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Lumowa, V. 2010. "Benjamin Constant On Modern Freedoms: Political Liberty and The Role of A Representative System"
Lumowa, V. 2010. "Benjamin Constant On Modern Freedoms: Political Liberty and The Role of A Representative System"
I. INTRODUCTION
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to carefully trace the three different layers that constitute the body of the
text, namely the distinction between ancient and modern liberty, the role
of representative assemblies, and Constant’s appeal to self-development.
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in the case of the ancient republics, Constant argued that commerce had
taken the place of war in modern times in engaging the interests of other
modern states (1988b, 313). As engagement in virtuous and patriotic war
in ancient times increasingly became unfavourable and embarrassing to
modern states, they gradually turned to commerce to secure tranquillity
and agreeable comfort. According to Constant, this is what “inspires in
men a vivid love of individual independence” (1988b, 315).
As an inevitable result of the complete subordination of ancient indi-
viduals to political involvement, however, their private lives came under
total surveillance by the state. The moderns, on the other hand, did not
have enough power to influence the course of politics, even in democratic
states. The complication of these predicaments was that both the ancients
and the moderns were kept in their own dogmatic slumber: the former
sacrificed their individual affluence and freedom for the exaltation of polit-
ical liberty and the latter’s self-immersion in the enjoyment of private inde-
pendence and prosperity hindered their political participation.
Building upon his distinction between ancient and modern liberty,
Constant establishes his first claim, which considers modern liberty to be
“the first need of the moderns” and “the true modern liberty” (1988b,
321-323). Constant’s adherence to this liberty, which empowers individual
freedom and participation in economics, clearly exposes his keen aware-
ness of the complexity of the French political condition. At that time, the
state had witnessed seemingly endless revolutionary wars and republican
political tyranny. Having seen the catastrophes of the republican revolu-
tion for himself, Constant came to believe that civic involvement in pol-
itics would be pointless since it would only inflate the revolutionist’s
unbridled desire for war and the still open wound of hatred between the
Jacobins and the ultra-Royalists. While acknowledging the admiration
held by the republicans for the notion of ancient liberty, Constant rebuffs
the restoration thereof because it was historically anachronistic and tacitly
subverted the moderns’ private domain. With this argument, Constant
aims at wiping away the illusionary dream of the ancient republic adored
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The last part of Constant’s 1819 speech includes his call for popular
involvement in the course of a modern state’s politics. Given Constant’s
earlier insistence on individual liberty, this part appears to be a surprising
shift, although it is not as conflicting as it might seem at the first sight.
Holmes correctly argues that Constant’s conscious decision to connect
his pessimism and optimism with regard to civic participation has to be
seen as a well-constructed argument (1984, 43-46). Holmes explains Con-
stant’s pessimism concerning civic participation by referring to the social
and political constellation of France during the establishment of the
Directory. France was then a war-weary nation and active participation in
French politics would have meant supporting one of the conflicting
parties, particularly the ultra-Royalists and the Jacobins, and thereby
augmenting the unrelenting tension between the two opposing parties.
During the Bourbon Restoration, however, the resurgence of the French
monarchy unveiled the inherent danger within the citizens’ entrenchment
in private affairs. Constant then exposed the severe predicament modern
individuals would encounter if they overlooked the potential political
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but aspiring tyrants, aiming not to break, but rather to assume the bound-
less power which presses on the citizens” (2003b). Here, the core prin-
ciple of Constant’s liberalism is clear: political power has to be limited so
that the freedom of the people can be secured. Rosenblatt correctly
regards this principle as “Constant’s two-pronged argument”, which
echoes throughout the book: his refutation of absolute political sover-
eignty or arbitrary power and his defence of the liberty of modern people
(2008, 123-124). By limiting political power, this does not mean that
Constant refuses the notion of popular sovereignty, the principle of which
is the supremacy of the general will over any particular will. On the
contrary, he argues that all authority undoubtedly needs the will of the
people to be considered legitimate. This means that no individual or
group can assume sovereignty as long as the body of all citizens has not
yet vested any individual or group with the exercise of its sovereignty. For
Constant, however, it does not follow that such sovereignty can be used
by its holder to dispose of individual lives or freedoms. He clearly states
that the nature of sovereignty is by no means arbitrary; it must not
encroach upon individual affairs.
