Victor Brombert
TOWARD A PORTRAIT OF THE
FRENCH INTELLECTUAL
L'intellectuel
-
rarely has a word inspired more
fervor, arrogance, bitter irony and generous anger. Edouard
Berth, ardent royalist and sympathizer with the
Action Fran–
~aise,
gave vent to some of these violent feelings in a long–
forgotten but significant book,
Les M efaits des intellectuels
( 1914) ,
in
which he
d~cribed
the intellectuals as an anti–
heroic cast of effeminate, knavish and deceitful weaklings, who
strive to impose on the modern world nauseating humanitarian
ideals ,and a morality of cowardice. One recognizes echoes of
Barres' vituperations against the servile mandarins, imbued with
Kantian moral principles and determined to emasculate France.
Without even mentioning the hysterical polemics of a
Berth or the strident outbursts of a Barres, it is easy to draw
up a catalogue of unfavora:ble opinioug. Paul Valery inveighed
with irony against the megalomaniac, complex-ridden intellec–
tuals; Romain Rolland called them "intolerant maniacs" in
love with ideas; Peguy denounced the
«parti intellectuel";
Julien Benda wrote a series of books about the "treason" of the
intellectuals. More recently, Raymond Aron diagnosed their
addiction to the ideological opium and their supposed irrespon–
sibility in the face of history.
It is clear that intellectuals themselves, when they are not
openly hostile
to
the term and the concept "intellectual," are
