By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
What does it mean to say, x implies y?
It may mean either of two things: either that x presupposes y, in the sense that x requires y by a specific and definite necessity; or that x anticipates y, in the sense that x requires y by only a generic and indefinite necessity. (Perhaps another way of explaining what is meant by the two things that implication may mean—i.e., presupposition and anticipation—is to say that, whereas the implication rightly distinguished as "presupposition" is unconditional, the implication rightly distinguished as "anticipation" is conditional.)
What Gamwell seems to want to say about a proper democratic constitution, which as such is merely formative, is two things: both that it necessarily implies certain substantive religious, moral, and political first principles, in the sense that it necessarily presupposes such first principles; and that it necessarily implies certain further, more specific, substantive principles (procedures, policies, and practices, and so on), in the sense that it necessarily anticipates such further principles.
Whatever else democracy may be said to be, it may be said to be the way of reason specified to politics, both constituent (or constitutional) and governmental (or statutory). Put in a more Habermasian way, democracy may be said to be communicative action specified to politics, again, at both levels, constituent and governmental.
7 October 2008; rev. 15 August 2009
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