Common Sense

WE often speak of the estrangement of intellectuals from the rest of the people. French perception found a name for it fifty years ago in the title of Julien Benda’s book La Trahison des clercs: the treason of the intellectuals. A catchy phrase, that, but what does it mean? Nobody would say that, merely by being intellectual, people betray their country. Yet the use of the word “treason” is neither frivolous nor malicious; the smoke indicates the presence of some fire. So what public faith do modern intellectuals break? What allegiance do they violate?

In the Fifties, Margret Boveri, a German journalist, published Treason in the Twentieth Century, a four-volume encyclopedic treatment of the prevailing multiplicity of conflicting, shifting, confused, misplaced, and contorted allegiances. The author concluded that in our age of ideology the concept of treason had just about lost any intelligible meaning. This conclusion had a certain plausibility, but what it amounted to was a verdict by default, an intellectual nolo contendere. Only the defendants’ plea—the plea of confusion—was presented; no opposing plea was even envisioned, nor has it been since, except in certain scholarly works. But the question continues to nag at us: Is there, in the case of The People v. the Intellectuals, a possible plea for the prosecution?

GN

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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WE often speak of the estrangement of intellectuals from the rest of the people. French perception found a name for it fifty years ago in the title of Julien Benda’s book La Trahison des clercs: the treason of the intellectuals. A catchy phrase, that, but what does it mean? Nobody would say that, merely by being intellectual, people betray their country. Yet the use of the word “treason” is neither frivolous nor malicious; the smoke indicates the presence of some fire. So what public faith do modern intellectuals break? What allegiance do they violate?

In the Fifties, Margret Boveri, a German journalist, published Treason in the Twentieth Century, a four-volume encyclopedic treatment of the prevailing multiplicity of conflicting, shifting, confused, misplaced, and contorted allegiances. The author concluded that in our age of ideology the concept of treason had just about lost any intelligible meaning. This conclusion had a certain plausibility, but what it amounted to was a verdict by default, an intellectual nolo contendere. Only the defendants’ plea—the plea of confusion—was presented; no opposing plea was even envisioned, nor has it been since, except in certain scholarly works. But the question continues to nag at us: Is there, in the case of The People v. the Intellectuals, a possible plea for the prosecution?