Treason of the Clerics

Google "Treason of the Clerics" today and you will see the main bulk of what the phrase has come to be, topically related to 9/11, Muslim clerics, etc. But fortunately you will also find an offering at www.mmisi.org/ma/01_01/kirk.pdf, a 1957 article by a Russell Kirk about a book published in the Twentieth Century between the two great wars by a Frenchman, Julien Benda entitled, Le Trahison des Clercs., coining the phrase.

The idea is simple enough, the intellectual class's abandonment of Platonic truths to the habit of serving the State. And because things come down to money, particularly evident today in the matter of the economy and the health of a nation, one might think this obscure intellectual thought might be worth tossing around these days. Where would the uncorrupted intellectual, the writer, the teacher, end up today? What would his or her role or life look like? Hopefully there would be something for such a person? Academics, like everyone else these days (except the billionaires), are just trying to survive.

Fortunately, for the sake of morale, a few examples of good health come to mind, which I, in my limited existence, have inkling of, Stephen Greenblatt, at Harvard, William H. Pritchard, at Amherst. Benjamin DeMott, deceased, who I hoped would have had a chance in life to have a chat with my father on such matters. (DeMott regarded the 9/11 Report as government whitewash.)

But, these days, its not so much about the Hellenic Truth of morality, human being, nature, but, you guessed it, the health of the corporations and business of varying sizes that drive the economy.

And this author of small books trying to shed some light on ideals has to go off and serve wine and food presently, and then be left to confront his own sensual nature, dumbed down by the grinding effort to keep afloat.