We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Although largely neglected in the literature, Benjamin Constant was one of Rousseau's most powerful and subtle nineteenth-century critics. In the first part of this essay, I have revived Constant's criticism of Rousseau's conception of freedom and tyranny. In the second part, I have provided counterfactual evidence in an attempt to show how Rousseau would have responded to Constant's interpretation. By demonstrating both Constant's criticism and Rousseau's defense, I have depicted the relationship between these two thinkers as a dialogue — a dialogue on the meaning of freedom and tyranny.
I would like to thank the Taylor Institute, University of Oxford, for their generous financial assistance in the preparation of this essay. I would also like to thank Dr. Steven Lukes, Dr. L.A. Seidentop, Mr. Alan Ryan and Mr. William Weinstein of the University of Oxford, Professor D. J. Thomas of the University of California, and Professor R. D. Masters of Dartmouth College for their helpful remarks on an earlier draft of this paper.
1 Rousseau, , “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences,” trans. Masters, (New York: St. Martin's, 1964), p. 58.Google Scholar
2 At times Rousseau himself appears to believe “that later readers are destined to refuse me the justice that I was denied during my lifetime.” See: “Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques” in Oeuvres (Paris: Pléiade, 1969), 1:662.Google Scholar
3 For example, see: Hearnshaw, , Social and Political Ideas in the Age of Reason (London, 1930)Google Scholar: “Rousseau's political philosophy is, indeed the source and origin of the Hegelian system of politics, which culminated in the lectures of Treitschke, the ravings of Bernhardi, and the Great War; and also the Marxian system of economics, which had issue in the dictatorship of the Proletariate and the Bolschevic revolution” (p. 192).
4 See: “De l'esprit de l'usurpation” in De la liberté chez les modernes (Paris: Pluriel, 1980), 2, chaps. 6–7, 86–196.Google Scholar
5 Principes de politique in De la liberté chez les modernes, p. 272.Google Scholar
6 “De l'esprit de conquête” in De la liberté chez les modernes, p. 186.Google Scholar
7 “De la liberté des anciens” in De la liberté chez les modernes, p. 503.Google Scholar
8 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” p. 186 n. 3Google Scholar; Principes de politique, p. 272Google Scholar n.4 [discussed pp. 648f].
9 “De la liberté des anciens,” p. 502.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., p. 493; “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” pp. 178, 187–90Google Scholar; “De la liberté des anciens,” p. 502.Google Scholar
11 Cf. Seidentop, L. A., “Two Liberal Traditions” in The Idea of Freedom, ed. Ryan, A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Holmes, S., “Aristippus in and out of Athens,” APSR, 73 (1979), 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 “De la liberté des anciens,” p. 495.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., p. 509.
14 Principes de politique, p. 271.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., p. 275
16 “De la liberté des anciens,” p. 502Google Scholar; Principes de politique, p. 49.Google Scholar
17 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” p. 119.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., p. 194.
19 Ibid., p. 197.
20 Cours de politique, p. 65.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., p. 65 n.
22 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” p. 202.Google Scholar
23 These two questions are similar to the ones Sir Isaiah Berlin poses in order to distinguish the concepts of “negative” and “positive” liberty. Indeed, Berlin's two concepts closely resemble Constant's concepts of “ancient” and “modern” liberty. Also compare with y Gasset, J. Ortega, Invertebrate SpainGoogle Scholar, quoted in Dodge, G., Benjamin Constant's Philosophy of Liberalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p.991.Google Scholar
24 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” p. 188.Google Scholar
25 Principes de politique, p. 199.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 200.
27 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” pp. 172–74.Google Scholar
28 Principes de politique, p. 221.Google Scholar
29 Like J. S. Mill, Constant seems to be arguing that the “natural” variety of individuals (i.e., their individuality) can be expressed only under modern conditions which guarantee the rights of individuals to identify themselves and their ends in their own way. In Rousseau's theory, he saw an image of “mechanical uniformity.” Cf. Constant's view of Rousseau's conception of social organization with Durkheim's description of “mechanical solidarity.”
30 Berlin, , Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 127.Google Scholar
31 Bibliothèque nationale, n.a.f., 14, 362, folio 89.
32 See: Croce, B.'s criticism on Constant in History as the Story of Liberty (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1949), pp. 245f.Google Scholar
33 To support his claim that there exists a necessary coincident between political liberty and slavery, Constant would have to clarify the principle by which social conditions limit political choices and values. For example, while economic and social structures may well play an integral role in determining the range of ethical positions generally accepted in a particular historical age, without an analysis such as that which Marx would later offer, Constant's claim appears to rest on basically ad hoc connections between social conditions and ethical positions.
34 See: Shklar, J., Men and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 1–33Google Scholar; and Barber, B., The Death of Communal Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
35 See: Social Contract, trans. Cranston, (London: Penguin, 1968), bk. 2, chap. 10, p. 96Google Scholar [2. 10.96]: “In Europe, there is perhaps one country still capable of legislation; it is the island of Corsica. … I have the feeling that some day this little island will astound Europe.” While this remark led an influential Corsican to ask Rousseau's opinion on a constitution for the island, its prophetic quality must have struck Constant—for it was from Corsica that Napoléon led his campaign to conquer Europe.
