Re: Constitution v2.0
dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu
Wed, 6 Aug 1997 15:51:50 -0700 (PDT)
In his last published work, _The_Contest_of_the_Faculties_, Kant famously
enthused that there is no sweeter occupation than the planning of state
constitutions. I expect we will live to see the day when these
foundational documents will be as obsolete as Kant's other occupation,
foundational Philosophy, is in our own day. I for one expect polity to
disjoin geography to such an extent (this is already happening) that the
traditional role of constitutions as a check on abuses and guarantor of
sociocultural continuities will be better provided by the reflective
equilibrium generated among the arrangements and expectations of
autonomous but cooperating social agencies with which we will contract for
services presently offered willy-nilly by nation-state agencies. As it
happens, I am deeply fond of the United States Constitution and don't
trust my fellow-citizens *qua* architects to produce a better document,
though I scarcely doubt their ability to junk the present one. Like most
of my fellow-citizens, I have lots of pet suggestions for tinkering with
the thing, but nothing so sweeping as would deserve the moniker "v2.0".
I'll leave it to ongoing and upcoming exigencies of a technoconstituted
future to bring on changes of that drastic a character... after all, they
usually do anyway. Best, Dale
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Dale Carrico | dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu
University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric
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It is impossible to make significant change by force.
The only way to make significant change is
to make the thing you want to change obsolete. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
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"Death, where is thy sting-a-ling?" -- Noel Coward