The Categorical Imperative

"There is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is Categorical...this imperative may be called that of Morality."

With this quotation from Emmanuel Kant, Gwen Frobisher ended her lecture on that philosopher – her first ever lecture for the Philosophy Department.

She began to put together her notes, and then the applause broke out. The students knew it was her first ever lecture, but this was more than polite applause; whether it was for the manner of her delivery or the intellectual content she didn't know.

She looked up at them, smiled, gave a slight bow, and then slipping the notes into her slim brief case she left the lecture theatre.

She wondered how they would feel when during her next lecture the following week she demolished Kant's argument.

* * * * * * * *

This was a moment of high triumph for Gwen. From what had been the ruins of her life ten years previously, she had reinvented herself, first as an honours philosophy student, then tutor, and now lecturer. She was still working for her PhD, and beyond that, who knew, perhaps a professorial chair of philosophy one day?

As she walked along the corridor she was overtaken by Professor Andrew Davis.

"I was sitting at the back of the theatre, congratulations Gwen; a superb exposition."

"Thank you Andrew. Thank God I didn't spot you; I'd have lost my place in the notes and not known what to say next."

He laughed, touched her lightly on the shoulder, and said, "Not you Gwen, you've got a great future in front of you."

He left her and she made her way towards the exit from the building. Standing at the top of the steps she surveyed the surrounding university buildings with feelings of deep satisfaction.

As she walked down the half dozen steps she was vaguely aware of someone standing at the bottom of them. As she passed him he stepped forward and said, "Hello, mother."

She stopped and turned to him. He was tall, and his frame indicated that he should have been a well built young man, but he was emaciated, his face pale and gaunt. His jeans were patched, not in the fashionable manner of young people at that time, but in the manner of necessity. The sleeve of his shirt gaped open at the seam over his right shoulder and his hair, again not fashionably long but certainly long, lank and greasy. His face had several days of stubble on it.

She stared at him. It took a few moments for her to recognise him, but then she gasped, "Jamie...it is Jamie...isn't it?"

"Yes."

But...but...what...why...what are you doing here?"

"I needed...I don't know...I needed..." His voice faded away as his large brown eyes, made larger and more prominent by his pale complexion and wasted features, looked at her as if pleading.

"My God Jamie, what's happened to you, you look terrible?"

"I-I-I hitched from up north, I had to...to..."

He swayed and she thought he was about to faint, but as she went to help him he made an obvious effort and recovered enough to say, "I needed someone and you...you..."

He swayed again and this time Gwen took him by the arm.

"You'd better come with me. I've got the car and I don't live far from here."

He picked up a rucksack saying, "If...if...if you don't want..."

"That's enough Jamie, we can talk later; I'm taking you home."

"Is he still there?"

"Who?"

"Him, Fielder."

"No," replied Gwen brusquely. "No more talking until I've got you home."

They got to the staff car park and her car and drove the ten minute journey to her flat. As she drove the car into the underground park he said, "This isn't where we used to live."

"No, a lot of things have changed in ten years Jamie – a lot of things."

Her flat was on the third floor and usually she ran up the stairs just to prove that she could, but this time they used the lift.

Inside the flat she sat him in an armchair and as he started to say, "I don't mean to be..."

"Eat first Jamie, then a shower and a change of...have you got any other clothes in that rucksack?"

"Only a change of underwear and some spare socks."

"My God Jamie what's happened to you - does you father know...? No, let's leave it, eat, shower, and I'll see what I can do with those rags you're wearing."

She went to the kitchen and re-emerged with half a cold chicken and the remains of a mayonnaise salad, and sat watching him devour it. It was obvious he hadn't eaten properly for some time.

She went back to the kitchen and returned carrying a bottle of red wine. She poured him a glass and said, "Drink."

He obediently drank.

She showed him where the shower was and asked, "Have you got a razor?"

"Yes, but the blade is so blunt now that..."

"Top draw on the right, you'll find a lady razor, use that for now, and throw those rags you're wearing out as soon as you've undressed."

