Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism
Valelly, Richard M.
tions the need to worship "some force In our June 6 issue, Debra framework of limited government, al- beyond and above human nature."...
...A year earlier she had Constant's political theory...
...Moore and her feel- to be genuinely engaging, for he is a ideal of "government by discussion" he ings of being involved in "a spiritual first-rate writer...
...the excesses of the Jacobins horrified him CHRISTIANS AND THE MILITARY: THE Likewise, she predicts that kingdoms and despite his own great dislike for the an- EARLY EXPERIENCE...
...But does Constant speak to late Goethe or an Einstein with the moral now twentieth-century America...
...I have no home for study of Constant to be published by an his book instead within a raging debate my religious faculty," she laments...
...He but "no such Church seems in sight...
...She ways brought this supposed theorist of Campbell's narne was inadvertently longs to find a church without dogma - omitted at the end of her article on the private back into the public arena...
...To explain this sudden nature of privacy and foresaw many of lead the early church to be unambiguchange -- or what some might call a modernity's ominous political tenden- ously pacifist or opposed to military servkeeping open of all options - it is worth cies...
...Constant brought a formidable histori- Christians did in fact serve in the legions, In Brief cal, social, and psychological learning to although uneasily: those who were marthe formulation of his political tyred for refusing or leaving service were philosophy...
...Constant also the ancient texts, and with representative Holmes...
...Beatrice copies out the To the extent that Constant is known certain types of opinion and speech are paragraph and twice refers to the phrase...
...Holmes han- by Eusebius, Ambrose, and Augustine is the United States...
...Holmes genius of a Buddha, a Christ, or a St...
...Catholic tvomen preachers, Lost n played a critically important role in the When will a leader arise, she asks, who novation (p...
...I American press...
...Therefore, the argu- "the basic thrust of the Lord's teaching is conceivable - and therefore that it will ment goes, he understood the precious clearly toward nonviolence," this did not not happen...
...cannot help but speak to a time in which muddledom...
...Con- time...
...One comes away from political philosophy can spend an entire relates it expertly to his political theory...
...He also manages extent that Holmes revitalizes Constant's with the elderly Mrs...
...Our apologies to early development of French democracy...
...Yet to the ing A Passage to India, she identifies a democratic theorist...
...A Swiss-born cos- about him in America may yet become a electric fire has ceased to heat her, the mopolitan philosophe who moved easily political act...
...The last treated as a defender of privacy, someone Strange as it may seem (but Constant entry dated 19 April 1943 was written who hated the state...
...spiritualization of the Christian vocation...
...exist...
...tions the need to worship "some force In our June 6 issue, Debra framework of limited government, albeyond and above human nature...
...A proper balance between the public opposition to military service, on the gious agnostic...
...After read- tained critical appreciation of Constant as tues and vices of liberal man...
...BENJAMIN CONSTANT AND THE MAKING Rousseau and Montesquieu...
...Stephen Holmes, profes- his ideal of "government by discus- posed when it comes to deciding what the sor of political science at the University sion," of robust public debate within the Gospel demands of Christians today in Commonweal: 382...
...The diary is superbly edited...
...He resembled in this respect rejecting not warfare but army religion...
...mind and underlines her final words for eventually advocated liberal constitu- The authors' thesis is that although greater emphasis: "I feel that this is in- tional monarchy...
...on this side of the Atlantic he is typically considered increasingly illegitimate...
...InWho was Benjamin Constant...
...But he was All this is argued with close references to OF MODERN LIBERALISM, by Stephen more than a scholar...
...All of that ritable, but his tenacious mental grip on far less guidance than many have supshould change...
...RICHARD M. VALELLY wireless has gone dead, and her cup of among an international aristocratic elite, tea has turned cold...
...The anti-military writings of Fathers remembering that between belief and Holmes partly agrees with this older like Tertullian and Hippolytus express disbelief, between the idea of annihila- wisdom, but goes far beyond it to recon- not pacifism but opposition to the tion and an afterlife, Beatrice frequently struct a fuller, more persuasive picture of idolatry-to the intricate system of found herself torn...
...of Chicago, has written the first major does not address this issue fully, locating Francis of Assisi...
...will unite the intellect of an Aristotle, a the author...
...He shows oaths, symbols, and sacrifices which defint d her position when she had made that Constant also greatly valued the pub- permeated Roman military life...
...this historical study feeling that the exsemester on modern political thought Politics made Constant unhappy and ir- perience of the early church may provide without hearing his name...
...ice...
...A graduate student in dles this feature of his career well and darkly shadowed...
...In it she this claim rests heavily on Constant's fully), reading Constant and talking records how in the past few minutes the personal history...
...The plausibility of would have savored this strangeness eleven days before her death...
...and the private was the true promise of other hand, stemmed from a Platonic liberal politics...
...Yale University, $27.50, 352 deeply involved himself in the great so- passages cited at length...
...He Fortress Press, $5.95, 101 pp...
...By John Helgeland, states - even her diary - will cease to cien regime...
...Then suddenly she changes her but found him equally dismaying...
...Origen's the paradoxical statement: "I am a reli- lic...
...I Ceased to exist...
...He flirted with Napoleon, Robert J. Daly, and J. Patout Burns...
...In it he offers a sus- among political theorists about the virwander about disconsolate...
...cial and political transformations of his not make a brief for just-war theory...
...The authors do Pp...
...Thus he often said and did appar- deed, their portrait of the thinking on war stant is almost completely unknown in ently inconsistent things...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 12
