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Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (; 25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss-French political activist and writer on politics and religion. He was the author of a partly biographical psychological novel, ''Adolphe''. He was a fervent liberal〔Craiutu, A. (2012) A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830, pp. 199, 202–03〕 of the early 19th century who influenced the Trienio Liberal movement in Spain, the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Portugal, the Greek War of Independence, the November Uprising in Poland, the Belgian Revolution, and Liberalism in Brazil and Mexico. ==Biography== Henri-Benjamin Constant was born in Lausanne to descendants of Huguenot Protestants who had fled from Artois to Switzerland during the Huguenot Wars in the 16th century. His father, Samuel Constant de Rebecque, served as a high-ranking officer in the Dutch States Army, like his grandfather, his uncle and his cousin Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. When Constant's mother died soon after his birth, both his grandmothers took care of him. Private tutors educated him in Brussels (1779) and in the Netherlands (1780), and at the Protestant University of Erlangen (1783), where he gained appointment to the court of Duchess Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He had to leave after an affair with a girl, and moved to the University of Edinburgh. There he lived at the home of Andrew Duncan, the elder and became friends with James Mackintosh〔 Benjamin Constant: philosophe, historien, romancier, homme d'état, p. 38 () 〕 and Malcolm Laing. When he left the city he promised to pay back his gambling debts. In 1787 he returned, traveling on horseback through England and Scotland. In those years the European nobility with their prerogatives had come under heavy attack by those who were influenced by Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality; Constant's family criticized him when he left out part of his last name. In Paris, at Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard he became acquainted with Belle van Zuylen, a 26-year older Dutch woman and writer, busy publishing the work of Rousseau and who knew his uncle extremely well by correspondence. She acted as a mother to him until Constant's appointment to the court of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel that required him to move north. He left the court when the War of the First Coalition began (1792). In Brunswick he had married Wilhelmina von Cramm, but he divorced her in 1793. In September 1794 he met the famous and rich (but married) Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, as a child brought up on the principles of Rousseau. They both admired Jean Lambert Tallien and Talleyrand. Their intellectual collaboration between 1795 and 1811 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual couples of their time.〔 Their affair resulted in one daughter Albertine.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Benjamin Constant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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