Political Reason in Age of Ideology - Essays in Honor of Raymond Aron 2006044481, 0765803534, 9780765803535

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Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy

Festschriften Series by Transaction Joseph L. Blau History, Religion, and American Democracy Maurice Wohlgelernter, ed. Herbert Blumer Human Nature and Collective Behavior Tamotsu Shibutani, ed. Werner J. Cahnman Ethnicity, Identity, and History Joseph B. Maier and Chaim I. Waxman, eds. Rose Laub Coser Social Roles and Social Institutions Judith R. Blau and Norman Goodman, eds. Gray Dorsey Law, Culture, and Values Sava Alexander Vojcanin, ed. Abraham Edel Ethics, Science, and Democracy Irving Louis Horowitz and H. Standish Thayer, eds. James W. Fesler The Costs of Federalism Robert T. Golembiewski and Aaron Wildavsky, eds. Raymond Firth Leadership and Change in the Western Pacific Richard E. Feinberg, ed. Eli Ginzberg The Economist as a Public Intellectual Irving Louis Horowitz, ed. John Hicks John Hicks: His Contribution to Economic Theory K. Puttaswamaiah, ed. George C. Homans Behavioral Theory in Sociology Robert L. Hamblin and John H. Kunkel, eds. Irving Louis Horowitz The Democratic Imagination Ray C. Rist, ed. Ian Kidd The Passionate Intellect Lewis Ayres, ed.

Georg Lukacs Georg Lukacs: Theory, Culture, and Politics Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tarr, eds. Joseph B. Maier Surviving the Twentieth Century Judith Marcus, ed. Robert K. Merton Robert K. Merton and Contemporary Sociology Carlo Mongardini and Simonetta Tabboni, eds. Hans J. Morgenthau Truth and Tragedy Kenneth Thompson and Robert J. Myers, eds. George L. Mosse Political Symbolism in Modern Europe Seymour Drescher, David Sabean, and Allan Sharlin, eds. Gwynne Nettler Critique and Explanation Timothy F. Hartnagel and Robert A. Silverman Karl Popper Critical Approaches to Science and Philosophy Mario Bunge, ed. Earl Raab American Pluralism and the Jewish Community Seymour Martin Lipset, ed. Paul Samuelson Paul Samuelson and the Foundations of Modern Economics K. Puttaswamaiah, ed. Pitirim Sorokin Sorokin and Civilization Joseph B. Ford, Michel P. Richard, and Palmer C. Talbutt, eds. Aaron Wildavsky Budgeting, Policy, and Politics Naomi Caiden and Joseph White, eds. Hans L. Zetterberg Sociological Endeavor Emil Uddhammar and Richard Swedberg, eds.

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First published 2007 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2007 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2006044481 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Political reason in the age of ideology : essays in honor of Raymond Aron / Bryan-Paul Frost & Daniel J. Mahoney, editors. p. cm—(Festschriften) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7658-0353-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Political science—Philosophy. 2. Aron, Raymond, 1905- I. Aron, Raymond, 1905- II. Frost, Bryan-Paul, 1961- III. Mahoney, Daniel J. IV. Series JA71.P6228 2007 320.01—dc22 ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0353-5 (hbk)

2006044481

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In Memorium Michael Paley (1965-2006) who helped edit this tribute to Raymond Aron

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Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Enduring Relevance of Raymond Aron Bryan-Paul Frost and Daniel J. Mahoney

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Part One: Aron’s Educative Legacy 1.

Raymond Aron—Political Educator Pierre Manent

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Part Two: A Lifetime of Reflection 2.

Aron, Marx, and Marxism: An Interpretation Daniel J. Mahoney

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3.

Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre Fred Baumann

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Aron’s Clausewitz Barry Cooper

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Raymond Aron and Alexis de Tocqueville Stanley Hoffmann (translated by Bryan-Paul Frost)

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Main Currents and Sociological Thought Liah Greenfeld

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Part Three: International Politics and Political History 7.

Raymond Aron and La France libre Michael Curtis

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Raymond Aron and the Origins of the Cold War Carlos Gaspar

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Raymond Aron: From the Philosophy of History to the Theory of International Relations Stephen Launay (translated by Paul Seaton and Daniel J. Mahoney)

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10. Raymond Aron, Critic of International Law: A Reading of Peace and War Claude Lefort (translated by Daniel J. Mahoney and Paul Seaton)

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11. The Threat of Danger: Decadence and Virtù Miguel Morgado

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12. The Anglo-American Vision of Raymond Aron: British Principles and American Practices Revisited Irving Louis Horowitz

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Part Four: Aron on Aron 13. Faces of Moderation: Raymond Aron as Committed Observer Aurelian Craiutu

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14. An Introduction to Raymond Aron: The Political Teachings of the Memoirs Bryan-Paul Frost

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About the Authors

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Index

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Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank Springer Science and Business Media for kindly giving us permission to reprint Pierre Manent’s essay “Raymond Aron—Political Educator,” which was originally published in European Liberty (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 1–23. We also wish to thank Simon & Schuster for permission to quote from Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller, ed. George E. G. Catlin (New York: The Free Press, 1964) as well as Princeton University Press to quote from Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976, 1984, and renewed 2004). Finally, the editors would like to thank Professor A. David Barry, Dean of Liberal Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Assumption College for generously defraying the costs of securing the rights to the aforementioned permissions.

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Introduction: The Enduring Relevance of Raymond Aron Bryan-Paul Frost and Daniel J. Mahoney A little over one hundred years after his birth, and not quite twenty-five years since his death, interest in Raymond Aron (1905–1983) remains vibrant. This was hardly an inevitable outcome—indeed, it would have been difficult to foresee this ongoing and even increasing appreciation of his work during his own lifetime (although a portent of it can be found in the growing public appreciation for his work in the years immediately before his death in October1983). It would not be an exaggeration to say that Aron was, at least during the coldest days of the Cold War and again during and after the revolutionary events of May 1968, a sort of intellectual exile within his native France. He was easily eclipsed in popularity first by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Louis Althusser (to name but a few of Aron’s generation) and then later by various structuralists, deconstructionists, neo-Marxists, and sundry other postmodernists. It must be added, however, that Aron remained a widely respected intellectual point of reference for moderate and conservative Frenchmen, that is, for that sizable segment of the public that never took Parisian intellectual fashions all that seriously. Neither flashy nor sensational in matters of substance, the prudent and measured positions he took on the most passionate issues of the day put him squarely outside the main currents and tastes of French intellectual life; and even when he did take the positions advocated by the Left (as in the case of Algeria), Aron often found himself criticized by both the Left and the Right, the latter because of the position he took, and the former because he took that position for the wrong reason (as when he argued that France should quit Algeria based on political and economic—rather than strictly moral—considerations). Moreover, Aron was said to be a cold, dispassionate writer who exercised (in François Mauriac’s phrase) an “icy clarity” over everything he analyzed, exorcizing any and every sort of feeling and sympathy he might have from his work. Regardless of whether, or to what extent, this might be true (and disregarding for the moment why this would not be source of praise rather than censure, especially for a political 1

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analyst), this reputation surely made Aron a less appealing or intoxicating author than the likes of Sartre, whose impassioned and fiery (but also often deeply irresponsible) rhetoric was a wellspring of inspiration for his followers, fellow travelers, and converts alike. To put all of this in Tocquevillian terms, Aron eschewed “literary politics”: He was not an artist or creator, and one will not find in his oeuvre those magnificent but fragile “cathedrals of concepts with the courage of the imagination” that the French are so often prone to contrive.1 Aron, by contrast, asked more prosaic questions and demanded more prosaic answers: He sought concrete and realistic solutions to immediate and long-range concerns, and he therefore stayed much closer to the texture, and ebb and flow, of political life as it is actually practiced and experienced, and not as a visionary might hope to transcend or transform it into some idealized image or hoped-for future. He cultivated responsibility in an age that valued commitment, however irresponsible or histrionic. Nevertheless, given the dynamics of French political and intellectual life during the Cold War, it is easy to see how it became a commonplace in fashionable gauchiste circles to say “that it is better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron”—an expression that Aron himself found unreasonable, dishonest, and scornful. So what helps to explain Aron’s continuing ascent in the eyes of the informed public (an ascent, one might add, that seems to mirror a descent in Sartre’s popularity—as Brian C. Anderson muses, after Sartre’s death in 1980, “[w]ho still took seriously The Critique of Dialectical Reason or even Being and Nothingness and Nausea?”).2 While there are likely several reasons, two in particular stand out. First, as the Cold War dragged on, it simply became harder and harder to deny—let alone to defend—the enormity of the crimes committed under the banner of communism (to its credit, France was the country where Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago had its most immediate and dramatic impact). As we have already mentioned, one could see the beginning of this transformation occur at the end of Aron’s life in the early 1980s, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly feted throughout France. Thanks in large part to an extended series of television interviews he gave to Jean-Louis Missika and Dominique Wolton (later published as Le Spectateur engagé) as well as to the publication of his Memoirs, a wider audience could see the principled and long-standing position Aron had defined and staked out against communist tyranny (as well as his reasoned and determined positions on other issues).3 In hindsight, one could then begin to see more clearly the nature of his achievement. Aron and others like him were instrumental in helping to keep France relatively sane and steady in those tumultuous postwar decades. With André Malraux, he “saved the honor of French intellectuals,” flirting as most were with some form of totalitarianism, whether of the Left or Right.4 And finally, he was just as felicitous in debunking the illusions of the Left (one thinks here of the remarkable opening three chapters of The Opium of the Intellectuals on the “Left,” “Revolution,” and the “Proletariat”) as he was in articulating a

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conservative-based democratic liberalism at a time when all things “Right” had seemed to be discredited by fascism or rendered passé by some form of leftist progressivism. Second, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the West’s unequivocal victory in the Cold War, Eastern European intellectuals (and others) began to study and translate his writings openly and in earnest (writings that had previously circulated clandestinely): Former “prisoners” of communist dictatorships could now praise a writer who genuinely understood from the earliest moments of his academic career the thought and character of Marx, Stalin, and the Soviet Union (Aron stood nearly alone in combining principled anti-communism with a serious and searching examination of Marx’s thought and texts). Of course, such intellectuals joined an already growing chorus of Western scholars who were committed to preserving and extending Aron’s legacy through their own research and writing as well as through such Aron-inspired journals as Commentaire and through associations and institutions such as the Société des Amis de Raymond Aron and the Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron in Paris. In sum, once the leftist intelligentsia began to awaken (however slowly and tentatively) from their collective hallucinations, and once those who were finally liberated from their enslavement in the socialist “utopia” were able to speak, it became nearly impossible not to recognize that Aron had been more or less correct about all the big issues of the day, and he consequently won new admirers and students from both the East and West, from “new” Europe and “old” Europe. In the felicitous phrase of Tony Judt, “Upon the funeral pyre of Sartrean radicalism a new generation of French intellectuals began to erect a monument to Aronian reason.”5 As the centennial year of Aron’s birth approached, international colloquia on Aron’s thought were held in Budapest, Rome, and Lisbon, culminating in a major conference in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales on March 11–12, 2005. The latter brought together a wide array of distinguished scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Israel, and France (and included an address by the French Prime Minister) and highlighted the continuing relevance of Aron’s model of political reasoning for reflection on “Democracy in the Twenty-First Century.” In the fall of 2005, two additional conferences on various aspects of Aron’s work were held at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Études. In addition, the two major Parisian dailies of the Left and the Right (Le Monde and Le Figaro) published a series of articles and interviews commenting on Aron’s life and discussing the continued relevance of his writings and example for a thoughtful engagement with the problems and dilemmas of the post-Cold War world. The fall of 2005 saw the publication of two impressive new collections of Aron’s writings (with a third volume, dedicated to Aron’s writings on modern society and social questions, appearing from Presses Universitaires de France at the beginning of 2006). The first collection, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, is a truly authoritative 1900-page anthology of Aron’s writings on

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politics and political philosophy (it was published as part of Gallimard’s distinguished Quarto series). These writings were selected, edited, and introduced by Aron’s biographer Nicolas Baverez.6 In assembling this volume, Baverez drew from the full range of Aron’s writings and included important but hard to find works such as L’Homme contre les tyrans (1946), the third volume of Aron’s wartime writings from La France libre; Polémiques, a remarkable collection of philosophically-informed polemics that were published the same year as the more famous The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955); and La révolution introuvable (1968), Aron’s vigorous and courageous response to the antinomianism unleashed by the “psychodrama” of 1968. These newly accessible works go a long way toward refuting the tendentious claim that Aron’s writing lacks passion and that the sober political analyst sacrificed the affective part of his personality in order to pursue the path of intellectual and political responsibility. In the aforementioned writings, Aron authoritatively confronts three manifestations of the contemporary crisis of civilization. He diagnoses the treason of the intellectuals, and defends liberal civilization against internal and external enemies with the sobriety and manly resolve that is characteristic of his work as a whole. One notable essay from L’Homme contre les tyrans explores the relationship between “Democracy and Enthusiasm.”7 Aron argues that if a civic-minded liberalism is to successfully overcome the totalitarian challenge it must learn to speak to the hearts and souls of men. The essay illustrates how Aronian liberalism limns a principled middle way between totalitarian demagoguery, on the one hand, and a narrow “economism,” on the other hand. De Giscard à Mitterrand, 1977–1983, a recently published collection of Aron’s editorials that originally appeared in the Parisian newsweekly L’Express, reveals an equally passionate defender of a liberal Europe that had increasingly lost cognizance of the collective virtù that was necessary to sustain Western civilization.8 The volume contains characteristically astute commentary on European and international politics (Aron is especially insightful about the illusions of détente) as well as numerous columns that forcefully present the case for political and economic liberalism against the French Left’s dream for a definitive rupture with capitalism, an ideological temptation given a new lease on life by the victory of François Mitterrand and “the Union of the Left” in the 1981 French presidential and parliamentary elections. The Aron who is revealed in these writings is anything but the cold, detached observer caricatured in François Mauriac’s widely cited formulation. He combines passion and observation, principle and prudence, and disinterested reflection and love of liberty in a manner that is an imitable model for humane and balanced political reflection. The following volume of essays endeavors to continue this legacy by offering a set of secondary essays on key aspects of Aron’s thought.9 Now, no single volume of essays could cover the enormity of Aron’s writings, spanning as it does sociology, political science, international relations, philosophy, and

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economics, to name only the most prominent disciplines. Therefore, we have decided to concentrate on four aspects of his thought: his educative legacy; reflections on other philosophers and intellectuals; international relations; and lastly, Aron’s own distinctive character as a political thinker. Let us briefly discuss why these areas were chosen. First, according to François Furet, Aron was perhaps “the greatest professor in the French university” by the time of his death.10 Pierre Manent’s essay on Aron’s educative legacy, first published in 1983 and reprinted in 1994, still remains one of the best overviews of his teaching as a whole, doing justice both to the full range of Aron’s writings in philosophy, strategy, politics, and sociology as well to the diverse forms those writings took in treatises, essays, lectures, and journalism. Second, Aron was deeply conversant in the history of western philosophy, broadly conceived, and he maintained a life-long and ever deepening engagement with ancient, modern, and contemporary thinkers. In an era where academic specialization is the norm, it is remarkable to see how well-read he was—particularly in those authors with whom he disagreed the most—and it is this broad training in the liberal arts that accounts, in part, for Aron’s great humanity as well as his acumen in judging the great events of the day. Third, Aron was a political analyst par excellence, and some of his most impeccable and penetrating analyses revolve around World War II and the Cold War, in particular, and international relations, in general. Whether as a journalist, theorist, or concerned citizen, Aron not only had a remarkably prescient appreciation for the character of fascism and communism but he also saw the dangers and dangerous temptations that Europe and the West faced in effectively fighting these twin menaces in the long and short term. And, finally, we conclude the volume by focusing on two books where Aron revealed more of himself than probably at any other time in his life: Le Spectateur engagé (The Committed Observer) and the Memoirs. Perhaps more than any other of his writings, these books offer a unique glimpse at what distinguishes Aron’s manner of thinking—namely, his political reasoning. And it is precisely Aron’s political reasoning that provides the underlying philosophic unity to this collection of essays as a whole. By political reason, we mean a prudential or practical reasoning that starts from and stays close to the perspective of political actors; that recognizes the unique character and autonomy of politics, political discourse, and the political arena; and that offers modest, responsible, and realistic policy recommendations as opposed to the utopian fantasies and dogmatic fanaticism so characteristic of the twentieth century. Aron’s approach to political reasoning compared the advantages and disadvantages of “social wholes” as they really are and resisted the temptation to radically remake men and societies anew. Nothing helps to clarify this approach more than two episodes Aron recounts in the Memoirs from the early 1930s. In the first, Aron explains an epiphany he had on the banks of the Rhine that helped to determine the sorts of questions he would ask for the rest of his life:

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Political Reason in the Age of Ideology I gradually grasped my two tasks: to understand or know my time as honestly as possible, without ever losing awareness of the limits of my knowledge; to detach myself from immediate events without, even so, accepting the role of spectator. Later, when I became a commentator in the daily press, my tendency to look at events from a distance, to present the world as it was, not the ways of changing it, constantly irritated many of my readers.

In the second, Aron reveals the way in which he would frame or answer those questions of “history in the making.” After expressing his concerns about political developments in Germany to an undersecretary in the French Foreign Ministry, Joseph Paganon, the undersecretary turned to him and posed this brutally simple question: “But you, who have spoken so well about Germany and the dangers appearing on the horizon, what would you do if you were in [the prime minister’s] place?” Aron continues: I do not remember my answer; I am sure that it was embarrassed, unless I kept silent. What should I have said? This lesson from a diplomat to a future commentator bore fruit. Fifteen years later, in the offices of Combat, I asked Albert Ollivier, who had criticized the government in an editorial: “What would you do in its place?” He answered, more or less: “That’s not my problem; it has to find what to do, I have to criticize.” As often as possible, I have tried to carry out my role as a commentator in an entirely different spirit, to suggest to governments what they should or could do.11

The first event reveals how Aron both tempered his commitment to know with an honest acknowledgment of his own limitations as well as insisted on philosophical detachment when analyzing the present—and not the present one wishes to come into existence but the present that actually is in existence. This is a categorical rejection of the ideological dictum that the purpose of inquiry is not to understand the world but to change it. In Aron’s view, any desire for change must first be grounded in understanding, and to do this one must be modest, detached, and truly focused on determining what is the exact character of that which one desires to change. The second event stresses that when one does decide to offer analysis or advice, one must always begin from and return to the perspective of practicing statesmen. It is relatively easy to criticize; it is of quite a different order of difficulty to supply a concrete and realistic solution. Of course, both of these episodes in Aron’s life are mutually reinforcing: It is precisely the attempt to offer advice from a genuinely political perspective that reveals the necessity of modesty, detachment, and understanding when confronting a serious problem. And it is only when such characteristics of inquiry are seriously employed that one can offer thoughtful policy alternatives. Such are the hallmarks Aron brought to nearly every event he analyzed; and while these criteria are formal, the mindset they describe—so commonsensical and yet so rarely found—is surely one of his greatest legacies and helps to explain why his work continues to be relevant today. The thematic divisions of this volume

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are intended to illuminate and exemplify this rich legacy of political reason in some of its most important manifestations.12 Let us conclude with a final note about the contributors to this volume. Although they come from a range of academic disciplines and from both North America and Europe, each one is an established scholar who has previously presented or published articles and/or books on Aron, and who is thus well-versed in his corpus. Nonetheless, as will become evident, there is obvious disagreement among the contributors as to what Aron’s thought actually was on a particular issue, and whether, or the extent to which, he was correct in his assessment. In our minds, nothing attests better to Aron’s legacy of non-dogmatic reasoning: Aron never cultivated disciples, and he always maintained that there was no such thing as an “Aronian” school of thought. Notwithstanding various disagreements, there is one thing on which all the contributors and editors agree—namely, the continuing importance of studying his sundry reflections and of encouraging a new generation of students and citizens to do the same. Notes 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

See Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848, eds. J. P. Mayer and A. P. Kerr, trans. George Lawrence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1987), Pt. II, chap. 1, 61–68, and esp. 67, as well as Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 456–57. Brian C. Anderson, “The Absolute Intellectual” (a review of Bernard-Henri Lévy, Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century), Policy Review 123 (February/ March 2004): 89. Le Spectateur engagé was later translated and published in English as Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, trans. James and Marie McIntosh, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997). See Nicolas Baverez and Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron: Political Liberalism, Civic Passion, and Impartial Judgement,” Society 41 (March/April 2004): 19. Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 137. Indeed, so widespread is the respect for Aron in his native France today that a postage stamp was recently released honoring the centenary of his birth. But it should be noted that much of this respect is perfunctory among intellectual elites, especially on the Left, who remain mesmerized by the spirit of 1968, and who increasingly reduce the political problem to one of managing the endless expansion of individual and collective rights. If Aron now has his place at the French intellectual table, it cannot be said that the critical mass of French intellectuals has learned to think politically. As Pierre Manent points out (Le Monde, December 3, 2005), despite Aron’s growing influence in France, that country remains “effectively the only country where ‘liberal’ has become an insult.” Raymond Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, préface de Nicolas Baverez (Paris: Gallimard, 2005). Aron, Penser, 359–71. Raymond Aron, De Giscard à Mitterrand, 1977–1983, préface de Jean-Claude Casanova (Paris: Fallois, 2005).

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Given that interest in Aron remains strong, one might expect that such a volume would have to wade into a crowded, if not saturated, field of similar such books. Surprisingly, this is not at all the case: There are very few collections of scholarly articles that are dedicated to exploring and explicating his writings as a whole. One recent exception is Raymond Aron et la liberté politique, eds. Christian Bachelier and Elisabeth Dutartre (Paris: Fallois, 2002), a collection of essays from European and American scholars based upon an international colloquium on Aron’s thought held in Budapest in October 2000. While this fine volume of essays discusses a wide range of Aron’s writings and interests, it remains untranslated to date and is therefore less likely to be accessible to an English-speaking audience. 10. François Furet, “La rencontre d’une idée et d’une vie,” in Raymond Aron 1905–1983: Textes, études, et témoignages (Paris: Julliard, 1985), 52. 11. Aron, Memoirs, 39–42. 12. This emphasis on political reason might at first glance seem unwarranted, especially if one considers the fact that Aron was a professor of sociology, was highly competent in economics, was familiar with anthropology and psychology, and so on. Would it not be more accurate to suggest that his political reasoning was only one aspect of a multifaceted thinker? Perhaps the best refutation of this claim is to be found in Allan Bloom’s eulogy of Aron (Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990], 260–61), where he accurately highlights the centrality of politics in all of Aron’s thought. “Politics as a distinctive dimension of human life, not to speak of its being the most important one, has become extremely doubtful. It has been reduced or swallowed up by other disciplines which explain it away. Economics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology, among others, claim primacy over political science. Modern abstract notions like the market, culture, society, or the unconscious take the place of the political regime as the prime cause of what counts for human beings. Older views either denied the real existence of such things as cultures or claimed that the political is their central cause rather than their effect. Aron, honest man that he was, took every academic claim seriously, but he obviously yawned when anthropologists presented their interpretations of things because those interpretations are so far removed from the common sense of life and because they ask us to concentrate on things like art styles, when freedom and peace are what we really should care about. Economists attracted his attention, but only to the extent that their theories are related to the real lives of nations and help to explain freedom or its opposite. He could never believe that the economic model of man exhausted man or that economic interest is the only kind of interest. He was in the tradition of political economy and understood Adam Smith better than did the economists who cut their science loose from its political moorings. He loved history but real history, that is political history, and he yawned, against his will, at economic, social, and intellectual history, just as he yawned at cultural anthropology. He called himself a sociologist, but it was political sociology if it was anything.”

