The desire to be a clerc and only a clerc is less a choice made by eternal man than the decision of a

partisan (Paul Nizan): to what extent, if at all, does this serve to explain the disagreement between
Benda and Nizan on the role of the intellectual?

For novelist-philosophers Julien Benda and Paul Nizan, 1927 and 1931 respectively saw the
publication of their extended polemical tracts Le Trahison des Clercs and Les Chiens de Garde, each
containing more or less beautifully-written prose, bitterly castigating the figure of the philosopherprofessor, or clerc1. Each had a different complaint, Nizans being in large part with Bendas. This
essay will argue Nizans arguments from partisanship are largely unsuccessful and inferior to others
he makes which better explain and support his differences with Benda over the proper role of the
intellectual.

Bendas clercs

The historical, present, and proper future roles of this figure seem at a first reading entirely
contested by the two authors. For Benda the clerc in his traditional and ideal role are the same, that
of disinterested philosopher, scientist, artist, or theologian, characteristically seeking the nonmaterial advantage of joy in his practice.2 He would live in a withdrawn manner, supported by the
church or by aristocratic families, and while concerned greatly with the moral realm, did not
comment on worldly affairs, instead pricking the conscience of the sovereign and the people from
time to time, through the promotion of abstract moral maxims. He must speak truth to the world,
though it may make him thoroughly unpopular. Respecting the moral exhortations of the clerc,
mankind would honour the good albeit while doing ill. For Benda this hypocritical contradiction,
allows civilisation itself to arise out of the rift between act and moral judgement.3 The clercs were
responsible for the state in its modern form, so far as it dominates individual egotisms.4 He appears
here to imply that the clerc promoted constraints upon men, which are in turn based upon a theory
of moral universalism, i.e. a Christian or quasi-Kantian doctrine that each ought to treat all as
deserving the same moral goods as himself. This seems on its face an entirely supportable moral
basis for a society. Yet this dominat[ion] (if we accept its truth) could equally well be explained by
domination of a particular kind of social contract theory of society, in which seeming moral equality

Benda 1969, xi.

Ibid., 43.
3
Ibid., 45.
4
Ibid., 44.
2

might be sacrosanct, alongside a very high degree of sanctity of the entire existing pattern of
material holdings.5 Benda is silent on the matter of which.

Bendas idealised clerc, however, has by 1927 become corrupted: following the fall of the ancien
rgime post-1789, and the rise of popular sovereignty across Europe, those clercs operating outside
the church, have lost their aristocratic patronage, and are obliged to descend to the marketplace,
where material necessity and (for the writer-clerc) the artists innate egotistical and sensationseeking temperament6 tempt him to flatter the worldview of whoever offers him money or praise.
Thus instead of maintaining rigorous independence such as would permit him to fulfil his primary
duty of speaking unpopular moral truth to the masses, he instead sanctifies their egotistical passions
of class, race, nationalism, and materialism. For the first time, mob and faction can act ill and it be
praised by those whose reputation and elevated position arose through unbroken centuries of
disinterested moral reasoning. Strength and passion become viewed as grounding supportable
claims to political right action; racial superiority is heralded as scientific proof of the simultaneous
historical destiny and moral desert supporting a nations conquest and supremacy; naturalism,
relativism, raison detat, and partisan political imperative, are elevated to the status of religion in
place of God and universalistic morality, threatening civilisation7. For Benda the danger of this
occurring obligates the clerc to instead withdraw from worldly affairs and resume scholarly
seclusion.

There is another key source of this obligation. In Trahison, maxims concerning right and wrong
action may be deduced from principles of pure reason. Moral truth, like mathematical truth, may
firstly exist and be knowable, and secondly derive from a realm outside of space and time, rather
than through the sensory or indeed seemingly any experience of or engagement in the world, Benda
taking an extreme position in this foundational epistemological debate about how knowledge is
acquired8, and drawing from it prescriptions for proper behaviour for the philosopher. This seems to
be in part the target of Nizans mocking epithet eternal man in Les Chiens.9

Nizans clercs

E.g. such as is claimed by those taking a strongly libertarian reading of Chapter V of Lockes Second Treatise.
Note the possible contradiction between this and Bendas earlier claim about the clercs joy being a nonmaterial advantage.
7
Implicitly (see n3, above).
8
E.g. per Markie 2013, 1.
9
Nizan 1971, 43.
6

