Analysis Of Benjamin Constant’s Thought Of Liberty

Benjamin Constant plays an important role in the ideology of western liberalism.His theory of liberalism inherits from John Locke and Montesquieu’s traditionalthought directly, with a distinct characteristic of British liberalism. The ideologicalcharacteristics of Constant are different from the French tradition of rationalism, butreflect a tendency of prudent empiricist. These characteristics are associated with thebackground which Constant lived in. The outbreak of the French Revolution at theend of the eighteenth Century is a major event, which had profound effects on thedevelopment of human political civilization. The social effects caused by therevolution were accompanied with the throughout life of Constant, and led to his deepreflection on it. The experience of the failure of the Great Revolution prove that therationalization displays incompetence in response to the collapse of political traditionand the restructure of political mode, and Utopianism would result in a painfuldisaster in political field instead of establishing a rational order. Therefore, Constantwas aware that people shouldn’t take this path of abstract rationalism to study thepolitics, instead of finding the basis of political system from the reality and thetradition.The formation of Constant’s liberal ideas has an inevitable connection with hisprofound reflection on French social history. He thinks that the Great Revolution hada success in the destruction of the old system to promote the progress of humanpolitical civilization. However, Constant also accuses it of violating the originalpurpose of freedom and going toward the opposite of freedom in the subsequentprocess. He has an idea of that the thinkers of Enlightenment as Rousseau should beresponsible for “The tyranny of the majority” appearing in the revolution because ofrevolutionary politics guided by their political theory. In his view, the thought ofRousseau exposed the deep theoretical crisis behind the revolution; Rousseau’spolitical model became an arch-criminal of human rights abuses and infringement offreedom during the revolution. So Constant criticized the theory of people sovereigntycreated by Rousseau.In addition, Constant is also aware of the risk of Rousseau’s thought not onlyreflected in political system, but also in the philosophical idea of freedom. It is that Rousseau’s theory and the revolutionary practice had failed to realize the differencebetween “the liberty of ancients” and “the liberty of moderns”, and also failed todefine the concept of the modern freedom. Thus, he argues that it is necessary toclarify the relationship between tow kinds of liberty, and then he proposes the modernidea of liberty to reveal the real freedom existed in modern society.Finally, he also has to face such a question as what political system would beestablished to protect the freedom of the modern people effectively. He thinks that therepresentative system which originated in Medieval Britain would provide the answerof it. Because of adapting to the development of the times and having the advantagesof controlling the despotic power, the representative system is the best politicalscheme to protect the liberty of moderns.