Part One Aron’s Educative Legacy

Raymond Aron—Political Educator

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1 Raymond Aron—Political Educator Pierre Manent Among the features that might characterize the twentieth century—the one which begins in 1914—at least three are indisputable: (1) in the political field, wars and revolutions which seem to defy all reason by the discrepancy between the mediocrity of men and the scope of the events, by the duration of their destructive momentum which no longer seems to be controlled by any rational intent, sometimes even by the active presence of some malignant will which becomes an end in and of itself; (2) in the intellectual sphere, the separation of intellectual activity into varied disciplines which no longer have any necessary relation to each other, a specialization built upon the authority of that which we call science, however destructive of the organizing and integrating capacity of the human spirit; and (3) finally in the spiritual realm, the sway of a temptation, that of bidding adieu to reason. Martin Heidegger, the greatest philosopher of the century, who for some years lent his authority to the National Socialist movement and who, disdaining any retractatio, ceaselessly denounced reason as “the most relentless enemy of thought,” bears witness to this temptation with emblematic clarity. When the last great representative of German philosophical thought makes an alliance with Acheron, when the communist movement in the name of the realization and the consummation of the Enlightenment restores the witch trials, how can one maintain one’s reason? How can one protect the human city? It is an instructive paradox that in the upheaval caused by his contact with a Germany toppling into darkness, a French Jew, faithful to the tradition of the Enlightenment, found the impetus and resources to confront the danger. The German experience protected Raymond Aron—although one had to be permeable to its lesson—from the liberal naïveté so widespread in France. By revealing the dependence of political events upon the adventures of the mind, it also saved him from the traditionalist and empiricist complacency to which 11

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an old civic culture such as the Anglo-Saxon tends; in this particular case the German experience revived the Cartesian élan: the mind is not free as long as it is incapable of unraveling the long chain of motives that underlie events. With apparent effortlessness, Raymond Aron has maintained these three loyalties, tempered and enlightened by each other, to the German philosophic ambition, to the French intransigence and clarity and to the Anglo-Saxon civic spirit: this marks the breadth of his soul as well as the vivacity of his mind. The Stages of a Life Born in 1905 of an assimilated Jewish family from Lorraine, Raymond Aron received the education and followed the same academic curriculum as a number of “good students” who were to become famous after World War II: the École Normale Supérieure (1924–1928), where he would meet Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Nizan; his philosophy “agrégation” (1928); his stay in Germany (Cologne in 1930–1931; Berlin from 1931 to 1933). This visit led Aron to break with the dominant ideas of the academic circle of which he was a part in Paris. In this circle the two main personalities were Léon Brunschvicg and Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier). The former, a distinguished mind, retraced the history of Western philosophy and read therein the growing progress of rationality which he identified with science. He tended to consider that henceforth the task of philosophy was but to comment on the results and above all the procedures of science; he was hardly interested in politics. The second personality, an entrancing teacher, cruelly marked by his experience in World War I, developed anti-authoritarian political considerations, inviting citizens to always beware of the powers-that-be, to whom they owed obedience but never respect. Brunschvicg’s political insensitivity and Alain’s summary and literary politics did not help Aron to understand what was happening before his eyes on the other side of the Rhine. Other efforts were required to understand history and politics; other methods, another kind of knowledge than that with which university philosophers and partisan essayists contented themselves. To be sure, French sociology—the disciples of Émile Durkheim—was not lacking in either knowledge or method; however, it seems to have nothing to say about the political events which it disdained, those political events which the Russian Revolution had glaringly shown determined the fate of men. And now, here was Raymond Aron in Germany who would read a good number of authors who, to differing degrees, asked the same questions as the questions which the French ignored: what does it mean to understand a historic event? Can the historian achieve objectivity? What method is adapted to the understanding of the political and historical universe? What is the relationship between the actor and the spectator in history? Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber were the two greatest thinkers to deal with these questions. Aron was above all fascinated by Weber. Above and beyond his incomparable erudition, his penetrating historical insights, the fecundity of his methodologi-

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cal propositions, the Stimmung of the German sociologist won him over: the existence simultaneously of the most rigorous scientific ideal and the most acute awareness of the tragic nature of history, tragic because it obliged human liberty to choose between causes when reason itself could not. Weber’s influence on Aron, regularly remarked upon by commentators and recognized by Aron himself, is all the more worthy of our consideration precisely since the general tone of the two works is so different. Weber’s vehement and movingly overcharged writing contrasts with Aron’s extreme sobriety of tone. The latter never adopted in either style or thought the Nietzschean mood that was so evident in the work of the German sociologist. If Aron never systematically developed his criticism of the Weberian philosophy or method, this criticism can be found and is nonetheless clear for its being implicit, in this stylistic difference: if, in order to remain faithful to the scientific ideal, we must renounce transcendental religions, then why conserve the pathos with which for ages the faithful described “the misery of man without God”?1 If scientific knowledge is today our only recourse, then why highlight the contradictions of life and science, dramatization which can only hinder the salutary influence of this knowledge upon action? In any case, if this reception, renewal and correction of Max Weber had decisive consequences on Aron’s own itinerary, its consequences on the destiny of Weber’s thought were also not negligible. It was largely due to Aron that readers were prevented from becoming obsessed by Weberian Nietzscheanism and expressionism, and that the knowledgeable and perceptive sociologist was not eclipsed by the Machtpolitiker. In some way, it is in part thanks to the Aronian renewal—Aron’s interpretation of Weber as well as Aron’s own personal work—that Max Weber owes his healthiest posterity in European sociology. Indelibly marked by his encounter with Max Weber, Raymond Aron, back in France, wrote his “thèse d’État,” which he defended in 1938 and published the same year under the title Introduction à la Philosophie de I’Histoire. The occasion was an intellectual event; the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale gave an account of the defense. Henri-Irénée Marrou said later that Aron’s stay in Germany was an important moment for French intellectual history because it contributed substantially, by the intermediary of the dissertation, to the weakening of the then dominant historical and sociological positivism. Besides, the members of the jury—in particular the philosopher Léon Brunschvicg and the sociologists Célistin Bouglé and Paul Fauçonnet—were themselves in one form or another, marked by this positivism. Therefore, while admiring Aron’s intellectual performance, they remained uncertain—uncomfortable would perhaps be the better word—with regard to the implications and the significance of the Aronian thesis. Perhaps the tone of this work—its “pathos” as Aron would refer to it later on with some severity—was influenced by the proximity of the war, the threat of which had been looming since 1933. A few months after the defense of his

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dissertation, the war broke out. After the defeat, Aron reached London and joined up with the Free French Forces. For four years he was editor in chief of the magazine La France Libre. Although he participated in this way in the effort to keep French culture alive outside of France, he refused to approve all facets of General de Gaulle’s policy and in particular his claim to being the sole incarnation of national legitimacy. At least up until the Anglo-American debarkation in North Africa he regretted that Gaullist propaganda indiscriminately labeled traitor everyone who obeyed Marshal Pétain. He also regretted that for the head of Free France the intransigent affirmation of French identity and independence—as necessary as it was—required excessively aggressive behavior with regard to our allies. It is from this period on that the convictions—both moral and political—that were to govern Aron’s political conduct and writings after the war appear: his reticence with regard to all behavior that tends to increase divisions between French men and women, divisions to which the French themselves are only too prone; a rejection of partisan propagandists who pretend to have a monopoly over patriotism; a reserve with regard to those political procedures inspired by nineteenth-century national or nationalistic Machtpolitik, a reserve tempered by the still acute awareness that questions of power and diplomatic independence are always essential to the life of a nation. After the war, Raymond Aron went back to France and turned to journalism, refusing the sociology chair offered him by the University of Bordeaux. He was an editorialist at Combat (1946–1947), then at the Figaro (he was to remain there for thirty years, until 1977). In 1946 his friendly relations with Jean-Paul Sartre were broken off for political reasons, Sartre tending to become more and more a communist “fellow-traveler,” while Aron became the sharpest critic of the Soviet regime and of the favor or at least indulgence with which many intellectuals treated it. He developed his arguments on the subject in “The” Opium of the Intellectuals (1955). His well-argued criticism of “sacred words” or of “myths”—Left, Revolution, Proletariat—his detailed analysis and comparison of the status of intellectuals in modern societies and the peculiarities of their history in France, make this book one of the most significant political works that have appeared in France and in Europe since the war. His main target was not so much the communists, who refused on principle any debate with the “bourgeoisie,” as the “progressives.” The “progressives” were at the time full of severity for the least defects of the Western democracies and mobilized all their resources of subtlety to throw a veil over the worst crimes of the communists, in order to maintain the myth that despite everything the proletariat was destined to regenerate our old societies, and finally to establish the recognition of all for one and one for all. In fact, even in this book, Aron was less concerned with attacking the ideals of the left (which were and have remained his own to a certain degree) as their perversion. He analyzes how noble ideals have become destructive myths, by virtue of what ignorance, mental confusion, and emotional thinking such highly gifted minds as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty

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were capable—at least for a time—of making themselves the spokesmen for such a summary pro-communism, albeit draped and variegated in a Hegelian trompe d’oeil. That same year, 1955, without giving up journalism, Raymond Aron took up his university career again. He was elected to the sociology chair of the Sorbonne. His courses, soon published, were rapidly considered classics of contemporary sociology: Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society (1967); La lutte de classes (1964); Democracy and Totalitarianism (1965); Main Currents in Sociological Thought (1968 and 1970). This last work, a series of historical and intellectual portraits of the great figures of sociology—Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Pareto, Weber—played a particularly important role in expanding the memory of French sociologists. The Comtean-Durkheimian tradition—full of merits but also limits due above all to its disdain for the political field—is stripped of its founder’s monopoly. At the two chronological extremes, the chapters on Montesquieu and Weber link the sociological point of view with the philosophical. At the center, the chapter on Tocqueville, which rehabilitates or rather establishes the French politician as a first rank sociologist, demonstrates that the sociological point of view in no way necessarily prevents an attentive consideration of political phenomena, or conversely, that the belief that political phenomena are of decisive importance does not oblige one to renounce established sociological truths. The chapter of Main Currents in Sociological Thought devoted to Tocqueville, in addition to the analyses devoted two years earlier to the Tocquevillian conception of liberty in Essai sur les libertés (1965) played an important part in the rediscovery of the importance of Tocqueville for the understanding of democratic societies. Then, toward the end of the ’60s, when opinion and society seemed to be heading in the direction of “an end to ideologies,” at least toward an appeasement of ideological tensions, and when Raymond Aron was on the verge of receiving in France the recognition that he had never lacked in the Anglo-Saxon world or in Germany, the “events of May ’68” forced him on the opposite side of what was then the dominant opinion in French intellectual circles. In The Elusive Revolution (1969), he sharply attacked the student revolt. He who had been one of the French University’s keenest critics found himself its most eloquent defender, faced with reformers whose slogans—No to selection, Student participation on exam juries, etc.—seemed to him to mean the end of any authentic university. More generally, Raymond Aron was repelled by the circus atmosphere of May ’68, and also by its imitative quality: Paris tearing up its cobblestones was a replay of the great scenes of the nineteenth century, that of 1830 or 1848, without the excuse of misery or of an oppressive regime. Aron’s very strong reaction to the events of ’68 surprised, irritated, sometimes upset academics and intellectuals who were close to him in France or abroad. Perhaps it discouraged him to see that France, finally endowed since 1958 with solid institutions and having finally succeeded in modernizing its economy, therefore

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having overcome, it seemed, its main handicaps, was still so fragile that a few student riots could unleash a major crisis such as would endanger the republic itself. The threat that a Cohn-Bendit could overthrow General de Gaulle incurred the wrath of Aron. Those whose serenity was not troubled by this perspective, those who were even enthusiastic at the idea may doubtlessly reproach him. We shall not forget, however, that according to classical philosophy, anger duly tempered by reason is a passion becoming the good citizen. After 1968, we are witness to a bitter reideologization of some French intellectuals: dogmatic Marxist-Leninism inspired by the teachings and works of Louis Althusser saw its apogee. Aron wrote D’une sainte famille à l’autre: Essai sur les marxismes imaginaire (1969), in opposition to the latter and also to criticize Sartre whose “group in fusion” described in Critique de la raison dialectique had found some following in the fervor of the events. Curiously enough, we can date the end of the great ideological debate in France to this book. Of course not that this powerfully and brilliantly argued work had convinced his adversaries or even that the latter had bothered to discuss it. But it is the last time that an important text took note of the polarization of the French intellectual community into two irreconcilable camps, not only on the basis of a profound political disagreement but even more because their intellectual approaches were themselves incompatible. To be more precise, it is the last time that Aron would try in a critical fashion to enable these two different worlds to communicate with each other (for thirty years he was virtually the only one to try to fulfill this task of intellectual clarity and civic conversation). In the years that followed, the Marxist-Leninist camp of the top intelligentsia fell apart. For thirty years Aron had made his objections and offered his arguments with no other response most of the time than silent disdain or vehement invective. At the close of the battle, the adversary abandoned everything, arms and baggage; he would shortly reproach Raymond Aron with having spent too long a time stating the obvious. It was a famous victory. After 1969, leaving all polemics aside, Raymond Aron undertook a major work on the strategic thought of Clausewitz and on his posthumous destiny. It was in 1976 that he published the two volumes of his monumental Penser la guerre, Clausewitz that is generally considered his masterpiece. In 1970 he had been elected Professor at the Collège de France from which he retired in 1979. From 1977 until his death in October 1983 he was the President of the Editorial Committee of the weekly magazine L’Express. The Philosopher This brief biographical outline suggests the variety and amplitude of Raymond Aron’s accomplishments. Few men of this century have been able like him to overcome the institutional conditions and the prevalent ways of thinking which almost inevitably push academics and scientists toward specialization. He can be equally felicitous and equally authoritative whether speaking with

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the philosopher or the statesman, the strategist or the economist. Nothing is as necessary to the vitality and even the survival of the public spirit in modern societies as the presence in their midst of such whole men. They ensure the communication between the different ruling elements or authorized groups which, each according to its own goals and methods, orient the fate of the political body. It is on this condition alone that democracies can mitigate the disintegrating effects of the excessive division of labor; on this condition alone that the art of politics can maintain its primary architectonic role. When the same mind is capable of such varied accomplishments, one question naturally arises: do the different facets of his activity—philosophy, international relations, strategy, sociology, journalism—represent expressions of what is basically one world conception? Or, to be more precise, if we consider the intellectual biography of Raymond Aron, what is the meaning of his break with pure philosophy which comes after World War II? We must keep in mind the subtitle of his 1938 thesis: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity. This work is a detailed study of the historic condition of man. The procedure is analytic. Aron does not describe the historic condition of man as the original event starting with and in the light of which everything that makes man should be understood. He doesn’t seek to penetrate as such the enigmatic relationship that links man’s humanity to Being and the question of Being to that of Time as Heidegger attempted to do in Being and Time. He describes, classifies and articulates the various fields of human existence in which man finds himself by his essence in direct or indirect relation with Time; so he surveys the several modes by which Time is experienced and known: from the knowledge of oneself to knowledge of others, from the various spiritual universes in which the individual has his place to the plurality of perspectives which are offered to him, as actor and as spectator, as private man, citizen, or historian. It is in order to be faithful to this plurality of human historicity that Aron sharply criticizes the two great strategies that have been adopted in modern times to neutralize the awareness of the paradoxes of historicity: on the one hand evolutionary determinism, and on the other, historical relativism. These two great types of doctrine appear to contradict each other: the first makes man the lord of time thanks to knowledge; the second makes him the plaything of time, by subordinating human experience and knowledge to the constantly new and unpredictable dispensations brought on or rendered possible by circumstances of time and place. In fact, both equally eliminate the unique character of man’s historic condition and its specific tragedy which resides precisely in the fact that man is neither the master nor the plaything of time. Therefore Aron tries to maintain the heterogeneity of the fields of Being and of the spiritual universes: each one must be taken on its own terms. For example, time, which is a succession of living species in the various theories of evolution, cannot be thought of in the same breath as truly historic time in which man accomplishes his deeds and creates his works. Similarly Aron upholds

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philosophy’s claim that it cannot legitimately be deduced from something other than itself, which “in the last analysis” would have a molding or determining effect upon it: history, whether it refers specifically to “history of the relations of production” or “history of civilization” or “history of science” cannot be a substitute for philosophy. The following quote indicates Aron’s basic thinking on this matter, with its ambiguity: “The possibility of a philosophy of history finally merges with the possibility of a philosophy in spite of history….” Such a formula characteristically ignores a third possibility, the Hegelian possibility, that the culmination of history and the culmination of philosophy are one and the same, and thus that all history can be reconciled with all philosophy. In fact, Hegel is almost absent from this book (or he is present only through Marx’s mediation), while Rickert, Simmel, Weber, Bergson, and Comte are analyzed, often in detail. History and Philosophy therefore in Aron’s thesis have a relationship that is at once ambiguous, novel and enigmatic; this is the most important point to clarify if we are to understand the later works of Aron. One might perhaps state the following: Aron’s thesis gives too much weight to historicism—to the idea that man is essentially a historic being who fashions himself and determines himself within history—to admit as classical philosophy did a theory of man’s nature and condition sub specie aeternitatis; on the other hand, it retains too much of the traditional conception, of philosophy—as the elaboration of universal articulations of the human experience—to succumb to the seduction of either relativism or of the historic totality, Hegelian or Marxist. Aron, while refusing both a philosophy which would abolish history and a theory of history which would abolish philosophy, tries to delimit and mark the intermediary terrain defined by the insurmountable distance between philosophy and history. Herein lies that which one might call his Kantianism: indeed, reason provides us with “regulatory ideas” to orient us within history and in one way to judge history; however, even if one is allowed to hope that humanity will in the future conform more readily to the requirements of reason, we cannot conceive of history as being the history of the triumph of reason. Between the universal which concerns philosophy and the particular in which real man is immersed, stretches a territory that one might call philosophically neutral. The Aronian attitude is best defined perhaps by the refusal to succumb to two spells: on the one hand, the spell of the philosophic quest which aims for the universal, to attain the Unconditioned; on the other, the spell of historic idolatry which sees in a particular people or class or historic moment the incarnation of the universal. We will limit ourselves to one remark, suggested by the comments of Gaston Fessard, on the difficulty of maintaining oneself on this neutral territory. In a striking passage from his thesis, Raymond Aron writes that there is no history of religion either for the believer or for the unbeliever: for the believer who by an act of faith adheres to the eternal, there is no history; for the unbeliever, there is no transcendent order. This perceptive remark certainly points to one

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of the major difficulties of that which we call the “social sciences.” However, to confine oneself to this alternative without taking sides for one or the other of the terms, or without suggesting a procedure that would enable one eventually to overcome or to circumvent this alternative, Aron’s critical philosophy of history seems condemned to say nothing concerning the great religious phenomena which have contributed in such a large way to the fashioning of our history. Might the critical philosophy of history, by methodological rigor, necessarily tend to dissolve the very subject matter of its inquiry? Raymond Aron would answer probably that this objection does not take sufficiently into account the limits of reason, “the limits of historical objectivity”: if reason can say nothing concerning the truth— total, partial or non-existent—of such revealed religion, for example, the philosopher can but take note of this fact; but this negative acknowledgment is nevertheless not empty or sterile since therein we can see one of the contradictions inherent in the human condition, that between reason and revelation. It would only be empty and sterile if we conceive of reason as a faculty or power which would by right extend its jurisdiction over the totality of the natural and human world: in this case, indeed, the incapacity of reason to tell us anything about religious phenomena as such would be a radical failure which would shed doubt upon the definition of man as a rational animal. But if reason is conceived of as a human faculty, that is to say finite, incapable of giving us access to the ultimate cause of things or of enabling us to seize the totality of history, then the recognition of its limits in no way takes away from its authority within those limits: to live according to reason remains the specifically and eminently human task, that in which man recognizes simultaneously his excellence and his finiteness. These remarks help us to understand why, in the later career of Raymond Aron, philosophy in the more restricted and academic sense of the term gets relegated to the background. Events, institutions, societies must be confronted and understood on their own terms and not on the basis of a philosophy of history, which, exceeding the limits of reason, would eliminate their contingency and dissolve their individuality. To understand events on their own terms is to understand the intentions and the deeds of the historic actors; and one cannot understand these intentions and deeds unless we envisage them first of all as the actors themselves have done. There is a density and an intelligibility inherent in historic events that the interpreter, philosopher or historian cannot reduce to a set of historic or sociological “laws” without annulling precisely this particular density and intelligibility. The historian’s interest in a particular event or period—interest determined or influenced from the start by a multitude of factors: a certain something in the air, one’s own personal political passions, scientific ideal…—is made possible by the interest that the actors themselves have shown in the events. This is why historical narrative, such as the finished model that Thucydides left us, holds an irreducible validity and dignity for Aron: “The passage from the individual act to the supra-individual event is

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accomplished through the narrative, without breaking the continuity, without substituting general propositions to the reconstitution of the facts, by the sole confrontation of what the actors wanted and what actually happened” (Thucydide et le recit historique, in Dimensions de la conscience historique, 1961). The intelligibility of history is first of all the intelligibility of the actions of the actors. The reflection on the Thucydidean narrative serves as the link in Aron’s development between the critique of historical reason on the one hand, and the analysis of strategic problems and commentary upon events on the other. Aron’s philosophic work as such has not received, at least until recent years, the attention that it merits. For France, the reasons are easy to comprehend. The long rupture caused by the war and by the occupation had dislocated intellectual customs and communications. Minds eager for a future that would in no way resemble the past, turned away from the works and men of the prewar period: we have only to think of Bergson’s near-disappearance from the French consciousness after 1945. Aron himself confirmed this break by not returning to the University and by adopting a mode of expression, journalism, quite distant from the philosophic genre; more important still, Aron most often does not relate even his non-journalistic postwar works to his previous philosophic reflection. Finally, it must be said, without presuming to pass judgment on the authors that benefited from it, that French philosophy entered into a period where fashion, stardom and confusion between philosophic rigor and literary amenities seriously compromised its working conditions. Merleau-Ponty and above all Sartre were the main beneficiaries of this state of mind. Of course, it was legitimate that the merits of Sartre as a writer, as a psychologist, and as a philosopher were generally recognized. But one cannot help but think that in the person of Sartre, France, perhaps for the last time, offered itself the royal luxury of having a favorite, something it had since the eighteenth century loved to offer itself. Actually, between Being and Nothingness and The Introduction to the Philosophy of History, there were numerous affinities, due to the common philosophic training of the two authors, due also to their conversations at the École Normale. If Sartre’s book was more directed at one’s sensitivity and imagination, if it had a more moving eloquence, Aron’s book was more rigorous, more balanced, and above all lent itself to developments and in-depth studies that the Sartrian mode of expression, always peremptory, always definitive, always absolute, forbade. However that may be, Raymond Aron had to pay this price—to renounce his philosophic work already in progress—in order to become what he was, in order that past philosophic works and possible philosophic work—the possible is not the unreal—be refracted in a thousand elusive but effective ways in his understanding. This, in order that one of the most intelligent young men that had become that which French culture, which is not a civic culture, does not willingly produce and recognizes with great reticence, that is to say, a public man who speaks with authority and competence about matters of the city, a man

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whose eloquence is capable of teaching the public as it is of holding the ear of Princes and Consuls, a man whose sovereign reason captures the essence of each situation, in order that he become that which the Romans called—a word whose full measure we no longer comprehend—an orator. The Strategist It is perhaps in his works on strategic problems and on war that the first philosophic research by Aron found its most explicit and fecund refraction. War is diametrically opposed to the moral imperative of the Kantian philosopher, and at the same time, it can in no way be ignored by the political thinker. The ought and the is are here clearly and cruelly differentiated by reality itself. Moreover, it is in the strategic decisions that the role of actor and the role of reason in the deeds of this actor are given center stage. The approach of a strategist is or wishes to be purely rational, while the outcome of this approach is fundamentally uncertain. This high exercise of reason is not a science; the “limits of historic objectivity” are the very condition for action and dictate its urgency. The undertaking which fascinates Aron is precisely to try to reach this extreme and paradoxical point where reason is at its highest degree of power and at the same time fragility. By his essays devoted to the problems of nuclear strategy, The Century of Total War (1954) and The Great Debate (1963), Raymond Aron initiated his readers—and perhaps military and political leaders—to the niceties and paradoxes of the American theories of deterrence. But perhaps unlike many authors of strategy, he has always been particularly sensitive to the extremely abstract nature of these theories, to their dependence upon summary and questionable psychological hypotheses and to general political conditions as well. From his first strategic essays, and even before having delved into the study of Clausewitz, Aron always underlined the importance of political matters in the elaboration of a judicious strategic discourse. Peace and War (1966) is a general survey, which tries to situate the problems of war, peace and strategy in a theory of international relations. But Aron, always acutely aware of the irreducible nature of action, notices that there cannot be a general theory of international relations comparable to the general theory of economy. In this work, full of historical examples, he analyzes the meaning of diplomatic conduct, brings out fundamental notions, specifies the variables which one must examine in order to understand a diplomatic constellation. He does not try to construct a closed system. If Penser la guerre, Clausewitz is generally considered Raymond Aron’s masterpiece, it is no doubt because the work is an expression of his diverse intellectual and human interests. First of all, the profound familiarity and love of Aron for the German language and culture. One of the tasks to which he dedicated himself was the bringing together of France and Germany. What could be more paradoxically moving than this encounter with the enemy of Napoleon,

