The Treason of the Intellectuals
By: Julien Benda
Contributors: Kimball, Roger
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
ISBN-13: 9781351298605
Subjects: Intellectuals; Nationalism; Modern Philosophy; Intellectuels; Nationalisme; SOCIAL SCIENCE; Social Classes
Description: "Julien Benda's classic study of 1920s Europe resonates today. The "treason of the intellectuals" is a phrase that evokes much but is inherently ambiguous. The book bearing this title is well known but little understood. This edition is introduced by Roger Kimball. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals were a breed apart. They were non-materialistic knowledge-seekers who believed in a universal humanism and represented a cornerstone of civilized society. According to Benda, this all began to change in the early twentieth century. In Europe in the 1920s, intellectuals began abandoning their attachment to traditional philosophical and scholarly ideals, and instead glorified particularisms and moral relativism. The "treason" of which Benda writes is the betrayal by the intellectuals of their unique vocation. He criticizes European intellectuals for allowing political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation, ushering the world into "the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds." From the savage flowering of ethnic and religious hatreds in the Middle East and throughout Europe today to the mendacious demand for political correctness and multiculturalism on college campuses everywhere in the West, the treason of the intellectuals continues to play out its unedifying drama."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Chapter 1 The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions  -- Julien Benda Roger Kimball; title: chapter 2 Significance of this Movement--Nature of Political Passions  -- Julien Benda Roger Kimball; title: chapter 3 The "Clerks"--The Great Betrayal  -- Julien Benda Roger Kimball; title: chapter 4 Summary--Predictions -- Julien Benda Roger Kimball.