Nizans eruptive 1931 polemic also targeted what he felt was the malignant influence of the clerc
upon the world, but of a different kind. The metaphysical theory claimed by the philosophical
establishment, to be key in grasping moral theory, was so much obscurity, designed to prevent the
proletariat believing in their own perceptions of justice and injustice, and so weaken their
confidence.10 This poisonous philosophy of the clercs needed to be destroyed11, it instead being the
duty of the philosopher to help the vulnerable and weak understand the nature of what was
happening to them, and act as revolutionary technicians serving the demands of the proletariat.12
There was no universal moral truth, issuing solely from the realm of reason, it instead arising from
the proletariats lived sense of suffering, each worker carrying his or her own moral truth.13
The philosopher works in the university, which in turn is the agent of the state, and so he does its
bidding in preserving the wellbeing of the bourgeoisie, not daring to express any controversial
opinion, lest he lose his job, and so enjoying no intellectual independence, unless the clerc
independently identifies the lot of the bourgeoisie with his own (the opulence in which Professor
Brunschvicg lives is given as an example). The clercs are leaned upon by the authorities, to exhort
their young students to fight and die in the Great War, many clercs doing so seemingly unprompted.
The entire school of enlightenment philosophy and its offspring are held bourgeois, devotion to
scholarship merely being a mask for devotion to the bourgeoisie14. The clerc must choose between
serving the master or the slave15. It seems that for the Paul Nizan of 1931, any intellectual role short
of actively supporting revolution, was a partisan betrayal of the proletariat. Yet it may be that he
held objections to Benda, grounded on more nuanced claims.

Was Nizan right?

Nizans premise that englightenment philosophy is bourgeois, cites Kants philosophy of universalism
(and with it the eternal man who subscribes to the same) due to Kants failure to acknowledge that
certain patterns of property-holding might under certain circumstances violate the categorical
imperative. 16 There seems a vast quantity of blue water between universalisms which do and dont

10

Ibid., 75.
Ibid., 48.
12
Ibid., 137.
13
Ibid., 43, 116-140.
14
Ibid., 135.
15
Ibid., 139.
16
Supra., 63-64, 144.
11

take account of material goods, about which Benda has little to say, other than his impugning class
passions for being egotisms.17 Here Benda appears to impugn Marxism for adopting what we might
call a class-struggle moral theory. Such a theory holds that a group or class deserves certain moral
or other goods, and that the moral desirability of altering the historical distribution of goods, makes
it permissible to harm non-group-members whose persons are obstacles to the groups claims. The
argument amounts to an egotism because it holds that non-group-members are less deserving of
respect than group members, this expressing a maxim which seems both false and nonuniversalisable. It is possible that Nizan may have come round to a similar view, in resigning from
the PCF in 1939 upon the Soviet-Nazi signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact18 and
indeed that Benda in later advocating engagement in support of revolutionary aims, may have felt
that Nizans point concerning bourgeois philosophy was correct. 19

What is most peculiar about Bendas argument in Trahison is that his conclusion concerning the
proper withdrawal of the clerc, in no way appears to necessarily follow from his premises. If worldly
ills follow from clercs propounding false principles in the world, then surely the remedy is that they
propound better ones, rather than that they be required to perform the impossible by eschewing
worldly existence and political matters about which they may commendably feel driven, at which
time new engage pseudo-clercs will presumably arise to fill the void. Nizans proposal, that
education be improved through the purging of obscurantism from philosophy,20 and that
philosophers enter the public sphere to aid public understanding of practical matters,21 seems on its
face far likelier to help inoculate an undereducated public from accepting dangerous and false
maxims. It is not clear why the corruption of the clerc seems an inevitable consequence of his
descending from his ivory tower, and why his improved knowledge and insight into the world, and
ability to evaluate the good, might not be a more likely consequence. So it seems difficult to sustain
the claim that the clercs retreat from engagement is a choice which somehow promotes the
universalistic morality espoused by eternal man.

It is not entirely clear Nizans conclusions concerning the proper role of the clerc follow from his
premises either. His contention that each suffering worker contains his own moral truth, seems an
attempt to rebut Bendas claim that such truth may only be derived from principles of pure reason.

17

Benda 1971, 3.
Schalk 1979, 53.
19
Ibid., 44.
20
Nizan 1971, 136.
21
Supra.
18

The attempt is successful in its properly asserting that true knowledge can be gained from sense and
not merely reason as Benda claims; yet Nizan takes an equally extreme position, in denying that
reason may play a role in adjudging moral truth22. This seems similarly absurd: surely both sense
and reason are necessary for the clerc to play any meaningful role.

