Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Benjamin Constant 4; Spaltung d. Menschen zw. Abhängigkeit u. Unabhängigkeit; Institutionalisierung von Skeptizismus; franz. Romantik als "Liberalismus in Literatur"

Kurzinhalt: Representative government is the institutionalization of skepticism. If institutionalized skepticism risked containing a new dogmatism, Constant did not see it. Among the liberals, Tocqueville was the first to confront it.

Textausschnitt: 90b With Constant, Rousseau's criticism of modern man and his soul comes into the service of liberalism. If modern man is essentially divided between his independence and dependence, between his self defined by others' attention and his own introspection, if he lives in the realm of representation, then the world of pure political action in which each person projected himself in the public place just as he was, naively and generously, is henceforth inaccessible. The social and political constitution must accede to this internal division and the necessity of "reflection." The division between society and political authority which "represents" it, which is perhaps the primary source of this internal division, is henceforth its necessary expression. The law cannot be the "register of our wills" since, strictly speaking, we never truly know what we want. It can, and thus must reflect only what our diverse and even contradictory actions, tastes, and choices have already made real in society. Representation, far from founding the dogmatic construction of an absolute sovereignty, will henceforth be the expression of our doubt, our skepticism. Representative government is the institutionalization of skepticism. If institutionalized skepticism risked containing a new dogmatism, Constant did not see it. Among the liberals, Tocqueville was the first to confront it. (Fs)

91a Because it is founded on skepticism, representative government completely accedes to the liberty of the moderns, the liberty of individuals who want to be left "in perfect independence concerning everything relating to their occupations, undertakings, sphere of activity, fantasies." And if this skepticism is to become institutionalized, it must be publicly, hence politically, defended from elements of the state or society who try to impose their particular opinion on the body of citizens. Hence representative government requires that individuals also periodically don the tunic of citizens or of ancient liberty. But the ultimate legitimacy of their political action is now public opinion, the clamor made by private opinions when joined together. (Fs)

91b In the end, Constant's political position is that of opposition, his intellectual attitude criticism, his weapon irony. When all its contradictions and tensions are considered, his liberalism is that of a parliamentary orator belonging to the opposition. In the Chambre des députés, where all the enlightened minds of society are bound to come together, he will denounce any reactionary or revolutionary attempts to impose a deliberate, hence artificial, hence tyrannical order on a society that has within itself the principle of its own evolution. He will show that this deliberate order would be all the more oppressive since those who propose it do not really want it, cannot really want it, since as modern men they have lost the innocence and sincerity that alone would give meaning to the restoration of medieval Catholicism or the ancient city-state. His irony will reveal the internal contradiction of those reactionaries whose opinions "are stamped with opinions they believe they are refuting," who "in declaring themselves champions of earlier centuries . . . are, in spite of themselves, men of our century," who "consequently, have neither the strength of their convictions nor the hope that ensures success."1

91c Coming back to his own position, however, the eloquent orator will turn his irony against himself. He will observe that if his reactionary or revolutionary adversaries are insincere and divided in their politics, he too is insincere in his loves, uncertain and divided in his personal religion. This ironic to and fro, between public life where one delivers remarkable speeches in favor of liberty, and private life where one writes autobiographical novels saturated with bitterness, sums up the "romanticism" of Benjamin Constant. Constant provided the first expression of the spiritual movement that, from Chateaubriand to Hugo, led postrevolutionary liberalism to seek the solution to its perplexities in literary creation. For Hugo, who knew how to be laconic, romanticism is quite simply "liberalism in literature." Politically, the movement also put Rousseau's critique in the service of liberalism, while, in literary terms, it made liberal irony serve Rousseau-inspired autobiography. (Fs)