Julien Benda (1867-1956) was a French cultural critic and novelist. He is best known for his La Trahison des clercs ("the treason of the intellectuals"), which became a lasting international catch-cry...
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An American-born English poet, critic, essayist, and dramatist, Eliot was one of the most influential writers in English of the first half of the twentieth century. His work and thought are characteri...
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Schalk is an American writer and educator. In the following excerpt, he considers Benda's views on political engagement and examines the critical reception of Th e Treason of the Intellectuals,...
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Woolf was an English essayist and critic best known for his leading role in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and thinkers in early twentieth-century London. Woolf and his wife, the renowned writer Virg...
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With Paul Elmer More, Babbitt was one of the founders of the New Humanism (or neo-humanism) movement that arose during the twentieth century's second decade. The New Humanists were strict moral...
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Santayana was a Spanish-born philosopher, poet, novelist, and literary critic who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, where he later taught philosophy. Late in his...
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Dewey was one of the most celebrated American philosophers of the twentieth century and the leading philosopher of Pragmatism after the death of William James. Dewey criticized the detached pursuit of...
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In the following essay, which consists of the last two installments of a three-part article, Siepmann provides an account of some of his conversations with Benda and outlines the principal ideas in La...
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Niess is an American writer and professor of French. In the following excerpt, he examines Benda's view of literature and literary artists.
"Avoir raison n'est pas litteraire.&...
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Born in Rehlingen, Saar Territory, Kahn is an American educator and writer. In the following excerpt, he considers the influence of Benda's Jewish heritage on his opinions and works.
Assimil...
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In the following excerpt, Nichols articulates a distinction in Benda's work between the clerc and the intellectual.
"The intellectual": for Benda, this was a sort of sacred rea...
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1. Television has greatly narrowed the freedom of the intellectual to do his job and "disturb the public peace." 100 years ago, the French intellectual Julien Benda could stand up against the estab...
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