The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (Century Library)

Author: (French) Benda
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: This book caters to the tendency of people after World War I to reevaluate from a critical perspective how Western intellectuals betrayed the "eternal principles" to serve political parties and their false gods. The author condemns those who abandon eternal truths, primarily referring to the right-wing, especially fascists. He claims that intellectuals should first be loyal to truth rather than parties. He attempts to distinguish between serving a cause and serving a party, and refuses various forms of totalitarianism, as these ideologies would destroy the independence and autonomy of intellectuals' lives. This book is the masterpiece of French philosopher Julien Benda and a world-renowned classic dedicated to studying the issue of intellectuals. The entire book consists of four chapters, focusing on three major issues: "The Age of Politics," "The Nature of Political Passion," and "The Betrayal of Intellectuals." In terms of length, compared to the massive works of contemporaries often numbering in the hundreds of thousands of words, Benda's book can only be considered an essay. Yet, in this small book, Benda vividly presents to us the mindset history of Western intellectuals from the mid-19th century to the period around World War I.