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Quote by Julien Benda

“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.”

Quote by Julien Benda

Book:The Treason of the Intellectuals
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The Treason of the Intellectuals

This book delves into the complex relationship between intellectuals and the public, exploring the moral obligations of those who shape public discourse and influence societal norms. more

Author

Julien Benda
Julien Benda

Julien Benda was a French philosopher born on December 26, 1867, and died on June 7, 1956. His philosophical thoughts were deeply influenced by German classical philosophy and the French philosophical tradition, particularly focusing on moral philosophy and aesthetics. more

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“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.”

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“The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.”

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“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).”

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Book:The Treason of the Intellectuals
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