The Treason of the Intellectuals by Julien Benda

Author:Julien Benda [Benda, Julien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781412806237
Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Notes

1.Notably for Renan and “speculative a-moralism.” (H. Massis, Judgments, i.)

2.See Note E at the end of this book for further information on this prestige, and what is new about it in history.

3.In 1891 Barrès wrote to the editor of La Plume: “If these books have any value, it is from the logic, the continuity of thought I have put into them during five years.” (“These books” included his Boulangiste campaign.) And, in the preface to his collection of articles entitled “Scènes et Documents du nationalisme,” he says: “I think that if Doumic will examine it from a greater distance he will find a development, and not contradictions, in my work.”

4.I shall be told of “clerks” who, apparently without degradation, have at some time or other taken the part of a race or a nation, even of their own race or nation. That is because they believed that the cause of that race or nation coincided at that time with the cause of abstract justice.

5.Similar occurrences may be observed among the ancients. For instance, Cicero denounced his fellow-citizens for having destroyed Corinth merely to avenge an insult to their ambassador (De off., I, xi).

6.Already in 1911, when a writer quoted this sentence:” It is impossible to accept the situation that humanity should be bound for indefinite centuries by the marriages, battles, treaties of the narrow-minded, ignorant, egotistic creatures who during the Middle Ages were at the head of affairs in this world,” he felt it necessary to add: “Fortunately these lines were written by Renan; one could not write them to-day without being called an unpatriotic Frenchman.” (G. Guy-Grand, La Philosophie Nationaliste, p. 165.) Without being called so by the men of thought—that is the curious part of it.

7.Quoted by Mgr. Chapon in his admirable study, “La France et l’Allemagne devant la doctrine chrétienne.” (Correspondant, of 15th August, 1915.)

8.See his Letters, ii, p. 31.

9.Consider how willingly they now accept military service. See Note F at the end of this book.

10.Here are the reasons given by a German Catholic for this attitude among those of his religion: “(a) Their incomplete knowledge of the facts and opinions in the belligerent and neutral countries; (b) Their patriotism, which could not be allowed to separate itself from the union binding together the German people; (c) The fear of a second Kulturkampf, which would be doubly dangerous if the German Catholics had even appeared to agree with the campaign carried on in France against German methods of waging war.” The second reason will be noted, i.e. the desire to be at unity with the nation, whatever the moral aspect of its cause. Here, at least, is one reason which Bossuet did not allege when he screened the violences of Louis XIV.

Let me recall that when, in 1914, the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg in the Reichstag hinted at a sort of apology for the violation of Belgian neutrality, he was sharply reproved by the Christian minister von Harnack “for having tried to excuse what did not need excusing.” (See A.

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