Benjamin Constant is one of the first foremost thinkers of liberal democracy. He played a leading role in the political and intellectual life of his time, at a decisive period for the future of Europe. His political legacy is exceptionally far reaching and he is also the author of the masterpiece Adolphe (1816), a forerunner of the modern psychological novel. Far from being only a political and economic doctrine, liberalism appears today to be one of the original sources of modern politics that is consubstantial with democracy. In Europe, the origins of political liberalism, represented in this case by Benjamin Constant, Mme de Staël and their friends, known as the “Coppet Group,” are closely related to the circulation of ideas and cosmopolitism, cultural exchanges and the practice of translation. In the Coppet circle, translation can be understood as meaning the transfer of a linguistic message from one language to another, but also as having the broader sense of interpretation and hermeneutics following Paul Ricoeur, who invokes the paradigm of linguistic hospitality . It is within that circle, in which was deployed an intensive activity of translation and interpretation, that were formulated the political, literary and aesthetic categories of the coming of age of democracy. In the famous distinction he developed between the liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns, Constant aimed to translate into politics and institutions the essential and irrevocable difference of modern times, that is, the primacy of individual rights born through the Revolution. While allowing for the free exchange of ideas and interchange with foreign countries, translation understood both in its narrower meaning and in the broader sense of interpretation, not only promotes the dissemination of the political ideas of liberalism, but also illustrates the need for difference and otherness as necessary features of liberal democracy.