe.

“Oh, we all do,” said Sloth. He ate another cupcake.

“Last I checked, I hadn’t hired the Prudent Predator to join you,” I said.

“No, but he volunteered, and we figured–hey, why not?” said Amour-Propre. “He seemed, well, so wickedly evil that we just couldn’t resist.”

“That would explain his otherwise remarkable powers,” I replied.

“Remarkable powers?” said Amour-Propre. “Did anyone lend him any remarkable powers? I certainly didn’t.”

Heads shook all around the table. Lust shrugged a little and grinned. “Okay, well maybe I intervened just a little. But you remember that incident.”

“Oh yes, I replied. How could I forget? But these other things, well, they were some big stuff–way out of your league, if I may say so. I’ve never once set out to find your counterparts and ended up here instead. And his cross-plane conspiracy nearly managed to do me in.”

“But now we’ve got you,” said Lust. “You’re perfectly safe. And I think you could use a private consultation in my chambers, now if possible. I’ve got a fireplace. And a bearskin rug.”

He must have been off his game. Making love on a dead animal has never appealed to me.

“Thanks, but no.” I tried not to make a face.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this right now if we can,” I continued. “You have not been keeping me from my goal. You probably couldn’t if you wanted to. But someone else has–possibly a god or two, if that defixion I found has anything to do with it–and what am I going to do now?”

“Give up,” said Sloth. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“Give up,” said Spite. “It serves ‘em right.”

“Give up,” said Self-Pity. “It makes the wallowing afterward a whole lot easier.”

“Give up,” said Sycophancy. “You’re taken care of so well here.”

“Give up,” said Lust. “If you think Sycophancy cares for you properly, well then let me tell you…”

“Give up,” said Amour-Propre. “A genius like you doesn’t need them anyway. Join me, and we will rule the universe together.”

“Well then, that settles it,” I replied. I had been more than polite, and I stood up, a little unsteady from all the absinthe. I walked toward the door, never looking back, intent on facing the cold mountain meadow alone if need be. Ever the toady, Sycophancy opened the door as I left.

But when I walked out into the meadow, there were Mohammed, Claudia, and Emmett the golem. Humanity the cat was on Claudia’s shoulders.

“How did you escape?” I asked.

“Never underestimate a gnome who’s well-versed in the martial arts,” replied Claudia.

“And Emmett eventually came when I called him,” said Mohammed. “I figure I’ll forgive him for taking so long. Eventually.”

“How did you find me here?” I asked.

“What do you mean, how did we find you here?” replied Mohammed. “It’s the end of the quest! We made it! Why, we were just inside chatting away with the Capitalist, the Stoic, and the Epicurean. They want to learn how to play go, tomorrow if possible, in Chateauna. I’ve told them so much about the game, from what little I know of course. We’ve learned all kinds of things about game theory and ethics and economics–and we can’t wait to discuss it all with you. We’re preparing a nice dinner of Peking duck and a little hot rice wine, and then we’ll get right down to the conversation. But Old Mother Utopia suggested we should head outside for a bit of a brisk constitutional before dinner–which as you know will be quite substantial–and here you were.”

“Something is very strange here,” I replied. I explained my difficulties as succinctly as I could, starting with the unfortunate choice of escape from my cage, through the bizarrely limited underground city of Kingsbarrow, my ethereal ramblings, and the conference with the Unethical Council, who, despite all appearances, I had to hold blameless in the whole affair.

“If I don’t miss my guess,” I concluded, “something very peculiar just happened with that door.”

Mohammed checked the door for magical residues, and these proved to be so numerous he ended up backing away with his hands over his eyes.

“You know, you’d have done better to wait,” said Mohammed as he recovered his composure. “Emmett here is easily strong enough to deal with most foes. And he quite frightened off the guards on his looks alone.”

“I didn’t figure on him showing up. I thought he was still chasing the sparrows from the garden.”

“Just like a human,” said Claudia. “Never realizing the resources at his disposal, nor how to use them properly.”

I rolled my eyes. Humanity the cat jumped down and nuzzled my shins. I picked him up and rewarded him with a friendly scratch behind the ears.

“Did you ever get a chance to write your novel?” asked Mohammed.

“I never did,” I replied. “I’ve just been too busy. Perhaps I’ll have to write one in December instead.”

“Say, can you still do that ethereal thing?” Claudia asked. “It might come in handy later on.”

I walked resolutely up to the thick wall of the castle. And then I walked resolutely into the thick wall of the castle, which refused to yield in the slightest–not even to spare me a little pain and humiliation.

“Guess not,” she said. “Oh well.”

“I met… another one of us somewhere. He wasn’t just religious. He was practically in charge, down there.”

“Down there?“

“Not what I meant. In Kingsbarrow. He was reverent and irreverent at the same time, and I honestly had no idea what he really believed. I’m not quite sure that he knew himself. But–oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m having my doubts about the entire Asan heresy idea. What is it, a club for the nonconformists?”

“Exactly,” said Mohammed. “I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was. And it wasn’t. It’s not a guarantee. Do you know how the Prudent Predator tricked me? I left that part out of the story, but you really ought to know. He used one of the signals.”

“Well,” said Mohammed. “That’s a terrible shame. But it’s still nice to be a member of such a generally reputable group, no?”

“It doesn’t settle anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s still not…”

“You’re looking for a guarantee,” said Claudia.

“Yes.”

“Forget it.”

“I should quit right now then.”

“There’s no such thing as quitting,” said Claudia. “It’s a club, yes, but it’s also an insight that you have, and once you have it, you seldom forget.”

“Even the insight doesn’t do that much. It’s open to a million abuses.”

“So is everything, up here.” Mohammed touched his temple lightly.

I knocked at the door, now painfully aware that I had traded away my key. It didn’t matter; the door opened of its own accord. In the courtyard, the Stoic was polishing his saber. The Malthusian was going over some chess problems with a replica of the Lewis Set. He always liked to say that it put him in the proper mood.

“I guess your strike is over?” I said

“Weeks ago. And we were needed in Ukraine just recently”

“Has it been that long? And what’s happening in Ukraine, anyway?”

“Indeed it has been ‘that long.’ You’ve been away for quite a while. And I’m surprised you hadn’t heard the news about their election. What, have you been living under ground or something?”

“Long story,” I replied, “but that’s not far from the truth. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.”

“Anything,” said the Stoic. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

And we walked off to the keep. Already I could smell the Peking duck.

We came to the colonnade; in its center, at the back, was a door. Myra paused for a moment.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“I’m not quite sure what’s beyond this door. I do know that it is said to be the private meditation room of the Grand Curate.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wish I could tell you. He runs the Cathedral, and if your cause is just, he will surely rule in your favor. But such things aren’t undertaken lightly.”

“Well–” I thought for a moment. Which, after all, was worse, walking for half a day and facing down two well-muscled guardsmen plus the Prudent Predator? Or taking my chances with the Grand Curate, whose powers to help and harm, whose temperament, whose very outlook on life was quite in doubt? I could always turn back at this point, and risk facing my earlier adversaries instead.

“Ah…. What’s he like, anyway?” I asked. “Is he going to rip my head off if I cross him?”

“I don’t know,” Myra replied. “But somehow, I doubt it.”

I doubted it too, and I approached the door. Like all things that are truly important, it looked smaller in real life. It was made of wood–Did it come from the surface? Where did they get their wood, anyway?–and it had a rough, wrought-iron handle. To tell the truth, it was a little rusty. Only a simple latch-type lock protected the Grand Curate from whatever wished to intrude upon him, and I inferred that he must have his own defenses hidden behind the door.

I touched the handle. Then I looked back at Myra.

“For what it’s worth, thanks. I might not see you again, and you’ve put up with me, which is more than I can say about a lot of people. I’m certainly not an easy person to put up with.”

