![]() See the Liberty Matters online discussions on “Limited Government, Unlimited Liberalism. 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.” ![]() His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. Benjamin Constant’s early political philosophy sought to represent one side of this Janus head, the Rights of Man (although it recognized the existence of the other side, the Terror). His colorful 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. Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France’s leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. ![]()
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