Julien Benda Quotes (19 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.
Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 187–188

Fear , Justice , Motivation , Thinking

“Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; today he is divine because he has been able to create equipment which makes him the master of matter.”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 126-127 (regarding homo faber)

God , Justice , Law , Idea

“For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 108

God

“Teachers … preach “the superiority of the intelligence”; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i. e. from exactly the same passion for the practical.”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 151

Intelligence , Teachers , Passion

“Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, ‘I think therefore I am,” now raises him to say … “I think, therefore I am not,” (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 149

Feeling , Thinking

“That teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively little esteem for the truly thinking portion of himself and to honor the active and willing part of himself with all his devotion…”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 149

Feeling , Thinking , Parting

“Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with … Renan’s verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. … The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 151–152

Love , Science

“Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it… With them morality was violated, but moral notions remained intact. … The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality.”

Julien Benda

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 110-111

Similar authors

Paul Valéry 89

French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Marcel Proust 41

French novelist, critic, and essayist

Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist

Romain Rolland 43

French author

Maurice Maeterlinck 21

Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

André Gide 74

French novelist and essayist

Christopher Morley 30

American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Edward Abbey 146

American author and essayist

Olavo de Carvalho 6

Brazilian journalist, essayist and professor of philosophy

Henri Barbusse 197

French novelist