Introduction

Summary

Recent years have witnessed a remarkable revival of interest in the thought of Benjamin Constant. Long recognized for his literary masterpiece Adolphe, it is now his political writings that are attracting attention. A steady stream of paperback editions are appearing on the market, college textbooks increasingly include references to him, and, recently, a US Supreme Court judge drew inspiration from him in a book on the US constitution. Along with a rapidly growing body of scholarship, this Constant renaissance is reaffirming Constant's stature as a founding father of modern liberalism. In fact, many people today regard Constant as the most important liberal thinker between Montesquieu and Tocqueville.

Oddly, however, Constant's present fame rests on a partial and skewed reading of his philosophy, since it ignores his lifelong interest in, and copious writings on, religion. Today, few people even know that Constant began doing research for a book on religion at the age of eighteen and that he pursued this endeavor throughout his life until he finally published it as the five-volume De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements (1824–1831). But Constant wrote much more on religion than that; he wrote newspaper articles and essays on religion; he wrote chapters on religion for his other books; he made speeches about it and gave lectures on it – and yet all of this is somehow missing from the accounts that we have of his liberalism.

This book is an attempt to redress this omission.