Julien Benda

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Julien Benda [ bɛ̃da ] (born December 26, 1867 in Paris , † June 7, 1956 in Fontenay-aux-Roses near Paris) was a French philosopher and writer .

life and work

Julien Benda comes from an assimilated Jewish merchant family and studied mathematics and history .

As a representative of resolute realism , he turned against irrational positions in philosophy and art at the beginning of the 20th century and in his work Belphégor (1918) condemned emotionality and intuition. In the years 1912 to 1914 in particular, he got into an intensive discussion with Henri Bergson and his philosophy of life .

In particular, in the novel The ordination (1910/1912) and the famous essay The betrayal of the intellectuals (1927, in the original: La trahison the clerks ) he complained a trend of intelligentsia that they were entitled position of universalism , its key value of justice and to betray their form of organization of democracy and to indulge increasingly “political passions” such as class struggle , nationalism or racism . His conception of the intellectual (in the original: clercs ) describes a class “whose activities are by their very nature not geared towards practical goals; People who seek their satisfaction in art, science or metaphysical speculation - in short, in the possession of immaterial goods ”. He saw Plato , Descartes and Kant as intellectual role models .

In the study on the European nation (1933) he advocated a rationally united Europe early on and called for a supranational reason. Not the Zollverein, but thinkers like Johann Gottlieb Fichte created the German nation. “Europe will be serious or not be at all.” Accordingly, in his work Die Schicksalsprüfung der Demokratie ( The Fateful Trial of Democracies) (1942) he criticized the Popular Front and National Socialism.

effect

With new editions of his most important work on the betrayal of the intellectuals in the 1940s and 1970s, even after his death, he repeatedly sparked discussions in French scholarly circles as well as in the public about the role of the intellectual and his relationship to positions of power in society. In Germany, his work received much less attention, although it also deals intensively with German intellectuals. Jean Améry gave the lecture A new betrayal of the intellectuals? (1976) on the occasion of the French edition of 1975 and wrote the foreword Benda, the untimely-timeless to the German edition of 1978. In the 1980s, Edward Said developed his concept of the "secular intellectual" from a controversial reading of Benda's betrayal .

bibliography

French

  • Les sentiments de Critias - 1917
  • Belphégor: essai sur l'esthétique de la présente société française - 1919
  • Les amorandes - 1922
  • La croix de roses; précédé d'un dialogue d'Eleuthère avec l'auteur - 1923
  • Lettres à Mélisande - 1926
  • L'ordination - 1926
  • La trahison des clercs - 1927
  • Cléanthis ou du Beau et de l'actuel - 1928
  • Properce, ou Les amants de Tibur - 1928
  • Appositions - 1930
  • Esquisse d'une histoire des Français dans leur volonté d'être une nation - 1932
  • Discours à la nation européenne - 1933
  • La jeunesse d'un clerc - 1936
  • Précision (1930-1937) - 1937
  • Un régulier dans le siècle - 1937
  • La grande épreuve des démocraties. Essai sur les principes démocratiques: leur nature, leur histoire, leur valeur philosophique. - 1942
  • Exercice d'un enterré vif, juin 1940-août 1944 - 1945
  • La France byzantine, ou, Le triomphe de la littérature pure: Mallarmé, Gide, Proust, Valéry, Alain Giraudoux, Suarès, les Surréalistes: essai d'une psychologie originelle du littérateur - 1945
  • You poetique. Selon l'humanité, non selon les poètes - 1946
  • Not possumus. Speaking of certaine poésie modern - 1946
  • Le rapport d'Uriel - 1946
  • Tradition de l'existentialisme, ou, Les philosophies de la vie - 1947
  • Trois idoles romantiques: le dynamisme, l'existentialisme, la dialectique matérialiste - 1948
  • Du style d'idées: réflexions sur la pensée, sa nature, ses réalisations, sa valeur morale - 1948
  • Les Cahiers d'un clerc, 1936-1949 - 1949
  • La crise du rationalisme - 1949

German

  • The betrayal of the intellectuals (French: La trahison des clercs , 1927, 1946, 1975), Munich and Vienna (Hanser), 1978; Frankfurt (Ullstein Materials), 1983; Frankfurt (Fischer TB), 1988; Current edition: Mainz (Verlag André Thiele ), 2013, ISBN 978-3-940884-71-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Treason, p. 111
  2. ↑ Jean Améry: A New Betrayal of the Intellectuals? , Lecture at the 8th Salzburg Humanist Talk, which took place from September 27 to October 1, 1976 in the new ORF broadcasting house in Salzburg; in: Essays on Philosophy , Works , Stuttgart (Klett – Cotta), 2002ff, Vol. 6, ISBN 3-608-93566-5 , pp. 157-179; First published in: Oskar Schatz (Ed.), Farewell to Utopia? Claim and mandate of the intellectuals , Graz-Vienna-Cologne (Styria), 1977, pp. 87-101
personal data
SURNAME Benda, Julien
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1956
Place of death Fontenay-aux-Roses , Paris