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who hated the French, and who nevertheless knew how to silence his prejudices and passions when it was a question of understanding and of making understood the strategic genius of Napoleon, the “god of war”? In one sense isn’t Aron to Clausewitz what Clausewitz is to Napoleon? How can one not be but touched by the personality of this period as well? Brutal of course—and preparing by its mass mobilizations for the total wars of the twentieth century—but still conserving, even in the relationships between enemies, a humanity which will be lost in our century. One of Clausewitz’s moving charms, as Aron recreates him, is to have combined the coldest realism with the élans and enthusiasm of German idealism. Aron, who of all authors is the least disposed to nostalgia, paints this period not only knowledgeably but con amore: one could legitimately say Das ist ein Mensch of many great actors and in every camp. All his readers have noted with what respect, with what affectionate delicacy Aron painted the portrait of the Prussian general, emphasizing the tormented aspect of his soul: living amidst the aristocracy but in a precarious situation, esteemed but not recognized for his true merits, ambitious and oversensitive, always carrying with him the unrealized desire for a more brilliant destiny. Throughout his analysis of the greatest strategic author, Aron brings to life the human qualities of these imperious and tender souls; in his meditations upon the first great modern European war, Aron has brought his own humanity to bear: grasping the most sensitive point, the sorest point of the common history of these two countries when the logic of hatred which would humiliate both of them each in its turn is set off, he has enlarged the common memory of France and of Germany; he has enriched and humanized the memory of Europe. In the speculative field, that which interests Aron is the theory of action, of which military action is but an eminent example. How to think action which is itself incertitude? How to think that which is not real but possible because it depends upon human choice? Returning to the problem of the Introduction and of his work on Max Weber, he asks himself what kind of theory will enable us to understand and shed light upon action without falling into doctrinairism which dissolves the incertitude and therefore the liberty of action in a false necessity or rationality but without admitting either that the world of action is pure confusion unamenable to reason. Just as in the Introduction Aron looks for a via media between evolutionary dogmatism and historicist relativism, in Clausewitz he searches for a via media between doctrinairism and empiricism; in short, he wishes to reconquer the field of practical philosophy or of practical reason, not by a return to the Aristotelian doctrine but by using the conceptual tools forged by those authors whom we might situate on the frontier between philosophy and social science, such as Montesquieu or Max Weber. Perhaps the work on Clausewitz allows us to understand why Aron did not write the book on Machiavelli which he had intended to write for a long time, nor the synthesis on Marx that has been asked of him for a generation, nor has he followed up the parallel between Machiavelli and Marx that he, himself,

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sketched out. Between the Italian patriot who exalts the founding prince, ex nihilo, of the ordini nuovi and the German doctrinairian who with jubilant indignation unravels cruel historic necessity, Clausewitz embodies the golden mean capable of harmonizing judiciously constraints and liberty of action. The “strange trinity” of war according to Clausewitz—the People’s passions, the free activity of the soul of the war Chief, the sovereign and regulatory understanding of the political Chief—is this not the emblematic of man’s political condition, of the conditions for human action in the political world? Aron establishes with faultless erudition how Clausewitz, far from being the prophet of absolute war, of the rise to extremes, of the militarization of politics, is, on the contrary, always careful to show that military objectives—victory first of all—only have meaning in relation to political goals; he shows in particular that this is the sense of the all-too-famous formula: “War is the continuation of politics by other means,” a formula so often interpreted the other way round. The idea of absolute war, the rise to extremes, the unconditional victory belong to the concept of war as a duel of wills, but this concept of war does not presume to reflect reality nor still less tell us what war should be; it condenses the logic implicit in all war, logic which is modified, sometimes considerably, by the circumstances, and more essentially by the influence of political objectives, by the rationality of political understanding. The second volume of Clausewitz is composed of two parts. The first part—“Prosecutor or defendant?”—is an interrogation on the destiny and posthumous influence of Clausewitz. In particular Aron examines the influence of his teachings on the Schlieffen Plan and on the military leaders of World War I such as Foch or Ludendorff; he then considers the use to which Lenin and later Mao Zedong put Clausewitz’s Treatise. To different degrees and for sometimes opposite reasons, all these men more or less misunderstood Clausewitz rather than enriched him. The fresco painted by Aron offers us the dismemberment of the Prussian strategist’s “trinity”: while Western doctrine and military practice give precedence to freedom of activity of the war Chief, Maoist ideology and practice emphasize the People, while the Soviets tend to accentuate unilaterally the primacy of understanding and of political objectives. In spite of its unilateral nature and ideological trappings which have nothing to do with Clausewitz’s thinking, the Soviet strategic doctrine retains with good sense in any case a central aspect of the Treatise, which Westerners have a tendency to forget. The elaboration of Clausewitz’s true thinking enables Aron to reclaim our true possession from the Soviets, a balanced strategic doctrine which they engross, mutilate and use to their own ends. The second part of the second volume—“The Nuclear Age, The Wager with Reason”—is an analysis of international relations in the nuclear age, an indepth reflection, nourished by events, on the problems of deterrence, the wars of national liberation, the new nature of revolutionary violence. Throughout this part, Aron shows himself to be very sensitive to a radical difference which

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distinguishes strategic reflection after Hiroshima from strategic reflection in the time of Clausewitz. The Napoleonic wars, however bloody they were, did not however undo the fabric of common humanity. The threat of nuclear annihilation abolishes that part of humanity which in those days remained in reflections upon war and in war itself: “Today whoever contemplates wars and strategy raises a barrier between his intelligence and his humanity.” And yet, in this book, and this is perhaps its greatest virtue as a book to educate, the reader always encounters intelligence and humanity together. But humanity is present—as it is in all of Aron’s work—with a sobriety, a reserve which sometimes renders it imperceptible to our contemporaries, used as they are to the stridency of fine sentiments. This is why, reading Aron, the reader will recall more than once Thucydides whose tranquil courage, free as he was of illusion, always discerns in the most inhuman constraints the play of liberty, the human element. The Sociologist The sociological analyses of Raymond Aron have become part of our pluralistic societies’ awareness of themselves. He is reproached, in France particularly, with being essentially critical, in such a way that he would leave us without guidelines, without landmarks to help us construct a better society. In fact, in conformity with the neutral philosophic position that was described above, Aron at no moment offers us a model for the good society or for the best regime. Nor does he offer a doctrine describing and elaborating the principles according to which the good society should be constructed and with reference to which consequently all existing societies could and should be judged. Aron’s point of departure is what our societies say about themselves, the ideals which they profess, principally liberty and equality. Then he analyzes the meaning or meanings of each of these ideals and how these ideals may agree or conflict, in which context their conflict is inevitable. One will find a remarkable example of this procedure in An Essay on Freedom (1970). Such a procedure is necessary according to him in order to understand the societies in which we live; moreover, it moderates the exaggerated hopes born of the illusion of being able to multiply in all circumstances the advantages of liberty by those of equality. One must beware of this illusion because it risks causing undertakings which endanger both liberty and equality. More basically, if we keep in mind his Kantian background, we can say that this type of analysis is an inquiry into the antinomies of the human condition. Assuredly, Aron never questions the ultimate value of these ideals themselves; more generally, he never questions the ultimate value of modern ideals (which include not only equality and liberty, but also, for example, technical progress and industrialization). But by virtue of his philosophic point of view it cannot be otherwise: if he does not believe that the history of the world is the “tribunal of the world,” neither does he think that it is possible to find an ultimate criterion

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for judgment outside of or above history, unless it be in the moral conscience of the individual who, in a given situation, can, and sometimes must, prefer what ought to be to what is. In certain circumstances, one can but say—it is an expression that Aron loves to quote—as Luther said to the Diet of Worms: Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. But this contingent encounter between a situation and a duty cannot be formalized and generalized into a doctrine of the True and the Good which would, so to speak, bypass the contingencies and the constraints of history. The advantages of such a philosophic position can be seen in the works that Aron devoted to modern societies and political regimes: Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society; La lutte de classes; Democracy and Totalitarianism. That which the public has above all retained from these books is the importance Aron gives to the notion of industrial society. This notion englobes as one genre two political species: liberal-capitalist regimes on the one hand, and totalitariancommunist regimes on the other. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, Aron sees the same constraints imposed and the same aspirations expressed: the scientific organization of work, the necessity to invest, the desire to increase productivity, etc. Beyond Marx, he renews the Saint-Simonian vision: modern societies are specifically characterized by the application of science to the exploitation of nature, by industrialism. Accordingly, at least in the Eighteen Lectures, Aron tended to relegate to the background the importance of political regimes, the radicality of the difference between the liberal regime, which he readily calls constitutional-pluralist, and the communist regime. This is at least the reproach made of him by some. It is certainly true that he never preached the doctrine of the “convergence” between East and West, but it is also true that his insistence on the characteristics common to all industrial societies seems to be out of kilter with regard to the never belied intransigence of his opposition to communism. In fact, we must distinguish two elements in this emphasis upon the notion of industrial society. We have already mentioned the first, which is Aron’s Saint-Simonism; furthermore, one must add that Aron, who had observed with consternation the disasters of France’s economic policy between the two wars, was greatly and happily impressed by the impetuous postwar growth and therefore by this very fact spontaneously open to the influence of the “theories of growth,” in particular that of Colin Clark. In the Aronian notion of “industrial society,” the neutral judgment—the specific feature of modern society is industrialism—is to a certain extent reenforced and kindled by Aron’s choice in favor of industry and economic growth. But the notion of industrial society plays another role in Aron’s approach. Since precisely it is indisputable that industry is one of the points in common between Western societies and those of the East, then to insist on this fact is to assert that a comparative discourse is both possible and reasonable; it is to make a direct attack upon the communist dogma concerning the incommensurability

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of the two types of societies (dogma which underlies and conditions that of the superiority of communist societies). To elaborate the notion of industrial society was not to announce the “convergence”; nor was it even to attempt to initiate a dialogue with the communists who in any case would not have been open to one; it was rather to suggest a language and notions which could in France but also in other Western nations, reestablish the communication between anti-communist liberals and the Marxist-leaning or industrialist Left who no longer believed in the official version of communist society but who were not yet ready to see the whole reality. In fact, it is indeed thus that, for the essentials, the notion of industrial society played its role in the public consciousness: it served less to reconcile liberals with communism than certain disillusioned communists or Marxists with capitalism. It is not only by his polemics, but also by the irenical concept of industrial society that Raymond Aron has contributed to maintaining intellectual communication between the two camps which divided the French conscience. The basic problem remains: does the notion of industrial society blur the specificity of the communist regime? The answer to this question can only be positive. But Aron’s position on this point is somewhat paradoxical: often—taking up, deliberately or not, the classical tradition—he underlines the decisive importance of the political regime in the conformation of a society and characterizes the communist regime as ideocracy; this is what he does in Democracy and Totalitarianism; it explains more generally his predilection for the more politically attuned sociologists such as Montesquieu or Tocqueville. Doubtless there is in Aron’s thinking a tension between the economist or the Saint-Simonian and the political liberal, tension which perhaps echoes that between the sociologist and the philosopher. From the opposite point of view, one might consider that in him two traditions which when they were not ignoring each other were fighting each other find reconciliation, traditions whose meeting in reality if not in people’s minds—the joining of industrial organization and political liberties—defines the nature of modern Western society. The preceding remarks should in no case obscure a central feature of the significance of the work and the activity of Aron: since the end of the last war he has been one of the most steadfast, most intransigent, most enlightened adversaries of communism. His understanding of the absolutely deadly character of the threat of communism which hangs over civilization and humanity, was immediate and total, free of those hesitations and those mental reservations which have for such a long time paralyzed so many intelligent minds. If knowing how to identify the enemy—who he is and what he is—is the most eminent political virtue, Aron possesses this virtue to the highest degree. And in the case of communism, which aims to destroy not only democracy but the elementary conditions for a truly human life, the judgment concerning the enemy is more and better than a simple political judgment, it is a judgment that is inseparably political and spiritual. In his combat against communism, Raymond Aron is inseparably defensor civitatis and defensor humanitatis.

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The Educator Raymond Aron’s role as political commentator represents a highly unusual situation, at least in France. Montesquieu remarks that in free regimes, if the historian is at his leisure to look for and to pronounce the truth, he rarely uses this opportunity since he is so busy maintaining the prejudices of the factions, those factions which are inseparable from liberty. What Montesquieu says about historians is even more true of journalists or of political commentators. In order to know what they are going to say, it usually suffices to know if they belong to the majority or to the opposition party. Aron has never been a partisan journalist. When the right was in power and he was one of the most scathing critics of the left within the intellectual community, he was never “governmental”: when he esteemed that the government has committed an error, he said so and argued his point of view. It is thus that the first three Presidents of the Fifth Republic discovered that they could not “count on him.” It is precisely for this reason that the public debate owes Aron so much. One trait of his journalistic style must be mentioned here: its enlightening terseness. Aron the journalist has the incomparable art of pointing out in a few words—without invective, without malicious personal attack, without pathos—the weakness in the armor, be it the imprudence of some diplomatic step, the absurdity of an economic choice or simply the vacuity of a speech. In the never-ending confusion of the political debate of a democratic nation in love with words, he has the perspicacity of one whom Erasmus emblematically calls “the night hawk,” “who sees very clearly in the midst of darkness.” It is for this reason that for over thirty years Aron’s formulas circulate so often in political conversations in France. Journalism: on this point so apparently far from philosophy in Aron’s career, we must halt for an instant. It seems to me that the role that the political Aron has in relation to Aron the philosopher, the Kantian Aron, is analogous to that which the political Cicero had with Cicero the philosopher: the orator knows that the stars exist, but most often he leaves it to the others to describe the movement of the constellations; or, if he ventures therein himself sometimes, his voice betrays a saddened irony. His own task is to introduce a bit of order and clarity into the sublunar world: to do this one must forget the stars as much as one remembers them. One higher Reason and Justice preside perhaps, mysteriously, over the destinies of the world, however improbable that may be; but the task of human reason and justice is, given the constraints and the incertitudes of effective action, to limit the powers of the inhuman. In a way, Raymond Aron has never ceased to develop his thesis on the “limits of historic objectivity” in the most difficult manner that there is: by interpreting day after day history in the making. At the beginning I said that Raymond Aron reconciled three fidelities: the fidelity to German philosophic ambition, the fidelity to French intransigence and clarity, and the fidelity to Anglo-Saxon civism. Without boastfulness

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or pomposity, he is what Nietzsche asked us to be: a “good European.” Aron upheld with all his force every initiative in the direction of an institutionalized Europe; but at least as important as the institutions is the European spirit. The history of each European nation is too long and too particular for the European spirit to be anything in the foreseeable future other than the spirit of the European nations: it can only be crystallized therefore by the efforts of individuals who, belonging to one or another of these nations, nevertheless have an open enough mind to inherit, so to speak, the culture of other European nations. Any other unification of the European spirit would be artificial, at best impoverishing, at worst ideological. It is because Raymond Aron by so many traits is a French patriot that his contribution to the European spirit, to the communication between European nations and their memories, is so fecund. Raymond Aron is a French patriot; he is a Jew, an assimilated Jew. Soberly assuming his Jewishness without affirming it aggressively, he has never considered that he belonged to two communities each of which required his allegiance. The only community which requires his allegiance is the French nation; to the Jewish people, to the State of Israel he feels bound by solidarity. His position has raised a lot of criticism, as any formulation of Jewishness necessarily must. Jews of the diaspora escape the accusation of betraying the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Even stronger, they are often faced simultaneously with these two accusations, as Aron has been. When a problem is theoretically insoluble, he who is faced with the problem must try not to render it even more insoluble: the consciousness of the depth of a problem is not measured by the stridency of the attitudes invoked. Aron’s reserve and sobriety also characterize his attitude with regard to Christianity, Catholicism in particular, so important in French history and conscience by the adhesions and the oppositions that it has raised. Raymond Aron is an unbeliever; not only is he an unbeliever but his writings do not betray that religious anxiety or that nostalgia for the ages of faith which one discerns in so many modern atheists, and which one encounters in Max Weber in particular. On the other hand, one never finds in Aron those moqueries or those points so characteristic of the tradition of the French Enlightenment to which he belongs. Has Aron attained that state which few Frenchmen, even today, know, that of “religious indifference”? We would be tempted to say he is insensitive to the religious tradition of Judaism because for him, for French culture, religion is identified with Christianity, and he is, however, indifferent to Christianity because he is Jewish. Perhaps this formula contains an element of truth. However, if in some mysterious way, our friends are a part of us and that which we are, then it is worth mentioning this: those minds which were the most spontaneously and most deeply attentive to the philosophical work of Aron were Catholics, in particular the historian Henri-Irénée Marrou and the Jesuit Father Gaston Fessard. That, as one says, proves nothing. It is true. But in Europe, in France in particular, “free-thinking” and the Catholic religion maintain

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complex, mysterious relations that the recognition of their opposition does not wear out: above and beyond this radical opposition which one does not have the right to attenuate, tacit complicities, unformulatable affinities paint, beneath the battlefield, the invisible network of a fraternity whose secret no one knows. The Catholic friendships which have surrounded and which surround Aron the agnostic or atheist are a sign of the unavowed part of the French soul. Europe, since its origins—and this is what defines the “crisis” which is consubstantial with it—has been looking for the political regime in which it could finally settle happily and live normally. Since the end of the Roman Empire, it has never been able to obtain this so coveted benediction. For two centuries, this desire and this impulse have been pressing, devouring, frenetic. As Nietzsche says, the history of Europe makes one think today of a river which wants to “end things.” To put an end to history, to put an end to wandering, such is the major temptation of the century, essentially in revolutionary undertakings but also in reactionary combats. This is why the principal virtue of political order, prudence, inseparable from moderation, is discredited to the extent that it is: it alone allows one to unite conservation to innovation and to creation; it alone guarantees the salutary influence of reason and protects us from the temptation of petrifying social life by imposing by means of violence “rational society,” in fact, the enemy of all reason as of all humanity. In this century, Raymond Aron is an exemplary representative of this cardinal virtue. Without making himself the preacher of moderation, without making this virtue an explicit theme of his writings, he illustrates it in each one of his deeds and speeches. Formed of institutions whose different logics are often ill-assorted and sometimes contradictory, inheritor of inimical traditions, Europe’s only chance to remain faithful to its plural essence is if the art of politics manages to weave together institutions, traditions, passions, virtues which, if each one were left to itself, would destroy the fragile equilibrium of European life. This is why Raymond Aron, intransigent adversary of communism, intransigent defender of liberal institutions, was never a doctrinaire liberal, a fanatic of the abstraction known as “the market.” He never succumbed to the temptation which is, so to speak, consubstantial with political reflection, that of ideology. His analyses prolong and shed light upon the problems with which political actors, citizens or statesmen are actually confronted in the city; he in no way pretends to have access to a superior point of view which would allow him to neglect the weight of institutions, the logic of situations, the passions of the citizen, the incertitudes of the statesman. A spectator and an actor in a period of European history in which thought has become its own enemy, in which certain of the greatest minds have consented—for a time or to the very end—to voluntary servitude, Raymond Aron has shown that the mind could be free in history and in the city. Since he never believed that history was the realization of reason, he contributed to introducing a bit of reason into European politics; because he never believed

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that democratic man should be overcome and surpassed, but enlightened and encouraged, he contributed to introducing a bit of humanity into European democracy; because he never wished to reign in pride, he was never obliged to obey slavishly; he is a witness to the freedom of the spirit in history, an educator of the European city. Note 1.

He has approached such a critique in the remarkable Introduction to Le Savant et le politique (Paris: Plon, 1959) [Note of Manent]. See the English translation, “Max Weber and Social Science,” in History, Truth, Liberty, ed. Franciszek Draus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 335–73.

Part Two A Lifetime of Reflection

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2 Aron, Marx, and Marxism: An Interpretation Daniel J. Mahoney In The Critique of Dialectical Reason, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously declared that “Marxism is the unsurpassable philosophy of our era.” Sartre’s was an unqualified judgment, the intemperate assertion of a philosopher turned fellow traveler and sometime apologist for totalitarianism. Raymond Aron’s approach to Marx and Marxism was considerably more balanced. He spent fifty years of his life studying the writings of Marx. On the one hand, he admired Marx’s ambition to capture the nature of social reality and learned much from his penetrating analyses of modern political economy. At the same time, Aron reluctantly concluded that there was an intimate connection between the “Marxism of Marx” and the tragedies of the twentieth century. In his view, Marx’s revolutionary dogmatism, his disparagement of representative institutions, his articulation of a global historical determinism that denied the autonomy of politics and the human element in historical becoming, all played crucial roles in shaping the totalitarian propensities of twentieth-century Marxism. With the publication of Le Marxisme de Marx we are in a better position to appreciate the central role of this engagement with Marx and Marxism in Aron’s larger intellectual trajectory.1 This posthumously published volume, judiciously edited and annotated by Jean-Claude Casanova and Christian Bachelier, and ably introduced by Casanova, originated as a series of lectures delivered by Aron at the Sorbonne during the academic year 1962 and 1963. Because of gaps in a few of the original lectures, the editors have supplemented the text with excerpts from a 1976–1977 lecture course on the same subject that Aron delivered at the Collège de France (the summary of that course is reproduced as the first appendix to the volume). Together, these lectures provide the most 33

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complete account of the Aronian engagement with Marx currently available and shed valuable light on the character of Aron’s liberalism. Aron is commonly understood to be a conservative-minded liberal in the tradition of Montesquieu and Tocqueville. He shared with his great French predecessors a rejection of intellectual dogmatism, a “probabilistic” conception of history, a stress on the autonomy of the political order, and the highest regard for free political institutions.2 Yet in Le Marxisme de Marx Aron writes that his intellectual formation owed nothing to his reading of Montesquieu and Tocqueville and everything to his critical engagement with the writings of Marx. In a particularly striking discussion, Aron writes that as a young man he began his inquiries as a social philosopher by studying Capital, hoping to convince himself of the validity of the Marxist critique of liberal society. This he could never do. “So, I have not become a Marxist. That said, there does not exist an author that I have read as much and who has formed me as much as Marx and of whom I have not ceased to speak badly” (304). Even as Aron finally adhered to the conclusions of what he called the “French school” of political sociology (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Élie Halévy), Marx remained a privileged interlocutor.3 For fifty years, this anti-Marxist was preoccupied, even obsessed, with clarifying the thought of his great intellectual rival. This is not to suggest that Marxism was Aron’s only or primary intellectual reference point. In his 1979 address on the occasion of his reception of the Prix Tocqueville, Aron wrote that, “[T]he road that led me to what is called my liberalism begins with the critique of Marx and passed through the reading of Max Weber and the lived experience of totalitarian regimes. At the end of the road, I discovered Tocqueville and I was won over by the man as much as I was by the sociologist or the historian.”4 Any adequate account of Aron’s liberalism must thus come to terms with his critique of Marx, his reading of Weber, his critique of totalitarianism as well as his discovery in the 1950s of the deep affinities between his thought and the political liberalism of Montesquieu and Tocqueville. Some early reviewers of this book, carried away by the discovery that the author of The Opium of the Intellectuals owed more to his engagement with Marx than his reading of Tocqueville, have tended to simplify the complex path by which Aron arrived at his mature liberalism. That said, there is no denying the centrality of the dialogue with Marx in Aron’s broader intellectual reflection. Why this singular preoccupation with the father of modern communism? To some extent it flowed naturally from Aron’s ongoing effort to understand the politics and history of his age, shaped as they were by the dominant presence of Marxist regimes and ideologies. In addition, Marx’s themes—industrialism, the philosophy of history, and the central role of political economy in clarifying the nature of modern society—were Aron’s themes, even if he interpreted them in a substantially different light. Whatever their ultimate differences, Aron remained genuinely captivated by the “mysteries of Capital” as he did not hesitate to call them.5

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Aron’s book is a model of intellectual generosity. He scrupulously retraces the intellectual itinerary of Marx and goes out of his way to do justice to his thought before criticizing it. He is above all interested in recovering the authentic “Marxism” of Marx, of freeing it from various ideological and methodological distortions and misappropriations. As Pierre Rosanvallon has pointed out in a thoughtful review in Le Monde, Aron’s book provides an imitable model for approaching the work of a thinker with whom one is deeply at odds.6 There is nothing “ideological” or partisan about Aron’s opposition to Marx. Aron’s scrupulously fair engagement with Marx’s thought illustrates how the absence of invective can go hand in hand with a radical rejection of the fundamental premises of a thinker to whom one is nonetheless deeply indebted. Aron begins his book with a succinct overview of Marx’s ideas in 1848, the revolutionary year that saw the publication of The Communist Manifesto. By then the essentials of Marx’s “philosophical thought” had taken firm shape (45). Only after examining the mature philosophical reflection of Marx in its more or less achieved form does Aron turn to provide a detailed account of Marx’s intellectual formation, of his transformation from “left-Hegelian” philosopher to revolutionary agitator and theorist of historical materialism. To do otherwise is to risk “privileging” the early writings of Marx, writings that are essential for understanding Marx’s intellectual development but that should not be confused with his thought as a whole. By 1848, Marx had arrived at the crucial distinction between “infrastructure” and “superstructure” that is at the core of all of his subsequent thought. The best articulation of this distinction can be found in Marx’s 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In a crucial passage Marx writes: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.7

In the thought of the mature Marx, political institutions and disputations, literary and other artistic productions, and philosophical and religious ideas are more or less “ideological” reflections of underlying and truly determinative social relations. When the Czech dissident turned statesman Vaclav Havel addressed a joint session of the American Congress in February 1990 he announced to his befuddled audience that “consciousness precedes being, and not the other way around.”8 That seemingly abstruse observation was in fact

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nothing less than a revolutionary utterance of the first order, an attack on an orthodoxy central to the Marxist conception of reality. Without the conviction that material conditions determine the consciousness of men, everything else in Marxism is open to question. By 1848 Marx had rejected every “idealistic” account of human being and society. He no longer spoke of a “human essence” as he had in some of his earlier philosophical writings. By the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marx had also arrived at his purported discovery of a fundamental “contradiction” between “forces” and “relations” of production, a contradiction that could only be resolved by revolutionary action on the part of the proletarian class. Marx was no doubt correct to observe a disconcerting gap between the immense productive capacities of the capitalist economy and the misery of much of the industrial working classes. But he was wrong to believe that only revolution could bridge this gap and the hopes that he placed in the revolutionary transformation of humanity were truly extravagant. In a later chapter, Aron speculates that Marx’s belief that revolution could resolve the enigmas of history and establish for the first time a truly “non-antagonistic” regime reflected both his tempestuous revolutionary temperament and his residual Hegelianism (300). For a revolutionary who cut his teeth on the writings of Hegel, contradictions needed to be definitively resolved. The thought that the class that had nothing else to lose, that embodied the misery of man under conditions of late capitalism, could inaugurate the reign of humanity, appealed to both the revolutionary and the Hegelian in Marx’s soul. In his measured presentation of the development of Marx’s thought, Aron shows that Hegel was Marx’s cherished interlocutor as well as his principal intellectual reference point. But it cannot be said that Marx was Hegelian in any strict sense of that term. The youthful Marx used an essentially Hegelian vocabulary that he quickly turned against the system and thought of the master. As early as his “Introduction to the Critique of the Philosophy of Right of Hegel” (1844) Marx used the methods and spirit of “critical” philosophy to subvert Hegelian conclusions. Marx rejected the “mediation” of the state as an instrument for resolving the tensions inherent in the historical condition of man and located the real foundation of social life in the material conditions of “civil society.” His critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right led to an even more fundamental critique of the alienation of human work that he identified with the division of labor and the capitalist economy. In Marx’s view, such alienation was “the root in some way of all the other alienations” (297). Hegel believed that the mediations of the state, of religion, and of “ethical life” could moderate liberal individualism without undermining the legitimacy of bourgeois civil society. Marx, in contrast, believed that the abolition of the state, religion, and what he called “bourgeois” morality was the very precondition of genuine “human emancipation.” Whatever the other changes in his thought, Marx always remained faithful to this basic conviction.

