Kirk on Benda

Prompted by a query from Brigitte, I chanced across an interesting two-pager: one famous scholar commenting on another. The first is Russel Kirk (The Conservative Mind), the other is Julian Benda (The Treason of the Clerks). Both are now dead. Russel passed in 1994, Benda in 1956. The two-pager is available here. In that brief piece, which appeared in the Summer 1957 issue of Modern Age, Kirk thought that Benda was “still in the land of the living” when he had, in fact, died the previous summer. In those days, news travelled slowly. In this house we are rather fond of both authors and cited works. There are probably others, hence…

Human Dignity

The notion of human dignity is rooted in the belief that humans have immortal souls and have been created by God. Thus they are something other than chickens; after all we can eat chickens without feeling any guilt. When beliefs in the transcendental origins of the human (at minimum) are abandoned, a kind of no-holds-barred tribalism becomes altogether possible—indeed laudable if it makes money and generates power. I was somewhat startled to see a book at my library, among new books, and high-lighted all by itself on the top shelf. It is David Limbaugh’s Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama (August 2010), a kind of companion to Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (which appeared in August as well, but a few days earlier). This sent me to the computerized catalog. I was wondering if my library also perhaps had a copy of Julien Benda’s 1928 book entitled The Treason of the Intellectuals (originally La Trahison des Clercs). No. But it’s worth reading—as an introduction to the other two above.