She waited outside the door and "the rags" came out, together with a worn out pair of smelly sneakers and socks.

Holding them rather gingerly she took them into the laundry. A brief inspection and she muttered, "Only fit for the rubbish bin," into which they went. Going into her bedroom she hunted through the wardrobe and found a dressing gown. She took it to the bathroom and opening the door called out, "Put this on when you're finished," and dropped it inside.

Returning to the lounge she sat back in an armchair and wondered what was going on. Ten years since Jamie and his father had left her, going up to the Queensland Gold Coast. Since then, nothing, not a telephone call, no a letter, and now – what the hell had happened?

She was still ruminating when Jamie entered the room. Shaved, and with his hair de-greased he looked slightly better than he had been twenty minutes previously, although slightly ridiculous in the pale green dressing gown that came nowhere near fitting his large frame.

He still looked exhausted so she said, "Stretch out on the divan."

He obeyed but started to protest, "If you'd rather I left I can..."

"Not until I find out what's happened to you, why you're here, I want to telephone your father but I haven't got a number, what is...?"

"No use, he...he's not able...wouldn't know..."

He was struggling to keep his eyes open but Gwen could see them drooping.

"All right Jamie, we can delay talk, you're exhausted; do you want anything more to eat?"

"I could do with something," he muttered.

She left him and went to the kitchen and made a couple of cheese and tomato sandwiches. When she returned he was fast asleep on the divan.

She put the plate of sandwiches on the coffee table beside the divan and sat down again to contemplate the situation.

* * * * * * * *

Ten years and here he was...ten years!

What was she supposed to do? She smiled wryly, remembering her lecture that afternoon. All the talk about objective and subjective ethics, morality and virtue! Was there such a thing as Kant's Categorical Imperative?

What about her forthcoming lecture in which she was going to arrogantly demolished Kant's argument? What about all those endless philosophical propositions and arguments about whether there was any virtue beyond one's own desire and pleasure?

She thought about all those philosophers who for three thousand years had argued the equivalent of how many angels could dance of the point of a needle as they sought to upstage each other. So what happens when you're confronted with reality, the reality of a tatterdemalion son lying asleep on your divan?

She laughed softly as she thought of the philosophers who argued that the only reality that exists is the one that you make up for yourself.

Well, derelict Jamie wasn't the sort of reality she would have made up for herself if given the choice.

Suddenly all the philosophic pretensions were like so much hot air, being blown away by the first puff of the cold wind that was her derelict son.

Was it all going to start over again; the ruin that her life had been ten years ago coming full circle?

"Be sure your sins will find you out."

"My God, I'm turning religious," she thought, "and everybody knows that religion is a dead duck floating on top of the water in the twenty first century, while a few idiots and fanatics try to revive its rotting carcass."

She looked across at Jamie. "Let him sleep," she thought, as a rumbling in her stomach told her it was some time since she had eaten.

* * * * * * * *

As she sat in the kitchen eating spaghetti bolognaise the memories of that time ten years ago came floating into her mind. She felt the pain of it almost as a physical thing.

Hadn't she been told when she had done her stint in the Psychology Department as a student that even the most exquisite agonies could be turned into sexual euphoria?

"Then why the hell am I not getting sexually worked up now?"

Husband Stan walking in on her as that bastard Ernst Fielder fucked her on the marriage bed.

Yes, bloody Fielder; well named and well paid for his ability to kick a ball between two sticks. Hero of the football oval and player in a team belonging to the major league, he could lay any woman he chose, and he had chosen her.

Of course she wanted to be caught – wanted to punish Stan for his neglect and his drug habit that was making life ever more uncertain.

Jamie, given the choice, opted to go with his father. Twelve years old he had said bluntly, "Dad's much more fun to be with."

That had hurt deeply, but in a sense he had been right. She'd married Stan because he was fun to be with (among other things), so how could she blame Jamie for his choice? In any case Jamie had hated Fielder and for all anyone knew, Fielder would be living with Gwen from that time on.

And so Jamie had gone north with his father and she had heard no more of them. At the time it didn't matter to her because she was totally captivated by Fielder.

