Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments - Hardcover

Constant, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865973962 ISBN 13: 9780865973961

Publisher: Liberty Fund, 2003

Synopsis

In Principles of Politics, first published in 1815, Constant explores the subjects of law, sovereignty, and representation; power and accountability; government, property, and taxation; wealth and poverty; war, peace, and the maintenance of public order; and freedom, of the individual, of the press, and of religion.

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), born in Switzerland, became one of France’s leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was a French-Swiss po-litical writer and novelist. He combined a lively political career with a fertile literary output, while entertaining a series of liaisons with some of Frances most prominent women. Constant was an able parliamentarian, a cham-pion of liberalism and the author of The History of Reli-gion. Posterity, however, remembers him as the man who bared the anatomy of a destructive passion in the story of Adolphe (1816).

Review

Apart from a few essays little was known in English of Constant, but now, thanks to the magnificent translation of his major work by Dennis O'Keeffe (Principles of Politics, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 2003) we have a clear idea of what Constant stood for and its value for the contemporary world. Constant produced, in over 550 densely argued pages, the most coherent normative theory of liberalism (in its traditional sense) in the nineteenth century. It is intellectually complex but Constant's own lyrical style is rendered into elegant English in O'Keeffe's fine translation. . . .There is an informative introduction by Nicholas Capaldi, and our understanding is made easier by Dennis O'Keeffe's thorough and lucid translation. He even politely corrects the odd mistake Constant made. It is a monument to scholarship and unlikely to be matched.

The Salisbury Review
Autumn 2004
Liberty Fund has published an elegant, faithfully translated edition of the first (1810) and longest version of Constant's Principles of Politics Applicable to All Modern Governments. . .Constant is a necessary companion for every thoughtful person who tries to steer a principled middle path between reactionary nostalgia and progressive illusions. His measured, humane liberalism is superior to nearly everything that goes by that name in the contemporary academic and political worlds.

The New Criterion
June 2004
By 1810 Constant had completed his Principles of Politics, which Dennis O'Keeffe has now translated into an elegant English that matches Constant's French. O'Keefe is the editor of the Salisbury Review in London, and his is the first full translation of this French classic. It also has an authoritative Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi, who sees Constant as a crucial link in the French liberal tradition between Montesquieu and Tocqueville. The book itself is a handsome product.

Quadrant
May 2004

Edition details

• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865973962
• ISBN 13: 9780865973961
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 580