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The centerpiece of Aron’s book is its clear, methodical, and fair-minded treatment of the major intellectual production of Marx’s maturity, Capital. Aron rightly considers this work to be Marx’s masterpiece and devotes no less than six chapters to a careful presentation and examination of its principal themes and arguments. The first eight chapters of Aron’s book painstakingly recreate the formation of Marx’s thought while chapters 9 through 14 confront Marx’s thought in its achieved form. In these later chapters Aron wrestles with “the mysteries of Capital” and sheds remarkable light on a work whose obscurities threaten to deter even the most curious and determined reader. Aron masterfully highlights the continuities in Marx’s thought while doing justice to the distinctive contribution of Capital. By the time of the publication of The Communist Manifesto Marx had already linked the injustice of capitalism to its inevitable self-destruction. The “antagonistic” character of capitalism, its relentless exploitation of salaried workers, would be the ultimate cause of its destruction. Capital builds on this simple and powerful “conjuncture of an analysis of injustice and the announcement of the death of capitalism” (335). Capital aims to demonstrate scientifically the truth of this judgment, to root the moral aspirations of socialism in a comprehensive scientific “critique” of bourgeois political economy. In fact, in all of his writings, Marx aimed to expose the “illusions” at the heart of bourgeois thought, illusions that he believed were rooted in the intrinsic falsity of capitalist social relations. In his view, under fully developed capitalism human relations were reduced to merely instrumental ones, whose value was measured solely in terms of money. Every human relation was defined in terms of its “exchange value.” Capitalism was the most perfect of antagonistic regimes. To its credit, it was not only the most productive of economic regimes but was the first one to recognize the equality of human work. But it did so in a “mystified” form, one that reduced human work to something other than itself. Thus, as Aron observes, the Marxist critique of the “fetishism” of commodities “echoes some philosophical considerations of his youth” (358). In his exploration Aron steers an exiguous middle path between those who read Marx as a normative philosopher and thus privilege his early writings, and those (like Joseph Schumpeter) who read the author of Capital as a merely positivistic or scientific economist. Aron is particularly skeptical of efforts to read the mature Marx merely as a humanist philosopher in scientific garb, and thus to ignore the empirical underpinnings of his later work. In this sense, Aron’s approach is closer to Schumpeter’s than it is to that of a “humanist” reader of Marx such as Père Pierre Bigo. Nonetheless, Aron believed that both the partisans of the “philosophical” and “scientific” readings of Marx ignored the path announced by Marx himself. The subtitle of Capital is “A Critique of Political Economy.” The idea of “critique” provides the key to reconciling the partial truth in both the “philosophical” and “scientific” readings of Capital.

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Aron rather wryly remarks that one could not imagine David Ricardo engaging in a “critical” reflection on political economy (445). The mature Marx remained faithful to the “critical” project by aiming to give it a rigorously “scientific” foundation. What the work of the early and late Marx have in common is the desire to dispel illusions, to root social analysis in the concrete conditions of human existence. If the critique of religion entailed both a blistering expose of religious illusions and of the social conditions that gave rise to them, then the critique of political economy must demonstrate both how the “contradictions” of capitalism will finally give rise to its self-destruction and how the bourgeois economists and other defenders of the liberal order do not begin to understand “the contradictions internal to capitalist reality” (446). In an extensive discussion, Aron carefully delineates Marx’s analysis of “surplus value” or profit. While recognizing that Marx’s analysis illuminates important features of the modern economy, Aron finally concludes that the doctrine of surplus value is both “non-operational” (458) and non-refutable (456). If capitalists only give workers what is necessary for themselves and their families to survive according to the habits of a given society, then what can account for the growing prosperity of capitalist societies over the past century and a half? And how can one ever prove that salaried workers are being fairly or unfairly remunerated for their work if, by definition, profit is a form of exploitation? The idea of surplus value can account for the growing misery and prosperity of society at the same time and thus is finally capable of explaining nothing. But to say that the concept of “surplus value” is finally “non-operational” for the science of political economy is not to suggest that it is without intellectual interest. Marx had many insightful things to say about the crucial role of “capital accumulation” in the economic development of modern societies. And his analysis of surplus value inspired important critiques of communist totalitarianism that pointed out the crucial similarities between communist regimes and the bureaucratic despotisms of the past. Aron’s analysis should convince even the most skeptical reader that “the mysteries of Capital” are well worth exploring. Aron ably conveys how in that work Marx brilliantly highlights the relentlessly transformative character of capitalist society. Marx illustrates how, in striking contrast to the essentially conservative nature of all premodern social orders, capitalism ceaselessly transforms every economic and social relation. “All that is solid melts in the air,” as Marx famously put it in the first part of The Communist Manifesto. Aron notes that Schumpeter’s influential notion of the “creative destructive” propensities of capitalist societies is heavily indebted to Marx’s earlier analysis in Capital. And while Marx was clearly wrong when he prognosticated about the “inevitable” self-destruction of capitalist societies, he nonetheless had insightful things to say about the living conditions of the working classes at the beginning of the industrial age. As Aron points out, Marx was not the only economist of his age to believe that economic science had established that profits inevitably declined. More than

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any economist of his age, Marx understood the central place of economic crises in the normal operations of capitalist society. But as for the necessary “immiseration” and “pauperization” of capitalist societies, Marx finally demonstrated nothing at all. Even in Capital, his most self-consciously ”scientific” work, the militant revolutionary, the prophet of the “non-antagonistic” future, ended up triumphing over the empirical sociologist and economist. In contrast, Aron’s lucid, balanced treatment of Capital allows us to better appreciate the limits of Marx’s “critique of political economy” without losing sight of the grandeur inherent in the enterprise. Aron aims to capture the main lines of Marx’s thought while remaining true to its “complex and equivocal” character (623). The fundamental tenets of Marx’s thought are clear enough, and readily lend themselves to appropriation by a state orthodoxy, even if his thought remained complex and subtle enough to fascinate several generations of exegetes. Aron is careful never to simply conflate the “Marxism of Marx” with either the dialectical materialism popularized by Engels in his Anti-Dühring (1878) or with the totalitarian politics instituted by Marxist-Leninist regimes in the twentieth century. At the same time he recognizes that “diamat,” however devoid of philosophical subtlety, is broadly congruent with the letter and spirit of Marx’s historical materialism. Moreover, he concluded that the Jacobin-Bolshevik reading of Marx’s political intention was a perfectly legitimate one, even if other political conclusions could be drawn from Marx’s texts. In the final five chapters of his book (chapters 15–19), Aron moves from a primarily exegetical to a more critical account of the Marxist enterprise. What, then, are the principal differences between the political liberalism of Aron and the revolutionary reflection of Karl Marx? In chapter 15 of Le Marxisme de Marx (“From Theory to Historical Narrative”) Aron turns to those writings of Marx (such as The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) that address concrete historical events rather than presenting a theoretical account of political economy and historical evolution. In Aron’s view, these writings reveal the ultimate impossibility of establishing any point-by-point correspondence between “political elements and social conflicts,” between economic interests and the activities of the state (539). In principle, Marx denied the autonomy of politics and understood the political “superstructure” to be nothing more than an epiphenomenal reflection of underlying social and economic forces. Marx’s dogmatic denial of the political element finally makes a mockery of history and suggests that things would have turned out the same no matter what decisions were made by political actors in positions of responsibility. In Marx’s explicit view, politics and war have no intrinsic importance as independent factors in the evolution of history and society. But Marx’s practice often belied his theory.9 In The Eighteenth Brumaire, for example, he sometimes assumed that Orléanists and Legitimists were unable to overcome their differences because

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of irreconcilable economic interests. At other times in the same text, however, Marx seems to recognize that the inability of the two groups of monarchists to agree on a common approach had a specifically political origin, namely, their failure to overcome differing conceptions of monarchical legitimacy. Marx’s historical narratives are of continuing interest precisely because they manage to transcend a narrow ideological reduction of politics to economics. But Marx’s theory cannot account for his practice: The latter does respect the indeterminacy inherent in concrete political life, not so the former. Aron consistently defended the autonomy of politics and its irreducibility to something other than itself. He never denied the legitimacy or necessity of investigating the real connections between economic interests and political decision-making but he believed that political decisions were never simply reducible to economic interests or to social conflicts (see 539–40). Efforts to establish a point-by-point correspondence between economic interests and the state inevitably become caricatures of themselves. Far from being an epiphenomenal reflection of underlying and truly determinative socioeconomic forces, the political regime itself plays a crucial role in shaping society and moderating economic and social conflicts. For Aron, the absence of a “proper theory of politics” was the great “lacuna” in Marxist thought (626). In lieu of serious political analysis Marx relied on an ultimately unfounded “prophetism” to describe the socialist future. He had next to nothing to say about the political organization of the socialist future. Some of Marx’s texts praised democracy and suggested that “real freedoms” would complete and not simply displace the “formal freedoms” characteristic of the bourgeois parliamentary order. More typically, Marx heaped scorn on “parliamentary cretinism” (the phrase is from The Eighteenth Brumaire) and praised the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would inaugurate the transition from capitalism to socialism. Marx’s emphatic rejection of political thinking makes it impossible to determine with any assurance how he would have defined the political organization of the socialist future. Aron convincingly argues that both the “communard-anarchist” and “centralist-Jacobin” readings of the revolutionary future find ample support in Marx’s texts (539, 543). The fiery debates among parliamentary socialists such as Edward Bernstein, anarchist revolutionaries such a Rosa Luxemburg, and totalitarian centralists such as Lenin, mirror genuine tensions within Marx’s thought itself. To be sure, Marx predicted that the state would “wither away” once the real causes of human “antagonism” were eliminated. But in the meantime an unprecedented concentration of power and a ruthless effort to repress the “exploiting” classes would be necessary to put an end to the “prehistory” of mankind and to inaugurate the socialist adventure. In his 1963 essay on “The Liberal Definition of Liberty: Tocqueville and Marx,” Aron argued that, whatever his intention, Marx bore some responsibility for the “totalitarian” consequences of his thought. Aron’s text is worthy of extended citation:

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[A] doctrine of action such as Marx’s is responsible not only for its intentions but also for its implications even if they are contrary to its values and goals. Now I agree that an all-powerful party, such as the Bolshevik party, does not conform to Marx’s thought; as early as 1917, a great number of Marxists refused to allow that public ownership of the means of production and a planned economy constitute the achievement of socialism in the absence of political freedom; it nevertheless remains difficult to conceive the elimination of class antagonisms, the end of the duality between society and state, without an absolute authority, without something like what is called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat, that is to say millions of workers, cannot itself exercise a dictatorship. Thus, it is not historically surprising that Marxism—rejecting the method of progressive reforms, refusing to admit the permanence of distinct economic and political spheres, and aiming at a liberation of all through mastery by the combined producers over their destiny—should end up with the total enslavement of all to one party, even to one man. Because how could the “combined producers” reorganize society from its foundations if their “combination” does not show itself capable of command, in other words, if the combination of producers itself does not form a party, with a hierarchy, a general staff, a chief?10

Aron demonstrated that Marx failed miserably as a prophet. Marx’s emphasis on the inevitably “catastrophic” collapse of capitalism is therefore of little relevance or interest to contemporary readers. His predictions about the inevitable “pauperization” and “immiseration” of the working classes were in no way borne out by the experience of liberal societies. His claim that inhuman “capital accumulation” was the essence of capitalist society has been falsified by a century of humane economic growth and continued political reforms in the western democracies. In fact, Aron suggested that this account was far more descriptive of the development strategy of Leninist societies than anything that had been experienced in the West (like many students of Soviet “modernization” in the 1960s, the anti-communist Aron exaggerated the utility of such an approach for stimulating and maintaining long-term economic growth). In large part because of his neglect of the political element, Marx could not anticipate the endless capacity of liberal societies for self-renewal. In a generous spirit Aron comments that Marx’s critique of liberal capitalism in particular and the communist threat in general played a salutary role in stimulating reforms throughout the western world. He is careful to add, however, that restrictions on laissez-faire capitalism in the United States owed nothing to Marx since Americans “never took Marx very seriously” (661). Aron concludes the 1962–1963 lectures by emphasizing once again the inherently equivocal character of Marx’s legacy. Nobody is able to say with any assurance what Marx would have thought about contemporary politics (659–62). Aron rightly points out that Marx cannot be held responsible for the specific form that collectivization and industrial planning took in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin. But in the 1976–1977 course on the “Marxism of Marx,” Aron proffers a much harsher and less equivocal judgment about Marx’s legacy. In both courses Aron stresses the centrality of the concept of alienation in the thought of both the early and late Marx. “In effect, alienated work is a

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central concept in the thought of Marx because it constitutes the root of both private property and the division of labor” (670). By the time Aron delivered his 1976–1977 set of lectures on the “Marxism of Marx” he had concluded that for Marx the overcoming of alienation necessarily entailed not only the abolition of private property but the very elimination of the market and the division of labor. There are intimations of this in the writings of the young Marx and it is a clear implication of the analysis of commodity “fetishism” in book 1 of Capital. In a critically important passage, Aron writes: “I have taken a long time to convince myself—but I don’t believe that it is possible to refuse this conclusion—that in the eyes of Marx, the source of all the evils of humanity resides in commodity form more radically than in private property, which, it seems to me, is only the social condition of the existence of commodity form” (680). For Marx, the abolition of alienation finally demands that the economy itself be “abolished.” In this sense Lenin’s “war communism,” the coercive effort to abolish commerce and property in all their forms, the ruthless struggle to subdue the independent proprietor and the petty merchant, was a logical consequence of the Marxist “critique of political economy” (680). Profoundly moved by his reading of Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents, Aron was less equivocal in 1977 about the ultimate human and political consequences of Marxism. In this text, as well as in In Defense of Decadent Europe (1977), Aron excoriated Marx for replacing balanced social analysis with a “prophetism” that masqueraded as a “science of society.”11 In the 1976–1977 text Aron goes so far as to call the Marxist claim that the industrial proletariat represents the cause of humanity an “absurdity” (681). Aron clearly had arrived at the conclusion that Marx was not an economist or social scientist in any ordinary sense of those terms (680). By the end of his life Aron’s criticisms of Marx were both more radical and a good deal less restrained than the ones put forward in his Sorbonne lectures. There is an important sense, however, in which Aron’s engagement with Marx fails to be sufficiently radical. Aron never adequately confronted the limits of critical philosophy in its Marxist form. In particular, he fails to examine the adequacy of the militant, dogmatic, and even irrational atheism at the heart of the Marxist enterprise. This failure to fully confront the truth of Marx’s atheism is undoubtedly rooted in an important ambiguity within Aron’s own thought. On the one hand, Aron was a non-dogmatic adherent of what he did not hesitate to call “atheistic humanism.” On the other hand, he displayed a deep and abiding respect for the limits inherent in the human condition and therefore rejected the radical Prometheanism at the heart of almost every current of modern thought. He was repulsed by an immanentist philosophy of history that denied any principles above the human will. He affirmed a transcendent realm above the praxis of men even if he could not give that realm any “supernaturalist” definition or content. Still Marx must be given a full and fair hearing, so Aron faithfully reports how the Marxist critique of religion eventually gave rise to the mature

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Marx’s critique of political economy, a critique rooted in the identification of religion with alienation and false consciousness. For Marx, “it was not man in general who created religion, it is the social and historical man of particular periods” (109). The false consciousness that is religion reflects the falseness of a world mutilated by the alienation that accompanies the division of labor and the institution of private property. The elimination of the sources of alienation will overcome all human “antagonisms” and eliminate the need for false representations of reality. The writings of the early and late Marx are united by a radical negation of religion and by a dogmatic denial of any transcendental principle or horizon. Marx simply takes for granted the “ideological” character of religious claims and representations: He nowhere seriously argues against them. In contrast, the atheism of Aron was anything but dogmatic. In language that he adopted from his friend the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Gaston Fessard, Aron stated that he could not “affirm” the truth of religion. But he also stressed that in good intellectual conscience he was incapable of “negating” it, either.12 He knew that his atheism was something far short of a scientific proposition, and he did not believe that reason could refute revelation without going beyond the limits of reason itself. He was no materialist and believed that man was a spiritual being whose thought and aspirations could not be reduced to the imperatives of either biochemistry or history. In the end Aron refused to choose between a modern conception of man as the being who acquires his humanity in the course of history and a more traditional affirmation of sempiternal human nature and moral limits. Two discussions in particular capture this ambiguity and reveal an enduring tension at the heart of Aron’s philosophical reflection. On the final page of chapter 2 (“Critical Philosophy”), Aron discusses Marx’s profound rejection of every form of injustice, of every form of servility. Aron observes that Marx was a man of revolutionary temperament whose hero was Prometheus (his doctoral dissertation contains a dramatic homage to Prometheus). Marx neither acknowledged nor respected any inherent limits. He had, Aron remarks, “a taste for defying social authorities, religious authorities, and the gods” (98). Aron notes that, in response to a question near the end of his life, Marx stated that the thing that he detested above all was “servility.” Aron argues that “this was in effect the eminent virtue of Marx: he admired Prometheus and hated servility” (98). Yet elsewhere Aron recognizes that the Marxian hatred of servility was tied to the most problematic assumptions: that man makes himself, that there is no “human nature” that is finally capable of resisting revolutionary transformation, that man is a god who can subdue all the forces of heaven and earth. Aron’s temperament was infinitely more sober. He knew that there was an inescapably “Promethean” dimension to the modern project and he finally did not regret it. But in his writings he always tried to moderate the modern—and revolutionary—propensity to believe that all limits could be overcome, all tensions resolved, and that “Reason” could somehow reign supreme. He was a

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rationalist who affirmed the limits of reason and a philosopher of history who did not believe that man’s nature was coextensive with the movement of history. I am not convinced that Aron’s principled moderation is readily explained by his “atheistic humanism” or that his genuine admiration for Marxism’s proud rejection of human servility finally coheres with his own respect for the limits that are a precondition of human freedom and dignity. Perhaps this tension in Aron’s thought reflects a more fundamental tension within the human condition itself. Marx, for all his rejection of traditional authority, can be understood as an aristocratic soul who proudly affirmed the self-sufficiency of man. As the case of Aron demonstrates, one can admire the human desire to aim for the heavens, to reject every form of humiliation and degradation, without forgetting the self-destructive propensities of this impulse. Aron, the conservative reformer, could readily understand and even in some way admire the revolutionary Marx. But Marx could have no patience for, nor appreciation of, the patient, sober, ameliorative sensibility of a Raymond Aron. This contrast in the ability to understand the “other” says everything about the limits of the “virtue” that Marx embodied to monstrous perfection. The first appendix to Le Marxisme de Marx is the summary of the course on “The Marxism of Marx” that Aron delivered at the Collège de France during the academic year 1976–1977. This text, informed by the “dissident” critique of Marxism, sharpens the more muted Aronian criticism of Marx in the 1962–1963 course at the Sorbonne. Aron continues to pay tribute to Marx’s intellectual contribution. He recognizes that Marx’s writings highlighted “with an extreme acuity some essential problems of modern society” (682). These problems include “the contradiction between the subjectivity of work and the objectivity of the world of commodities; the contradiction between the Promethean will of social control and the unpredictability of the market; the contradiction between the liberty and equality of political agents, citizens on the one hand and the inequality and dependence of economic agents on the other” (682). Because of the continuing relevance of these concerns, Marx’s work will continue to speak to us long after the collapse of the regimes that ruled in his name. But Aron goes on to point out the terrible inadequacy of the Hegelian language of “contradiction” at the heart of the Marxian project. “Contradiction is a term of logic; it calls for a radical solution” (682). Aron, ever sensitive to the “antinomic” character of social and political life, preferred to speak of “tensions” or “conflicts” or “oppositions” (682). In an admirable spirit of intellectual moderation, Aron reminds his readers that the reasonable man tries to understand and moderate conflicts rather than attempting to eliminate them altogether. The latter is the path of intellectual fanaticism and ideocratic despotism. Therefore, despite his enduring fascination with the thought of Marx, Aron chose another path altogether. He rejected the revolutionary effort to “abolish contradictions by a Promethean enterprise of social transformation” (682). Aron turned critical philosophy against itself by appealing to the needs

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of “flesh and blood” (682) human beings against the ideological abstractions so dear to Marx and his epigones. The effort to unite the cause of philosophy to the revolutionary claims of a semi-mythological Proletariat turned out to be an ideological obfuscation of the first order. In an ultimate paradox, Marx’s intransigent rejection of servility gave rise to unprecedented forms of bondage and intellectual obscurantism. For all his admiration of Marx, Aron could not finally resist this damning conclusion. In his Memoirs published only weeks before his death in 1983, Aron went so far to speak of Marx as a “cursed sophist,” a “putative ancestor of Marxist-Leninism” who was partly responsible for “the horrors of the 20th century” (quoted on pp. 14–15). At the end of his life, then, Aron did not hesitate to say terrible if truthful things about his lifelong interlocutor. In his thoughtful Preface to the Le Marxisme de Marx, Jean-Claude Casanova speculates that with the death of Soviet socialism it is now possible to turn our attention away from “the cursed sophist” and to remember only the “critical philosopher” (15). But Aron’s analysis strongly suggests that such a separation is finally impossible. The “sophistic” desire to abolish all human antagonisms, that is, to eliminate the political and economic realms of human existence altogether, is rooted in the “critical” project as Marx himself understood it. We should never forget this as we read Marx in any voice. Notes 1.

Raymond Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, preface and notes Jean-Claude Casanova and Christian Bachelier (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2002). All page references in the text are to this edition. 2. For his own account of the affinities between his thought and the liberalism of Montesquieu and Tocqueville, see Raymond Aron, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, vol. I, foreword Pierre Manent, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 332–33. 3. Ibid. 4. See Raymond Aron, “On Tocqueville,” in Defense of Political Reason: Essays by Raymond Aron, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 176. 5. Raymond Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 21. 6. Pierre Rosanvallon’s review of Le Marxisme de Marx appeared in Le Monde (January 31, 2003) under the misleading title “Raymond Aron préférerait Marx à Tocqueville.” 7. Quoted on p. 46 of Le Marxisme de Marx. I have used the translation in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), 4. 8. See Vaclav Havel, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” in American Political Rhetoric, eds. Peter Augustine Lawler and Robert Martin Schaefer (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 208. 9. Aron had already developed this argument in his chapter on “The Sociologists and the Revolution of 1848,” in Main Currents, I: 303–33, esp. 321–30. 10. The essay can be found in Raymond Aron, Politics and History, trans. and ed. Miriam Bernheim Conant, intro. Michael A. Ledeen (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1984), 139–65, esp. 160.