For eight months he had fucked her half to death. Sexually he wanted the lot; vaginal, oral, anal, and anywhere else he could stick his seemingly permanently erect penis.

It hadn't lasted of course. Eight months and Fielder had found him self another female body to plunder and had left her without a backward glance.

It was then she might have thought of Jamie – might have claimed some part in his life and he in hers, but after a tranquillised few months she had picked up the university course she had dropped when marrying Stan; their marriage, apart from Stan being fun, was a consequence of her being pregnant to him.

It was then that she discovered a previously un-revealed talent – a quick mind that could demolish.

In philosophy tutorials she enjoyed the games: Freedom? Democracy? Love? Good? Bad? The meaning of life? Virtue? Vice? Knowledge? Reality?

"Define your terms...define your terms."

Like flies inside a bottle they bashed themselves against the glass trying to get out, and failed to see the open neck of the bottle.

How she had loved those verbal games. Sitting there in the tutorials she listened to the other students' responses and then with devastating logic demolished them piece by piece.

She was rarely the first put forward an argument of her own; she simply tore apart those of others' and enjoyed seeing their bewilderment. To add to their bewilderment she would then proceed to knock down the very argument she had just put forward.

Quick witted and with a retentive memory it had been great fun.

By her third year as a student in the School of Philosophy she could summarise every major philosopher from Thales to Karl Popper and pull them all apart.

"A brilliant mind," was the conclusion of the Philosophy staff, some agreeing enviously and others with admiration.

She was riding high on the academic wave, what time had she, or even desire, to bother about Jamie and Stan.

Always highly sexed and as a teenager promiscuous, after Fielder her libido seemed to go into hibernation. Her lust was now for philosophy and the power over others it seemed to give her – the power she had felt in the inaugural lecture that afternoon, and the applause that had been her reward.

And now, out of a clear academic sky, had come this fruit of her womb. Why, what did he want, what had happened, why was he so derelict? He looked like one of those discarded wrecks that haunted the prosperous for a dollar on the streets of the city.

Why, just when she had reached a high point in her life, had the past found her out?

* * * * * * * *

She went back into the lounge and sat for a while looking at him. She had struggled to recognise him when he had first stepped towards her; had she passed him in the street he would have gone unnoticed by her. Only one word had enabled her to recognise who he was, "Mother."

Still asleep and relaxed she thought she could see in his features the lineaments of the child she had known.

"Such a beautiful child," she had thought when they had first put him in her arms.

Stan's drug habit had been mild, like a cloud in the sky no bigger than a man's hand. It had at first made him even more fun to be with, but she saw over time his mood swings, and she feared them, not for what they were, but for what they might become.

Like many women she thought that she could shock Stan into realising what he was doing to their relationship, and had taken the catastrophic route so many women take to try and bring a spouse into line, that of adultery. That had culminated in Stan's departure with Jamie.

She was good to look at, she knew that, and Fielder's eye had spied her out at the end of a football match she had attended.

Well, that was history now; an unchangeable past, but what now that history had caught up with her?

She grimaced as she sardonically asked her self, "And what is my Categorical Imperative now?"

She was tired and it was time for bed, "And tomorrow...well it must take care of itself."

She went to a cupboard and took out a blanket and laid it over Jamie. She showered and went to bed.

In her dreams that night Emmanuel Kant came to her saying, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made."

* * * * * * * *

Morning and she didn't want to wake up. She had work on her doctorial thesis that she wanted to do; she had Jamie to cope with, which was what she did not want to do.

She went to the bathroom, washed her face and cleaned her teeth, dressed, and then went into the lounge. He was still asleep but the sandwiches had gone.

"My God, will he never wake up?"

She went to the kitchen and for some reason set aside her healthful muesli and fried herself some bacon and eggs.

Perhaps it was the smell of the frying delicacies that infiltrated Jamie's dreams, but he entered the kitchen still looking somewhat pathetic in her dressing gown, and asking, "Where are my clothes, I can't wear this..."

"I've put them where they belong, Jamie, in the rubbish bin."

