Constant’s Principles of Politics
This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on “Liberty and Responsibility in the Thought of Benjamin Constant.”
Liberty and Responsibility in the Thought of Benjamin Constant
Guide to the Readings
Edition used:
See also:
Session I: The General Will: A Critique of Rousseau.
Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
- Book I: On Received Ideas About the Scope of Political Authority, pp. 1-28
- Book II: On the Principles to Replace Received Ideas On the Extent of Political Authority pp. 29-43
- Additions to the Work Entitled Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments, pp. 430-433 and 442
Session II: Freedom of Thought and Religion and Legal Safeguards Thereof.
Principles of Politics Applicable to All Government
- Book VII: On Freedom of Thought, pp. 101-27
- Book VIII: On Religious Freedom pp. 129-47
- Book IX: On Legal Safeguards pp. 149-162
- Book XVII: On the True Principles of Freedom pp. 383-93
- Book XVIII: On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority. Chapter Five: Continuation of the Same Subject (On the Duties of Enlightened Men During Revolutions) pp. 415-18, 495
Session III: Politics, Ancient and Modern.
Politics Applicable to All Governments
Session IV: Government and Property.
Politics Applicable to All Governments
Session V: On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority.
Politics Applicable to All Governments
Session VI: General Discussion.
Reading Lists
- Addison and Smith: Freedom and Responsibility
- American Liberty in Political Documents before 1787
- An Introduction to the Major Writings of Ludwig von Mises
- Banned Books
- British and French Sources of American Constitutionalism
- Burlamaqui, Bayle: Freedom Tolerance, Natural Law
- Cato’s Letters: Liberty and Responsibility
- Cobden: Liberty and Peace
- Constant’s Principles of Politics
- Emerson on Anti-slavery
- Eric Mack, An Introduction to the Political Thought of John Locke
- Gibbon and the Rise of Christianity and Islam
- Homer’s Iliad: Liberty and Responsibility
- Hume, Smith, and Ferguson: Wealth, Commerce, and Corruption
- Hume: History of England
- James Tyrrell on Authority and Liberty
- Jefferson-Hamilton Debate
- John Milton: Liberty in his Prose and Poetry
- Major Political Thinkers: Plato to Mill
- Mandeville: Vice, Virtue and Liberty
- Mill-Macaulay Debate on Government
- Old Testament and English Political Thought
- Political Sermons of the Founding Era
- Readings from the OLL Reader
- Rousseau and Hume: Contrasting Views of Liberty
- Shakespeare and Marlowe: Liberty in Four Plays
- Shakespeare: Liberty and Responsibility
- Socialist Tracts
- Sophocles and Aeschylus: Blood Justice and the Founding of Legal Order
- Tacitus: Liberty and Tyranny in the Annals
- The Ruling Class and the State: An Anthology
- Thomas Paine and American Liberty
- Thucydides: War, Empire, and Liberty