Böcker av Julien Benda

A travers une série de discours et d'essais, l'auteur examine le rôle de l'intellectuel dans la société du XXème siècle ainsi que les faiblesses de l'idéologie politique de son époque. Cette réflexion sur la philosophie politique et la condition humaine a marqué la pensée française.This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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.

This book offers an incisive account of interwar Europe and a warning against the lure of tribal loyalties and antipathies.

From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. This book tells how in the early decades of the twentieth century, intellectuals abandoned their attachment to the traditional panoply of philosophical and scholarly ideals. It is of interest to those who teach and preach the human sciences.