Intellectual Dissidents and the Construction of European Spaces, 1918–1988

Abstract

The French writer Julien Benda was renowned for his controversial assertions on the role of European intellectuals. In 1927, he denounced the political engagement of fellow writers as a betrayal of their duty to defend the abstract principles of truth and justice. His speech to the ‘European nation’ in 1933 encouraged intellectuals to become self-denying evangelists, abandoning homes, families, goods, salaries, and status in order to spread the gospel of European fraternity. And in 1948 he anticipated the birth of a European spirit through the rewriting — and relearning — of European history, whereby the emphasis would shift from nationalism to internationalism, from cynical nation-builders to the ‘dreamers’ whose grandiose projects of unity had ultimately foundered. Roman emperors and medieval popes would be the heroes of this new curriculum, to be taught in the only truly European language: French.1