"But what am I going to..."

"I'll go out later and buy you some more, that is, after you tell me what the hell is going on. Do you want some egg and bacon?"

"What?...Oh yes...if you..."

"Here, take this."

She gave him what she had fried for her self and commenced frying another lot.

She gave him and her self a chance to get through breakfast and then said, "Now Jamie, what happened, how did you get here, why are you here, and how did you find me?"

He looked at her and asked, "Which question do you want me to answer first?"

Gwen, exasperated asked, "How did you find me?"

"Oh, dad and I knew you'd gone back to university studies so I took a chance. I asked some of the students in the university cafeteria – they always know more about what's going on than anyone else – and I learned you were lecturing that afternoon."

"So, does your father know where you are?" Gwen asked.

"No, he doesn't really know anything anymore."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Mother, do you really want to know?"

"Of course I bloody well want to know. I want to know why the hell you're here looking like a ruin."

"Drugs."

"You...you're on..."

"No...no, not me, dad; you didn't tell me...why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think...oh never mind, what are you saying, he got..."

"Got worse, yes, a whole lot worse; I tried, I really tried, but in the end..."

"Tried what?"

"Well he ran through all the money. He stopped working. Then the things in the house started to disappear and..."

"He was selling them; what was he on?"

"God knows mum, everything I think - whatever he could get. I tried to keep things going...took odd jobs just to try and..."

"So what happened?"

"The cops found him blown out of his mind lying on the beach one night. He didn't know who or where he was."

"He's in prison?"

"No, he's in some mental institution. They say he's done permanent brain damage to himself. I hung around for a while, visiting him, but he didn't know who I was. I know I should be able..."

He broke off as the tears came, and struggling to go on said, "I couldn't cope anymore, I wanted someone...someone...I know at my age I should have...but I needed..."

Gwen went to him and put her arm round him.

"It's all right Jamie...it's all right...we all need someone some time; I'm here."

"Mum...oh mum...please I don't know what..."

"Quiet Jamie...quiet...we'll work something out; everything will be fine."

"Will it mum...will it?"

"Yes, of course. How did you get here?"

"Oh, I hitched, but I couldn't get a ride straight here, it took me five days."

There was a pause in the conversation for a few moments, and then Gwen said, "Well I haven't got a tutorial to take until this afternoon so I'll go out this morning and get you something decent to wear, that'll be a start, and then we can talk some more."

* * * * * * * *

Gwen, having retrieved his clothes from the rubbish bin, checked his sizes, and returned some time later bearing clothing and footwear considerably more expensive than that in which he had arrived. In addition she had bought extra food.

Jamie, dressed in the new clothes, looked and felt a lot better. Once more they sat in the lounge and Gwen asked, "Your education, how far have you gone?"

"Things being how they were I had to leave school when I was sixteen. Dad had stopped working so I got what jobs I could just to try and keep things going, but I could never earn enough."

"So you're not really qualified for anything?"

"No."

To someone in Gwen's position it seemed shocking that her son was so poorly educated. She began to think about what possibilities were open to Jamie.

He interrupted her thoughts.

"How long can I stay here for?"

"What...?

"How long...?

"Oh, let's deal with that later. You came down here because you thought I could help you, right?"

"Yes, I was desperate and there seemed to be nobody else I could turn to, so I..."

"You've got to get yourself a worthwhile life Jamie. These days you've virtually got to have a full high school education just to get a job as a labourer."

"Don't I know it," Jamie muttered.

"I'm prepared to help you Jamie, if you're prepared to help yourself, and that, I think, means completing your education. Are you willing to take that on?"

"Yes, but I haven't got any money."

"I realise that Jamie; Gwen frowned slightly and went on, "but I think it's about time I caught up belatedly on some of my maternal responsibilities. There are some adult education colleges around now, mainly used by those who for one reason or another, failed to complete high school, you could attend one of those."

"But I'll still need some money to..."

"Haven't you understood me Jamie, I'm willing to meet the costs and if you can't manage on the student grant which is pretty poor, I can make you a small allowance."