Filangieri et Constant: constitutionnalisme des Lumières et constitutionnalisme libéral

This is a analysis of the genesis of Benjamin Constant's "Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri". The meticulous exegesis Constant devotes to Filangieri’s work boils down to a tendentious reading of "The Science of Legislation", making Filangieri into an emulator of Mably, a monotone defender of the republic of the ancients, a theorist of sovereign interventionism. From another point of view, the "Commentaire" of Constant shouws the paradox of the liberal constitutionalism aganist the constitutionalism of Enlightenment.