To anyone on my f-list who can read French

[fpb]

I just got hold of a .pdf version of Julien Benda's famous denunciation of the intellectuals' surrender to Fascism, La Trahison des Clercs. I only just started reading it, but it sounds like everything that it has been said to be: strong, brave, clear-headed and with the marble-like clarity that the best French prose affords. What is above all significant is its defence of democracy as the proper place for the life of the mind. One passage (translated): Such a posture is a flagrant betrayal of the values of the intellect, since Democracy amounts in its principles (but it is its principles that its opponents call into question, and not, as they pretend to, their misapplication) to a fundamental assertion of those values, especially thorugh its respect for justice, truth and the individual person. Any free mind must recognize that the ideal written in the Declaration of the Rights of Man or the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 is an intellectual ideal. And it is likewise undeniable that democracy, through its grant of individual liberty, implies an element of disorder. "When," says Montesquieu, "you can perceive no noise of conflict throughout a State, you may be sure that there is no freedom there."

I will send a copy to anyone who asks for one.