“Oh nonsense,” she replied. “What’s life without a little adventure? Sure, you’re hard to deal with. So what.”

“Well, I guess that’s that.”

“It is. Now get out of here, before I change my mind.”

I gave her one last, grateful look. I should have hugged her. If I had been a decent person, I would have. Then I turned toward the door, opened it, and walked through.

Like all things that are truly important, I could not recall all of the details that I wanted when the time finally came to write them down. Such is life. The door was open, and a long, gray hallway of roughly cut stone stood before me. It was the last thing I expected; more apropos would have been an enormous, brilliantly-lit chamber full of uniformed guards, or an ozone-scented room with a curtain at the far end, one that would open to the voice of the great and mighty Oz. No such luck. I walked down the humble hallway, which was lit only by a succession of candles in sconces every few feet. They reminded me, if anything, that the being–the person–that I was about to meet must after all be human: Candles burn out, and someone must replace them. I walked down the hallway.

At the end, in an anticlimax, there was another door. This one had even less ceremonial to it than the other one, if such a thing was possible. It was simply a door, shorn of all pretension. There wasn’t even a lock to it, just a handle that presumably allowed one to pull it open.

I did.

But I didn’t find what I had expected. Inside, was a venerable human man doing yoga. He was rail thin, wore a loincloth, and had a long beard down to his navel. He was the perfect picture of a guru, and he was the very last thing that I had ever expected.

And he wasn’t one of those passive, recumbent poses either: It was Shiva the Dancer, with the left leg planted firmly into the ground, the torso bent forward, the left hand reaching outward, the right, clasping the right leg and pulling it back, up, and over the head. It was a delicate and challenging pose, appropriate for beginner and expert alike, exercising and stretching the muscles from the tip of the forward hand down to the balancing foot. The man before me was a master: His clasping hand, rather than reaching behind the back, instead went over the head, and the graceful loop of Shiva’s dancing arc was complete. I stood awed in silence.

I’d expected the Wizard of Oz. I’d gotten both more and less.

He broke the pose, assumed a standing, resting posture, and looked directly into my eyes.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Are you the Grand Curate?”

“That is what the call me.”

“But are you?”

“Okay, I’ll stop being coy. I am the Grand Curate. And you’re here for some help, right? I am very sorry, but I don’t have it.”

“You don’t have it? But you don’t even know what I was looking for.”

“Hmm. Well, maybe I do have it. The trouble is, though, that so many people come to me asking for help, but I just can’t give it to them. I’m not a god, not an Avatar, not even a halfway decent wizard.”

“I’m not looking for any of those things,” I replied hopefully. “I’m just looking for a way to the surface.”

“It wouldn’t interest you,” he replied.

“It’s my home,” I said. He looked at me crosswise for a few moments, then spoke.

“No, I’m quite sure you’re lying. Your home is somewhere quite far away. But I can guess at least that you have some greater affinity for the surface than for down here.”

“Have you seen the surface?”

“Many times, yes,” he replied.

“Can you take me there–or show me the way?”

“I can,” he said. “Though the method is unreliable.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m going to make you ethereal, and you will ascend as rapidly as smoke through the passages of the Cathedral tower.”

“Spiritually?”

“What difference does that make?”

“No, I’m serious. Am I going there in person, or are you just sending my spirit up to have a look around? I’ve heard enough about your beliefs that I have to say I’m not sure I trust them.”

“My beliefs?” he asked. “My beliefs? Do not infer what I believe from the superstitions of residents of Kingsbarrow. I will send you to the surface both physically and spiritually–because there really is no difference between the two. The Kingsbarrowers seem to think otherwise, and there’s not a hope of convincing them. I gave up on that long ago, and they gave up on understanding me. I am still their spiritual leader, though, and they do their best to understand me in their own cramped way. But if it’s spiritual, then it not only exists for real in the world, but it is the very most important thing the world. But if it is immaterial, though, it doesn’t exist, spiritually or physically. You take your pick, but you can’t have one without the other.”

A light went off in my head. I passed him one of our secret signals, a powerful and unsubtle one. He responded in kind–and I knew, even more than I knew when I stood before the Prudent Predator–that the Grand Curate was a friend. I could trust him. He looked piercingly into my eyes once more.

“Why didn’t you say that you were one of us?”

“I’ve been burned before,” I replied. “It seemed best not to take any chances.”

“All life is a chance,” he said.

“Sure. And it all ends badly, too, right? Well I’m too young for that yet.”

“I suspect you will still be too young at seventy.”

“Fair enough.”

“So how do you propose to get me out of here?”

“We will make you ethereal, as I said. Your body will pass through the columns, and the worked stone, and the bedrock. It will flow through underground streams, and prehistoric refuse heaps, and the fossilized remains of the beasts of legend. It will seep through the topsoil and emerge precisely where you wish to be.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“I’ve done it many times myself. And I suppose that it won’t help you, will it, if I tell you that all life is a risk, and that he who hesitates is lost?”

“Won’t help a bit.”

“Consider your options then. For my own benefit, what are they?” I sighed and began.

“I could go back the way I came, where I would be attacked instantly by two strong men and an Avatar with a serious and unavenged grudge against me. Or I could travel back out the gate where I entered, head upstream, and make for parts unknown. I used to think that it probably led to a bunch of privies, but after seeing Kingsbarrow, I’m inclined to think that it goes somewhere rather worse.”

“You would not be wrong.”

“May I ask?”

“Trust me, it’s worse than having to face an angry Avatar with a grudge,” he said.

I gulped.

“And that brings us to choice number three: Become ethereal.”

There was a long pause where neither of us said anything.

“I’ll do it.”

“Then you will come with me,” he said. And he walked toward the back of the room, where a bead curtain separated the humble space from whatever lay beyond.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” I began. Myra had reclaimed both her composure and her socks, and she set about once more to mending them. Her darning needles still trembled ever so slightly at the thought of helping an illegal philosopher, and this was doing terrible things to her socks.

“Sure,” she replied. “What’s not to understand?”

“Kingsbarrow is a city underground. You almost never venture to the surface, right?”

“That’s right. We do most all of our trading with the cities beneath us, and most people don’t even believe that the surface exists.”

“Wait a minute. The cities beneath you?”

“Why yes, there are at least a good two dozen of them. Funny that you never knew. The name of our city suggests that it used to be tied a lot more closely to the surface, but these days we venture out only in those directions that the spirits tell us to go–and this inevitably leads downward. Many of us never leave Kingsbarrow. And why should we? It is without a doubt the greatest city that ever was.”

“To leave it would be an insult–unpatriotic, almost.”

“Right.”

“Interestingly enough, that brings me to my next point. You have no philosophers–only religion.”

“And good hard work.” She shifted the socks uncomfortably in her hands.

“Ah yes.”

“What little philosophy you do have is picked up here and there, without system, without rigor, without consideration.”

“You make it sound like such a bad thing.”

“No–I was just thinking. You’ve just given me a near-perfect description of most everyone in the Real World.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“I should have thought that Reals would be more… I don’t know, profound, perhaps.”

“And what would that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, no sense carrying on about hypotheticals. You were going to help me escape to the surface, right?”

“Um… Yes, I suppose I was.”

On another plane of existence, the gods were at it once again.

“I tell you, ever since we lost that defixion, it’s been bloody hard keeping track of them,” said the youngest god. Alone in the halls of power, the gods did not hesitate to proclaim their shortcomings.

“Perhaps we could find another way of interfering with their quest? After all, they must be stopped,” replied the middle-aged god.

“I know just the thing,” said the eldest with forked tongue.

“You always do,” said the youngest.

