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Benjamin Constant

File:Roche_-_Portrait_de_Benjamin_Constant_(1767-1830),_écrivain_et_homme_politique_-_P1679_-_Musée_Carnavalet_(cropped).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Benjamin Constant

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French-Swiss politician, writer on politics and religion (1767-1830)

OverviewAI-generated

Benjamin Constant, born Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque in Lausanne, was a male philosopher, politician, writer, and diarist. He held citizenship in both Switzerland and France and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. Writing in French, Constant was associated with the liberalism and Romanticism movements. His work period began in 1779, and he is noted for the work *Adolphe*.

Constant worked in Paris, where he also died. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. His personal life included an unmarried partnership with Germaine de Staël. He is described in sources such as the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and The Nuttall Encyclopædia.

Synthesized by Vinony from 35 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Wikiquote, Open Library, Europeana Sparql, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
1767
Died
1830
Works
253

Top works

  • Lettre à Monsieur de Procureur-Général de la cour royale de Poitiers
  • Discours de M. Benjamin Constant, Député de la Sarthe, sur la loi relative aux finances
  • De la dissolution de la chambre des députés
  • Annales de la session de 1817 à 1818
  • Des motifs qui ont dicté le nouveau projet de loi sur les elections

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
101
Total plays
329

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Benjamin+Constant">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Benjamin Constant

Quotes

  • Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vécu avec elle.
  • Diversity is life; uniformity is death.
  • The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures, and they call “liberty” the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Works in European collections

36 objects attributed to Benjamin Constant, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

~31 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss and French political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion.

A committed republican from 1795, Constant backed the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797) and the following one on 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799). He became the leader of the Liberal opposition in 1800, during the Consulate. Having upset Napoleon and left France to go to Switzerland then to the Kingdom of Saxony, Constant nonetheless sided with him during the Hundred Days, drafting the Charter of 1815, and became politically active again during the Bourbon Restoration. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1818 and remained in office until his death in 1830. As the head of the Liberal opposition, known as Indépendants, Constant was one of the most notable orators of the Chamber as a proponent of the parliamentary system. During the July Revolution, he was a supporter of Louis Philippe I ascending the throne.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Benjamin Constant” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (7)