Benjamin Constant was a Swiss-French philosopher, one of the firsts to be called a liberal. This essay concerns with Constants classical text The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns, which he had addressed to the Athenee Royal de Paris in 89. This essay-lecture, written in the wake of the French revolution, presents in an argumentative and a suggestive tone, comparison between the two kinds of liberties one which was practiced by the ancients and the other which the moderns practiced or needed. For Ancients, liberty stood for collectively and directly carrying out affairs of the government. This collective political liberty obstructed and interposed the will of the individuals by regulating each area of their life. Whereas for the moderns, liberty centered on respect for individual rights, the rule of law and the right to engage in commerce. To bring about this difference, he gives the examples of the ancient groups and republicans such as Sparta, R
ome, the Gauls and Athens with Athens being the only state where subjection of individual existence to collective body was not as complete as in the others. In this essay, Constant argues against eighteenth century revolutionaries vain and foolish obsession with importing ideas about public and private life from classical philosophy into the modern world. In this regard he critically analyzed the works of de Mably and Rousseau as examples of men whose confusion between the two liberties led to their students confusing the ancients liberty as their own, resulting in what he calls the evil beginnings of the happy revolution. Constant claims that owing to the difference in the size, social organization, complexity and goals, ancient liberty can no longer be practiced in the modern world. Thus, stresses on the importance of the combination of the two liberties in order to attain a successful representative state which according to him, is the best suited for the moderns.