Positive Liberty

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.

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