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11. Aron’s indebtedness to Solzhenitsyn is most apparent in the opening chapter (“Marx’s Messianism and its Misadventures”) of In Defense of Decadent Europe, trans. Stephen Cox (South Bend, Ind.: Regnery/Gateway, 1979), 3–27. 12. For a representative discussion, see Raymond Aron, Essais sur la condition juive contemporaine, ed. Perrine Simon-Nahum (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1989), 212.

3 Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre Fred Baumann In 1924 Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre met for the first time at the École Normale Supérieure. Aron, a serious, bookish type, sought and finally received the approval of the popular, brilliant, rebellious, and tyrannical Sartre.1 In 1928, Aron passed his examinations at the top of his class only because, as he recalled it, Sartre “felt it necessary to flunk that year” by presenting his own, novel philosophic teachings.2 Aron’s studies in Germany became the conduit for Sartre’s interest in the Husserlian phenomenology that would play such a role in his later thought. They argued incessantly, but with mutual respect, Sartre recalling that “he had never discussed philosophy with anyone but Aron ‘who did me in.’”3 In a copy of Being and Nothingness Sartre inscribed to Aron, he called it “the ontological introduction” to Aron’s “ontic philosophy of history.”4 After World War II the two friends broke on the issue of anti-communism. From then on Aron and Sartre entered one of those classic French intellectual duels where ideas, politics, morals, and personal character become so intertwined that eventually the participants seem to become archetypes. At first sight their relationship seemed so polarized as to be transparent, almost allegorical, with lessons to be drawn at will, depending on one’s viewpoint. Which side one takes on Aron and Sartre almost seems like a test of identity, a classic French choice like those between Descartes and Pascal, Montesquieu and Rousseau, or Hugo and Flaubert. With Aron and Sartre, cool reason, worldly wisdom, and impersonal rationality on the one side are pitted against passion, brilliance, and principled irrationality on the other. Nuance stands against categorical judgment, dialogue against monologue, good manners against deliberately vile ones, political realism and moderation against principled utopianism and revolutionary extremism. The choices all appear to hang ripe from the branches, ready for the plucking. It looks almost as if Aron and Sartre had somehow conspired together to provide an instructive tableau vivant for posterity. 47

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However tempting it is to treat the relation of Aron and Sartre as allegory and thus as a test of one’s identity, it would be an error. It is easy enough for a temperamental Aronian to show his hero triumphing again and again over Sartre’s political absurdity and dogmatism, to emphasize the contrast between genuine thoughtfulness about politics and emotional rhetoric, and to contrast Aron’s serious and respectful concern for Sartre’s ideas with Sartre’s ill-tempered and somewhat sinister denunciations of Aron. But at the same time it is possible for the temperamental Sartrean to turn the tables. This has been done by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, who accuses Aron of nihilism because he rejected utopian possibilities.5 From that optimistic viewpoint, all of Sartre’s apparent vices become virtues and Aron’s virtues the vices of cowardice and mediocrity. Indeed, the kind of standoff in which the allegory-as-identity test ends ultimately merely confirms Sartre’s basic view against Aron’s, in that all seems to rest on questions of irrational choice, of willpower, of taste, and forfeits from the outset Aron’s defense of the standard of reason. Two things need to be remembered here. First, Aron himself frequently spoke of his relation with Sartre, at least at some levels, in terms of temperaments, and to that extent seemed to acquiesce in Sartre’s ultimately Nietzschean understanding.6 Second, Aron himself never simply tried to dismiss or triumph over Sartre, though Sartre tried it with Aron. Aron always freely granted Sartre’s philosophic seriousness and his superior creative powers. The question for the interpreter of this relationship, and especially for one sympathetic to Aron, is what power reason can have when faced with a self-conscious, principled, and reasoning irrationalism. Ultimately, it may take a Socrates to make the case fully. But, despite Aron’s philosophic modesty (Allan Bloom speaks of “his naïve and generous respect for philosophy”), I think the entire history of Aron’s relationship with Sartre gives us some good reasons, beyond the merely temperamental, why even a temperamental Sartrean ought to respect Aron and even come to prefer him to Sartre.7 Beginnings Aron’s descriptions of his first encounters with Sartre at the École Normale already set out some of their fundamental differences. For Aron, intellectual excitement characterized his time there.8 He looked up to his teachers of philosophy, Alain and Léon Brunschvicg, as well as to his fellows, like Sartre and Paul-Yves Nizan. Sartre evidently hated looking up (hence his decision to show up his teachers in his final examinations) and rather enjoyed looking down, whether on those students he “hanged” or consigned to outer darkness, or, above all, on the “bastards” and “important” people.9 The former were those who nakedly or hypocritically pursued their individual self-interest; the latter (overlapping heavily with the former) those who enjoyed authority and fame but did not, in Sartre’s view, actually deserve it. Aron seems to have been ready to learn; Sartre to learn while, and perhaps

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through, fighting. Aron’s brilliance coexisted with modesty; Sartre’s with enormous and indignant pride. To oversimplify greatly, Aron went on from school to involve himself with Dilthey and Weber; Sartre with Husserl and Heidegger. Aron says, rightly, that “the questions that Sartre and I asked ourselves were largely the same ones.”10 But how they asked and answered them already diverged greatly. Aron became the great interpreter of German historical and social thought to the French, through his German Sociology and the Critique de la raison historique.11 He found in the unsentimental, even grim, realism of Max Weber something that spoke to him, and he accepted what he took to be the irrefutable facts of historical relativity in a way that did not, in the end, threaten for him the possibility of rational understanding. At the end of his life, in the interviews published as The Committed Observer, he sums up his 1938 book Introduction to the Philosophy of History. He asserts three key principles: 1) the plurality of possible interpretations, which is what he says he means by historical relativism; 2) anti-determinism; and 3) the need for choice and decision, which he says approximates the Sartrean word “commitment.” But when he expands on the third term, he speaks of a fundamental choice as “either the acceptance of the kind of society in which we live, or its rejection.” Thus one either becomes a revolutionary, who chooses violence and adventure, or one does not. After 1945, he reports, he tried to explain why he did not become a revolutionary.12 Underneath the historicist/Sartrean language of choice, decision, and commitment, however, we find out that the essential question is the ancient question of the regime, and that there are reasons that can be given to explain one’s answer. It is hard to see what Aristotle himself would have found to quarrel with in that. To the extent that “relativism” then comes to mean the knowledge that one cannot be ultimately certain, no Socratic would be in a position to complain.13 Politically, Aron already showed himself to be too sensible for most partisans, even of his own side. Thus, while highly sympathetic to the intended reform program of Léon Blum and the Popular Front, he understood that its economic program, which established the forty hour work week, was “perfectly inane,” in that this would mean fatal cuts in productivity.14 Meanwhile, a still unpolitical Sartre took the philosophic conclusions of radical historicism neat and developed a philosophy of commitment that preserved very little room for reason. Thus, in his famous Existentialism is a Humanism, he admits that, since one cannot know the historical outcome, there is no rational basis for making the choice between staying home with mother and cooperating with Vichy or fighting with the Free French. (Nonetheless, it is plain enough, though implicit, that for Sartre, choosing to stay home makes you either a “coward” or “scum.”) 15 The combination of a rigorous moralism with a rigorous irrationalism became the hallmark of the Sartrean approach. During the war, the book that remained for Aron the most characteristic and valuable of Sartre’s career, Being and Nothingness, was published, along

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with the classic existentialist plays, The Flies and No Exit. Sartre became famous. Meanwhile, Aron went to London with General Charles de Gaulle, where he worked as a journalist for the Free French. After the war, with the Right entirely discredited by its collaboration with the Nazis, the question for French intellectuals became whether to throw in with revolutionary Marxism, and, consequently, to give full-blooded support to Stalin’s Russia, or to support liberal democracy and capitalism, that is, American hegemony and the Fourth Republic. This was a tough choice for many and the first part of it perhaps not all that easy for Aron himself.16 The Break: Sartre Sartre solved the problem by establishing a short-lived political faction, the RDR (Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire), whose founding was governed by a longer-lived political principle. While distinguishing himself both politically and intellectually from the outright Stalinists like Nizan and Louis Aragon, he insisted that, even to criticize the communists, one had to be in fundamental solidarity with revolutionary communism.17 For example, Sartre’s friend and ally, Albert Camus, who was a genuine hero of the Resistance, tried to work out in The Rebel a theory of opposition to oppression that would not in the end, like communism, turn into oppression itself. Sartre broke with him in a series of famous polemics. In establishing a moral standard for revolutionary action, Sartre alleged that Camus wanted to stay outside of History (like a little girl testing the water to see if it is hot).18 Since we are inevitably trapped within a history that is meaningless in itself, we have to give it meaning by concrete struggles for justice. Sartre, and his spokesman Francis Jeanson, were therefore scathing about Camus’ ahistorical criticisms of the Stalinist justification of totalitarianism by its stated goals. Camus must think he was like a god, outside of history, who could condemn ordinary men trying their best to deal concretely with their historical fate. One had, Jeanson lectured Camus, to take seriously such things as socioeconomic “infrastructures” when making political judgments. From Camus’ falsely universal moralism, Sartre appealed to serious historical reflection (all in the name of a moralism of intention that made Kant’s seem sober). Rejecting the classical Marxist claim to understand history led, it appeared, all the more to the need to accept the content of that claim. Somehow, then, existentialism, a radically individualist teaching, necessarily involved commitment to the collectivist, Marxist cause.19 In practice, what I have described in fairly anodyne terms came to mean a robust policy of pro-Stalinist apologetics and abuse of anti-communists.20 Sartre’s collection of polemics from 1952–1954, published as The Communists and Peace, gives a pretty good sense of his style in day to day politics. Much of it is standard pro-communist apologetics, for example, shifting the burden to anti-communists to prove that Stalin could have operated differently, or to prove that the Soviet leadership no longer believes in the communist project.21

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(Otherwise, the great savant of “bad faith” proclaims himself sure that, “whatever the Politburo may do, it will not sacrifice the workers to the Russian nation.”)22 Sartre, (specifically attacking Aron), also faithfully defends the peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union in the early Cold War, dismisses economic data as “a merely arbitrary abstraction,” and defends the North Korean invasion of the South by stigmatizing Syngman Rhee as the oppressor.23 The facts of Soviet oppression go generally unmentioned, but the strength of the French Communist party, under democratic conditions, is constantly held up as proof that the proletariat really supports the communists, while democratic elections themselves are debunked.24 To his credit, by 1954 Sartre could see around him the American-based revival of capitalism. But he was confident that it would only produce more proletarians who would someday become the gravediggers of capitalism.25 Amid the Stalinist boilerplate, however, Sartre’s own, and real, arguments reappear constantly. “[T]he Soviet Union is in itself a historic value to be defended, since it is the first state that without yet achieving socialism, ‘contains its premises.’”26 Since the proletarian is isolated, without hope, the proletariat, if it is not to crumble into the dust, needs to have a party, and the Communist party is the only one it can have. Thus any worker who joins the bourgeoisie is a deserter.27 Even though engaging in political and economic arguments of a sort, Sartre seems to admit that they are essentially pointless, since all depends on whether one makes a commitment to communism or anti-communism.28 His use of standard communist apologetics thus becomes more understandable. Such arguments did not, apparently, need to be true if they could be used in a fight to which one is committed for ultimately ungroundable (if still praise- or blameworthy) reasons. The Break: Aron Aron’s response to the Marxist-existentialist position took the form of a lot of newspaper articles, but culminated in his book The Opium of the Intellectuals, whose title already conveys its theme. His response had two main elements. First, he carefully demonstrated all the ways in which the quasi-religious politics that emerged from the mix made no political sense at all. By insisting on a utopian revolutionary stance against what Sartre would come to call “the hell of daily life,” every conflict became apocalyptic and there could be no room for prudence or compromise, or a concern for keeping the game going. Thus: Statesmen who do not claim to know history’s last word sometimes hesitate before embarking on an enterprise, however attractive, the cost of which would be too high. “Churchmen” and “faithful” [Aron’s terms for orthodox communists and intellectual fellow travelers, respectively] ignore such scruples. The sublime end excuses the revolting means. Profoundly moralistic in regard to the present, the revolutionary is cynical in action…. Nothing, short of a total “humanisation,” can appease his hunger

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Aron demolishes the leftist assumptions on which faith in the attainment of the “sublime end” are based. “The Left,” unified against the establishment, he argues, is and always was a myth. So is “The Revolution” as a cataclysmic event that ushers in a Golden Age. And, decisively for Marxists, so too is “The Proletariat,” understood as the self-conscious and salvific class. History cannot be known to have a meaning; the claim of necessity made by revolutionaries to justify infamous deeds cannot itself be justified. From that point of view, Marxist intellectuals can be seen as “in search of a religion” and thus as betrayers of their own enlightened pretensions. In Opium, Aron distinguished between Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, dealing more harshly with the latter. Paradoxically, Opium was published about the same time as Merleau-Ponty’s reconsiderations of his earlier views, Adventures of the Dialectic, which showed how far he had come in Aron’s direction, and, strikingly, Aron even defended Sartre against some of Merleau-Ponty’s criticisms in that book. When it came to Humanism and Terror, Merleau-Ponty’s earlier work, Aron was justly severe. Merleau-Ponty had accused Arthur Koestler of setting up a false dilemma by accepting the Stalinist reading of Marx, whereby the outcome of history could be foreknown.30 Like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty freely admitted that history had to be given a meaning by human action. Thus Rubashov’s dilemma (how can the party be the vehicle of history if Stalin is its leader?) proves to be a false one. But then, why throw ordinary prudence to the winds? Why support drastic, apparently foolhardy, revolutionary measures that would only seem to be justifiable on the basis of overwhelming confidence about their outcomes? Aron restates Merleau-Ponty’s argument as follows: Marxist philosophy is true, unquestionably true, in a double sense. It has set down the conditions which are indispensable to the “humanisation” of societies. It has also sketched out the route via which the “radical solution of the problem of coexistence,” that of the proletarian revolution, will have a chance of being achieved. The proletariat, which is the only “authentic intersubjectivity,” the “universal class,” must form itself into a party, overthrow capitalism, and emancipate all mankind in emancipating itself.31

Aron then cites Merleau-Ponty’s famous assertion about Marxism: “In a sense, it is not a philosophy of history; it is the philosophy of history, and to refuse to accept it is to blot out historical reason. After which there will be nothing left but dreams or aimless adventure.”32 Apparently, therefore, “naïve dogmatism,” as Aron rightly calls this, is its own justification for all the risks it incurs. That we have no idea if the sacrifices made in the name of overcoming all oppression will actually produce their intended result is no reason to avoid

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them; we are even obligated to undertake them, all so we can believe that history is ultimately rational. More specifically, Merleau-Ponty’s faith in historical reason as an abstraction abandons all pretense of basing the Marxist claim to bring about the truly human community of mutual recognition on an account of historical developments like the relations of production. Thus, in the absence of any specific, concrete account of what mutual recognition would actually mean in contemporary society (e.g., the actual relations between workers and management), the term becomes hopelessly vague and abstract. Specifically, Aron points out that Merleau-Ponty’s postulate that “private ownership of the means of production is incompatible with men’s mutual recognition” takes no account of actual developments in capitalism; American corporations do not much resemble what Marx meant by private ownership in his day.33 Again and again he chastises Merleau-Ponty (and implicitly Sartre) for an ungrounded identification of the goal of complete human emancipation with the success of communist revolution.34 To ground that would require seriously checking to see if Marx’s account was still, if it ever had been, historically, factually valid.35 In sum, and in un-Aronian terms, Merleau-Ponty does not know what he is talking about and has no grounds for making his claims. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty seems to have had an inkling of this himself even at the end of Humanism and Terror, when he begins, grudgingly and implicitly, to admit that he shares Rubashov’s problem of the “silence” (i.e., lack of revolutionary zeal) of the proletariat and thus the lack of any valid revolutionary political guidance.36 His later break with the communists is already, if faintly, foreshadowed there. This meant that, however deliberately dogmatic Merleau-Ponty was—however much his faith was grounded in the need to believe so as to avoid the rule of “dreams and adventures”—in the end he was amenable to the lessons of reality and reason. While much of Aron’s critique of Merleau-Ponty applied to Sartre as well, Aron had another question in mind for him. “But I really wonder how Sartrism could ever regard the Communist revolution as the solution to the dialectic of L’Être et le néant.”37 This question became the crux of Aron’s difference with Sartre. What had brought both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty to communism was the longing, according to Aron, for the realm of free mutual recognition, the Hegelian end of history. So, could such mutuality overcome the situation of man in a world deprived of God, trapped in his own finite divinity? Could man create a world in which mutual recognition would satisfactorily fill the void left by the absence of a cosmic sanction for human life? In a 1946 essay, Aron gives arguments for thinking this impossible. “[E]ither man’s consciousness is confined within the dialectic of L’Être et le néant, or the true dialectic of consciousness is one which unfolds in history, and it is creative.”38 While the latter seems unlikely, given the terms of Sartre’s earlier philosophy, even if it were possible to turn the tragedy of that story into the triumphal Marxist narrative, this would mean accepting not only Marx’s particular historical analysis but the belief that, citing

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Marx, communism would be the “true solution to the struggle between origin and being, between objectivity and subjectivity, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species.” To believe this, however, would mean “inverting the basic assumptions of L’Être et le néant,” which taught that there could be no solution.39 Thus, as Aron wrote after the publication of Opium, one “cannot be at the same time the heir of Hegel-Marx and the heir of Kierkegaard” because the existentialist problem, “that of the dialogue of the individual with the absence of God,” is not answered by Marxism.”40 Since “this argument is at bottom quite commonplace and somehow obvious,” what then was Sartre’s vehement and often hysterical Marxism actually about?41 Had Sartre seen deeper than Aron and found a way to square the Marxist-existentialist circle, or was there something else going on that Aron had not seen or wanted to see, or that Sartre himself had not acknowledged? The long-running philosophic theme of the Aron-Sartre debate is the possibility of the former; the underlying question, I think, was always the latter. In his review of The Adventures of the Dialectic, Aron undertook to defend Sartre against Merleau-Ponty’s claim that Sartre’s “ultra-Bolshevism,” which Merleau-Ponty now rejected, was rooted in Sartre’s ontology. Aron thus again maintained that Sartre’s communism was in some sense a mistake, an inconsistency, not something at the heart of his project. Merleau-Ponty found “a pre-established harmony between the Sartrian ontology of pure will, of insular consciousness, and the Bolshevik practice of the act, which, by a mysterious and unjustifiable fiat, brings forth the party from the scattered mass.” This does not, as Aron goes on to summarize Merleau-Ponty’s argument, necessarily lead to Sartre becoming a communist, but “once allied with the Communists, it gave him a way of integrating Communism with his own goal, of interpreting the Communist action within the framework of a philosophy which assumes the irreducible opposition of the subject and the Other, the formless class and the unified party, things and men, but ignores the dialectic by which the apparently opposed terms come together.”42 But, Aron says, Sartre’s account of the human world is formally dialectical and he does not ignore history. Merleau-Ponty’s error, Aron writes, agreeing with Simone de Beauvoir’s defense of Sartre, is to have confused Sartre’s ontology with ontics, to have treated an ontological concept like the “pour-soi” as though it were the self, the historical subject.43 Sartre’s Marxism is purely “ontic.” That is, Aron continues to maintain that Sartre’s Marxism does not rise to the level of seriousness of the ontology of Being and Nothingness. True, there are passages in The Communists and the Peace that “are close to what Mme. De Beauvoir calls pseudo-Sartre,” for example, where he “forbids the proletariat to reject the party unless it is united in another party,” but what he really wants is for the leaders and the followers to relate dialectically, which seems to mean for each to do what is right by the other.44 Such a harmony, however, if it is not to be merely partial, temporary, and based on bourgeois, Lockean bargains of

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interest, is only possible if History is creative of truth, that is, if the Marxist philosophy of history can be accepted. If it cannot, of course, then Sartre stands convicted of choosing “revolution without knowing what he is choosing, with no justification other than the fact of present oppression.”45 The evidence is ambiguous, Aron admits. Sartre is “strangely vague on the points which should be clarified if sympathy to Communism (even without party membership) is to become philosophically and politically intelligible.” That is, Sartre does not clarify his position on the apostolic status of the USSR. This ambiguity does not, however, lead Aron to Merleau-Ponty’s view that Sartre’s philosophy of freedom has made a Leninist out of him. Thus, even at the time of Opium, and of some of Sartre’s most extreme pro-communist writings, Aron wished to separate the Sartre he admired from the utopian ideologue he was compelled to deplore.46 Years later, Aron realized, after reading The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre’s ultimate reply to him, that “the difference of opinion was philosophically more profound than I suggested, and Merleau-Ponty was more right than I believed.”47 Throughout, however, Aron believed that it was Sartre’s moralism that led him to stick to a strictly Manichean view that his philosophy of freedom actually denied since that philosophy relativizes the historical subject and thus the binary oppositions that absolutist Manichaean thinking, like Sartre’s moralism, produces.48 In a sense, such an excuse trivializes Sartre as a philosopher. And yet it is hard for me not to think that it was Aron’s genuine affection and admiration for a former friend, to whose loss he was never entirely reconciled, which sought to carve out a realm for the “real” Sartre and put aside his merely “ontic” politics.49 The State of the Argument It is worth asking at this point where the argument stood and who had the better of it. To start with, it should not need saying, but probably does, that when it came to substantive political judgments, Aron was always on or near the target and Sartre tended to be, at least, though surely not only, in hindsight, wildly off. If the earlier citations from The Communists and Peace (e.g., the Korean War as an uprising against Syngman Rhee or the 1950s boom bringing communist revolution closer in France) do not convince, then Aron’s examples in Opium of Sartrean political analysis ought to. Thus the execution of the Rosenbergs, Sartre thought, might “fling us helter-skelter into a war of extermination.” America was rabid, guilty of “criminal follies” and “ritual murder”; it even now had the equivalent of the Nuremberg Laws, so that France must cut herself off from America or “be bitten and infected ourselves.”50 Aron took politics seriously and was very good, as all his writings on contemporary issues show, in following patterns and likelihoods without much regard to his own hopes and fears; Sartre, as we have seen, tended to understand politics as ideological theater and seems to have had a principled indifference to the kind

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of questions that were foremost for Aron. But, while it should matter a lot, it is not enough just to grant Aron the victory for his superior political judgment. There remains the question of why Sartre, no mere crank and a great intellect, did not seem to care about real political thinking. Still, in showing that Sartre and his friends had swallowed Marx whole and dogmatically, Aron had accomplished more than Koestler and others, who had also demonstrated how Marxian rationalism had transformed itself into blind, superstitious faith in history. For it had been Jeanson and Sartre who had mocked Camus for not taking “infrastructures” seriously, for making moral judgments ungrounded in historical analysis. Aron had shown how vain a boast that was, in that Sartre had never bothered to take Marx’s analysis seriously enough to question it. Therefore, what was Sartre and Jeanson’s wholesale acceptance of Marx but a baroque expression of the same moralism they thought they had transcended? In this way, Sartre’s claim failed not just practically, as a matter of political knowledge or prudence, but theoretically. Also, Aron evidently had scored by showing Sartre the tension between his individualistic and tragic analysis of consciousness in Being and Nothingness and his insistence on a collectivist Marxist happy ending, since Sartre himself felt compelled to write the Critique of Dialectical Reason to answer precisely that charge. Sartre, however, had, I think, a two-part answer in mind that enabled him to believe that Aron had not really laid a glove on him. First, epistemologically, Sartre had absorbed a relativism far more radical than Aron’s. From his viewpoint, those who try to make large-scale probabilistic judgments about human history are just fooling themselves. They do not really know, and are in fact necessarily expressing their biases, their “values,” and, usually semi-consciously, their situations. This is why, again, Sartre was able to descend to vulgar Stalinist apologetics; it is not as though for him anything else in the realm of political argument was fundamentally sounder. True, the Stalinists could not claim to know the outcome of history, but neither could the “wisdom” of Aronian probabilistic analysis make any claims as an alternative. All that one could be sure of then was intention, one’s fundamental self-expression through choice of a side. That was all Aron was doing in the end, and that was why one had to break with him, since his choice was the wrong one. If Marx was wrong, well then, as Steiner quotes Sartre, “Damn it to hell! One more great human hope gone to bits.” What mattered was aiming for the best because there was nothing that could be known either certainly or probably. And surely Aron, who himself admitted to historical relativism and the impossibility of finding a transcendent viewpoint that would allow for knowledge, ought to have acknowledged this. That he did not showed his bad faith. But why, one might urge on Aron’s behalf, is that all that matters? What about the terrible costs of those “great human hopes” going to bits? Here I think Sartre’s answer is classically Nietzschean. Nothing could be worse than bourgeois life, a life of freedom freely denying itself for the sake of accom-

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modation, of mere survival, or worse, of comfort. Could this be an eccentric opinion of his, perhaps the view of a would-be god-king trapped at a dinner party? No, he would reply, since I have shown in Being and Nothingness and elsewhere (e.g., No Exit) that those who think they are not miserable really are, only they are in bad faith, in denial. Thus in the end both the epistemological and the moral Sartrean answer depends on the claim of being superior in moral courage, of being willing to see the alternatives as starkly as they really are. From that viewpoint, the paradox of Marxist existentialism seems to be the only consistent, even rational, course and those who, like Aron, show it to be a paradox, and think they are thus demolishing it, only show how far they are from the level of the argument.51 Thus, to some degree, as Aron eventually admitted (see below), he and Sartre were talking past each other. To meet Sartre on his grounds, Aron would have had to show both that, even without (or, more precisely, especially without) the possibility of certain historical knowledge, prudential and probable judgments still made sense, and that ordinary life, life lived without apocalyptic hopes, was worth living. Aron of course never undertook that task fully. Yet, without officiously trying to do it on his behalf, one can note what seems to underlie Sartre’s position. Epistemologically, he insists on an all or nothing choice. Either we know, really know, or we do not know anything and have to choose in blindness.52 The influence of a kind of Cartesianism is manifest here. The modern scientific refutation of ancient thought was made possible by the belief in the adequacy, at least for human purposes, of a reductive and ultimately mathematical account of the world. The classical vocabulary, which took the human situation as the norm even for the sub-human world of matter in motion, and thus spoke of kinds and qualities, was mockingly rejected. Even when talking about human things, what Leo Gershoy has called “social Newtonism” sought to employ the standards of a triumphant quantitative science.53 But the historicist and eventually “post-modern” refutation of modern thought retained the latter’s epistemological radicalism in the form of negation; now Descartes’ demon really did rule. But was it epistemological rigor or just optimism about the human problem that really justified throwing out probabilistic, prudential thinking about human things? In Sartre’s case it is hard not to think that there is a link between his epistemological radicalism and his substantive view of the human condition. The extreme choices that nihilism forced upon him did not seem to cause him great reluctance or distaste—to the contrary. Sartrean rhetoric differs greatly from the stoical endurance with which Max Weber, for one, treated the absence of any cosmic guidance.54 In the end, we would need to consider whether Sartre’s vision of ordinary life as hell and life in the maelstrom of history as bracing (a kind of life that it is fair to point out Sartre himself did not go in for) really does speak to the human condition as such or just to some fairly peculiar versions of it. Aron would go on to a deeper engagement with Sartre’s philosophy.