“Don’t kiss up to me. I haven’t forgotten about that thing you put through the defixion conduit, which was the reason we lost them in the first place. I may not be omniscient, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“You can say that again,” muttered the middle-aged one, who, while not born yesterday himself, was clearly feeling his oats.

“What?” asked the goddess.

“Never mind. What was your plan again?”

Meanwhile, Myra did her best to explain a plan of her own. Sadly, it inspired in me not the slightest glimmer of confidence.

“We’re going to take you to the Cathedral of the Unseen.”

“What’s that like?”

“Oh, it’s ineffable.”

“I figured. But what does it look like on the outside?”

“It’s that big building in the center of town. There we pray to the God we have never seen, and the indescribable essences of our prayers float… surfaceward, and then up to where the Gods live, which is reputed to be a giant air pocket somewhere far above the surface.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”

“None whatsoever. But I feel that I am nobler because I believe. After all, the mere senses are base and corrupt; we must not be naive enough to think that that is all there is.”

“What if it was?”

“Then you, my friend, will never get out of here. We’re going to ask the gods for help.”

“I doubt they will listen to me, at least not in a good way.”

“Oh no, you don’t understand our ways at all. The gods exist on a higher plane of reality–and because of that, they do not respond to the senses. They respond only to those things that you cannot sense at all.”

“Like thoughts? I’m afraid I sense my thoughts all the time.”

“Oh, you’re insufferable. We’re going to the church and hoping for a miracle. You Real-Worlders do it all the time, right?”

“Some of us do. But I hope you will forgive me if I had expected something more in the way of help.”

“Something more than the divine? How dare you? Besides, you might be surprised.”

It turns out that I was.

Under Myrna’s guidance, the labyrinthine streets of Kingsbarrow became, if not comprehensible, at least passably efficient as a means of traveling from one point to the next. She knew all the turns, most of which were entirely counterintuitive.

“So why do people here not seem to care that I’m about twice their height?”

“They don’t care because curiosity killed the cat. And because idle minds are the devil’s playground. And because it’s better to leave well enough alone. And because what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

“Do I detect a note of irony?”

“None whatsoever.”

I gave her one of the more unobtrusive of the secret signs that Claudia and Mohammed had taught me. Myra did not respond. Oh well, there went that idea.
We had reached the Cathedral of the Unseen. Remarkably, it was visible–or, at least some parts of it were. In the middle of a great, mostly flat public square in what seemed like the center of the great hive of Kingsbarrow, there stood an enormous structure of gothic architecture touched by something utterly alien in its overall composition: It stood, not in the form of a cross or a dome, but as a gigantic column, rising up to the apex of the underground chamber. Somehow, I thought, I must have descended tremendously in my escape from the dungeon.

Gnomes were coming and going in all directions, quietly and solemnly. Quite unlike the marketplace of Paganopolis, they fit every conventional definition of reverence.

“So this is the Cathedral of the Unseen. But it’s funny, I can actually see the thing. I sort of didn’t expect that.”

“No, you can’t see the thing,” Myra replied. “You only think that you can see it. But what you are really seeing is just the surface appearance of the Cathedral. The thing in itself is never witnessed by any of the senses.”

“If it’s never witnessed by any of the senses, then why bother with it?”

“Because someday it might be witnessed? I don’t know. Why do you ask so many stupid questions? You’re going to get us both in trouble.”

“But,” I said, unable to resist, “if someday it might be witnessed, then what we are witnessing then isn’t really the thing in itself. It’s just another appearance. That which cannot be known, cannot be known, ever. That which can, can. But if it can’t be known, and it can’t ever do anything to influence us, then why do we bother?”

“The unseen influences us tremendously.”

“Then surely its influence can be sensed?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what difference does it make?” I asked, once again exasperated. “Its existence is perfectly possible, but perfectly trivial. And since no evidence can ever support the existence of such a thing, then the thing in itself just plain isn’t.“

“For your own sake, you’d better hope that you’re wrong, because the unseen is exactly what’s going to get you out of here. Or not, depending.”

We had reached the great main gate of the Cathedral. It was made of solid brass, divided into panels and sculpted in high relief much like a Renaissance or baroque masterpiece of the same type. Each panel depicted scenes from one or another great mystical event. Though how, exactly, the artists came to witness these unseen and unseeable spiritual occurrences was by now the least of the mysteries to me. What puzzled me much more was how anyone who held as consistently to the doctrine of das ding an sich might ever have come to find this artwork inspiring in the first place. Wasn’t it clearly, obviously, and brassily, a gigantic screaming fraud?

But I had only moments to ponder this question before we were inside the Cathedral itself, and the dim lights made me strain my eyes to make out the interior. Altered lighting conditions, you see, are favorable to glimpsing the true essences of things. Somewhere in the back, incense was burning, and this too, I am assured, helps one glimpse the divine–depending on what formula is used in the manufacture. This one smelled insipid, and reminded me of my childhood, when holiday Mass was always a spiritual experience: Inevitably, the incense made me pass out, and I had to be dragged to fresh air every Christmas and Easter for fear of asphyxiation. In an earlier age, I might have passed for a demoniac.

In recent years, though, my childhood incense reaction had disappeared entirely. Perhaps it was that once I got into college, incense was suddenly cool again: You can tell I didn’t go to college with many Catholics.

“Psst,” said Myra. “The holy water.”

“What do I do?” I asked. I was pretty sure that making the sign of the cross wasn’t quite going to be appropriate.

“Duh,” she replied. “You cross yourself.”

“Like in Christendom?” I replied.

“Where?”

“Never mind.” I did as she asked, forgetting all about my lingering questions of faith and propriety. If das ding an sich was truly unknowable, then she could stand not to know about my religious unbelief for a little while longer.

Ah, holy water. The stuff of vampire movies for those of you not raised Catholic. The stuff of every Sunday morning for those of you who were. And, in either case, thoroughly not a spiritual thing in itself. But it most certainly was spiritual, somehow.

“Hey Myra?”

“Yes?” she replied, exasperated anew.

“Can a material thing, you know, like, point you at the spiritual? Can it give you an idea of what the spiritual is like, or maybe tell you when you’re getting hotter or colder? I’m just curious.”

“Truthfully, it can’t.”

“Then what’s the sense of all these rituals?”

“You really do think like a philosopher. And it will do you no good whatsoever in Kingsbarrow. If you must know, the real truth is grasped from within, and no one can say for certain whether you’ve got it or not. All of this” she gestured, “is outward conformity, which is necessary for the good order of the state.”

“The unseen on the inside, but conformity on the outside?”

“Exactly.”

“Or, ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.’”

“Right, yes again. You know your system a lot better than you give yourself credit, my boy.”

“Well thanks. But I just have to ask–Where do you come in?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Then I saw something that made me forget my question entirely.

We were crossing the long round atrium of the building, apparently heading for a half-circular colonnade that wrapped around the far side of the cathedral. At the center of the structure, I looked up. I expected to find a dome, a vaulted arch, or some other architectural finishing piece. What I found instead boggled the imagination.

Ring after ring of gothic arches and flying buttresses spiraled upward and out of sight. Gallery upon gallery, stairwell upon stairwell, the tower climbed, impossible in its height and complexity. At the top, the mists of the underground swallowed them up entirely.

I would never have guessed that in my escape I had descended so far beneath Chateauna, or that the surface was so far above me. Was it really that far up? Or was Kingsbarrow connected somehow through an extradimensional tunnel, so that what seemed like a half-days’ walk in a generally level underground passage was really much further, or much steeper? Even the most plausible explanation–that I had walked from Chateauna due east until I’d reached the Elrin Mountains–still seemed ridiculous. Those mountains were a good two days’ off by any estimate I had ever seen.

But at the top–oh, at the top of the tower–Light! It was faint, and swallowed by mist like everything else, but the light was unmistakable.

