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Poetry

De Omnibus Dubitandum

‘On the doubtfulness of everything’ – A satire against the dogmatists by Joseph Bou Charaa

Arise my Hume and yield your Scottish Fork,
Raze all systems and sack Scholastic York.
Observe the craft then falsify its claims
As Franklin did when testing Mesmer’s games.
Imagination thus one might conclude,
A fact to some, to others simply rude.
No dogma shall persist, no magic flute,
No Monads sing with Hegel’s absolute.
Behold my Hume how dialectics thrive
By utter fantasies are kept alive.
Each fervent man defends his sacred creed
Be it a Marx or others of that breed.
Oh look how great our Cosmos, well design’d:
A worthless sketch whose author(s) left unsign’d.
If add too much into that common sense
What verb might take then but a timeless tense?
Go matchless wit a statement senseless write,
Like Cantor’s Set, exhaust Reason’s light.
A style obscure do not such thoughts excuse
Which are thought to irk yet made to confuse.
Next praised a Beattie his God-given wits,
As skilful Sophists filling thus what fits.
Come, dogmatist, infer to reach your Cause,
Forget all facts, dismiss good Newton’s laws.
Your statement’s false, it lacks a solid ground;
Though valid, th’ argument may not be sound.
Throw thus your self-serv’d books to Etna’s flames
And let them cross the Styx in nameless names.

Joseph Bou Charaa, a.k.a. Joseph Sopholaos, is a Lebanese writer and translator on Mana Platform. He holds an M1 in Arabic Linguistics & an M1 in General Philosophy, both from Lebanese University. He recently translated Nigel Warburton’s Philosophy: The Classics into Arabic (2021).