Julien Benda: Action

Julien Benda was French essayist. Explore interesting quotes on action.

Julien Benda: 38 quotes0 likes

“When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. … For him evil, even if it aids politics, still remains evil. The modern realists are the moralists of realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good.”

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 107-108

“The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action…”

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 148

“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.”

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

“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).”

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