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Perhaps, though, his deepest act of refutation came in the way his public life contrasted with Sartre’s own. 1968: An Ugly Interlude In 1968 the outbreak of student riots in Paris, which ultimately threatened the Fifth Republic itself, led to a spectacular and one-sided confrontation between Sartre and Aron. Typically, although the moderate Aron had been a reforming critic of the antiquated French university system, and had even left his position at the Sorbonne, when the situation became quasi-revolutionary, he turned against the utopian mob and its extreme, anarchic demands.55 Equally typically, the events made the radical Sartre ecstatic. After all, a revolution of intellectuals and the young was far more to his taste than one made by moujiks and commissars. This was a Sartrean revolution, in deed as well as in style, in that his great, uncompleted theoretical effort to unite his Marxism and his existentialism, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, had, with its glorification of the “fused group” emerging out of a leaderless mob, become an actual guide to some of the intellectuals involved in the great days.56 In a way it was the Parisian version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution that Sartre so greatly admired. Aron’s opposition to his golden moment led Sartre to what it is not excessive to call a temper tantrum. Aron, Sartre said, was unworthy to be a professor because he had (Sartre was willing to bet his right arm) never questioned himself. Also, as de Gaulle had now been seen naked, the students should be allowed to see Raymond Aron naked too. Aron’s clothes would not be returned until he agreed to make an examination of conscience.57 Aron, finding the attack contemptible, thought it beneath his dignity to respond. Ugly as they are, Sartre’s remarks tell us something about what Aron meant to him and about who Sartre was. Aron’s refusal to respond tells us something about him as well. Early in The Committed Observer, Aron is asked about his differences with Sartre over (Freudian) psychology. He replies that Sartre had rejected the unconscious but, through his doctrine of bad faith, found a “trick” by which he could incorporate Freud’s insights.58 Yet when asked if he himself engaged in psychological explanations, Aron replied that he thought it unfair to explain others by psychological or sociological reduction.59 Then he adds: “Let’s take Sartre. I have never sought the profound motivations of one or another of his assertions. I considered only his motivations that were so visible, so close to the surface, that taking them into account could not be considered as a kind of psychoanalysis.”60 He thus refused, out of a kind of probity, to say everything he thought he knew about Sartre and his motives. In the given case, perhaps the only things one could say about Sartre’s outburst are psychological. The patent folly of the assertion that Aron had never questioned himself (unless it is assumed that any real questioning would have caused him to agree with Sartre), and then the unveiled sadism of wanting to see Aron “stripped naked,” speak to the hatred of a will that cannot brook opposition

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and that saw in Aron inveterate and unanswerable resistance. More interesting perhaps is the fact that Sartre’s fantasy of stripping Aron naked before all the students amounts to a wish-fulfillment of a very contemporary kind: precisely this sort of thing had been going on in Mao’s Cultural Revolution.61 Mao too had found a way to lead a “leaderless” revolution, to give the appearance of a “totalization without a totalizer”62 (of course, all the more totalitarian for being able to give that impression), to get credit for being the mere embodiment of the masses, and to carry out his private vengeances in a suitably “spontaneous” and thus legitimate way, so that the instigator could hide behind the instigated. Here Sartre sees himself, in effect, as Mao, looking on as the students (spontaneously, of course) humiliate Aron until he is reeducated, humbled, brought to acknowledge the superior wisdom of Sartre-Mao, the Great Teacher.63 To me, this piece of rant reveals something deep in Sartre, something profoundly tyrannical that generally masks itself as high-minded indignation on behalf of the oppressed, something that his character had in common with a number of the great leaders of the twentieth-century revolutionary Left.64 Aron refused to get in the gutter with Sartre. To some extent this may have been another example of Aron’s effort to keep the irrational, thuggish Sartre he knew too well apart from the serious philosopher and former friend whom he continued to admire. Thus Aron speaks frequently of Sartre’s violent words, of his hatred of dialogue and tendency to monologue, of his being a “nasty kid,” and so on, but those judgments never seem to be dispositive.65 I wonder though to what extent his refusal to reply was also Aron’s implicit reply to Sartre, as was his refusal to psychologize. I wonder too to what extent Aron’s scrupulous avoidance of emotional language, which ultimately made him famous for his “dry clarity,” while certainly a genuine and characteristic trait, might also have been an implicit response and reproach to Sartre. It is striking that in The Committed Observer Aron becomes most irritated and, perforce, emotional, when he defends himself from the charge of being too impersonal and dry.66 Just as Sartre acted out, quite theatrically, the authentic, genuine, non-actor who was (as he said Aron was not) all of a piece, Aron presented himself, also theatrically, though in the underplayed style, against Sartre as the man of reason and respect for reality, the intellectually honest and therefore generous partner in debate.67 Each, in other words, made himself into a role model, one egregious, enraged, brilliant, ill-mannered, but “authentic,” the other self-restrained, rational, sober, magnanimous, and honest. Sartre was the center of many constellations and seems to have taken it as his due. Aron deliberately allowed Sartre to be the star, always put himself in the shadows, and yet, implicitly, made of that very fact a sign of his superiority to the great Magus of the Deux Magots. Nonetheless, in this confrontation, even a temperamental Sartrean would, if honest (maybe even if authentic) have to see the superiority of an Aron who took real risks in seeking to calm a temporarily crazed public opinion and whose reputation suffered thereby greatly and for many years, to the intemperate bullying of a

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Sartre whose very rage at Aron suggests his sense of inferiority before him (or at least the sense that he would need the aid of a mob to overcome him), and who sinks to fantasies of getting his revenge by mob violence. The Settling of Accounts: The Critique versus History and the Dialectic of Violence In the end, though, Aron’s real response to the Sartre of 1968 was History and the Dialectic of Violence, his critique of Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason.68 The very fact that Sartre had written his book demonstrated the persistent power of Aron’s arguments in Opium and elsewhere. Sartre knew that he had not demonstrated successfully how Marx and Nietzsche, Stalin and Roquentin, could be reconciled. So, in the Critique, he gave it his best shot. It was at that level, the highest Sartre could achieve, that Aron thought it appropriate to address him. The Critique, intended as the first part of an uncompleted project, tries to bring Marx into harmony with existentialism by focusing on material scarcity as the hitherto universal human condition. Scarcity represents finitude and need, as death does for the existentialists. Out of it arise alienation and the class struggle. So far, despite Aron’s strictures on a reading of Marx that makes scarcity so important, so fairly good.69 What was in Being and Nothingness the active principle of Being-for-itself becomes praxis, and its passive counterpart, Beingin-itself, gets several new labels, among them “exteriority.” So reinterpreted, it becomes possible to see the overcoming of natural scarcity by capitalism and of artificial, capitalist-caused scarcity by communism as the answer to many of the problems of alienated consciousness raised by Being and Nothingness. What seemed like private problems were really socioeconomic. But, even granting an Hegelian end of history of full mutual recognition, what about death, which demonstrates the fundamental situatedness of human consciousness, which in turn keeps it from ever finding full solidarity with another? Would not Alexandre Kojève’s end of history (the European Union as world state, in effect), however satisfying to Marx, have given Sartre nightmares? Would not hell still be other people, even if they all had equal incomes? Sartre’s answer was found, paradoxically, in the struggle to bring about the end of history, in emancipatory revolution. It was, after all, the fear of death, not death itself, which caused alienated and Manichean behavior. Man is a wolf to man reciprocally, out of fear and worst-case scenarios. If, however, the fear of death could be overcome, in a common emancipatory project in solidarity with another who was identically overcoming his fear of his own death, then true liberation from the situatedness of the self would become possible and man would cease to be the “useless passion” to be God. Thus, all unalienated behavior has its roots in the fearful overcoming of fear. The classic example of the mob of individuals becoming the “fused group” was for Sartre the storming of the Bastille.

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Such exalted moments, however, are rare and do not last long. The next step is the institutionalization of revolutionary fraternity through the oath. Once they have triumphed, the brothers replace their fear of the enemy with fear of each other in swearing to allow the others to “lynch”—Sartre’s word, significantly enough—them. After all, now that they are safe again and their fear of death, either by oppression or revolutionary warfare, is ended, they may become alienated individuals again. This internalized fear, the fear of being the victim of revolutionary terror, is precisely what keeps them from giving way to the hell of daily, bourgeois life, of “serial alterity” (e.g., passively accepting your place in line at the bus stop), that is, of bourgeois individualism with all the recursion of alienated behavior that it entails. Thus Stalin’s Great Terror, like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, turns out to be just what its victims had agreed to, since this “[r]eflexive fear, for the third party, is born when no one—not even him—is sufficiently afraid,” afraid enough, that is, to keep alienation at bay.70 Terror is the guarantor of all real human fraternity. And, since the real end of the revolution is to maintain unalienated relations by means of a terror that is itself justified by the continuation of an outside threat to the revolution, the Manichean viewpoint in which all victims are ipso facto guilty can never be relaxed for a moment. The problem that bothers Sartre, however, is that the institutionalization of the oath has let the serpent into Eden. It will lead, gradually and necessarily, to further institutionalization, to a more and more bureaucratized party and ultimately to an administrative state—that is, to what was exoterically wished for and esoterically feared, to Stalin, and worse, to Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The best Sartre can offer is a perpetual replay of the process, a kind of dialectic of heating and cooling, something like Thucydides’ interplay of motion and rest. This is part of the reason, I would imagine, why the Maoist solution, namely a central authority taking upon itself the recreation of revolutionary consciousness by involving the masses in the necessary purges and terrorism, appealed to Sartre as much as it did. What is most immediately striking about Sartre’s solution to the human problem, and what seems to take it very far from Marxism, at least in spirit, is its apparent celebration of violence, not for its own sake exactly, but for the sake of overcoming, in the fervor of the struggle, the despicable fate of being “Thing-destinies and enslaved men,” that is, ordinary people living in peace according to agreed-on rules.71 In the end, Sartre’s exaltation of “fraternityterror” sounds suspiciously like a quasi-Jacobin version of Fascist glorifications of war and the spirit of the trenches and vulgar-Nietzschean polemics against the cowardice of bourgeois life. The Critique thus offered Aron a double challenge. What should one think, as a matter of philosophic reason, of Sartre’s effort to assimilate Marx? Had he shown Aron wrong in Aron’s separation of the serious existential Sartre from the naïve and dogmatic parlor Marxist? But also, what should one make of Aron’s willingness to separate Sartre the philosopher and Sartre the “nasty kid?” Had Sartre also succeeded in refuting Aron by demon-

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strating that they were ultimately one and the same, that he actually was a nasty kid who loved nastiness, that is, something of a fascist?72 In History and the Dialectic of Violence Aron treats the first question substantively and architectonically, the second in passing and in parentheses. Thus, at the end of the Preface to the English-language edition, Aron ends with a “somewhat personal remark,” since “there is a chance this book will be interpreted as a balance-sheet between two youthful friends who, through the events and passions of the age, have become opposed to one another. Let me say that in the evening of my life the memory of our friendship remains to me more alive than our polemics.” He concludes: “I accept him as he is—even while opposing him indefinitely with reasons he will never be ready to listen to.”73 Then there are several pages at the beginning of the sixth chapter, “From Freedom to Violence,” that treat his personal relation with Sartre in the context of the theory of the Critique.74 As the end of the Preface indicates, Aron is writing in the mingled spirit of truthfulness and charity that characterizes his side of the relation with Sartre. That this is a calculated rhetorical position seems likely to me; that it also largely reflects Aron’s actual sentiments and character also seems true. The tone of the book confirms this: It criticizes dispassionately, it passes up many juicy chances for cheap, or even not-so-cheap shots, it never descends to righteous indignation, and, in short, it has none of the tonal signs of someone out to get even. The substantive argument, in very brief summary, runs something like this. First, has Sartre managed to square the circle between the relativism and perspectivism of existentialism, with its roots in neo-Kantianism, and the teaching of a single, intelligible history? To put it in Sartre’s terms, does it make sense to speak of a totalization without a totalizer?75 No, he has not, and no, it does not. Praxis, which is both projected and freely projects, can be ontologically intelligible, can create and recreate worlds and its own teleologies, but it cannot understand, cannot fit itself to the structures it discovers, cannot have grounds for believing that its universals are indeed universals and not just its own. Unlike Dilthey, who only imagined moving from understanding particulars to universal laws, Sartre “ignores enough of history-reality to imagine the totalization of it.”76 For the rest, (and here Aron relodges his earlier charge), “[w]ithout any kind of critical analysis, Sartre has accepted the truth of Marx’s Capital as evident.”77 This means, in turn, that Sartre’s understanding of critique, while shared with Marx in one respect, omits altogether the kind of critique that Marx himself had employed in discovering those “infrastructures” Jeanson had so confidently attacked Camus with, the crucial kind of critique that gives real understanding of the structure of society and that provides the goals of individual praxis with some rational basis and a universal goal. Sartre promises to provide something like this in the second volume, but that was never finished, perhaps because Aron was right, that it could not have been provided on Sartrean principles.78

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From this, Aron turns to Sartre’s account of consciousness as it moves from the individual to the social, that is, to the crucial roles played by materiality, alterity, and scarcity. Here Aron praises Sartre for maintaining his existential beliefs in the freedom of praxis. He grants as well that the enmeshing of free praxis in materiality necessarily has an alienating effect. But materiality, unlike scarcity, is a permanent, not a contingent, fact. How then can Sartre hope to overcome alienation? Was not scarcity introduced as a substitute for general alienation in order to guarantee a Marxist happy end to a story, that by Sartre’s own account must end in the tragic finitude described in Being and Nothingness?79 Aron then traces Sartre’s argument from individual to collective alienation and thence to the class struggle, and from there to the formation of the fused group (the Bastille) and ultimately to the administrative (revolutionary) state (the Kremlin). Following Sartre’s resolutely Sartrean account requires him, however, Aron notes, in effect and paradoxically, to side with Dühring in his polemic against Engels about the priority of political oppression vs. economic exploitation as the cause of revolution. This voluntarist position is true to Sartre the existentialist, says Aron, but not to Marx.80 This has a corollary. Where for Marx the regime and not men were detestable, Sartre “imputes the inhumanity that he observes in the colonial or the capitalist regime to the projects of colonialists or capitalists.”81 But this too has a corollary. In the voluntarization and personalization of the class struggle we find the justification of vengefulness (expressed famously as an ideology of hate as liberation in Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth) and of the “nasty kid” of Sartre’s polemics.82 It is true to Aron as the opposite of the nasty kid, that is, not just the nice, but the rational and sober interlocutor, that he allows this corollary to remain unmentioned. The rather more sophisticated implication he does draw, however, is that Sartre’s choice in the class struggle no longer makes sense by his own argument. True, he sides with the victim and that corresponds, given his dogmatic invocations of the truth of Marxism, with the proletariat. But, given Sartre’s voluntarism and unwillingness to appeal to the objective economic circumstances, he has no reason to believe that the triumph of the workers will not lead to at least as much oppression as the preceding regime (i.e., there is no reason to side with Stalin or Mao against the West).83 Sartre’s only recourse is to class spirit. The struggle itself is what is meaningful, or rather “the class struggle constitutes the foundation of the intelligibility of History.” This means, says Aron, that “[o]nce more, dialectic, intelligibility and hope are blended with the characteristics of violence.”84 Unfortunately, as Aron goes on to show, this is circular, since it presumes to ground the truth of Marxism on the validity of class struggle which in turn is grounded on the truth of Marxism. The class struggle is insufficient to establish the totalization of a single history, because it is a totalization without absolute knowledge.85 In other words, the Critique has not succeeded in answering Aron’s

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original objection to Marxism-existentialism made in Opium. Sartre still has no adequate reason to identify the struggle against oppression with the Marxist class struggle. What, then, is he up to? Aron suggests that the ethics promised at the end of Being and Nothingness proved impossible, so that Sartre substituted a politics for them.86 (Such a politics would be validated ethically by having an ethical, i.e., egalitarian, intention.) In view of Heidegger’s more consistent admission in the Letter on Humanism of the impossibility of a Heideggerian ethics, this suggestion may tell us a lot, not just about Sartre, but the whole phenomenon that Allan Bloom has called Left-Nietzscheanism.87 Aron then gingerly inspects the consequences of this ethics of struggle. Sure enough, it involves stereotyping and essentializing the hated enemy, and thus the very Manichean behavior that is the curse of alienated man.88 This, he suggests in the chapter “Between Marxism-Leninism and Leftism,” allows for a more generally leftist (i.e., revolution for its own sake) reading than a MarxistLeninist one. Politically, Aron was right; Sartre was a leftist and fascists are not leftists. But the question remained, underneath the particular egalitarian politics, whether the Critique did not really allow for a radically “rightist” reading. Aron does not ask this yet. Instead, he suggests that Sartre, who Aron claims in the Preface had come too late to Marxism, defended Stalin because “he lacked the patience to wait for leftism, the rebellion of his heart.”89 To test this, Aron turns once more to epistemology and to a philosophic demonstration that the dialectic of free consciousness cannot produce the kind of historical understanding that Marx claimed to have reached and that Dilthey had sought. From there the argument moves to a review of the quarrel between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Sartre about the Critique and structuralism. With this, Aron ends his treatment of the first question, that of Sartre’s Marxism. The darker question he reserves for the next chapter, “From Freedom to Violence.” He introduces this question in its personal aspect, presenting himself as implicitly so superior to Sartre’s vindictiveness that he can even retain the admiration he felt for him when they were young and friends.90 It is a morally attractive and rhetorically powerful response to Sartre’s anger and thus also a good piece of counter-polemic. But the real question, Aron understands, is to what extent Sartre’s bad behavior is of a piece with his entire project and therefore not incidental to the issues between them. And here, perhaps doing posthumous justice to the Merleau-Ponty of Adventures of the Dialectic, he acknowledges that for Sartre, as early as Being and Nothingness, “each of our gestures, each of our judgments expresses the relation to Being by which a particular consciousness has determined its entire destiny. Thus Sartre does not betray his own philosophy, he reveals it (and shows the terrorism in it) when, with respect to my attitude in May 1968, he declared me ‘unfit to teach.’”91 In asking about the relation of Sartre’s theory and practice, Aron is at once asking a fundamental question about Sartre and his project and, necessarily,

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asking whether his own judgment of him, mixed, complex, ironic, but surely in large part still highly favorable, has been mistaken. By considering anti-communists as dogs he strips them of their humanity. Is it the man or the philosopher who expresses himself with such verbal aggression, such a refusal to understand the other in his alterity or to recognize the possible good will of his opponents? Is it the man or the philosopher whose only praise comes in obituaries? Has his philosophy no other goal than to justify this way of being? Or does such a life, in part at least, derive from this philosophy?92

Yet, having raised the issue in the clearest way, he ostentatiously returns to his adamant refusal to psychologize. “I shall not discuss it here: I shall stick to the relationship, which is free of doubt, between the philosophy of terror and terrorism in action, all of which is in the name of a humanism based solely upon the presence in everyone of a nothingness, creator of a total and ungraspable freedom.”93 In this almost theatrical opening and closing of a door Aron is not just keeping up his role in the tableau vivant, but he is showing his rejection of Sartre’s subversion of the rational by the personal and psychological. In doing so, in making a “gesture” that expresses his relation to Being (in effect, “I’m not going there with Sartre”), he thereby does, at another level, in fact go with him. But this is an only provisional concession, since ultimately the question is whether it is not in fact, as Aron believed and lived, reason that should govern the gestures we make in relation to Being. He explains that the historical relativism he shared from the outset with Sartre meant for him a rejection of Manichean thinking and “an appeal for the recognition of the other in his alterity,” whereas for Sartre it has meant the opposite. His book is thus, like Sartre’s, an expression of his fundamental character and views. “Thus I do not think this ‘liberal’ dialogue (to understand the other from his point of view even if the reciprocity is antagonistic) is out of character for me, and I even take this dialogue to be a testament of friendship or an expression of what, in my own ethics, is called fidelity.”94 Fundamentally, then, Aron sees the choice as between peace and war, friendship and hostility, reason and will. It is possible to believe that Sartre is more correct than Aron in deriving from radical relativism the second terms of these oppositions rather than the first. It is possible to believe that Aron may share with such figures as Gadamer a commitment to reason, moderation, and decency that the contemporary philosophies they grew up with could not in the end sustain. But along with that, it is possible to believe that Sartre’s grand indulgence in radical relativism’s implicit permission to the voluntary and the arbitrary is a pretty good reason for wanting to think the question of historical relativism through again. What is most striking and extreme about Aron’s selfunderstanding, what is in its way as extreme as Sartre’s Manichean paradoxes of freedom (maybe even more so), is that the principle of understanding the other is raised here to the level of friendship, even in the teeth of principled,

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thoroughgoing, and venomous hostility. If this is not Christian—and it is not—it gets close. (Or, perhaps, as other comments he makes suggest, his long-term affection for Sartre colored his judgment.)95 However firmly Aron closes, or at least appears to close, the door to personal judgments, what he offers us, namely an account of the relationship between Sartre’s philosophy of terror and actual terror, all in the name of a “humanism” of negative freedom, is important enough. Aron raises and rejects the possibility that Sartre merely had a “taste for revolution.”96 He admits now that his earlier reproaches to Sartre for “endowing with philosophical dignity his political opinions” were partly wrong. “I was criticizing the implications of his philosophy on the basis of my own.”97 That is, he had not seen that Sartre’s quasi-fascist tendencies were implied by his fundamental philosophy of freedom. Yet, “[i]n contrast to the fascist philosophies of violence, Sartre’s philosophy has humanity as its horizon.” His final judgment seems to be this: While Sartre is in the end no fascist, the “fascistic” appearance of Sartre’s thought comes from two causes. First is the absolutist conception of freedom (as negation) that rejects “the inevitable socialization of praxeis,” (i.e., all laws and compromises); second, the refusal “to compare real or possible regimes with each other so as to choose, according to time and place, such and such a path towards liberation.”98 (The second point seems to me a consequence of the first.) Conclusion It was doubtless not Aron’s intent to suggest that this boils down to the realization that at the root of Sartre’s thought is the privileging of the tyrannical will to absolute power, which is then masked and justified by an abstract extension of that privilege to all. This is a vulgar view (which, however, I think has a lot to be said for it). By contrast, and here perhaps I am not entirely vulgarizing, Aron opts for actual human reciprocity, which is all the more real—in practice certainly but also theoretically—for not being absolute, for recognizing and accepting the limits of human situatedness. In the end, Lacoue-Labarthe’s attempt to turn the tables back on Aron fails because the utopian hopes he accuses Aron of failing, out of mediocrity or cowardice, to share, are inherently, at their moral apex, hellish, the dream of men transformed from men into demonic beings ruled entirely by hatred and fear. Earlier, I argued that, however much both Sartre and Aron cooperated to make of their relation a tableau vivant that would offer the viewer a satisfying complete choice of identities, in the end, even someone of Sartrean temperament ought to see the superiority of Aron’s thought and soul. At one (early) point, Sartre remarks critically of Aron that (presumably unlike Sartre) he is made of parts, and is not authentic. For those of Sartrean temperament authenticity is necessarily the most important criterion. For Sartre it seems to mean spontaneity and, as such, it has little room for prudential or rational deliberation. Yet, as Aron carefully shows, where does “authenticity” so conceived lead Sartre but into

