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Comment by amrocha | Hacker News Reader

I think you should try to decide for yourself what to make of the situation instead of wondering what some ancient dead old dudes would think.

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It is possible to have your own thoughts and also wonder what other people think.

If that was the case then you should wonder what Descartes would think. What Derrida or Baudrillard would think. We both know it’s not about that though.

Wondering what the people who created the government think of the current government is massively different than wondering what either of two French philosophers who never participated in statecraft born 150 years later thinks.

It is perfectly normal to wonder what the architect of a system thinks of the current system, and entirely separate from wondering what a pair of unrelated Frenchman think of that system. Even if they are just “some ancient dead old dudes”.

Descartes at least was a mathematician and a philosopher with novel ideas. Derrida and Baudrillard were "postmodern" slop faucets.

These guys made a constitution that says all men are free, except for slaves and women because they’re obviously not men. This led to a civil war just a couple decades later. I think it’s pretty clear that they didn’t really know what they were doing. In fact, that’s why they gave you the tools to change the laws of the country.

Both perspectives could be informative.

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