It is clear that, for Constant, political power regardless of its holder (an
individual or a group) is circumscribed by the limits of individual freedom
and civil liberty. The exercise of this principle itself, however, cannot guar-
antee that the holder of political sovereignty will not encroach upon the
private lives of its citizens. One might ask how the activities of such a
government can be confined in practical terms within its jurisdiction, or
how such governments can be prevented from transgressing the parameters
of human existence, which are necessarily independent and remain indi-
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vidual? One might argue that political power can be limited by dividing it
into several balanced or opposite powers. Constant, however, immediately
foresees the weakness of this argument, namely that it does not guarantee
that the total sum of those powers is not unlimited. For him, the answer
cannot be found in the organization of government while leaving political
power unlimited, because he believes that determining the nature and
extension of political power comes prior to its organization (1988a, 182).
Thus, there has to be a system that can procedurally limit political sover-
eignty. Constant systematically developed such a system in Principles of Poli-
tics Applicable to All Representative Governments (1815), which is a shortened
version of his Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1806-1810).
The Principle of Politics of 1815, published during the Hundred Days, was
intended as a companion to the new constitution Constant prepared at the
request of Napoleon Bonaparte (Rosenblatt 2008, 156).
The leitmotif of both works is the same, namely the two-fold argu-
ment concerning the absence of arbitrary power and the promotion of
individual liberty, freedom of the press, and respect for the freedom of
all. In the Principles of Politics of 1815, and against the royalists who wanted
to rebuild the Ancien Régime, Constant clearly articulates his position on
the issue by endorsing popular sovereignty. In order to distinguish his
position from that of the Jacobins who were infatuated with Rousseau’s
idea of absolute sovereignty, however, Constant immediately states that
no authority exercises unlimited power over its people, and he draws its
boundaries using the principles of individual affairs and freedoms (Rosen-
blatt 2008, 156). He writes, “[s]overeignty has only a limited and relative
existence. At the point where independence and individual existence
begin, the jurisdiction of sovereignty ends” (1988a, 177).
In addition, Constant tries to elaborate a system that curtails the
extent of political sovereignty. In his system of constitutionalism, Con-
stant speaks of five different powers, namely royal power that lies in
the hands of the head of state, executive power in the hands of the min-
isters, representative power of long duration that resides in the hereditary
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absolute power, they are prone to create arbitrary laws that are extended
to everything, including individual affairs. Whenever this amount of power
is invested in the executive power, it inevitably turns itself into a despot
(Constant 1988a, 185-186).
Thus, the dominant and recurring ideas in Constant’s political con-
siderations are his deep concern to promote and secure individual liberty
and the enjoyment of private affairs, and his obstinate insistence on the
absence of absolute power assigned to an individual or a group. His strat-
egy is to prevent the sovereignty of the people, regardless of its holder,
from becoming unlimited. Aware that such a principle can never stand
alone, Constant then establishes a system that constitutionally structures
political authority into two different powers, neutral power and active
power, and confines each of them to its own domain. By this systematic
strategy, Constant supports his basic claim of limited sovereignty with the
organization of governmental institutions. For Constant, the neutrality of
power and the organisation of government served to guarantee modern
interests in individual enjoyments and civil liberty. Thus, by the time he
wrote the 1819 text, Constant already had a complex system that estab-
lished the limited power of government over its citizens for the sake of
their private freedoms.
In the 1819 text, Constant argues that the enjoyment of individual
liberty requires modern citizens to exercise their political liberty, although
in a markedly different manner than the ancients (1988b, 323). Here,
Constant insists that the modern exercise of political liberty involves
modern citizens delegating their political tasks to their representatives in
a representative system, with the representative system being “an organi-
zation by means of which a nation charges a few individuals to do what
it cannot or does not wish to do herself” (1988b, 325). It is “a proxy
given to a certain number of men by the mass of the people who wish
their interests to be defended and who nevertheless do not have time to
defend them themselves” (1988b, 326). It is clear from these statements
that Constant sets out to combine the modern demand of individual
enjoyments with the practices of political liberty, which guarantee the
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Reflecting upon the rise of Napoleon as the First Consul, his becoming
the first French emperor in 1804, and on the ultra-Royalists’ influence in
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the legislature during the reign of Louis XVIII, Constant correctly suspects
that these absolute monarchies tended to absolutize their power and extend
their prerogatives to private domains (Vincent 2000, 608). The people of
France readily surrendered their own freedom for an unguaranteed stabil-
ity and a despotic hand at the reins of government, because they had
grown weary of internal political turmoil and revolutionary war. Both the
military and the people fell into the hands of Napoleon as the latter gained
absolute power after his 1799 coup. By suppressing his critics, such as
Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël, Napoleon established an empire
that was animated for the most part by the spirit of the Ancien Régime.
