By now the basic facts of the Dreyfus Affair are known and beyond
dispute. This book condenses a century or more of scholarship but
adds significant new knowledge about some of the main figures in
the Affair, as well as Dreyfus's heroic struggle for freedom and
rehabilitation. It also studies how intellectuals contributed to
the Affair and largely defined it and themselves, creating a new
class of committed intellectuals who, from time to time, would
descend from their Ivory Tower to become involved in something that
""strictly speaking was none of their business"" (Sartre). This
book follows the careers of both Dreyfusard (Lazare, Zola, Peguy)
and anti-Dreyfusard (Drumont, Barres) intellectuals, as well as the
itineraries of several up-coming-intellectuals such as Gide and
Rolland, who, for a variety of reasons, chose not to become
involved. Moreover, the Affair is still ""radioactive"" because the
issues it raises remain as relevant as ever not only in France but
also around the world. As one prominent key player, Charles Peguy,
stated several years after Dreyfus had been rehabilitated: ""the
longer this affair has been over, the more evident it becomes that
it will never be over."" adly, there is no shortage of cases of the
justice system breaking down and even running amuck. Past and
present abuses in the name of the ""war on terror"" are still
waiting for the Emile Zola, not only to denounce them to the nation
and to the world but also to create a true debate about our core
values as a democracy. Which public intellectual will step up to
pen the ""J'Accuse"" of our times? Zola's passionate defence of
Dreyfus is legendary and constitutes the moral high point of
intellectual commitment in France but also, paradoxically, the
beginning of their demise as arbiters of a higher or nobler, that
is to say, a more idealistic public ethics. The rehabilitation of
Dreyfus constituted a victory for justice, but it also signaled a
decline in the moral stature of the committed intellectual. Less
than a decade after the rehabilitation of Dreyfus, French
intellectuals no longer would command the moral high ground. During
World War I, those on both the Left and Right rushed to embrace the
war effort without questioning it (the only internationally
well-known French intellectual to oppose the war was Rolland). By
the 1930s, French intellectuals were more likely to take their cues
from Moscow or Berlin and to immediately situate any issue in a
much larger ideological and international context.
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