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the most rigid and partial postures and paradoxes: on the one hand, freedom as negation, absolute, abstract, at war with all givenness, finitude, and thus, reality; on the other, as a corrective, absolute, abstract recognition of the Other (as the abstract Other, inevitably) in his own freedom. This juxtaposition cannot but mean, as in Being and Nothingness, perpetual warfare. Then, to resolve this paradox, there is required an abstract, unreasoning and ultimately careless acceptance of a political doctrine that promises on its own, vastly different terms, to turn “other people” from hell into heaven. Devotion to the end of the cause becomes the putative justification of the unmediated release of the will to power, the justification for contemptuous dismissal of all human beings other than the sworn brothers as mere objects (“Thing-destinies”). The ideal human being, the upshot of Sartre’s “humanism” in the Critique, finally becomes a demon, united with his fellow demons, at one level by a common hatred, at a deeper level by a common terror of each other. Instead of the promised flow of spontaneous human existence, we have allegorical characters, nightmarish shadow figures, theatrical postures, extreme and rigid polarities, abstraction, and always, as Aron says, monologue rather than dialogue. It is possible, of course, to see Sartre as the braver, the intellectually deeper of the two because of the radicalism of his relativism and the conclusions he draws from it. Where Aron seemed to fight off the radical implications of historical relativism, still trying to understand patterns that the phenomena suggested to his admittedly situated consciousness, Sartre leaps enthusiastically to the grandest conclusions. Is this not the sign of a deeper mind and soul? I rather doubt it. What relativism permitted Sartre to do was precisely to assert himself through his valuations, to impose himself on an inert and meaningless anarchy. In doing so he did not seem to take very seriously the possibility that, even in the absence of God, the phenomena might have characteristics, patterns, and probabilities of their own that needed to be respected and understood, to the extent a perspectival being could attain. That possibility would have meant necessary limits to freedom as negation, to absolute freedom, to what used to be called pride. But if, by contrast, like Aron, one rejects the deep Sartrean revulsion at the existence of a world of discrete and finite things, human beings included, then “authenticity” will have to be understood differently. Things will matter, and even have a claim on us, as what they are. The intellectual curiosity that Aron already brought to the École Normale and that became the guiding principle of his intellectual life is rooted in that acceptance of the world of discrete and finite things. From that principle we learn that we can only transcend our own limitations by, initially, understanding other things and people as they are to and for themselves.99 The true authenticity and “spontaneity” of a human being, the true flexibility in the face of phenomena that are always in part mysterious, real fidelity to self, will come to be seen far more in Aron’s realism, modesty, candor, self-criticism, and openness to the criticisms of others than in Sartre’s melodramatic gestures and rhetoric.

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And while no one should dispute Aron’s own judgment that he did not compete with Sartre at the level of philosophic creativity, it would be a mistake, I think, simply to judge that Aron was a better human being, even if Sartre was a better philosopher. True, Aron did not undertake the full-scale critique of historical thinking that might have been necessary to avoid Sartrean or Nietzschean conclusions and to support his own, humanistic, scholarship and ethics. One might recall, however, the famous conversation, reported by de Beauvoir, in which Sartre “turns pale with emotion” when Aron tells him that, with phenomenology, one can do philosophy about an apricot cocktail, because this was “just the thing he [Sartre] had been longing to achieve for years.”100 Yet one might reflect that in the end Aron stayed truer to the fundamental insight of phenomenology (which may be the fundamental insight of philosophy itself) than did Sartre, namely, the need to pay respectful attention to the phenomena, to let them, in the first instance, speak for themselves, and to encounter them (and this of course includes, to the extent possible, “inner” or psychic phenomena as well) with what the Greeks called pistis, a kind of trust. In that sense, Aron points us to a path where philosophy does not perpetually cut its own throat with a razor, whether Occam’s, Descartes’, or Sartre’s. At the level of politics, the difference is patent between Aron’s good sense and careful judgment—if only we could read him today on Islam and democracy or the West and the War on Terror!—and Sartre’s contorted apologetics for some of the worst regimes in human history. So too should be the immediate ground for this difference: Aron took politics seriously, on its own terms, as having its own patterns and characteristics; Sartre did not, treating it as material for his psychological/theoretical dramatics. But ultimately that ground has its own ground. In short, Aron sought to understand the world and thus had to accept it from the outset, fundamentally, as a world. Sartre’s freedom as negation was a way of expressing a settled hostility to the world as a world, hostility that sought in every way possible to subjugate it, and indeed finitude itself, to will. One choice is that of a human being; the other is that…of something else. Notes 1.

2. 3. 4.

Raymond Aron, Memoirs, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 21. “Sartre willingly took the lead in ‘hanging’ new students, sometimes with a ferocity that shocked me…. I remember the satisfaction of my vanity when I learned from someone else that both of them [Paul Nizan was the other] had placed me on the right side of the barricade, among those they had not consigned to outer darkness.” Aron adds a footnote (34n1): “I was perhaps more moved by this ‘recognition’ on the part of Sartre and Nizan than by the praise given me by Léon Brunschvicg for a presentation on the ontological argument in St. Anselm and Kant.” Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, trans. James and Marie McIntosh (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 21. Aron, Memoirs, 60. Aron, Thinking Politically, 45.

Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

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Cf. Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron: A Critical Introduction (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 132. Mahoney refers to Allan Bloom’s “Raymond Aron: The Last of the Liberals,” from Giants and Dwarfs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 267, where the source is cited as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Neither an Accident nor a Mistake,” Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): 481–84. Sartre himself in effect made the same point, according to George Steiner, who, in “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” the transcription of a discussion held at Skidmore College on April 11, 1985, and published in Salmagundi 70–71 (1986): 171–73, recalls attending a meeting where Sartre said, “Suppose it is all true about the Gulag” (172). “There are two possible reactions for a human being. One is to say ‘Ha! I told you so. What a fool you were to expect otherwise. How much easier it is for you and me now that we know.’ The other reaction is to say, ‘Damn it to hell! One more great human hope gone to bits’” (173). Steiner goes on to cite Sartre as adding, “Ontologically they are not the same reaction.” Leszek Kolakowski notes soberly that, “Sartre’s ‘ontological’ distinction is good enough to serve as an excuse for the worst kind of commitment. He himself never, to my knowledge, analyzed or recanted his own blunders” (173). No doubt Kolakowski is right, but Sartre’s point is that he knows that and it does not bother him in the least. For example, Aron, Memoirs, 330–31, or Thinking Politically, 142. Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs, 259. Aron, Thinking Politically, 19: “I never met such a remarkable group of people, so much so that in all other milieux I have known since then, I’ve retained a kind of nostalgia for the Ecole Normale.” Aron, Memoirs, 23, and Thinking Politically, 19. Aron, Thinking Politically, 45. Aron, Memoirs, 56. Aron, Thinking Politically, 44–45. Cf. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron, 174n24, where Mahoney points out that Aron did not accept Weber’s “value-free” characterization of charismatic leadership, concerned that it made it impossible to distinguish between Hitler and Socrates. Whether or not Aron ever successfully met the challenge of radical historicism theoretically, he certainly refused its temptations. And in insisting on paying attention to the phenomena, so that an approach that could not distinguish between Hitler and Socrates had to be defective, he showed a wisdom that was not merely practical or prudential. Aron, Thinking Politically, 38. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Eyre Methuen, 1948), 35ff. and 52: “Those who hide from this total freedom…I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary…I shall call scum.” Thus, in his highly respectful and yet sharply critical account of the magisterial Hegelian philosopher (and self-proclaimed “strict Stalinist”) Alexandre Kojève, Aron credits him with preserving “the autonomy of France and Europe” by defending, against American pressure, the article of the GATT that permitted the establishment of the EEC (Aron, Memoirs, 66). Cf. Sartre and Camus, eds. and trans. David A. Sprintzen and Adrian van den Hoven (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2004), 146f., taken from Sartre’s polemic against Camus: “To deserve the right to influence men who are struggling, one must first participate in their struggle, accepting many things, if one wants to try to change them.”

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18. Ibid., 156. 19. Sartre himself sums it up well in his polemic with Camus: “Does History have a meaning you ask? Has it an end? For me this question has no meaning…. And the problem is not to know its end, but to give one to it” (ibid., 157, italics in the original). For Aron’s presentation of Sartre’s view, see below. 20. Thus, one of Sartre’s favorite comments was that “all anti-communists are dogs.” Cf. Aron, History and the Dialectic of Violence: An Analysis of Sartre’s “Critique de la Raison Dialectique”, trans. Barry Cooper (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 160. 21. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Communists and Peace, with a Reply to Claude Lefort, trans. Martha H. Fletcher, John R. Kleinschmidt, and Philip R. Berk (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 110. 22. Ibid., 14. 23. Ibid., 17, 35, 27. 24. Ibid., 65, 126f. 25. Ibid., 157. 26. Ibid., 12. 27. Ibid., 88, 94, 98. 28. Ibid., 12–13. 29. Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 156–57. 30. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, trans. John O’Neill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 14. 31. Aron, Opium, 115. 32. Aron, Opium, 116, from Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, 153. Strikingly, the English translation has, “After that there can be no more dreams or adventures.” The French, however, reads: “Après quoi, il n’y a plus que rêveries ou aventures ” (Humanisme et Terreur [Paris: Gallimard, 1947], 165). Aron’s translator seems to have gotten it basically right. 33. Aron, Opium, 116–17. 34. Cf. Aron, Opium, 80–81; History, xxiii; and Marxism and the Existentialists, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 160–61. 35. Cf. Aron, Opium, 80–81, and also History, 18. 36. Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, 156. 37. Aron, Marxism and the Existentialists, 33. 38. Ibid., 32. 39. Ibid., 33. 40. Ibid., 37. 41. Aron, Opium, 224. 42. Aron, Marxism and the Existentialists, 69. 43. Ibid., 71. 44. Ibid., 72. 45. Ibid., 73. 46. Aron, Opium, 224. 47. Aron, Marxism and the Existentialists, 9. 48. Aron, Thinking Politically, 142, and History, 161. 49. Aron, Thinking Politically, 143, 149. 50. Aron, Opium, 225n. 51. Aron poses the question to himself when he cites a contrast drawn by Leo Strauss between modern political thought, which, by focusing solely on human activity, ends in a philosophy of history that makes such activity meaningless, and the

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52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67.

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Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean rebellions against that thought that attempts “to recover the possibility of practice, i.e., of a human life which has a significant and undetermined future.” However, in destroying thereby the very possibility of theory, Strauss claims that the irrationalist rebellions contradict themselves as well, so that “‘[d]octrinarism’ and ‘existentialism’ appear to us as the two faulty extremes.” Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 320–21, cited in Aron’s 1956 essay “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” which appears as an appendix to the 2001 Transaction edition of Opium of the Intellectuals, 325–52. How then to deal with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, who “combine in a curious way the two extremes” (Aron, “Fanaticism,” 328)? I do not mean that Sartre denied the facts of mathematics or physics but rather denied that their human meaning or value can be known. Leo Gershoy, From Despotism to Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 62. “Liquidation” is for Sartre a very positive word, “petrifaction” a very negative one. Aron, Thinking Politically, 207. Cf. Aron, History, Preface, xx–xxi. Aron, Thinking Politically, 214. (These quotations are from an interview with Sartre in the Nouvel Observateur, June 19, 1968, and are put to Aron by his interviewer in The Committed Observer.) Cf. Aron, History, 185. Aron, Thinking Politically, 32. Ibid., 33. Of course, it will be objected, Sartre is only speaking metaphorically. No doubt—but metaphors can be taken as emblems for the actuality they pictorially evoke. Sartre’s was perhaps only an atrocity in thought, in metaphor. But then again, the acting out of such fantasies in the Cultural Revolution was also meant as a metaphor (for revolt against authority). When a master of language like Sartre chooses such words they mean something; when a philosopher of choice and responsibility like Sartre uses such words, he chooses to be responsible for their implications. This is a classic formulation from The Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. AlanSheridan Smith, ed. Jonathan Rée (London: Verso/NLB, 1976), 64, 817. My colleague, Professor David Leibowitz, has pointed out to me that the image of stripping can be found in Plato’s Charmides (154d–155a) as a metaphor for examining the soul. It is doubtless possible that Sartre had this image in mind when making his comments on Aron. The possibility, if in fact true, would in no way change my view of those remarks except to show what no one needs to doubt, namely that Sartre was capable of erudition even in a temper tantrum. The arrogant, intelligent, spoiled boy who learns in boyhood that he can have his way only if he masks his tyranny behind an overt solidarity with the oppressed is a classic twentieth-century phenomenon. Episodes in the early life of Lenin and Castro suggest the pattern. The basic type is that of the Schwärmer of Schiller. Aron, Memoirs, 330. Aron, Thinking Politically, 56, 79, 81, 203, 259–60. Simone de Beauvoir, ed., Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvior, 1940–1963, trans. Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 176. From a letter of May 9, 1940, we find (already): “With Aron there are compartments too. He was a fifty-year old in everything, but that didn’t make one single fifty-year old, you’d have to add up all those fifties to reach his true age. I wonder if that’s not a Jewish intellectual flaw,

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68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology and at any rate it explains the lack of authenticity, because authenticity is being the same, a single projection through all situations.” Aron’s D’Une Sainte Famille à l’autre (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) is devoted to the then fashionable Marxism of Althusser, not to Sartre. Aron, History, 36ff. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 430. Ibid., 406. In this context a remark of Sartre’s in The Communists and Peace (163) rings a bell. “At the same period, on the same continent, anger and fear were engendering fascism everywhere: it was, if I may speak this way, the ‘healthy’ reaction.” One notes the scare quotes and the slippery locution “if I may speak this way,” as well as the rhetorical need for them, but it is the scare quotes that should have scare quotes: Sartre means it. Aron, History, xv–xvi. Ibid., 159–61. Ibid., xviii Ibid., 14. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 80. Ibid., 83. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 7–31. See, for example, “Make no mistake about it; by this mad fury, by this bitterness and spleen, by their everpresent desire to kill us, by the permanent tensing of powerful muscles which are afraid to relax, they have become men.” Aron, History, 83–84. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 91. Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1977), 255–61. Cf. especially the discussion of evil on 260. Aron, History, 105. “Nothing was more striking to me when reading Portrait of the Anti-Semite than the increasing resemblance between the anti-Semite as seen by Sartre, and the Jew seen by the anti-Semite.” Ibid., xxi, 117. Ibid., 159. “Many of my friends are surprised that I carry on a dialogue with an interlocutor who rejects discussion. The insults he periodically heaps upon me certainly do not respect the principle of reciprocity, the highest ethical principle set forth in the Critique…. Their comments do not discourage me: unlike those who make them, I have retained my youthful admiration for the extraordinary fertility of Sartre’s mind and for his power of abstract verification, without forgetting his superb indifference to verification and the proper use of reason. As a result of its excess, his rage bothers me little; I accept him as he is, even in his violence and immoderation.” Ibid., 159. Ibid., 160. Ibid. Ibid., 161

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95. Aron, Thinking Politically, 143 and 149, where he speaks, interestingly, of the “permanence of friendship.” 96. Aron, History, 193. 97. Ibid., 195. 98. Ibid. 99. This does not, emphatically, mean that we will fall into an equally abstract and extreme attitude of acceptance—whether traditionalist, quasi-Buddhist, or multiculturalist—since that represents another abstraction and pose, and since making judgments on the basis of the best rational thought and evidence available is being true to the kind of thing human beings are. 100. Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (New York: Paragon House, 1992), 112. Cf. Aron, Memoirs, 43, on that conversation and his view of the importance of phenomenology.

4 Aron’s Clausewitz Barry Cooper As did his major study of America, The Imperial Republic, Aron’s book on Carl von Clausewitz originated in courses given at the Collège de France. Between 1970 and 1972, Aron undertook “an investigation of the origins (or one of the origins) of modern strategy. The wars of the twentieth century and the atomic bomb have shattered classical ideas, at least in appearance, and have called into question both the art of diplomacy and the art of war.” Appearances can deceive. After analyzing Clausewitz’s great book, Vom Kriege, Aron concluded that, in some important respects, the study of the Prussian master was still required for strategic thinking even in the atomic age. Our chief concern is not, however, with the lessons Aron drew from his study of Clausewitz for the understanding of contemporary politics, diplomacy, and war. Rather, we will examine Aron’s analysis in the spirit with which Aron undertook it: a free and unencumbered study of a great book. Looking back, Aron indicated in his Memoirs that he had four goals in mind when he began writing: (1) to present the biographical and historical data to situate the author of On War in a social and spiritual context that would help readers understand his arguments; (2) to analyze Clausewitz’s “philosophical method”; (3) to examine and explicate the problem of interpreting On War, centered on the remark in his 1827 preface that distinguished two types of war and also maintained that war is the continuation of state policy; and finally, (4) to analyze the dialectic of attack and defense in light of popular warfare.1 These topics were brought together chiefly in the first volume of Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, which was followed by an account of the fate of Clausewitz’s thought after his death and the implications it had for understanding later nineteenth-century strategic thinking in Prussia, and then Germany and France. Finally, Aron considered the implications of On War for understanding the Cold War and nuclear weapons. This division was reflected in the subtitles of the two volumes: “The European Age” and “The Planetary Age.”2 75

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This large study was the first sustained analysis Aron had written since Peace and War (1962). For nearly a decade and a half he had written only what he called “essays,” some of which appeared in book form. They were not, however, focused examinations of a major thinker, a perennial problem, or an important text. Even in Peace and War, which contained several references to Clausewitz, the discussion was perfunctory. Aron worked on the book for three years, with an enthusiasm that anyone who picks up On War can easily understand. “I spent time in the Bibliothèque Nationale, I read the French and German commentators on the treatise; I took pleasure in rediscovering old quarrels. I did not claim I was putting an end to the controversies, but I was reconstructing Clausewitz’s intellectual path through the various versions of his great work.”3 An examination of Aron’s study of Clausewitz is useful both for what it brings to the understanding of Clausewitz and for what it adds to our understanding of the wide-ranging work of Raymond Aron. One of Aron’s most important insights came from his having paid close attention to the order in which Clausewitz most likely completed the major divisions of the book. To simplify considerably: The middle books, on strategy, the engagement, and military forces, contained the bulk of the historical material that described what we identify below as the Napoleonic revolution in military affairs or RMA.4 The “dialectic of attack and defense,” as Aron called it, is found in Books Six and Seven, which lead directly to the analysis of “War Plans” in Book Eight, where the connection between innovative French war-fighting and innovative French politics was first developed. Book Two, in Aron’s view, was a “methodological interlude,” and Book One, “On the Nature of War,” was written after the implications of the conclusions reached in Book Eight were worked out (I, 29–30; 9).5 In other words, Aron followed a fundamental principle of hermeneutics, that one must first try to understand a complex and profound book the way the author intended it to be understood. The alternative, which is to be avoided, is to find in such works what the critic puts there. “But,” asked Clausewitz, “what is the good of interrogating an interlocutor who will send us back only our own words, like an echo?” (I, 25; 6). The question answered itself. In the following section we consider the intellectual and historical context of Clausewitz and his work. In the subsequent sections we analyze Aron’s account of Clausewitz’s theory. I. Context The chief interpretative controversy regarding Clausewitz stems, as Aron noted, from remarks made in two notes, dated 1827 and 1830. In the latter Clausewitz indicated that he considered only the first chapter of Book One to be “finished.” As a consequence, the bulk of On War was considered by its author to be a “shapeless mass of ideas” open to “endless misinterpretation” and plenty of “half-baked criticism” (OW, 70). In the earlier note, he

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distinguished two types of war, in the first of which “the purpose [Zweck] is to overthrow [or crush, niederwerfen] the enemy” and render him impotent, and in the second, the purpose is merely “to occupy some of his frontier districts” to use as bargaining chips at subsequent peace negotiations. Either way, and “no less practical, is another point that must be made absolutely clear, that war is nothing but the continuation [or expression] of state policy [Staatpolitik] with other means” (OW, 69). The unfinished condition of On War and the question of two types of war has, broadly speaking, resulted in two schools of Clausewitz interpretation: those who emphasize the importance Clausewitz attributed to the enveloping and annihilating battle, Vernichtungsschlacht, the ascent to the extreme, absolute war, his contempt for generals who refuse to shed blood, the importance of numbers, and so on; on the other side are those who emphasize that war is the continuation of state policy, that the statesman trumps the general, that the approximation to absolute war is historically rare and that as a result, most wars are half-wars by comparison to it. Moreover, the importance of the two kinds of war, in Clausewitz’s view, changed as a result of his experience. He expressed the difference in terms of the relationship between attack and defense, the topics of Books Seven and Six respectively. As a young soldier, the somewhat romantic and patriotic Clausewitz was a proponent of direct attack, of the brutal and massive offensive. Following his experience of the Russian campaign, Clausewitz emphasized the importance of resources available to the defender, and was capable of great analytical detachment. So lively a mind as that of Raymond Aron would thus find plenty of questions to explore in Clausewitz’s text. It is also worth noting, as Richard M. Swain pointed out, that in several respects the life experiences of Clausewitz and Aron display similarities and equivalences. Anyone familiar with Aron’s Memoirs, especially his description of his early formative years and the many ambivalent experiences associated with it, can see a kindred sense of anxiety in Clausewitz, whose nobility was not confirmed by the king until 1827 and who was never entirely at ease either as a swaggering Prussian officer in Berlin society or as a quiet and reflective philosopher. Aron and Clausewitz both knew the experience of defeat in defense of their respective homelands. Aron several times drew parallels between the Prussian’s experience of defeat at Jena in 1806 and his own experience of the fall of France in 1940. Following these military disasters, Aron fled to Britain to join de Gaulle in the struggle against the Germans; Clausewitz fled a few years after Jena to Russia to join the struggle against the French. In both instances their native lands had been forced into an alliance as a result of conquest. For both men Hitler and Bonaparte were enemies, not merely opponents. Neither Clausewitz nor Aron ever doubted that war was a permanent expression of human existence, not an evil that might be expected to disappear anytime in the future. Both men sought to make the phenomenon of war intelligible—to subject war to reason, as Clausewitz put it. Both men were impressed strongly with what nowadays is called the Revolution in Military

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Affairs: For Clausewitz, the change was expressed in the differences between the warfare practiced by Frederick the Great and that undertaken by Bonaparte; for Aron, the change was expressed simply in the existence of nuclear weapons, which seemed to have placed the conduct of war entirely beyond the control of reason, and so somehow disconnected from the essence of war as Clausewitz understood it.6 Biographical contingencies aside, both Clausewitz and Aron can fairly be called political philosophers. Aron explicitly identified On War as “a great work of political philosophy” (I, 10; viii) and Clausewitz as “among the great political philosophers.”7 Of course, neither man was a certified professional, which is to say, university based, philosopher who devoted his talents to expounding philosophical views on politics, though both had strong philosophical ambitions.8 Indeed, we would argue that “great works of political philosophy” are not always written by those whom others describe as philosophers. In this respect one might well follow the argument of Leo Strauss, for whom the noun in the term “political philosophy” indicated a comprehensive and fundamental treatment of a subject matter referred to by the adjective. “Political philosophy deals with political matters in a manner that is meant to be relevant to political life; therefore its subject must be identical with the goal, the ultimate goal, of political action.” The chief themes of political philosophy—liberty and government—are both capable of lifting human beings “beyond their poor selves,” and they are concerned with matters “closest to political life, to non-philosophic life, to human life.” At the very least such an understanding of political philosophy is “realist,” in the sense of the contemporary study of international relations and of war because it aims to understand political reality, which includes war, and thus to understand the “fundamental questions,” as Strauss often said. Accordingly, to the extent that political philosophy is closest to ordinary, non-philosophic life, the adjective “designates not so much a subject matter as a manner of treatment,” namely “the political, or popular treatment of philosophy.”9 In commonsense language, both Clausewitz and Aron aimed at clarity about a fundamental constituent element of political reality: war. In a general sense, both men expressed their views in a philosophical style. In a note written about 1818, Clausewitz reflected on the genesis of On War: These drafts did not follow any preliminary plan. My original intention was to set down my conclusions on the principal elements of this topic in short, precise, compact statements, without concern for system or formal connection. The manner in which Montesquieu dealt with his subject was vaguely in my mind. I thought that such concise, aphoristic chapters, which at the outset I simply wanted to call kernels, would attract the intelligent reader by what they suggested as much as by what they expressed; in other words, I had an intelligent reader in mind, who was already familiar with the subject. But my nature, which always drives me to develop and systematize, at last asserted itself here as well. From the studies I wrote on various topics in order to gain a clear and complete understanding of them, I managed for a time to lift only the most important conclusions and thus concentrate their essence

