Should we try to “live in the present”? Such is the imperative of modernity, according to this work of political theory. Since Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that “the earth belongs to the living”—since Sigmund Freud announced that mental health requires people to “get free of their past”—since Friedrich Nietzsche declared that the happy man is the man who “leaps” into “the moment”—modernity has directed its inhabitants to live in the present, as if there alone could they find happiness, authenticity, and above all freedom. But this imperative rests on a profoundly inadequate, deforming picture o ... More

Should we try to “live in the present”? Such is the imperative of modernity, according to this work of political theory. Since Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that “the earth belongs to the living”—since Sigmund Freud announced that mental health requires people to “get free of their past”—since Friedrich Nietzsche declared that the happy man is the man who “leaps” into “the moment”—modernity has directed its inhabitants to live in the present, as if there alone could they find happiness, authenticity, and above all freedom. But this imperative rests on a profoundly inadequate, deforming picture of the relationship between freedom and time. Instead, human freedom—human being itself—necessarily extends into both past and future; self-government consists of giving our lives meaning and purpose over time. From this conception of self-government, the book derives a new theory of constitutional law's place in democracy. Democracy, it argues, is not a matter of governance by the present “will of the people”; it is a matter of a nation's laying down and living up to enduring political and legal commitments. Constitutionalism is not counter to democracy, as many believe, or a precondition of democracy; it is or should be democracy itself—over time. On this basis, this study offers a new understanding of constitutional interpretation and of the fundamental right of privacy.