This book can be described as a study of Benjamin Constant's religious and political thought or as an intellectual biography of Constant from the point of view of religion, or as an essay on the relation between Protestantism and politics in the wake of the French Revolution. I will assess briefly the book under these three different headings.

As an intellectual biography of Constant, Rosenblatt's book works very well. It is pleasant to read, informative, and well organized. It brings to life many different and important characters in Constant's life, best of all, Madame de Staël. It gives a good sense of the importance of German philosophy for him. It addresses successfully the problem of the coherence of Constant's intellectual and political trajectory. It shows well how significant his involvement with the Directoire's intolerant policies seems to have been, and how much his own liberalism can be described as a result of that unfortunate experience. States must “leave religion to itself.”

As an essay on the relation of Protestantism and politics in the wake of the French Revolution, Rosenblatt's book is a very welcome addition to the existing literature (for instance, François Furet's book on Edgar Quinet.) Rosenblatt is carrying on an enquiry started with her previous book, on Rousseau and Geneva, where she analyzed Rousseau's Protestantism in relation to his home-town's religious debates and traditions. She gives a good sense of the richness of the debate about the relation between Protestantism, individualism, and liberalism around 1800. However, the author seems more comfortable with Protestantism than Catholicism, and, at times, her presentation ends up being slightly one-sided, if not distorted. The author tends to overestimate the importance of anti-Catholicism and to underplay the divisions among Catholics. For instance: Thermidorians are described as having “always believed” that “Catholicism and the Revolution were fundamentally incompatible” (43), a statement that would have surprised the abbé Grégoire. Catholics appear mostly as counter-revolutionaries. Catholics of a more democratic or more liberal temper than Maistre or Bonald are conspicuously absent. Royer-Collard, for instance, is hardly mentioned, and when he is, the brief account given is unhelpful (238).

Professor Rosenblatt's main theme is that Constant's liberal philosophy offers an alternative to the narrowly materialistic theories of liberalism, or to theories of liberalism that are too narrowly centered on economic life and self-interest — “liberalism” is understood here in the European sense. Constant offers a moral defense of representative government, one that is not utilitarian, but pointing to the highest needs of the soul. Hence, the importance of religion in this book. Religious freedom appears to be related to the quest of something ultimate. Freedom is all the more important as sincerity is described as paramount in this quest for the ultimate. “Moral improvement was more intimately connected to the search for knowledge than to the mere possession of knowledge” (129). As Constant puts it: “everything imposed by government turns out to be not only useless but harmful, truths as much as error.” In the sincere quest for religious truth, sincerity is the most important thing, not truth. This might be what justifies the title of the book, “liberal values.” The Weberian connotations associated with the concept of value could perhaps be justified by Constant's own uncertainty about the very content of ultimate truths: “Constant never embraced any specific religious doctrines” (137).

In the last analysis, one is not offered a sufficient account of Professor Rosenblatt's understanding of the relation between Constant's political thought and his theology. Is Constant a political theologian of some sort? Can his political philosophy be made sense of without its theology? To what extent is Constant's political thought dependent on a specific theology? Could a good Muslim or a good Pagan be a good liberal? Although these questions do not receive any firm answers (Bryan Garsten's forthcoming book on Constant' religion may help here), one hopes that the author will develop further her Protestant genealogy of modern political thought, relating it to the Whig interpretation of history, and strengthening further our understanding of the relation between Protestant Liberalism (Constant) and Protestant anti-Liberalism (Rousseau).