Invoking the same spirit, the ultra-Royalists then gained majority power
during the reign of Louis XVIII and unstintingly disagreed with his con-
stitutionally mitigated monarchy. These monarchies ultimately abrogated
both political liberty and individual freedoms as they all focused on the
expansion of their absolute power and the relegation of their critics and
political oppositions to the margins. While abhorring these governmental
abuses against the people of France, Constant never allowed himself the
chaotic and violent path left by the excesses of the Terror.
Constant argued for modern self-interest against Rousseau and
Robespierre, who claimed that in the name of the good of society and
the general will people had to forfeit their personal gains and particular
will for a citizenship inspired by civic virtues. Realizing, however, that the
inertia of self-interest would invite egocentrism and, as a consequence,
absolute monarchy, Constant called for civic enthusiasm in political
affairs. Aware that this enthusiasm would be fragile and could be withered
away either by passivism conditioned by absolutism, or by the excess of
self-interest10, Constant justifies his call for civic participation in political
affairs by appealing to another human basic characteristic beyond self-
interest, namely self-development.
Before elaborating on this sentiment, it is helpful to note that Con-
stant’s argument for political participation in government has two levels.11
Constant first claims that civic participation and the political liberty of the
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In what follows, Constant was aware that the pull to the liberty of the
moderns at that time was much stronger than the pull of the idea of exer-
cising collective freedom in politics. This was due to the progress of civi-
lization, the achievements of modern industry, significant changes in the
nature of commerce, the circulation of commodities and money. These
dramatic changes in the life of the moderns overturned the political pow-
ers that were at the centre of the ancients’ spirit, thus leaving wealth as “a
power which is more readily available in all circumstances, more readily
applicable to all interests, and consequently more real and better obeyed”
(Constant 1988b, 325). Referring to the absolutism of Napoleon and the
Bourbon Restoration, however, Constant identifies the critical risk inher-
ent in the modern fascination for personal freedom and individual welfare.
As the moderns let themselves be captivated by such a fascination, a per-
son or a group would insistently encourage the modern fascination for
personal wealth and liberty and would thereby slowly gain the political
power needed to serve their despotic desire (Constant 1988b, 326). This
despotic regime would in turn endanger individual freedom and wealth.
To consolidate its power, a despot has to lure modern individuals into the
trap of self-interest because an individual captured in the pursuit of private
enjoyment will be more attracted to the immediate commercial gains than
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…I bear witness to the better part of our nature, that noble disquiet
which pursues and torments us, that desire to broaden our knowledge
and develop our faculties. It is not to happiness alone, it is to self-
development that our destiny calls us; and political liberty is the most
powerful, the most effective means of self-development that heaven
has given us.
Political liberty, by submitting to all the citizens, without exception,
the care and assessment of their most sacred interests, enlarges their
spirit, ennobles their thoughts, and establishes among them a kind of
intellectual equality which forms the glory and power of a people
(Constant 1988b, 327).
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further on the issue in the 1819 text, it is interesting to see how he tries
to formulate a more solid argument for justifying the significance of polit-
ical liberty. By constituting political liberty as part of being human,
Constant makes clear his intention to balance the demand of individual
freedoms and that of political participation. For him, both are constitutive
of the lives of individuals. Exercising political liberty and enjoying indi-
vidual freedoms properly lead citizens to the establishment of their own
dignity. This constitutive argument for political involvement justifies its
indispensability in the course of human life. In this way, Constant appro-
priates this particular element of the ancients’ liberty, not as an instrumen-
tal supplement to the liberty of the moderns, but as a constitutive part of
being human as well as citizens.
