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Julien Benda’s Anti-Passionate Europe

Princeton University, jmueller{at}princeton.edu

In the early 1930s, Julien Benda provided one of the most uncompromising visions for a united Europe. In line with his rationalist universalism, Benda sought a continent that was cleansed of passion and particularism, and called on European intellectuals to act as a rationalist vanguard in constructing such a Europe. However, Benda fatefully wavered between polity-building strategies of reshaping and redirection. For the most part, Benda seemed to demand nothing less than a comprehensive reshaping of the moral and political psychology of European citizens. However, his universalism faltered frequently, and he conceived of Europe rather as a large nation, in which the ‘passion for reason’ would come to dominate other passions. Such ambiguities - and failures to draw a clear line between normative ideals and the pragmatics of polity-building - persist in many present debates on European unification.

Key Words: Julien Benda • European integration • intellectuals • nation-building • universalism

European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 5, No. 2, 125-137 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1474885106061601


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