Notes
INTRODUCTION
- The international conference—the second on Constant, the first having taken place
in October 1967—was held in Lausanne on 15–19 July 1980, and its proceedings
were published under the title Benjamin Constant, Madame de Staël et le Groupe de
Coppet, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation; Lausanne: Institut
Benjamin Constant, 1982. Also in 1980 the first issue of the annual journal Annales
Benjamin Constant appeared, and a committee was set up to plan the publication of
Constant’s complete works and correspondence, of which the first two volumes
appeared in 1993. On 12 December 1980 France Culture broadcast a programme
devoted to Benjamin Constant who was described as ‘one of the founders of French
liberalism’. It was the twentieth in the radio series ‘Relectures’, and consisted of a
discussion chaired by Hubert Juin (now deceased) with Pierre Manent, Philippe
Raynaud and Marcel Gauchet, with readings from Constant’s works. Marcel
Gauchet’s selection of Constant’s political writings, De la liberté chez les Modernes.
Ecrits politiques appeared in the same year, published by Livre de poche, Paris.
- Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, p.
126. There are several illuminating observations on Constant’s political thought later
in the book (pp. 162–6).
- Constant, Œuvres, p. 835. The passage occurs in the preface to the Mélanges de
littérature et de politique published in June 1829.
- Beatrice Camille Fink, in ‘The Idea-World of Benjamin Constant as expressed in his
Political Philosophy’, University of Pittsburgh Ph.D., 1966 (reprinted by University
Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1987), p. 5, notes:
The reasons for Sainte-Beuve’s hostility are not entirely clear.
Perhaps it was because of a difference of political opinions, or
perhaps mere jealousy. In all likelihood, it can be traced to the fact
that he obtained a good deal of his information on Constant by word
of mouth via the de Broglie family, related to Mme. de Staël and
unfriendly towards Constant.
5.
Stephen Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism, New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984; Benjamin Constant, Political
Writings, trans. and ed. Biancamaria Fontana, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), 1988; and Biancamaria
Fontana, Benjamin Constant and the Post-Revolutionary Mind, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1991. It is only fair to add that regrettably both
books by Biancamaria Fontana contain numerous factual inaccuracies, especially on
biographical matters.
- Quoted from Constant’s Esquisse d’un essai sur la littérature du dix-huitième siècle
List of abbreviations 267