“You can see,” Myra said, “why we make our most important prayers here.”

“So that they float up more easily? But I thought you said that the spiritual was higher than all that material stuff, and it didn’t interact with it at all. And if that’s the case, you might as well pray in a lavatory.” My mind went back to the fellow who had very nearly been doing just that in Paganopolis.

“Oh, you’re impossible,” she replied.

From somewhere high above, a waft of glitter trickled down across the light. No doubt some dutiful priest had spilled it from a high balcony at a silent, prearranged signal: a work of piety.

“I suppose,” I continued, rubbing it in, “that the glitter makes you feel incorporeal, ethereal, closer perhaps to das ding an sich?”

“As a matter of fact,” Myra replied, “it does. Some of our very best mystics have come here for just that reason, to bathe in the light and the glitter, and the etherealness of this very place. And in their trances, they experience whiffs of frankincense, glittery spangles across their fields of vision, and God himself twiddling their naughty bits. Are you happy now?”

I could see I’d done nothing at all but make her angry.

“I can’t believe that I’m doing this for you,” she said. We crossed the rest of the chamber in silence, which, to tell the truth, put me in a far more spiritual mood than all of my earlier crankiness.

Kingsbarrow was mine. Or at least, those parts of it that appeared to my bodily senses. The rest, which would never be detectable through any means whatsoever, was unknown and unknowable. I could live without it.

The first thing I noticed were the twisty, unruly streets of the underground city; they went in every imaginable direction but straight. Bridges spanned from one building to another; at times, strange shafts descended from the cobblestone pavement into numerous subsurface layers. Here and there, a massive stairway would raise the street to a higher level or sink it to a lower. All of this, combined with the total lack of street signs, virtually guaranteed that I would lose my way several times–if, that is, I had had much of a ‘way’ in the first place, which I did not.

My friends Claudia and Mohammed were gone, probably imprisoned, possibly being sold off to face one of three very nasty deaths. For all I knew, Emmett the golem was probably still chasing sparrows in the garden of that hostel we’d stayed in a few chapters ago. And Humanity the cat? I shuddered to think what that poor creature’s fate might have been.

As to my enemies, they were still far too numerous and entirely at liberty. Come to think of it, though, the Prudent Predator was hardly behaving prudently at all, and perhaps I could use that to my advantage. Exposing him now would do what–drive him into hiding, maybe? One could only hope. Perhaps–just maybe–there was something to be learned here? First, though, I would have to find my way back to the surface.

I myself was lost. Nor was it a good sign that the city’s guards had never seen and did not particularly believe in the existence of a surface world. For a time I walked without guide or map, hoping that something would catch my eye. It didn’t. The city was peopled almost entirely by gnomes, all of whom carried on their business while paying little or no attention to the human among them. One might have expected surprise, but they all seemed mysteriously indifferent.

Finally I found myself at the end of a long blind alley; a woman was sitting on a stoop in front of me, knitting her socks. I stopped, knowing that I had to turn back but feeling far to proud to do it just yet.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m sort of lost,” I replied.

“Sort of?”

“Alright, I’m very lost. I’m very, very lost.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m trying to get back to the surface.”

“The surface! Oh my, I haven’t heard of a surface-dweller coming down here for decades!”

“Any idea how I might get back?

“No, I’m afraid not. Why don’t you go back the way you came?”

“I just can’t, trust me.”

“You’re running from something?”

“Um… Well…”

“You are.”

“Yes.”

“Come in, sit down.” She picked up her socks, opened the door, and invited me inside. “We’ll see what can be done to help you.”

Inside the house was a whole family of gnomes, from old to very young. They were engaged in a cacophony of various household tasks: Sweeping, cooking, washing clothes, tending the fire, making bread, and rocking the infants, of which there were several. Idleness was nowhere to be found.

“So, my name is Myra. What’s yours?”

“Jason.”

“Welcome to my home. These are my children, their children, their wives, husbands, brothers-in-law, and et cetera.”

“Quite a family.”

“Thank you. So…what do you do? On the surface, I mean.”

“I’m sort of a philosopher.”

The room grew silent.

“A philosopher!” Myra whispered. “Why, you worthless rogue–Philosophers are illegal down here.”

“They’re damn near illegal up there, too.”

“But–” she paused “–I hesitate to say this, but I hope you’ll understand. There’s almost always a good reason to despise philosophers. Maybe you don’t know any better; you look awfully young for a philosopher, and too modest by half. Perhaps in time you will learn.”

“Perhaps. Ah–I beg your pardon?”

“It’s nothing personal, I assure you, but philosophers are the worst sort of humanoid, the very lowest, um… almost… down to the last miserable one of them. They spend their time at ease, never accomplishing anything, and their only real labor is to convince everyone else–we, the ignorant and the unlettered–that theirs is the queen of the sciences, and that without philosophy, the rest of creation would be for naught. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy against the honest and productive elements. Philosophy is not the greatest pursuit, but the vainest.”

“But philosophers teach people how to think,” I replied. “They challenge preconceived notions and help build up knowledge on a sounder, more rational footing.”

“Nonsense. Scientists advance human thought; philosophers argue about figments of their own imaginations. Admit it: You too have experienced that guilty rush of pleasure that comes when you consider that the philosopher is the king of all thinkers. It’s damn near the only thing that all philosophies agree upon: ‘Philosophy is the best.’ If shoemakers went prattling about like that, we’d lock them up, and with good reason. Can you imagine anything more transparently self-serving?”

Then she paused for a moment. Her expression changed, and she began again.

“Well, there is only one thing that philosophers are good for, but I suspect that you simply haven’t got it in you.”

“Alright, let’s make a deal. You tell me what philosophers are good for, and if I can provide it, then you will help get me to the surface.”

“Agreed.”

“So what is it?”

“Chills,” she said.

“Chills?“

“Yes, that’s right. The only thing worth a damn that philosophy ever supplies to the rest of humanity is a good case of the chills.”

“Is that all?” I asked. “You mean, like a shiver down your spine?”

“Well now, let’s not underestimate the power of chills down the spine. Entire genres of literature are wasted on just such pursuits, if not lower ones. Philosophers, though, are practically useless outside this one ability of theirs, and that is why we throw the best of them in prison,” she replied.

“But you ask me to ply you with a bit of philosophy, to see if I can’t get a reaction from you?”

“You may try,” she said “And depending on how well you do, we’ll see about getting you out.”

I thought for a moment and then began.

“May I see your socks?” I asked. She frowned and pulled them closer.

“My socks? What have they got to do with philosophy?”

“The ones that you were darning are actually quite relevant. Please.”

She handed me the socks.

“How old are these, if I may ask?”

“At least six or eight years, and I have cared for them meticulously ever since the day I bought them.”

“You have patched them and re-patched them whenever they developed a hole?”

“Indeed I have. I would never permit myself to wear socks with holes in them.”

“Think back, then, to the day you bought them. How many times have you patched your socks?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s been quite a few.”

“And how much, would you say, is left of the original socks?”

“Stop it. I’ve heard this one before.”

I looked around the room. The others had apparently heard it too: They were looking bored and restless, uncertain what to make of this stranger who had come into their midst with a depressingly familiar tale.

“You’re going to ask me,” she continued, “whether the socks are the same socks that I bought many years ago, when they have been patched and re-patched so many times along the way. The question will be: ‘What essential part of the socks endure, when their material has been completely changed?’ What is the essential, that keeps the ’socks,’ socks. We’ve all heard that one before.”

The room nodded in agreement, then began muttering about my fate.

“It’s a vain and puerile question,” Myra continued, “perfectly typical of philosophers. There’s no good answer and no point at all in talking about it. And you were even going to congratulate yourself on having come up with it! Why, John Locke invented that thing centuries ago.”

