treason m — ERIS

Treason of the Intellectuals

JULIEN BENDA

Benda’s book is the great twentieth-century defense of intellectual integrity. It has become extraordinarily timely again at a moment when social criticism often routes itself through the particular loyalties of racial, religious, and national identity.

––David Bromwich

Benda’s essay, published by ERIS in a new translation by David Broder, offers an incisive account of interwar Europe that ranges from the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and Georges Sorel to the activities of Charles Maurras and Benito Mussolini. It also serves, however, as a remarkably timely warning against the seduction of modern intellectuals by tribal loyalties and antipathies.

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Benda’s book is the great twentieth-century defense of intellectual integrity. It has become extraordinarily timely again at a moment when social criticism often routes itself through the particular loyalties of racial, religious, and national identity.

––David Bromwich