Even if we accept Nizans claim concerning the bourgeois character of enlightenment philosophy, his
claim concerning the clercs partisanship seems very problematic. There is after all a great distance
between acquiescence in inequality (which may well be admirably-intentioned, if one believes a
constrained form of it will promote human flourishing overall, as Locke did), 23 and the extreme
Nizan describes, of knowingly participating in an academic conspiracy to confuse the workers and
thereby forestall the revolution which alone can bring relief from unacceptable suffering24. The
latter seems absurd to a contemporary reader, incredible both in the devious intent it imputes to
the clerc, and the thought proletarian revolution would today aid workers in the West.
Nizans claim that so-called universalism, amounts to disguised bourgeois temporal justifications
under the cover of science, seems to rely on a kind of morality-of-consequences, wherein individual
intent counts for little, and instead intent is imputed to a form of unconscious crowd-mind, i.e. that
of a class.25 The evidence for this seems in part the economic pattern, and the collective silence of
agents upon it. Yet by conflating consequence, and the intention he infers from it; and by failing to
distinguishing this hypothetical intent of groups, with that of merely silent individuals, Nizan argues
from a standpoint which seems inconsistent with any supportable moral view. This seems a failing
of the logic of class-struggle as such.

It is conceivable that Nizans experience in Aden, witnessing the twin evils of poverty, and colonial
oppression, as well as coming of age during the Great War, may have impressed upon him a
particularly acute image of man as culpably indifferent to his neighbours wellbeing. It is very
difficult to see how anybody sane could have intended such a quantity of suffering to take place
yet entirely likely that many would wish to lay blame for the evil which transpired and which in
hindsight alone seems inevitable. A similar desire to hold a party to blame for an adverse economic
pattern about which they seem untroubled, seems likely to give rise to the identical blamingimpulse, provided there is hope that some revolutionary step can change matters for the better. Yet
even if such a revolutionary step exists, it is not clear why silence is necessarily a partisan act. As AW

22

Supra, 124.
E.g. Locke 1988, 5:41-48.
24
Nizan 1971, 68 et seq.
25
Ibid., 78.
23

Moore reminds us,26 there may be legitimate reasons for action or inaction, other than moral
reasons, and these may include ones own life-projects, perhaps of developing ones art, or raising a
family, for example.

More persuasive are Nizans premises that there exist unnecessarily confusing elements of
philosophy, the rarefied parlance of the academy excluding many from the subject. People do have
a duty at some level to speak out against injustice, and this duty may be greater for those whose
learning sees them held in public awe. No doubt nervousness about jeopardising job prospects will
inhibit many university staff from taking part in public protest as willingly as they might otherwise.
But it is one thing to claim that middle-class academics are as myopic and negligent as anyone else,
and very much another to claim they are partisan in jealously desiring their wellbeing and that of the
entire bourgeoisie, at the expense of the poor. It is difficult to see how the claim could have held
true. Yet it may be that some of Nizans prescriptions for philosophers do not require it to have.
Notably, numerous of these and other of Nizans premises are shared by Benda: the clerc possessing
a greater responsibility than others, his duty to fearlessly voice truth at the risk of unpopularity, the
importance of being intellectually independent, his obligation to somehow prevent evil; they even
seem to share the same scepticism of historical determinism, 27 the same hatred of moral egotism, a
respect for the role of ideas in shaping the economic realm, 28 and the same horror that the world
would fall to the causes of corrupt clercs making naturalistic arguments. 29 This gives rise to the
question, revolutionary hopefulness or pessimism aside, in what way do the worlds and clercs
characteristics fundamentally differ for the two? Benda has no qualms about obscurantism, indeed
by example he seems quite its advocate; the two authors differ additionally on the existence of
universal moral truth (although Nizan seems more consistent over his lifetime than Benda
notwithstanding the latters volubility on the matter); on the existence of a desirable alternative to
a capitalist order (although this too was to change); on the method of gaining knowledge, about
which both make bizarre claims; and on partisanship, concerning which Nizans claims seem
insupportable. Amid such grand concepts, one which is comparatively trivial seems to me to best

26

Moore, 2013, paraphrasing Williams.

Schalk 1978, 61 (I have no confidence in destiny, quoting a French 1965 print of Les Chiens at p15, a
remark oddly absent from the 1971 English edition).
28
Contra Marx. Alongisde Nizans explicit alternating claims about the role and lack of role of ideas in affecting
the economic realm, the fact he thought it necessary to write Les Chiens, seems testament enough to his belief
in their power.
29
The reader may object that Marx was a naturalist in grounding his claim to the destiny of the workers, on
their superior force of numbers, and there is something in this. However both he and Nizan do present a
nobler account of their moral cause when they both describe the suffering of the alienated worker (e.g. Nizan
1971, 133) (albeit that only Nizan acknowledges that morality may be other than a bourgeois sentimentality).
27

explain the difference between the authors idea of the clercs proper mission. It is Nizans
conception of the duty to communicate to ordinary people in an understandable way about things
which are or should be important to them, and to know the life of ordinary people, an improvement
on Bendas eternal scold, and more faithful to Emersons ideal of the scholar in the world, he and it
proceed[ing] from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein.30

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