“Actually, that’s where you were wrong. I wasn’t going to ask the question.”

“No?”

“No. I was going to answer it.”

“Oh. Then tell me, what is a sock, anyway?”

“A sock is an intention. The ’sockiness’ of a thing is the use to which you put it, the plan that you conceive in your mind; it develops over time according to your own intent to keep it up. Once you throw a sock away, it’s not a sock anymore. It’s just a rag. But take a rag and treat it properly–and suddenly, it becomes a sock again.”

“Not bad,” she replied. “But I don’t have any chills.”

“You and your chills! You say that philosophy is supposed to be arresting, supposed to make you shudder and look at the world anew. But I disagree, because I believe that neither you nor I can ever trust that feeling. And we mustn’t trust it, because the people next to us are feeling exactly the same sensations, yet for entirely different reasons. I read Henry Veatch or Daniel Dennett, and I get the chills. The person next to me reads who knows what–Peter Singer, maybe, or Sartre, or Marx–and he feels the same.

“And that is the beauty of it, the beauty and the futility, because no matter what one’s ideas may be, the chills come all the same. Everyone, positively everyone, experiences that same feeling of the uncanny when they hear a philosopher that resonates with them. But the feeling of the uncanny can itself be perfectly false.”

“I don’t understand,” she replied.

“You’re asking me to do something other than true philosophy. And I won’t do it. If a good sense of the chills can come from falsehood just as well as from truth, then you have got the wrong idea entirely about philosophy.”

“You win,” she said. The hair of her arms was standing on end.

“So you don’t know what happens to you after you die here?” asked the Devil’s Advocate. “Well, then that makes it just like the real world.”

“No,” I replied. “I have at least some idea of what happens after I die in the real world.”

“And doesn’t it frighten you? I mean, the possibility that something truly nasty might await you in the afterlife, here or over there?”

“I’m not sure. So far as I know, very few Reals ever come to the unreal world in the first place. I’m not aware of any besides myself who have done it recently. And I’ve never heard of one dying here. As to the real world, I’m pretty sure death is going to be a bad thing. I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, and I don’t accept Pascal’s Wager.”

“Why not?”

“Well, let me try offering it to you.”

“Me? I’m already playing for the other team.”

“Then we’ll have to change the wager ever so slightly. Let me put it to you like this: You are an Unreal; your home is here, in the unreal world–and when you die, we can assume that absolutely nothing happens. You weren’t ever really real to begin with.”

“Precisely. And because I’m Unreal, I’ve got nothing at all to lose by following Satan.”

“So suppose I told you that you should be good today, because tomorrow I would hurt you if you are evil. And besides, you’ve got nothing to lose by being good for a day, even if my threat turns out to be false. You’ve only got punishment to avoid.”

“Would that make you good–or evil?” asked the Devil’s Advocate.

“It’s not about me; it’s about you. How would you evaluate my threat?”

“Well, it certainly is a threat. But I’d want to know how likely the punishment was before I made any decisions based on it. And besides, I would think you were quite a bully–where do you get off forcing me to be good with threats? What kind of goodness is that? I thought Aristotle”–the Devil’s Advocate spat–”said that goodness was that thing which was pursued as an end in itself.”

“That’s more or less how I feel about Pascal’s Wager. As to life after death, I see no evidence for it. And I find it ridiculous to think that anything, short of actually dying, could adequately prepare me for the experience of death. In the end, I’ve quite given up on trying.”

“And there is no guide in all of your philosophy that will teach you about death?”

“Not a thing.”

“Surely, then, you are starting to see the shortcomings of the entire system you are crafting? I mean, isn’t it all starting to look awfully vain by now?”

“To be honest, it is. Worse, all that noble stuff about having a critical, independent, thoughtful mind–a mind that never sacrifices itself to anything–even all of that doesn’t guarantee someone’s virtue, as we’ve just seen. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee anyone’s happiness. I mean, just look around me.”

“I’m sure the Prudent Predator is an exceptional case.”

“Quite the contrary. We all have it in our power to be like him, any time we wish. And you can see the result of that power right here. I’ve lost my friends, I’m imprisoned, and I’m likely to face one of three very nasty deaths in the near future. There’s not the slightest guarantee of either virtue or happiness in life, I tell you.”

“Then being a ‘good person’ or a ‘bad person’ is a meaningless distinction? And then–all life itself would be meaningless!” He seemed far too pleased with himself.

“And at times, my life really does seem completely meaningless. I do some good. Then I do some bad. Then I wonder about where the whole thing is going. But nothing really changes. To try to help myself, I make up some explanations, but I’m not even sure that I myself believe them. Then I go to sleep, I wake up, and I do it all over again.

“I’m at the stage in my life where I’m realizing that I’m never really going to amount to much. Maybe I’ll be remembered as a good person; maybe as a bad person. I doubt very much I will be famous in either direction, and what it all means is that I’m not really going to be anything people will want to remember for very long after I’m gone. In a way, it’s liberating, not having to live for all those other people, not even facing all that much pressure to do it,” I said. “But in a way, well–I guess we all wish we amounted to something. Is that too much to ask?”

“It’s nice to have low expectations. Of course, your life could end in a mere matter of days, if not sooner. And then you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“That’s true of everyone, isn’t it?”

“It’s especially true in your situation, I would think.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“So do we have a deal about the keys?”

“Sure,” I replied. “What’s the worst that could happen? As I see it, I stand nothing to lose.”

“Funny you should say that. So I’ll give you the key to the cell, and you’ll give me the key to the Citadel?”

“I think so. But I want to see, first, that the key you’ve got there is actually able to get me out. No sense having you vanish after slipping me a bogus key.”

“Fair enough.” He inserted the key, and the lock on the cage slipped open effortlessly. Suddenly I regretted our bargain, but there was not a thing I could do about it anymore. At least, not honestly–and I had a feeling I would regret giving the Prudent Predator anything more to work with on this adventure. It was bad enough escaping from his dungeon, even though I had a perfect right to my freedom. The Devil’s Advocate reclaimed my wrought-iron key, and I would just have to take my chances at the Citadel without it.

“Farewell,” he said. “You will forgive me if I do not say ‘Adieu.’”

“Of course.” And with that, he vanished in a puff of hydrogen sulfide.

I surveyed the room around me. The guards were presumably upstairs, as was Mr. Prudence himself. But even his mere presence raised question after question in my mind: If he was after all so prudent, then how did he dare to kidnap a shopkeeper, overrun the shop–and keep it open for business–but expect not to get caught? How did he manage to conduct negotiations with foreign powers, over the public execution of a prisoner, presumably through at least three distinct intermediary channels–and hope to cover all of his tracks? Avatars are clever, but something didn’t add up.

Sadly, I didn’t have time to ponder it: The only other exit from the room was a sewer grate, which seemed rather more promising than having to fight the guards. Just to be on the safe side, I removed the suit of chain mail that I’d stolen: No sense tempting fate. Then I wrenched the grate up and out of its setting, which proved surprisingly easy. I took the torch from the wall and climbed inside, and at that moment it occurred to me that this was, technically theft–where, after all, was I to draw the line? I left a few dollars behind to pay for my transgression, just in case.

Thankfully, there was an iron ladder set into the stonework. It led downward into the darkness, and I followed. The ladder gave out on a long corridor with a sewage trough in the center. All around me was stonework, probably ancient in its workmanship. I could see to the limit of the torch in either direction, and there appeared to be no other entrances nearby. Unsure for a moment which way to turn, I followed the direction of the water, figuring that it would have to let out on the surface somewhere. Now, in a fantasy setting this is not always the case–hollow worlds, portals to alternate realms of existence, and magical water disposal systems all have a way of turning up. But I had little time to worry about such things right now.

