The perfectible can be perfected: "Democracy is a perfectible system."
Perfectible is an adjective that applies to that which is susceptible to perfection . It should be noted that the action of perfecting consists of increasing the qualities or quality of something, turning it into something better .
For example: “I present to you the model of the new vehicle that our company will manufacture: of course, it is a perfectible design on which we will continue working” , “The manager believes that it is an interesting project, although perfectable” , “We have a method "very effective training, but it is still perfectible like everyone else."
Etymology of the term perfectible
In order to establish and understand the meaning of the term perfectible, it is necessary that, first of all, we proceed to determine its etymological origin. In this sense, we can say that it emanates from Latin, since it is the sum of three elements of said language:
- The prefix per- , which can be translated as “completely” .
- The verb facere , which is synonymous with “do” .
- The suffix -ible , which is used to indicate “that can” .
The perfectable
It is important to establish that, on a regular basis, for years people used perfectable instead of perfectible and that was considered an error because the word was not recorded as such. However, in the twenty-third edition of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) the idea of perfectable is already included, which is defined as an adjective that indicates that something can be improved.
In a broad sense, there is nothing that cannot be perfected or perfected, since any human creation can be improved : achieving perfection is impossible. Therefore, even in the most successful and efficient developments, something can always be improved (performance, aesthetics, cost, etc.).
The adjective perfectible can be associated with the time: a medical treatment useful today can be perfectible and improved in the future.
Democracy, a perfectible system
Take the case of democracy . There is generally a consensus that democracy is the best system of government. This does not mean, however, that it is a perfectible system . The laws that regulate it and the institutions that make it up can be modified so that the social organization becomes increasingly adequate to the needs of the people.
Thus it is common to say that democracy can be perfected, since it is essential that it be modified in order to adapt to the changes that society is experiencing at an economic, social or political level. In this way, for example, in Spain there are various political groups that advocate that the existing Constitution, which dates back to 1978 , be reformed to improve, to adapt to these new times.
Precisely this singularity of democracy of being perfectable distances it enormously from a dictatorship where the established norms are considered to be the best and cannot be changed, because they are the ones that the imposed regime establishes as the ideal ones.
Subjectivity and time
Perfectibility , however, can be subjective. For one person, “La Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da Vinci is the perfect work of art; For another, however, the painting could be perfected with certain additions of color or other details.
What can be perfected, finally, also depends on the time. The existing treatment against HIV today, to cite one case, is the best that can be developed according to current scientific knowledge. However, it is a treatment that can be perfected in the future since, perhaps, in the coming years it will be possible to create a vaccine against the virus or a pill that eliminates it from the body.