From the discussion above, Constant seems to suggest that both
individual freedoms and political liberty are essentially related to two fun-
damental characteristics of individuals, namely self-interest and self-devel-
opment. For Constant, individual freedoms and enjoyments are the
expressions of the individual need for self-interest. Acknowledging their
significance for individuals’ self-preservation, Constant immediately sees
that they can be abused by arbitrary power. To prevent this abuse,
Constant appeals to the exercise of political liberty and finds his justifica-
tion for it in another human basic character or sentiment, namely self-
development. K. Steven Vincent regards Constant’s appeal to self-devel-
opment in the final part of the 1819 text as his turn to the romantic
sentiment, which had already preoccupied Constant in his early writings
(2000, 625-637). Some have suggested that Constant’s idea of self-devel-
opment has its root in his works on religion.12 More specifically, Tzvetan
Todorov demonstrates that, according to Constant, religious sentiment is
one of the expressions of the human capacity to transcend oneself. With
this self-transcendence, humans are able to go beyond their pursuit of
self-interest, to develop themselves in search of meaningfulness (2009,
280, 283-284). Bryan Garsten further claims that Constant’s work on
ancient religion indicates the insufficiency of self-interest to articulate the
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VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has argued that understanding the 1819 text from a historical
perspective is useful but cannot explain the complexity of Constant’s
arguments. The elaboration of the historical backgrounds against which
the two parts of the text were written demonstrates in fact that Constant’s
1819 text emerges from his concern for and reflection on French political
conditions as he experienced them. Although such an elaboration testifies
to Constant’s acute perceptiveness in relation to the political context in
which he lived, it does not uncover the thrust of his argumentation in
defending modern freedoms, while keeping individuals away from the
dangers of political apathy. Constant’s adamant insistence on the balance
between the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns, between the
enjoyment of individual freedoms and political liberty, is the leitmotif that
characterizes the unity of the two seemingly contradictory parts of the
text. To see how he defends both the enjoyment of individual interests
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WORKS CITED
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NOTES
1. I would like to express my gratitude to the three reviewers of this text for reading and
offering their critical comments and suggestions. I am also grateful for input from the participants
in the International Colloquium “In Search of a Lost Liberalism”, at the Institute of Philosophy,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
2. For example, Kalyvas and Katznelson 2008, 146; Vincent 2000, 636-637; and Berlin
2003, 51.
3. More specifically, Helena Rosenblatt argues that Constant did not change his political
beliefs after 1795. She writes: “Constant denounced arbitrary government and defended the main
accomplishments of the early phase of the Revolution: civil, equality, representative government,
and legal safeguards protecting the rights of the individual” (2008, 122).
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4. However, Berlin’s reading of Constant, which considers him as the one “who prized
negative liberty beyond any modern writer”, is mainly based on Constant’s Principles of Politics
Applicable to All Governments, in which he championed “the limited government ideal” while repeat-
edly endorsing civil liberty, individual freedoms and enjoyment in the text (Berlin 2008a, 38;
Berlin 2008b, 209-211; Galles 2005, 104). In his review, Galles seems to be in agreement with
Nicholas Capaldi that the centre of Constant’s elaboration in Principles of Politics is articulating and
securing liberty (Galles 2005, 103; Constant 2003a, “Introduction”).
5. In his Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1806-1810), Constant had already
begun his elaboration of the difference between the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns
(Constant 2003d, “On Political Authority in the Ancient World”). He makes further allusion to this
differentiation in a shortened version in The Spirits of Conquest and Usurpation and Their Relation to
European Civilization (1814), particularly from chapter 6 to chapter 9 (Constant 1988c, 43-167).
Holmes indicates this in his n. 1 (Holmes 1984, 270).
6. Cf. Acte additionnel aux constitutions de l’Empire de 1815, Art. 65.
7. These are Constant’s own words quoted in Kalyvas and Katznelson 2008, 154.
8. In his Principles of Politics of 1815, Constant lists the vices of assemblies when they are not
kept within the limits they cannot transgress (Constant 1988a, 195-196).
9. Constant observes that there are writers who, according to him, wrongly claim that the
Lacedaemonian government and the regime of the Gauls had already practiced a system of
representation. In the former, the ephors, who were elected by the people and supposed to defend
their interests, turned out to be “an insufferable tyranny”. By the same token, the regime of the
Gauls privileged the priests, the military class, and aristocracy over the people, leaving them
completely vulnerable to exploitation and malicious oppression. Constant admits, however, that
there were “feeble traces of a representative system” in Rome with the establishment of the
tribunes of the plebs, which granted the people the opportunity to exercise most of their political
tasks directly (Constant 1988b, 309-310).
10. Constant wrote, “[c]haracters are still too small for the spirits, they are worn down, as
the body, by the habit of inaction or by the excess of pleasure.” Quoted in Vincent 2000, 627.
11. This point is suggested by Holmes and I am simply following his reconstruction. See
Holmes 1984, 40-43.
12. For example, Garsten 2009, 286-312; Garsten 2010, 4-33; and Todorov 2009, 275-285.
However, it needs to be mentioned that Helena Rosenblatt’s Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and
the Politics of Religion gives Constant’s works on religion their deserved attention.
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