I moved quickly to put as much distance as possible between myself and my former prison. More than once, the torch flickered and threatened to go out, which would have been a complete disaster. Little by little, the passageway grew; the stream in the center grew likewise, fed perhaps by inlets below the surface. Never was there a chance to deviate from the path.

At length I could see in front of me that the passage led into a gigantic cavernous opening–and that within it there were structures, artificial lights, and even some flickers of activity. I had no idea where I was. Given where I had come from, though, it hardly mattered. I stepped into a giant archway at the end of the passage which appeared to be a checkpoint of some sort. The drainage ditch emptied discreetly into a culvert just before the checkpoint.

“Halt, who goes there?” a voice asked me. It was a gnome, though the accent was unfamiliar. It came from somewhere in the archway above me.

“I am a traveler, and I am lost. I mean you no harm.”

“Wait here while we determine the truth of your story.”

“I will answer any questions you like.”

“Thank you, but we do not need your help.”

Several moments later, a trapdoor in the ceiling opened, and five gnomes slid down a rope to the floor.

“Your story checks out, and you are free to enter. Welcome to Kingsbarrow.”

“How did you know I was legit? Did you read my mind?”

“We asked the spirits who guide us, for there are things greater than our five senses, and we answer to their authority.”

“You mean you contacted them?”

“Indeed.”

“How? I mean, you just said you can’t just use your five senses, right?”

“You are right. But beyond that we cannot say.”

“And how did they answer you?”

“The same way that we contacted them.”

“You can’t say?”

“We can’t say.”

“How do you know when they aren’t saying anything?”

“We know.”

“What if I told you that I didn’t believe in these things, since I’d never seen them?”

“We would chide you for your lack of faith. Then we would pat ourselves on the back, because faith is a good thing, and we have it in abundance.”

“I suppose I would be free to do the same about my rationality, and that I could doubt your wisdom in turn.”

“Yes, but we are more numerous.” It is always easier, I thought to myself, for the greater number to act more foolishly and to declare itself more noble. The reverse is true for the smaller number.

“That settles everything, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“By no means! It throws everything into confusion!”

“How so?”

“Well, we apprehend the truth through higher methods, exactly as we always do. And we found that it’s permitted for you to enter the city. But there are others who claim to do precisely the same thing, and yet they come to different conclusions. These individuals are liars and charlatans. They must be fought with all available resources. That’s why we must be careful with everyone who enters.”

“I don’t believe in anything that cannot be supported by sensory evidence. Indeed, if something never intrudes into the world of the senses, then what basis do we even have for claiming that it exists?”

“How childish of you. But I guess your prejudice is fundamentally harmless. If you cannot grasp our higher realities, then you are to be pitied, not hated.”

“How exactly do you ascertain the reality of extrasensory beings? Do you sense them?”

“As it happens, we do.”

“Then they aren’t extrasensory, are they?”

“They are.”

“Well, good day to you then. And say, could you tell me perhaps how to get back to the surface–only, not by the way I came?”

“I don’t believe in the surface,” the guard replied. “I’ve never seen it.”

Someone lit up a torch, and for the first time I beheld the room around me. I recognized one of men who had grabbed me as the muscular fellow from the weapons shop.

“So what do I call you?” I asked my captor. “As I understand it, The Predator is already taken. And ‘Prudence’ doesn’t sound all that sinister.”

“Well… hmmm… it doesn’t, now does it? But that’s just the beauty of the whole operation! After all, I’m not supposed to look evil right from the start. All the very best wickedness looks perfectly harmless from the outside.”

“Well, whatever,” I replied. “But in any event, I don’t have anything that you want. You might as well let me go. If it helps, I’ll promise not to tell anyone that you did it.”

“But it’s not so simple as that,” replied my captor. “You’re right that I have no personal stake in detaining you. But you are a known criminal, my friend. My spies tell me that you are wanted for questioning in both Meta-Israel and Idoltaria. And the Inquisition of Christendom has started proceedings against you as well. Seems some guy named Augustine made a complaint, and now they want to have a chat with you. Here the Christians still burn at the stake, too. “

“I was afraid of that.”

“The options as they stand right now seem to be stoning, burning at the stake–or being tossed off a cliff into a river in a giant sack containing a monkey, a rooster, and a snake.”

I blinked, recalling something from ancient history.

“The pagans get creative, you see.”

“Lovely.”

“Yes, but I’m holding out for the highest bidder. Negotiations are already underway.”

Seeing that I had nothing further to say to him, the Prudent Predator bid me goodbye and left the room, as did his two associates. For the second time in as many days, I found myself alone in a dungeon.

Alone, but with company. Sadly, it was not Lust, but the Devil’s Advocate who joined me in my solitude.

“What are you thinking, my dear boy?”

“I’m thinking about sunk cost.”

“Economics? At a time like this?”

“It is the science of choice, isn’t it?”

“Well yes. But it would seem that your choices are few–or possibly zero.”

“So it would seem. But I can still choose what I think, right? And that choice may be able to influence other things that I can’t quite control right at the moment.”

“Telekinesis?”

“Don’t be smart with me.”

“Then tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I am wondering,” I replied, “how I might be able to make some sort of deal for my freedom.”

“What do you have to offer?” asked the Devil’s Advocate.

I produced from my pocket the heavy wrought-iron key to the Citadel of the Inner Ethical Council.

“You’re not thinking of…”

“Well, it’s one of the last remaining resources I have, right?”

“You have that fine shirt of chainmail.”

“Oh yes, how could I forget? It’s the very thing that got me in trouble in the first place.”

“How do you propose getting yourself out of that trouble? Go back to Oberon and ask his forgiveness? He isn’t noted for his mercy.”

“And I’m not noted for asking forgiveness.”

“Does that trouble you?” asked the Devil’s Advocate.

“I’m not sure I believe in forgiveness, to be honest.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! For most people in your situation, forgiveness would be the first thing on their minds.”

“I know. But I don’t have much chance of earthly forgiveness–and I have no hope whatsoever in the heavenly kind.”

“Well what happens, then, when you do wrong?”

“If I do wrong, I’ve done wrong. End of story. If you think about it, ‘forgiveness’ doesn’t at all erase the fact that a wrong has been done. No, it’s just a lot of make-believing that the wrong never happened. But it did happen, and there’s no changing that. Forgiveness is just a sugar-coating. Even the promise to ‘forgive and forget’ is a lie–If you promise to forget something, don’t you always invariably remember it?”

“Well said. But God has the power to forgive. Or so I’m told.”

“Of course. Most people believe in God, who is said to offer a forgiveness that matters much more than the earthly kind, a forgiveness that–suspiciously–can be obtained wherever you are. But I’m wary of things that come too cheaply. The promise of forgiveness is to undo the past, but it never works out that way. Even God doesn’t do that.”

“Yes, most people say they believe in God, but they never fail to give my Master his due. They keep right on sinning–and they keep right on asking forgiveness. I wonder if goodness might not do better, if it refused all forgiveness?”

“An interesting question.”

“But let’s be reasonable: Whether it’s a superstition or not, belief in God aims to give comfort in situations precisely like your own, when nothing else could possibly work.”

“If you’re trying to convert me, you’ll have to do better than that,” I replied. “I hardly see how adding a delusion to one’s miseries can make them any better.”

“Hush. It’s wicked to mock the afflicted. And I’m not trying to convert you. Now it just happens Christians do make the very best souls for roasting, but we’ve despaired of you case a long time ago”

“Oh good. So after I’m thrown off a cliff in a sack with a monkey, a rooster, and a snake, at least I’ll not quite taste so juicy to the devils who will torment me afterward. If, that is, you are anything more than a figment of my imagination.”

