Editing Benjamin Constant (section)

==Legacy==
The importance of Constant's writings on the liberty of the ancients and of that of his time has dominated understanding of his work, as has his critique of the French Revolution.<ref>{{cite book|title=Benjamin Constant, Madame de Staël et le Groupe de Coppet: Actes du Deuxième Congrès de Lausanne à l'occasion du 150e anniversaire de la mort de Benjamin Constant Et Du Troisième Colloque de Coppet, 15–19 juilliet 1980|editor=Hofmann, Étienne|publisher=Oxford, The [[Voltaire Foundation]] and Lausanne, Institut Benjamin Constant|date=1982|language=fr|isbn= 0729402800}}</ref> The British philosopher and historian of ideas, Sir [[Isaiah Berlin]] has acknowledged his debt to Constant.<ref>{{cite book|author=Rosen, Frederick |title=Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill |date=2005 |publisher=Routledge |page=251}} According to Berlin, the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy [was] Benjamin Constant, who had not forgotten the Jacobin dictatorship.</ref>

Constant's wider literary and cultural writings (most importantly the novella ''Adolphe'' and his extensive history of comparative religion) emphasised the importance of [[self-sacrifice]] and effect of human emotions as a basis for social living. Thus, while he pleaded for [[individual liberty]] as vital for individual and moral development and appropriate for modernity, he felt that egoism and self-interest were not part of a true definition of individual liberty. Emotional authenticity and fellow-feeling were critical. In this, his moral and religious thought was strongly influenced by the moral writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and German thinkers such as [[Immanuel Kant]], whom he read in reference to his religious history.