Un episodio del pensamiento franc�s de la autonom�a. Benjamin Constant y las id�es tr�s ing�nieuses

This paper attempts a consideration of the significance of Benjamin Constant�s aesthetic thoughts within the context of the history of the concept of �aesthetic autonomy�. With that in mind it reevaluates his transformation of the German tradition, by way of its binding to the social theory corresponding to the cultural and historical analysis of early French Romanticism. Taking the coinage of the expression �art for art�s sake� as a starting point, this paper reconstructs the whole of Constant�s thought-system, as well as its exchanges with some of his contemporaries �namely Mme. de Sta�l and Henry Crabb Robinson� in the means of understanding the proper reach of the conceptual novelties brought in by him, as can be seen from the standing point of Begriffsgeschichte.
The paper deals not only with his postulates referring specifically to a negative relationship towards the mercantile society, but also with the analogies he establishes between art, love, religion and morality, while it furthermore examines his theory of social autonomy. The reflexive setting together of this different elements, assembled from his political essays, his journals, the novel Adolphe and other writings, brings to the light a general form of a thought of the autonomous, which explains the manner in which Constant understands aesthetic autonomy in particular, by way of his collaboration and dissent with his European colleagues.