English Explanatory Dictionary

trahison des clercs

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A compromise of intellectual integrity by members of an intelligentsia.

Word forms

trahison des clercs trahisons des clercs

Etymology

Borrowed from French trahison des clercs (literally “treason of the clerks”); originally adopted from the title of the French philosopher and novelist Julien Benda’s 1927 book, La Trahison des Clercs (whose first English translation bore the title The Betrayal of the Intellectuals). See too: "In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des Clercs. [He used] “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals."

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