“In the unreal world? Here we’re just as real as you are.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“So what do you really think, anyway?” he asked. “What do you atheists, you hopeless ones think–in a hopeless situation? It’s easy to believe in nothing when times are good, right? But what about now? Tell me; I’m curious to taste your despair.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I mean, well, you know: I was born and raised a Satanist. We all are down there, I guess. But I’ve always wondered how the atheists live. Anything, really.”

“You mean, ‘Does life have any meaning for the atheist?’”

“Exactly! I live and breathe for Armageddon; every night I sharpen my claws in sweet anticipation. One dark and glorious day, I tell myself, I shall drink the blood of angels! But what do you live for?”

“What a miserable question.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t live for anything. I just do the best I can while I’m at it. And there’s no cosmic drama to get in the way.”

“How depressing.”

“Sometimes. But then, Christianity has sorrow enough of its own. And even Satanism does too, on occasion.”

“Satanism? It’s a never-ending bliss.”

“Nonsense. As I understand it, the only book authenticating your Master’s existence also predicts that he will lose the Last Battle. It can’t be fun to back a loser.”

“Well, yeah. There’s that, I suppose.”

“And you lost that whole witchcraft thing a while back, too. There can’t be that many babies to roast these days, can there?”

“These days, almost never.”

“I’m sorry to hear that… I guess.”

“We do have plenty of wars going on,” the Devil’s Advocate said hopefully, “and we’re doing all we can to think up new ones.”

“I’ve noticed.” We paused for a moment, unsure where to go next.

“Christians,” said the Devil’s Advocate, “have it all wrong when it comes to atheists, don’t they?”

“They do.”

“But how? I want to hear it from you.”

“The Christians’ biggest mistake is to think that in our misery, we atheists are crying out for their particular God. Christians simply assume it, because that’s what their religion tells them. It isn’t so. In our misery, we are perfectly alone, equally removed from Christ as we are from Buddha, Krishna, and the deified Augustus Caesar.”

“But they would say that Christ is right there for you.”

“What would a Buddhist say?”

“Fair enough. And, well–you understand, of course, that I do have to bring this up–Satan is right there for you too. If you’re interested.”

“I know. But I take other comforts.”

“What are the comforts of an atheist?”

“In sorrow, I recall that all things must end, and I take comfort from that. In joy, I recall that all things must end–and that I must hold to the good all the harder.”

“That’s hardly logical.”

“Neither is the proverb about the empty triangle.” He looked puzzled, but I opted not to try explaining. Evangelism can be insufferable, and it’s usually a waste of time.

“I’ve been thinking of making a deal,” I continued. I held up the key to the Citadel. “Perhaps you could secure the key to my cage, and I would give you this one in return.”

“A lovely deal; to be honest, I’d been wanting that one back.”

“I figured. I’m guessing that now that the election is over, the Council will have called off its strike.”

“I wouldn’t speak too soon. Have you seen what’s happening in Ukraine?”

“Democracy is only as good as the people who take to the streets and defend it.”

“Hardly a ringing endorsement. But have you considered that giving up the key means giving up your quest?”

“I have. But staying here means giving up my life, and of course I can’t keep questing if I’m dead.”

The Devil’s Advocate looked puzzled once more. He glanced at my wrought-iron key, then at the smaller steel key that was hanging from a hook on the far wall. With measured, pondering steps he walked over and retrieved the key to my cage.

“Help me out here,” he said, “because I’m not sure I quite understand the mechanics of the unreal world.”

“Okay.”

“You are real. You’re completely 100% real, and you’ve been translated here by a mystic portal.”

I blushed. “I’m not quite sure I believe in it myself. I’ve never been much of a mystic.”

“In any event, all the rest of this stuff is unreal, not-real, false, fictional.”

“Yes.”

“So what happens if you die here?”

“I have no idea.”

The Devil’s Advocate roared in wicked laughter.

We then planned to pass the rest of our day in a succession of museums, sidewalk cafés, and elegant boutiques: It was shaping up just like a vacation in Paris, except only for the language barrier and the crotte, neither of which was in evidence. Claudia and Mohammed were kind enough to teach me the secret symbols of the Asan heretics, making me formally a member of their little group. I would relate those signs to you here, but then they would no longer be secret. You’ll have to learn them for yourself.

“I don’t feel any different,” I remarked.

“Try to keep it that way,” replied Mohammed.

“Yes, do try to keep it that way,” said Claudia. “But now that you’re a heretic too, you should know that you’re free to speak your mind all you like. To us, at least.”

“Not like he didn’t before.”

“Yes, but now he’s a member of the group. From this point on, it’s his responsibility to think critically, to say something really challenging to us whenever it comes to his mind. Is there anything you’ve never quite had the guts to say before? We almost have a tradition, you know, that the new ones get to sound off about something that’s been bothering them.”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything just yet.”

Mohammed sighed in relief. At about that time we entered a large shopping complex; long ago it had been an authentic castle, but over the centuries it had made the rough and uneasy transition into something approaching a modern shopping mall. We stopped for lattés just inside the drawbridge. As we took our drinks and began to walk, the coffee’s aroma percolated up to my brain, I remembered that I really did have something to talk about.

“Well, okay, I suppose I do have something to say. I’ve always–”

“You know, you don’t have to if you don’t want–” said Mohammed.

“Shh!” said Claudia. “He’s trying to say something. “And you,” she said, turning to me, “be careful of what you do say.”

“Well, alright then. I think the Categorical Imperative is a whole bunch of nonsense.” If anyone was listening to our conversation, I felt certain that they would immediately tune out.

“What?” said Claudia.

“You heard me. The Categorical Imperative is bad philosophy. It’s nothing more than a clever dodge that conceals the real ethical thinking of the speaker. Worse, it fails entirely to bridge the is-ought gap.”

“Those are some serious charges,” Claudia replied. “Explain yourself.” As she spoke, she stopped to sip her latté and to examine a superbly crafted set of nunchaku.

“Well, you know Kant’s famous statement of the imperative: ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ I tend to think that a categorical imperative of some kind can be found in just about any ethical system–except perhaps Randian Objectivism, which considers Kant the worst philosopher of all time.”

“Oh no,” she replied. “Even among Objectivists, I think I still see a categorical imperative. Consider the second half of Ayn Rand’s ethical credo:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

It’s egoism, sure, but it’s a principled egoism. And when it rejects all claims of unearned value, it also adopts something very much like a categorical imperative.”

“I suppose I can see that. I’m not totally convinced though.”

Claudia called the sales clerk over, and he took the nunchaku out of the case.

“Consider the Prudent Predator, too,” Claudia continued. The salesman raised his eyes ever so briefly, then returned to his work.

“Egoist philosophies of any kind–Rand’s included–always have to deal with the question of someone who pretends to be good, but who will lie, cheat, and steal if a convenient moment arises. The so-called Prudent Predator bides his time, picks the right opportunity, and strikes. Then he goes back to looking and acting just like everyone else. He winds up having the best of both worlds, reaping the benefits of honesty most of the time–and the benefits of dishonesty whenever he can. Egoism has a hard time accounting for such a creature, because with him, evil isn’t really about dark towers and fangs dripping with gore. It’s about the sly, smirking betrayal in the midst of goodness.”

“But if it’s in his own material interests, then hey, why shouldn’t he stab his neighbor in the back?” I asked.

“Precisely, and this concern has led many to reject egoism as a moral system and to adopt altruism, its direct opposite. Never mind that if anything, the practical difficulties to altruism are even greater. The fear of the Prudent Predator is just too much to handle.

“It’s hard for an egoist ethics to argue against the Prudent Predator without invoking the Imperative. But even a whiff of Kant will instantly dispel him: If the others lived by the same means that you adopt, it would make all life insufferable.” Claudia took some coins from her purse and paid for her new weapon.

