Benjamin Constant

Summary

Dominique Pagani mentions Benjamin Constant occasionally and from several angles. Politically, he ranks him among the "hyper-liberal" authors who have come back into fashion1. In his tribute to Domenico Losurdo, he uses him as an example of the dichotomous logic of the "friends of liberty"2. He also mentions him as one of the authors Jacques D'Hondt studied in his work on Hegel and the French3. On the moral level, he presents him as Kant's opponent in the controversy over lying4. Finally, in a session devoted to Bach, Nerval and Lévi-Strauss, he names him among the Romantics5. These mentions remain brief. Constant appears mainly as a contextual reference, tied to liberalism, to the French reception of Hegel, to the Kantian question of lying and to Romanticism. He is not an author whose work Pagani discusses in detail.

1. 1Hegel on the Beach 2/51 Feb 2016 · 24:50
2. 2Tribute to Domenico Losurdo2 Jul 2018 · 34:24
3. 3Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (2)2 Aug 2016 · 34:27
4. 4#8 Harnessed to confinitude17 May 2020 · 1:21:07
5. 5#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss9 Jun 2021 · 1:01:17

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.