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Julien Benda (1867-1956) | |
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French political and social philosopher, novelist and critic, who argued in his most famous work, La trahison des clercs (1927, The Treason of the Intellectuals), that contemporary intellectuals have abandoned the pursuit of universal truths in favor of every kind political and national passions. A prolific writer, Julien Benda published about 50 books, mostly forgotten today, but his phrase "la trahison des clercs" has been evoked many times. "Civilization, I repeat, seems to me possible only if humanity consents to a division of functions, if side by side with those who carry out the lay passions and extol the virtues serviceable to them there exists a class of men who depreciate these passions and glorify the advantages which are beyond the materials." (from The Treason of the Intellectuals) Julien Benda was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Paris. Between 1889 and 1891 he studied at the École Centrale but left his school, and after military service, he entered the University of Paris, receiving his bachelor's degree in history in 1894. Before devoting himself to writing, Benda led a carefree life and spent weekends at the chateau of his cousin, Simone Casimir-Périer. Benda was one of many artists and intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer unjustly convicted of treason. He contributed articles on the case to Revue Blanche, which were later collected in Dialogues à Byzance (1900). The Dreyfus affair soon turned into a clash between "the forces of the past and the forces of the future," as Zola said, and made explicit the role of intellectuals as watchmen over the moral values of the society. Later, in his 70s Benda said that it had been a fortunate episode for the men of his generation. Benda was an extreme rationalist from the beginning of his career and remained faithful to his belief that there is an universal Truth to be found. A defender of reason, he opposed Bergson's philosophy, particularly his intuitionism, in such works as La Bergsonisme: ou, Un Philosophie de la mobilité (1912), Une philosophie pathétique (1913), and Sur le succés du Bergsonisme (1914). Condemning all modern trends in the arts and literature Benda regarded Bergson as a supreme example of a general cultural and philosophical decline. "Bergsonism," he said, "was perhaps the only philosophy to have been really understood by the vulgar." Bergson himself preferred to remain silent. Benda's first novel, the anti-clerical L'Ordination (1911-12), was originally published in Charles Péguy's Cahiers de la Quinzaine. As a reply to Benda's negative criticism of Bergson's philosophy, Péguy wrote his essay 'Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonnienne' in April 1914, but he also acknowledged that Benda was "the only adversary of Bergson who knew what it was all about." In 1913 the Benda's family business went bankrupt. During World War I Benda contributed to Figaro articles, which were collected in Les sentiments de Critias (1917) and Billets de Sirius (1925). He supported fiercely his country against Germany, which he did not regard as a Cartesian nation; there is nothing to be learned from the German spirit. Always thought provoking and polemic against obscurity, sentiment, feeling, and modern age in general, Benda concluded in 1945 in La France byzantine, that France herself has become decadent, the new Byzantium. "Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that gregarious is the praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is contemptible. It is moreover certain that the group which desires to be strong has no use for a man who claims to think for himself." (from The Treason of the Intellectuals) La trahison des clercs, which came out when Benda was 60 years old, gained a lot of attention. A new edition of the book was published in 1947. Benda used the term "clerks" in the medieval sense of the word. By the term he meant all those "whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or metaphysical speculation." Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, and César Franck, for example, were true "clerks," intellectuals, who never "diverted from a single-hearted adoration of the Beautiful and the Divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread." But modern "clerks" have betrayed their vocation and their traditional philosophical and scholarly ideals by involving themselves in passions of race, class and nation. Most crucially, they have broken their tradition by mingling political passions with their work as artists, as scholars, as philosophers. Truth and just are determined by the useful. The common man has won, was Bendas' conclusion. This view found its most cogent expression in José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses (1929). T.S. Eliot, who agreed with Benda's arguments concerning the role of the intellectual elite , noted that Benda's "own brand of classicism is just as romantic as anyone else's." Although Benda rejects the glorification of national particularism, there is an anti-Teutonic strain in some of his work. In the 1930s Benda lectured at various universities in the United States. Although he criticized Marx's theories and totalitarianism, he was a Communist sympathizer for a period. With the rising threat of fascism, Benda challenged intellectuals to descend from their ivory towers, saying that "the clerc must now take side." During the Occupation, Benda lived in Carcassonne, bustling with projects. In Paris, his notes and library was destroyed by the German Nazis. La Grande Epreuve des démocraties (1942) was smuggled out of France and first published in the United States by Editions de la Maison Française. Nicia Louise Eugenie Lebas, whom Benda married relatively late in life, was the daughter of a former military governor. After the war Benda attacked the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, arguing that existentialism was nothing but warmed-over Bergsonism. He died on June 7, 1956, in Fontenay-Aux-Roses. Benda's two autobiographical works, La jeunesse d'un clerc (1936) and Un Régulier dans le siècle (1937), document the evolution of his thought. For further reading: Encyclopedia of the Essay, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1997); World Authors 1900-1950, Vol. 1, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); The Opium of the Intellectuals by Raymond Aron (1985, original French edition, 1955); The Spectrum of Political Engagement: Mournier, Benda, Nizan, Brasillach, Sartre by David L. Schalk (1979); Treason, Tradition and the Intellectual: Julien Benda and Political Discourse by Ray Nichols (1978); Julien Benda by Robert J. Niess (1956) Selected works:
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