Benjamin Constant

Presentaci n de Tzvetan Todorov, tienne Hofmann Traducci n de Agust n Neira Las investigaciones sobre la religi n acompa aron a Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) durante m s de cuarenta a os, a pesar de inevitables interrupciones, debidas a la existencia agitada del hombre pol tico, del periodista y del pensador. Obra de una vida, aunque muy pronto ca da en el olvido, De la religi n combina la afirmaci n del sentimiento religioso como inherente a la especie humana con la indagaci n de su perfeccionamiento en las formas hist ricas del fetichismo, el polite smo y el te smo. Obra tambi n de un activo y h bil opositor liberal, es un hito en la historia de la mirada cr tica dirigida al fen meno religioso y un texto indispensable para entender la formaci n de la antropolog a de las religiones.

Ce volume s'ouvre sur les remarquables discours au Tribunat, par lesquels Constant perfectionne ses talents innes d'orateur politique. Ils sont publies ici d'apres les diverses sources accessibles, y compris les proces-verbaux des seances, qui permettent de faire etat de toutes les interventions du tribun ainsi que d'un discours perdu. Viennent ensuite les fragments de l'ouvrage abandonne que l'auteur voulait intituler De la possibilite d'une constitution republicaine dans un grand pays, edites pour la premiere fois sur la base de l'ensemble des manuscrits. Ils sont suivis de quelques autres textes qui appartiennent a la meme epoque et qui completent l'image de l'action politique de Constant sous le Consulat et les debuts de l'Empire. Enfin, en annexe, est reproduite une copie partielle de l'ouvrage Des circonstances actuelles, de Mme de Stael, qui a ete faite a la demande de Constant pour lui servir d'instrument de travail et dont on retrouve beaucoup de traces dans les fragments de l'ouvrage abandonne ainsi que dans les Principes de politiques. La connaissance de cette copie est indispensable a la bonne comprehension des debuts de la reflexion politique de Constant. Cet ensemble tres riche de textes presentes dans une perspective nouvelle est complete, comme toujours, d'une chronologie, d'instruments bibliographiques et d'un index des noms propres qui en permettent une lecture approfondie.

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.

In these two remarkable works, a brilliant, vain, long-suffering Frenchman describes the first twenty years of his life and their culmination in a tortured love affair with a possessive older woman. Constant attempted to conceal the fact that these two books were autobiographical. To his friends and acquaintances, however, it was clear that Adolphe was really Benjamin himself. Constant was an able parliamentarian, a champion of liberalism and the author of The History of Religion. Posterity, however, remembers him as the man who bared the anatomy of a destructive passion in the story of Adolphe.

This is the first English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant, one of the most important of modern French political theorists and writers. A Swiss protestant by birth, Constant was a prominent figure in French political life in the aftermath of the revolution of 1789, and a leading member of the liberal opposition to Napoleon and, subsequently, to the restored Bourbon monarchy. His writings are widely regarded as one of the classical formulations of modern liberal doctrine, and Constant’s own closeness to the Anglo-Saxon political tradition renders their translation into English particularly appropriate. The novel Adolphe has hitherto been Constant’s only work freely available outside France, emphasising his importance within European Romanticism and his centrality to French literary development in the nineteenth century. This translation of Constant’s political writings is replete with full editorial apparatus and bibliographic information that will enable anglophone students of liberal thought to engage at first hand with one of its most durable and influential exponents.