ABSTRACT
The moral value of the intellectual as an enlightener and a hero of justice was itself at stake during the Dreyfus Affair. The anti-Dreyfusards, such as Maurice Barrès, considered intellectual figures like Zola as “aristocrats of thought” with a sense of superiority over the people. Interestingly, the intervention of radical French intellectuals in favor of Alfred Dreyfus was symbolized by their resistance against the fury of the crowds in the public space. To be an intellectual meant to be against prejudice, hatred, violence, and injustice, meaning to uphold morally and politically all the values that the crowds refused. In other words, the particular affair—of the Dreyfus affair—generated so much collective enthusiasm and, conversely, so much collective disapproval because it questioned values that were/are part of the French political memory, while at the same time giving them a new historical sense, in a precise context. In a way, the Dreyfus affair reactivated the centennial debate on the French Revolution: between those who believed in the rights of man, and for whom the rights of an individual are superior to the reason of state.