“I don’t think that’s how Objectivism answers the question,” I replied. The man counted out Claudia’s change and handed it to her over the counter. “Objectivists seem to say instead that the mere act of looking for those rare occasions to break the rules actually does a lot of damage to one’s moral and psychological well-being: Even if a material profit is to be had, these situations just aren’t worth seeking out.”

Claudia noticed that the clerk had mistakenly returned more in change than she herself had offered for the item. She counted again and paid the proper price. The clerk smiled and thanked her.

“It doesn’t pay to keep two sets of morals about,” I continued. “It’s actually against your self-interest. Nor does it pay to consider switching back and forth between these sets from moment to moment. It makes you less sure of things that ought to be moral certainties–and less habituated to virtue over time.” I noticed that the sales clerk was now talking quietly with a tall, powerfully-built man. Both were shooting occasional glances in our direction.

“Exactly!” said Claudia. “And that is a Categorical Imperative. Whether Objectivism recognizes it openly or not, it certainly operates on the principle.”

“Well in any event, this doesn’t contradict what I was saying all along–Theories of ethics almost always have some form of the Imperative to them. But let’s go back, because I’ve got a problem with the Imperative itself. Kant says, ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’”

“What’s the problem with that?” asked Claudia.

“The part about ‘the maxim by which you act:’ It strikes me as weak somehow. I mean, what precisely is the operant principle for a given action? How do we determine what principle is at work when we act? For a given action, there may actually be many different animating principles acting in harmony–or in conflict. Which one (or ones) do we consider? And for an identical action, we may mistakenly ascribe many different motives if we’re looking at it from the outside. The motives we impute may be noble or vicious, wise or foolish, sincere or hypocritical. It all depends on whom one asks, the context of the action, the knowledge of the actor… “

I trailed off. The clerk was alone now behind the counter. He was pretending to be busy, but he kept looking in our direction.

“Can you give me an example?” Claudia asked.

“Of course,” I replied. “Consider what Kant would say about gay marriage. Based on my Google search hits, a great many people want to know what Kant would have thought about the modern-day issue of same-sex marriage. Now, the historical Kant of course had absolutely no opinion at all about gay marriage. For that matter, he probably didn’t even understand what ‘gay’ meant, since the gay identity was only just emerging then, and quite secretively at that. But at any rate, someone has been bringing up his name a lot recently in this context, and people looking for the answer that he might have given. Some of them have even made their way to Positive Liberty.”

“Maybe it’s from philosophy class, and the teacher is using gay marriage as an example of the Categorical Imperative,” she replied.

“Could be. Now, from where I sit, there are at least two different ways of applying the Categorical Imperative to same-sex marriage. One strikes me as foolish; the other is more reasonable, I think. But the mere fact that there are two explanations points to a greater problem with the imperative itself: How one infers the maxim behind an action can influence the evaluation that one makes by the Categorical Imperative.”

“Is that a problem?” Claudia asked.

“Of course it is! The Categorical Imperative looks like an objective test to a lot of people. But if the way that you make up the operant maxim can skew the outcome, then it’s not objective test at all. You end up making all your real arguments behind the scenes and using the Imperative as a cover. Let me give you my two examples, and maybe it will get a bit clearer.

“The first line of argument runs as follows: Kant would say that gay marriage is wrong, because we should always seek out the principle behind a given action–and attempt to universalize from it. If the results are unfavorable, then the action we are considering must be bad.

“Now, in this case we find that the principle behind gay marriage is that everyone must marry and be faithful to a person of the same sex. But society would never survive if everyone were in a gay marriage, so Kant must say gay marriage is wrong.”

Claudia laughed out loud.

“Don’t laugh; some people seem to take this argument quite seriously.” I produced a clipping from my pocket and read:

Start with Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” - the morality of an action can be tested, even in the absence of belief in a supreme being, by universalizing it hypothetically - “Would it still be good if everyone did it?” In the case of gay marriage, it is clear that it fails this test; aside from promiscuity and disease, it would lead to the collapse of society in one generation as no one would be having children.

“Where did you find that,” asked Claudia, “Free Republic?”

I shrugged.

“But see, I don’t for a moment believe that the principle behind gay marriage is to force all people into a gay marriage.”

“I should hope not,” she replied. “I like men far too much.”

“It’s a false derivation of principle, and exactly the problem with the Categorical Imperative. So all of this brings me to the other maxim that we might derive from the act of gay marriage, and it’s one that I have to say I strongly prefer:

Let every couple be married who desires it, and let them spend the rest of their lives in a mutually supportive and faithful relationship, full of a deep, authentic, and abiding love.

This satisfies the Imperative quite nicely: Gay marriages and straight marriages both operate on the same principle, and this principle applies equally to all. If Immanuel Kant himself wouldn’t necessarily have supported gay marriage, well, at least we might hope to bring around the latter-day Kantians.”

“Impressive,” said Claudia. “But I thought you said the Categorical Imperative had some serious problems. It seems to me like all you’ve done is to correct a misapplication of Kant’s ideas, not to attack the philosophy itself.”

“No, I think it runs deeper than that,” I replied. “See, I support same-sex marriage because I believe that any person who desires it should seek out a mutually supportive and faithful relationship with another person, and that all of these relationships–belonging to the same category–should be treated the same way. But I could easily imagine others who might support gay marriage merely because they think that straight marriage ought to be destroyed.”

“I think you’ve been reading too many conservative blogs,” Claudia replied.

“Maybe. But if Kant’s Imperative really is valid, then it should be able to derive ethical principles from individual actions and evaluate both principle and action alike. But it does no such thing. Instead, it invites the thinker to invent the principle behind an action–and then pontificate about his invention.”

“I see your point,” said Claudia, “but I think there might still be a way to fix the Imperative.”

“Explain.”

“The principle behind an action cannot be derived merely at the whim of the observer: It must be inferred from the sum total of an individual’s actions, not just in one situation, but throughout his life.”

“That’s not what Kant said.”

“I know, but maybe he should have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose someone supports gay marriage. Is it reasonable to infer that he opposes straight marriage in principle? To answer that question we would have to examine his other actions as well. Does he discourage straight people from getting married? Does he try to break up the straight marriages around him? Does he say bad things about straight people and their unions?”

I winced as I recalled how many gay activists have done precisely these things. But then again, these radicals were hardly the same people who were lobbying for gay marriage. On the contrary, the rise of same-sex marriage as a political issue has done more to marginalize the radicals than any other issue I can think of.

“So,” she continued, “if someone opposes straight marriage while supporting gay marriage, then we might infer that they are acting on your first principle, which fails Kant’s test. But if someone encourages and supports straight marriage, does what he can for the straight marriages around them, and generally speaks well of the institution, then that person’s support for gay marriage might fall under your second principle instead.”

“But that still doesn’t solve the problem,” I replied. “We are still left inferring the principles behind every action. Our inferences are the place where we do all of the moral heavy lifting. In that sense, the categorical imperative affirms the consequent without ever really examining it.”

Appropriately enough, we had wandered out of the weapons shop and entered a toystore.

“Suppose,” said Claudia, “that I buy this teddy bear.”

“Alright.”

“What is the principle behind my action? And how would I generalize from it? Clearly, you would not say that I think everyone in the world must run out to this very store and buy an identical teddy bear.”

“No, of course not.” I replied.

“You would have to infer that I was acting on some more reasonable principle.”

“Yes. And I’m tempted to suggest a few, though Kant wouldn’t have liked any of them.”

“What are these?” she asked.

“A hedonic principle, perhaps. Or, if you really don’t mean to start a run on teddy bears, we might say that your principle is something like Aristotle’s golden mean: ‘Buy those consumer goods that appeal to your desires–but only to satisfaction, not to surfeit.’ Or somesuch ancient, outmoded doctrine.”