Aesthetics, Stability and Functionality as Premises in the Process of Creating and Changing the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

The author analyzed the premises that would justify changes to the constitution. Prerequisites such as aesthetics, stability and functionality are at the center of attention. Based on the experience of the Polish political system after 2015, the author stated that the pursuit of the aesthetics of the constitution, in the form of its brevity and general character of the norms, is still relevant, but it cannot be a decisive premise. It is much more important to strive for the precision of norms in order to ensure the functionality of the constitution as the main stabilizer of the system. These experiences teach that the application of the constitution cannot be presumed in good faith, and all its essential provisions should be tested to the extent that they can be interpreted in bad faith, e.g. by creating a field for circumventing the constitution.

In this paper I would like to present an interpretation of David Hume’s political theory. Therefore, a method of investigation can be recognized as hermeneutical one. Main threads which I would like to emphasize are: concept of stability, distribution of power, role of an opinion in political dimension and a conservative attitude toward a change. I claim that important lesson for political science can be taken from his theory. Generally speaking, this lesson consists in refusing the so-called political regime fetishism and focusing on the relevant issues of social stability. These issues are strictly determined by the opinions, hence the proper subject-matter of political science is identified with them. As one of the conclusions I propose a thesis that politics is, and ought only to be slave of opinions, what is an allusion to a famous sentence from A Treatise of Human Nature that the reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.