Towards a More Perfect Union:
Can a Society Outgrow the Ideas that Founded it?
The day after the final performance of Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, we’re gathering with the director for a conversation. The play closes with a provocative debate and asks the audience should we abolish the Constitution, or amend it?
At Philosofarian, we also teach a small civic reflex: when a question only offers two choices, it often smuggles in a presumption. Not always, but often. Two options can compress a whole landscape of possibilities into a hallway with one lightbulb.
So part of what we’ll do together is widen the frame.
Format:
Introduction - 30 minutes
Local Philosopher Seth Tichenor will provide a clear primer to help everyone share the same “starting map.”
Negative and positive rights/freedoms: freedom from interference vs. freedom to do, become, and participate.
Why the Preamble matters: what it says the Constitution is trying to accomplish before it starts assigning power.
Enlightenment context and ideals: Philosophical assumptions shaped the Constitution and still shape our expectations today. Philosophers who influenced the Enlightenment include Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hume.
The Constitution’s possibilities: what it can enable, what it can’t guarantee, and what citizens still have to do.
Facilitated conversation - 60 minutes
We’ll use the play as a launchpad, (buy tickets here), but the conversation won’t require attendance to be engaging. Expect thoughtful prompts, opportunities to share your perspective or thought process, and to hear and other perspectives you may not share. Questions you can cook with right now:
What does “abolish” actually mean in practice? What gets lost, what becomes possible?
What counts as “amend” when culture, courts, enforcement, and power continuously shift?
Are there alternatives that aren’t captured by either pole: reinterpretation, reconstruction, repair, redesign?
What do we want a constitution to do, and what should never be left to paper alone?
Why this, why now?
The Constitution is often treated like sacred text or bureaucratic artifact. The play treats it like a messy living force in real lives, with real consequences. Today we see the constitution ignored on a regular basis. This conversation is for anyone who’s been chewing on constitutional ideas whether you went to the play or not.
Why Seth?
One of Seth’s areas of specialization is Political Theory. He’s taught courses ranging from introductory to profession levels in the intellectual history of the constitution, political philosophy, constitutional foundations of American government, policy and practice of American government, state and local politics, and theories of violence and nonviolence.