36 For example, see Constant's own view of historical progress in “De la perfectibilite de l'espéce humaine” in De la liberté chez les modernes, pp. 596–603.Google Scholar
37 See the interpretaion of Rousseau's conception of historical development by de Jouvenel, B., “The Pessimistic Evolutionist,” Yale French Studies, 28 (Fall-Winter 1961–1962), 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38 Cf. Marx's conception of the “secularized modern state” in “On the Jewish Question,” Karl Marx Early Writings, trans. Bottomore, T. B. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), pp. 1–41.Google Scholar For a defense of the secularized state, see Constant's essay “Du développement progressif des idées religieuses” in De la liberté chez les modernes, pp. 523–43.Google Scholar
39 See Social Contract, 4. 8.Google Scholar
40 It is often said that one test of the ethical validity of a claim is that it should be realizable. But whether a claim can be realized does not necessarily affect its ethical validity. For example, the inveterately wicked person who laments the goodness he is unable to possess could very well look to an ethical theory to explain why it is the case that the conditions under which he lives prevents him from realizing his goodness.
41 See: McAdams, J. I., “Rousseau and the Friends of Despotism,” Ethics, 74 (1963), 340.Google Scholar
42 Cf. M. Cohen's criticism of “negative” liberty: “Berlin and the Liberal Tradition,” Philosophical Quarterly, 10 (1960), 216–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43 “De la liberté des anciens,” p. 499Google Scholar; Cf. Social Contract, 3. 1. 79ff.Google Scholar
44 Geneva Manuscript, trans. Masters, , (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), 1. 6. 175.Google Scholar
45 See: Social Contract, 3. 2. 135Google Scholar
46 See: Cohen, , “Berlin and the Liberal Tradition.”Google Scholar
47 “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” p. 187 n.1.Google Scholar
48 Social Contract 4. 5. 168f.Google Scholar
49 Ibid., 2. 6.117.
50 Cf. Goldschmidt, M. L., “Rousseau on Intermediate Associations,” NOMOS, 11 (1960), 119–38.Google Scholar
51 To illustrate this point we need look no further than Constant's own participation in the Cent-Jours. We know that Constant was a critic of Napoléon, but we also know that he was a Conseiller d'Etat to the Emperor during the Hundred Days. Under Napoleon's instructions, Constant designed an act to reform the Constitution of the Empire. On 24 April 1815, he proposed his “act additionnel.” This act, known as the “Benjamine,” attempted to guarantee individuals their civil liberties, but it did not significantly attempt to extend popular sovereignty. For this reason, many of the liberals of his day attacked what appeared to be Constant's justification of Napoléon's absolute power. In reference to Constant's earlier stance against the Emperor there seemed to be “very little Constant in the Benjamine.” In other words, even to liberals of his persuasion, the extension of civil liberties did not help prevent the abuse of power by Napoléon.
52 “Discours sur l'économie politique,” p. 254.Google Scholar
53 Julie in Oeuvres, 2:231–33.Google Scholar
54 Ibid., p. 234. Cf. contemporary arguments by Reisman, D., The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).Google Scholar
55 “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences,” p. 59Google Scholar; “Discours sur l'économie politique,” p. 256.Google ScholarCf. Marx's argument in “On the Jewish Question” concerning the alienation inherent in individual liberty as conceived within the modern state.
56 “De l'esprit de conquête,” pp. 150ff.Google Scholar
57 “De la liberté des anciens,” pp. 512ff.Google Scholar
58 “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,” trans. Masters (New York: St. Martins, 1964), p. 179.Google Scholar
59 “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences,” pp. 37f.Google Scholar
60 Julie, p. 234.Google Scholar
61 “Considerations on the Government of Poland” in Rousseau: Political Writings, trans. Watkins, (London: Thomas Nelson, 1953), p. 168.Google Scholar
62 Julie p. 234Google Scholar
63 “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,” p. 222.Google ScholarCf. Charvet, J., “Individual Identity and Social Consciousness in Rousseau's Philosophy” in Hobbes and Rousseau, ed. Cranston, M. and Peters, R. S. (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 462–84.Google Scholar
64 Emile, trans. Bloom, A. (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 4. 213.Google Scholar
65 Cf. the master-slave dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 111–19.Google Scholar
66 My argument in ths paragraph is largely inferential. It is based on textual indications found in “De l'esprit de l'usurpation,” pp. 243–52.Google Scholar
67 Oxford Lectures on Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 70.Google Scholar
68 See: MacIntyre, A., After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 6–23.Google Scholar In reference to the debate between Constant and Rousseau, I am quite aware of the nineteenth-century philosophical concern to unify, synthesize or dissolve the oppositional nature of the relationship between “individual liberty” and “moral freedom.” But to my mind, these attempts in principle may be misguided. See: Brint, M. E., “Rousseau and His Interpreters” (Dissertation, D. Phil., University of Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar
