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