Constant Political Writings

Constant  Political Writings
Author: Benjamin Constant
Publsiher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1988-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521316324

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This 1988 book is an English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant.

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
Author: Benjamin Constant
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: IND:30000081673240

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Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France's leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. His colourful life included a formative stay at the University of Edinburgh; service at the court of Brunswick, Germany; election to the French Tribunate; and initial opposition and subsequent support for Napoleon, even the drafting of a constitution for the Hundred Days. Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. While Constant's fluid, dynamic style and lofty eloquence do not always make for easy reading, his text forms a coherent whole, and in his translation Dennis O'Keeffe has focused on retaining the 'general elegance and subtle rhetoric' of the original. Sir Isaiah Berlin called Constant 'the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy' and believed to him we owe the notion of 'negative liberty', that is, what Biancamaria Fontana describes as "the protection of individual experience and choices from external interferences and constraints." To Constant it was relatively unimportant whether liberty was ultimately grounded in religion or metaphysics -- what mattered were the practical guarantees of practical freedom -- "autonomy in all those aspects of life that could cause no harm to others or to society as a whole." This translation is based on Etienne Hofmann's critical edition of Principes de politique (1980), complete with Constant's additions to the original work.

Benjamin Constant

Benjamin Constant
Author: Dennis Wood
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781134977659

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`For forty years I have defended the same principle: freedom in everything, in religion, in philosophy, in literature, in industry, in politics - and by freedom I mean the triumph of the individual.' Constant thus summarized his beliefs at the end of his life. A political theorist and a passionate defender of individual liberty, he was also the author of one of the greatest French novels of psychological insight, Adolphe. In a major new biography Dennis Wood traces the development of Constant as a writer centrally preoccupied with the problematics of freedom, not only in the fields of politics and religious belief but also in his own troubled relationship with several women.

Liberal Values

Liberal Values
Author: Helena Rosenblatt
Publsiher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107402301

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Professor Rosenblatt presents a study of Benjamin Constant's intellectual development into a founding father of modern liberalism, through a careful analysis of his evolving views on religion. Constant's life spanned the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Napoleon's rise and rule, and the Bourbon Restoration. Rosenblatt analyzes Constant's key role in many of this era's heated debates over the role of religion in politics, and in doing so, exposes and addresses many misconceptions that have long reigned about Constant and his period. In particular, Rosenblatt sheds light on Constant's major, yet much-neglected work, De La Religion. Given that the role of religion is, once again, center-stage in our political, philosophical and historical arenas, Liberal Values constitutes a major revision of our understanding of the origins of modern liberalism.

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns
Author: Benjamin Constant
Publsiher: Good Press
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: EAN:4064066437855

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This is an essay by Benjamin Constant. In this essay, Constant contrasted two views on freedom: one held by "the Ancients," particularly those in Classical Greece, and the other by members of modern societies. He investigates the dangers of attempting to impose ancient liberty in a modern context, as well as the risks associated with each type of liberty. The danger of ancient liberty was that men, preoccupied with securing their share of social power, might place too little value on individual rights and pleasures. The danger of modern liberty is that we will give up our right to participate in political power too easily, absorbed in the enjoyment of our independence and the pursuit of our particular interests." Constant believes that the two types of liberty must eventually be combined.

Germaine de Sta l and Benjamin Constant

Germaine de Sta  l and Benjamin Constant
Author: Renee Winegarten
Publsiher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780300119251

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When they first met in 1794, shortly after the Reign of Terror, Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant were both in their twenties, both married, and both outsiders. She was already celebrated and a published writer, whereas he, though ambitious, was unknown. This compelling dual biography tells the extraordinary story of their union and disunion, set against a European background of momentous events and dramatic social and cultural change. Renee Winegarten offers new perspectives on each of the protagonists, revealing their rare qualities and their all-too-human failings as well as the complex nature of their debt to one another. Their passionate and productive relationship endured on and off for seventeen years. Winegarten traces their story largely through their own words--letters and autobiographical writings--and illuminates the deep intellectual and visceral bond they shared despite disparate personalities and gifts. Exploring their relationships with Napoleon and the Bourbons, their different responses to the momentous upheavals of postrevolutionary France, their support of individual liberty with order, and more, the book concludes with an appreciation of de Staël's and Constant's singular contributions to a new literature and to the history of liberty.

Benjamin Constant

Benjamin Constant
Author: Valerie Behiery
Publsiher: Editions Hazan, Paris
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Exhibitions
ISBN: 0300210892

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A leading Orientalist painter during the Third Republic in France, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant was one of the great colourists of the period, and his work evokes the sights he had witnessed during his travels in Spain and Morocco, as well as reflecting the exotic contents of his studio. He was the creator of huge architectural compositions, in which he set fierce-looking Moors and dispassionate odalisques. This book focuses on Benjamin-Constant, offering new and unpublished research into the life of a famous yet today little-known artist and revealing him at work in his studio and at the Paris Salon, teaching at the Academie Julian and amidst the many foreign students and collectors who flocked round him.

Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism

Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism
Author: K. Steven Vincent
Publsiher: Springer
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2011-01-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780230117105

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This book advances a new interpretation of the timing and character of French (and more broadly European) liberalism, and contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the place of morality, sociability, and conceptions of the "self" in modern liberal thought.