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in smaller compass. But eventually my tendency completely ran away with me; I elaborated as much as I could, and of course now had in mind a reader who was not yet acquainted with the subject. The more I wrote and surrendered to the spirit of analysis, the more I reverted to a systematic approach, and so one chapter after another was added. (OW, 63)

Such a style, said Gallie, belonged to an author “of marked philosophical ability.” He combined a “slightly ironic self-awareness” with modesty, poise, and assurance, “which suggests a genuine, if not a great, philosopher.”10 Moreover, his study of war, as Aron indicated, was practical, as political philosophy must properly be. And as for Aron himself, the focus of a lifetime of scholarship and of more popular writing has been prudential and practical, the very embodiment of political reason.11 There is also a more narrow and almost technical sense in which On War is a work of political philosophy. Paret, for example, argued that “what Clausewitz attempted to do might be called phenomenological in the modern, Husserlian sense of the term.”12 Not that Husserl, with his own elaborate technical vocabulary, ever would claim Clausewitz as having anticipated his own “rigorous science,” but that Clausewitz’s method looked phenomenological in the sense that he proceeded from the consideration of a wide range of examples towards what phenomenologists would call the essence, and towards what Clausewitz usually called a theoretical account, of the phenomenon of war. In an unpublished Preface, written between 1816 and 1818, Clausewitz used some quasi-Husserlian language to describe his scientific approach to war. “Its scientific character,” he said, “consists in the attempt to investigate the essence of the phenomena of war and to indicate the links between these phenomena and the nature of their component parts” (OW, 61). Consider, then, a few of his more “phenomenological” passages: “War,” said Clausewitz, “does not belong in the realm of arts and sciences; rather, it is part of man’s social existence,” like commerce and politics—except that conflicts, which exist in commerce and politics as well, are usually settled without bloodshed. Accordingly, “war is a special activity different and separate from any other pursued by man,” so that “as long as they practice this activity, soldiers will think of themselves as members of a kind of guild, in whose regulations, laws, and customs the spirit of war is given pride of place” (OW, 149, 187). Or consider Clausewitz’s phenomenology of military defeat: Those who have never been through a serious defeat will naturally find it hard to form a vivid and thus altogether true picture of it: abstract concepts of this or that minor loss will never match the reality of a major defeat. The matter is worth closer examination. When one is losing, the first thing that strikes one’s imagination, and indeed one’s intellect, is the melting away of numbers. This is followed by a loss of ground, which almost always happens, and can even happen to the attacker if he is out of luck. Next comes the break-up of the original line of battle, the confusion of units, and

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Political Reason in the Age of Ideology the dangers inherent in the retreat, which, with rare exceptions, are always present to some degree. Then comes the retreat itself, usually begun in darkness, or at any rate continued through the night. Once that begins, you have to leave stragglers and a mass of exhausted men behind; among them generally the bravest—those who have ventured out farthest or held out longest. The feeling of having been defeated, which on the field of battle had struck only the senior officers, now runs through the ranks down to the very privates. It is aggravated by the horrible necessity of having to abandon to the enemy so many worthy comrades, whom one had come to appreciate especially in the heat of battle. Worse still is the growing loss of confidence in the high command, which is held more or less responsible by every subordinate for his own wasted efforts. What is worse, the sense of being beaten is not a mere nightmare that may pass; it has become a palpable fact that the enemy is stronger. It is a fact for which the reasons may have lain too deep to be predictable at the outset, but it emerges clearly and convincingly in the end. One may have been aware of it all along, but for the lack of more solid alternatives this awareness was countered by one’s trust in chance, good luck, Providence, and in one’s own audacity and courage. All this has now turned out to have been insufficient, and one is harshly and inexorably confronted by the terrible truth. (OW, 254–55)

This is, perhaps, a description of Clausewitz’s experience at Jena. Danger, which is the very element within which an engagement is fought, changes its meaning for the loser: It “is no longer a challenge to their courage, but a harsh punishment to be endured” (OW, 231). Clausewitz was personally acquainted with Schlegel, the Romantic writers Ludwig Tiech and Novalis, and played cards with Hegel.13 His approach to war has also been likened to the philosophical methods of Kant and Hegel, who were his approximate contemporaries (Kant died in 1804; Hegel and Clausewitz both died as a result of the cholera outbreak of 1831). There is, moreover, a kind of family resemblance between certain of Clausewitz’s formulations and the more systematic arguments of Kant as well as some of the remarks and themes of Hegel. It is probably fair to say with Paret, that Clausewitz belongs firmly in the camp of the counter-Enlightenment.14 Aron was skeptical of the influence of Kant and Hegel chiefly because those who read and interpret Clausewitz are mostly military people with but a vague understanding of philosophy, and most people with more than a rudimentary grasp of Kant and Hegel do not read Clausewitz. There are, however, the views of the great neo-Kantian, Hermann Cohen, to consider. Cohen defends at length the “less improbable” notion of a Kantian influence (I, 361; 224). Even for Cohen, however, it seems clear that Clausewitz was not properly speaking a Kantian. Rather, the chief text upon which the notion of a “Kantian Clausewitz” rests, the memoirs of General von Brandt, indicates quite clearly that Clausewitz was first a soldier and second a thinker who happened to listen to J. G. Kiesewetter lecture on Kant. And Kiesewetter, von Brandt said, did not so much “teach the philosophy of Kant as dilute it, so to speak, into homeopathic doses.”15 And yet, as others have pointed out, Clausewitz followed a Kantian style in sharply dividing war from other human activities or, within the context

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of war, introducing notions—such as absolute war—that look very much like Kantian “regulative ideals.”16 In Aron’s view, Clausewitz’s taste for definitions and abstract notions that seem to mark a treatise as scientific does not depend on any serious knowledge of Kant’s philosophy. He simply lived in an intellectual universe permeated with Kantian ideas and Kantian language, a universe that was equally filled with the language of Goethe and Schiller (I, 436)—but no one would for that reason call Clausewitz a poet. Nor would one look for the influence of Newton’s physics or cosmology simply because Clausewitz borrowed the notions of a “center of gravity” or of “friction” to describe the course of an engagement. The question of an Hegelian “presence” in On War is more complex. On the one hand, it seems clear that Clausewitz adopted a highly conventional view of the state that had been given its most famous contemporary exposition in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, at least if that “textbook,” as Hegel called it, is read in a highly conventional way.17 It is also true that both men were in Berlin at the same time and that Clausewitz, who had light duties as director of the Kriegesschule für die Offiziere, better known as the Allegemeine Kriegsschule, had plenty of opportunity to listen to the famous philosopher as well as play cards with him. It is also true that, on occasion, Clausewitz used the Hegel-sounding language of thesis and antithesis (OW, 523–24, for example). There are, however, a couple of obvious problems of detecting a Hegelian influence in On War. First, even though Clausewitz and Hegel were both impressed by Bonaparte, the former fought against him whereas the latter was, to be blunt, a collaborator who justified Bonaparte’s achievements in extravagant, almost liturgical, language. In Hegelian terminology, Clausewitz was unquestionably a “Master” rather than a “Wise Man” or “Sage,” as Hegel understood himself to be. Thus, for example, in a letter to his wife following the battle of Jena, Clausewitz wrote: I have had some distressing experiences, and my soul has endured many bloody wounds, but the rock on which I have based my hopes, on which I have relied with certainty, this rock is still standing, solid and intact…for, as regards my inner state, if I am not bringing back a booty rich in great exploits, I am at least free from the burden of blame; so I can say to myself that I have not been unworthy of the modest hopes that you, my beautiful love, have placed in me. I can thus return to you holding my head high. (I, 94; 12)

This was clearly the attitude of a man who insists on resistance and on fighting his enemies, not “understanding” them. Second, Hegel was a notoriously ambiguous writer who has been interpreted in any number of ways. Accordingly, even to say that Hegel justified the achievements of Bonaparte is itself a contentious though not an arbitrary assertion. Consider, for example, a month before the battle of Jena, Hegel addressed the students in his class on “speculative philosophy.”

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Political Reason in the Age of Ideology Gentlemen, this is speculative philosophy as far as I have come in its elaboration. Consider it a beginning of philosophizing to be continued by you. We find ourselves in an important epoch of time, in a ferment; the Spirit [Geist], with a sudden jerk, has moved to advance beyond its previous form [Gestalt] and to assume a new one. The whole mass of hitherto accepted conceptions [der bisherigen Vorstellungen] and concepts, the bonds of the world, have been dissolved and collapse like a dream image. A new epiphany [Hervorgang] of the Geist is preparing itself. It is appropriate for philosophy to greet its appearance and to recognize it; while others, in impotent resistance, adhere to what belongs to the past, and the majority is not more than the unconscious mass of its appearance. But philosophy, recognizing it [the Geist] as the eternal, must give it the honor due to it. Recommending myself to your kind remembrance, I wish you a pleasant vacation.18

On the surface, this looks like a formal, if somewhat obscure valedictory: The students, it is to be hoped, will continue where their teacher has led them during changing times. But what does it mean for the Geist to assume a new Gestalt? How are “conceptions” also the bonds of the world? How can the Geist prepare itself for a new epiphany? Why is it appropriate for philosophy to recognize this epiphany? Would the “others,” bent upon “impotent resistance,” have included Clausewitz? These questions require considerable interpretive effort in order to understand what they might mean, let alone attempt to answer them. A clue as to what Hegel meant is contained in a famous letter he wrote to his friend Niethammer, just before the same battle at Jena after which Clausewitz informed his wife that he had acquitted himself honorably. It is dated “Jena, Monday, October 13, 1806, the day when Jena was occupied by the French, and the Emperor Napoleon arrived within its walls.” Hegel wrote: “I have seen the Emperor—this World Soul—riding through town, and out of it, for a reconnaissance, it is a wondrous feeling indeed to see such an individual who, concentrated in one point, sitting on a horse, reaches over the world and dominates it.”19 When one decodes the language of Hegel into something resembling commonsense discourse, he is describing his “wondrous feeling” at seeing Bonaparte, whom he considers to be a “World Soul,” which not only rides a horse but appears to have the capability of giving a new Gestalt to the Geist. The task of “philosophy,” that is, of Hegelian philosophy, is to recognize this new form of the Spirit as an epiphany and explain its true significance to students and to the general population. It is certainly not the task of such philosophy to “adhere” to what belongs to the past and fight the new form of the Spirit, either with weapons or with critical understanding. To one such as Clausewitz, at least in 1806, Hegel’s attitude was that of a detestable, servile, and cowardly opportunist, not that of a Sage.20 He no more would write an apology for Bonaparte than would Aron write one for Hitler. The interpretation of Hegel as a “Wise Man” who understood how what was taking place in everyday reality, such as the victory of the French at Jena, was also entirely reasonable is, nevertheless, a powerful one, especially in France. Moreover, it was one with which Aron was entirely familiar.21 Let us, therefore,

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leave the issue of the proper reading of Hegel open and consider only Aron’s analysis of an allegedly “Hegelian” Clausewitz. The “dialectic” of attack and defense, as Aron called it, is not properly speaking Hegelian because each of the two first elements [i.e., attack and defense] contains its opposite: no offensive without an element of defense, and vice versa. The defense, by paralyzing the attack, condemns it to failure, but attack crowns defense and ensures its ultimate success. The defensive retains what is best in the offensive whereas the offensive takes from the defensive what is its worst side. Strategy oscillates between these opposites and has to seek out the best compromise between the opposite term’s good and bad aspects. In no way is such oscillation or compromise the equivalent of a Hegelian synthesis.

There is in this “dialectic” an oscillation and even a kind of “resolution” or Ausweg, but there is no Hegelian Aufhebung, a “synthesis” that transcends existing but temporary contradictions and gives rational coherence to the entire historical progression. Such a genuinely Hegelian dialectic, said Aron, “has no place in the Treatise. It could not appear there.” If, for example, hussars parry the blows of lancers, who can say which is the attacker and which the defender? “It would be easier,” said Aron, “to find Hegelian elements in the positive and negative poles of electricity” (I, 364; 226). Likewise, Paret explained that Clausewitz’s “dialectical method” does not lead even to a resolution because “its intent is to clarify differences: it is not part of a necessary progression that both gives expression to and moves toward a state of infinite harmony.”22 Clausewitz did write of a “contradiction” between ends and means, and between material weight of numbers and spiritual importance of morale, but these contradictions would also simply dissolve in practice and in strategy at the onset of an engagement. Aron did allow that the dialectic of the offensive attack and subsequent conquest of territory (a positive objective) contrasted with the defensive retention of territory (a negative objective) could be understood as a “dialectic of wills, each of which negates the other (or the objective intended by the other) that comes close to the Hegelian dialectic of Master and Slave—except that there is no question of recognition involved” (I, 365; 226). It would probably be more accurate to say that the dialectic of attack and defense corresponds to the conflict of proto-conscious desires that is transcended (aufgehoben) as the dialectic of Master and Slave, but it is certainly true that the key notion of recognition is absent.23 Indeed, to the extent that recognition exists in On War, it emerges from the consummation of victory, namely the pursuit of the vanquished by cavalry or by an uncommitted reserve that results in taking trophies such as flags, pennants, or standards that “embody the victory” (OW, 263–66). Kant and Hegel aside, for Aron, Clausewitz’s self-identification with Montesquieu extended beyond matters of style, which he mentioned in his note of 1818,

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to method and substance. Paret likewise noted that “like The Spirit of the Laws, Clausewitz’s work is a highly personal, in some respects almost autobiographical document.”24 “The whole of the Treatise,” Aron said, “like De l’esprit des lois, aims to overcome the opposition between the universal and the historical” (I, 66; 34). Clausewitz’s ambition, “like that of all sociologists, is to render history intelligible and action rational, in the sense that means are adapted to ends. This intelligibility results from a constant back-and-forth between abstraction and history, or concept and lived experience.” In short, in Aron’s view, Clausewitz belonged more to the eighteenth than to the nineteenth century. He was influenced more by his mentor General Gerhard von Scharnhorst (I, 379–81) than by Kant or Hegel.25 He believed in the European concert of nations, even though he also had to come to terms with “the thunderclap of the Revolution” and discovered in himself the passion of a German nationalist (I, 373; 231). His nationalism, however, was not so much conservative as defensive: Germany was a bulwark in preserving a European equilibrium against the offensive and aggressive ambitions of France. In this respect at least, the oft-made comparison between Clausewitz and Machiavelli is justified. Clausewitz, like Aron after him and Montesquieu before him, understood international affairs in terms of a general dynamic equilibrium and, more particularly, of Eurocentric political balance. For example, in two essays of 1831, “Political Relations in Europe Since the Polish Partitions” and “On Several Political Questions Concerning the General Issue of the Existence of Germany,” Clausewitz argued that, ever since the days of Louis XIV, with only a twenty-four-year interlude of peaceful impotence, France alone has placed the European balance and equilibrium at risk.26 This was the chief problem, in Clausewitz’s view, posed by Bonaparte: He sought to take France from a position of supremacy in Europe (Vorherrschaft) to that of a hegemonic empire (Alleinherrschaft). Thus, when France abused the power that came from military victory, it provoked an alliance to restore the balance, and paid to the last penny the cost of defeat (OW, 252; cf. SR, 610). In 1831, following the several disturbances of the previous year, Clausewitz saw the necessity of yet further war to maintain the European equilibrium. In his analysis, war to restore an equilibrium disrupted by French ambitions was defensive. Likewise, in Book Six of On War, on defense, written many years earlier, Clausewitz elaborated his notion of European balance. He did not have a “systematically regulated balance of power” in mind, so much as the interests of states and of peoples combining to support a tendency towards equilibrium and balance. In this respect, and with suitable qualifications concerning the larger scale of a European equilibrium, Clausewitz’s view again echoed that advanced by Machiavelli concerning domestic politics in Italy. A final contextual observation concerns what might be called the efficient cause of the recent outburst of French aggression, the attacks of Bonaparte. In Aron’s words, Clausewitz concluded that the French owed their victories “not

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to their superiority as a people, but to their superiority of numbers, to a new way of fighting, to the talents of their generals, and finally to the genius of Napoleon” (I, 46; 21). The importance of military genius, which Clausewitz may have borrowed from Kant’s Critique of Judgement, and of material superiority is self-evident.27 The talents of generals combined with, and, indeed, connected to, a new way of fighting constitutes what we summarily called the nineteenthcentury or Napoleonic “Revolution in Military Affairs.” Before considering Clausewitz’s understanding of the Napoleonic RMA, two preliminary remarks are in order. First, behind Clausewitz’s arguments lay the insights of Scharnhorst, particularly his insistence on the great value found in the study of history as a means to understand the context and so grasp the importance of contemporary innovations. 28 “Historical examples,” wrote Clausewitz, “clarify everything and also provide the best kind of proof in the empirical sciences. This is particularly true of the art of war” (OW, 170). Second, Clausewitz based much of his argument on immediate experience and direct observation, confirming again his affinity to Montesquieu who, as Aron noted above, moved from the particular and historical to the conceptual and universal. In 1793 and especially in 1806, Clausewitz saw displayed unmistakably the futility of the old forms of warfare. “When in 1806,” Clausewitz wrote, the Prussian generals, Prince Louis at Saalfeld, Tauentzien on the Dornberg near Jena, Grawert on one side of Kapellendorf and Rüchel on the other, plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great’s oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of a style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield. (OW, 154–55)

Later, in Book Six, he wrote that “the vacillation and confusion of the Prussians in 1806 was brought about by outdated, petty, and impractical views and schemes” (OW, 518). In short, the defeat at Jena was a humiliation of Prussia’s once proud army. Clausewitz, along with Scharnhorst, Neidhardt von Gneisenau, and Hermann von Boyen, led the reform and transformation of the army so that when it returned to battle in 1813, 1814, and 1815, it could contribute to the final overthrow of Bonaparte.29 That is, there was no doubt in Clausewitz’s mind that the French owed their victories to their new modes of making war. Nor did he doubt that the reform of the Prussian army was a practical way of solving the problem presented by Bonaparte’s innovations. It is hard to avoid acknowledging a humiliating defeat, but it is even more difficult to understand what happened. More is involved than reliance on a weaker order of battle or poorer planning. In Book Four, Clausewitz first described one significant change:

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But this, he said, was a “spurious philosophy,” a “sham,” a game of strenuous diplomacy or forceful negotiation “in which battles and sieges were the principal notes exchanged” (OW, 265, 587, 590). Indeed, the traditional expression “vainly offering battle to the enemy” no longer made sense (OW, 245). Today there is nothing to prevent a commander bent on a decisive battle from seeking out his enemy and attacking him. If he does not, he cannot be considered to have wanted the engagement; today if he says that he has offered battle but that the enemy refused it, it merely means that he did not think conditions favorable for an engagement. It is an admission on his part to which that expression does not apply; he uses it only as an excuse. It is true that while the defender cannot nowadays decline an engagement, he can avoid it by abandoning his position, and thereby his object in holding it. But this kind of success already constitutes the better part of victory for the attacker—the recognition of his provisional superiority. It is therefore no longer possible to talk of “a challenge refused.” (OW, 246)

Second, therefore, the “sham” of the “honor of victory” has been replaced with its consolidation: “[P]ursuit is now one of the victor’s main concerns, and the trophies are thus substantially increased” (OW, 266). The reason why trophies are captured is that their capture is the expression of the destruction of the defeated army; the reason why the victor must capture as many trophies as possible is to indicate to the vanquished that his power had been obliterated. The effect, Clausewitz said, “is rather a killing of the enemy’s spirit than of his men” (OW, 259). There are some additional and, at first glance, external changes in post-Napoleonic warfare. Armies have given up tents, for example, because “it is now thought more advantageous for an army of 100,000 men to have another 5,000 cavalry or several hundred extra guns instead of 6,000 tent horses” (OW, 312). In the days of Frederick the Great, planning was required to execute a march but battles were conducted by direct command. In a post-RMA world, without magazines and huge baggage trains, marches can simply be commanded, but the large size of armies means that battles must be meticulously planned (OW, 316). At the same time, the size of modern armies and their continuous deployment has increased the problems of supply and logistics (OW, 330). These external changes are central, in Clausewitz’s view, to a great increase in the lethality of post-RMA war-fighting.31 Tents and baggage trains were aban-

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doned in order to increase the size, the mobility, and the firepower of armies, which is also why it is impossible to “decline an engagement.” In the old days, “regular armies resembled navies, and were like them in their relation to the country and its institutions. Fighting on land therefore had something in common with naval tactics, a quality which has now completely disappeared” (OW, 153). Today war consists of “single, great, decisive actions” (OW, 153). Most important, however, is that post-RMA war is conducted by mobilized nations. Eighteenth-century dynastic or “cabinet” warfare “was still an affair for governments alone, and the people’s role was simply instrumental.” With the Napoleonic RMA, however, “people themselves were in the scale on either side. The generals opposing Frederick the Great were acting on instructions—which meant that caution would be one of their distinguishing characteristics. But now the opponent of the Austrians and Prussians was—to put it bluntly—the God of War himself” (OW, 583). Suddenly, he said, “war again became the business of the people…. The people became a participant in war; instead of governments and armies as heretofore, the full weight of the nation was thrown into the balance. The resources and efforts now available for use surpassed all conventional limits; nothing now impeded the vigor with which war could be waged, and consequently the opponents of France faced the utmost peril” (OW, 592). “Woe to the government,” he said, “which, relying on half-hearted politics and a shackled military policy, met a foe who, like the untamed elements, knows no law other than his own power” (OW, 219). In short, the Napoleonic RMA was an unanticipated result of the French Revolution, akin in this respect to the effect of popular passions on the conduct of the Thirty Years War by Gustavus Adolphus.32 Not just the effectiveness of Bonaparte “cast the old accepted practices to the winds”; so too did the resistance he mobilized against his forces—in Spain, in Russia in 1812, and in Prussia in 1813. “All these cases have shown what an enormous contribution the heart and temper of a nation can make to the sum total of its politics, war potential, and fighting strength. Now that governments have become conscious of these resources, we cannot expect them to remain unused in the future, whether the war is fought in self-defense or in order to satisfy intense ambition” (OW, 220). A major aspect of the “heart and temper” of a nation emerged from the experience of war itself under these new conditions. “The more harshly [wirklicher] a war is waged, the more it is charged with hatred and animosity, and the more it becomes a struggle for mastery on both sides, the more all activity will tend to erupt into bitter fighting, and the greater the importance that will then attach to a great battle” (OW, 259). As Aron observed, “in most cases, the popular passion expresses the magnitude of the stakes: there is a correlation between the intensity of the sentiments and the significance of the opposing interests” (SR, 606). Historically, however, wars have not been waged in an atmosphere of hatred and animosity and as a result the character of battle (Schlacht) has not always

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been one of slaughter (Schlacht). That is why governments and commanders tried to avoid a decisive battle, and why they were able to succeed. “Laurels were to be reserved for those generals who knew how to conduct a war without bloodshed; and it was to be the specific purpose of the theory of war to teach this kind of warfare. Recent history has scattered such nonsense to the winds” (OW, 259). It is not simply Clausewitz’s conviction that only a great battle (Hauptschlacht) can produce a major decision but it is a conclusion based on experience and on the evidence of history. Thus “we are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed. The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms” (OW, 260). To summarize the Napoleonic RMA: Changes in the size of the attacking army, changes in technology and in its operational concepts (no tents, observation balloons, and so on), changes in the order of battle and the objective of combat, and especially the unleashing of the energies of the nation in arms, created a new kind of warfare. A final contextual novelty, then, is to indicate the new political ends post-RMA war was intended to serve. At the start of the Revolutionary wars, it was not clear what their political purpose (Zweck) would be. By the end of them it was clear: “the destruction of the European monarchies” (OW, 592). Or, to use the formulations of 1831 quoted above, France sought not just primacy but a hegemonic imperium. Granted that Bonaparte effected an RMA and that, in consequence, his enemies were annihilated one by one until they were compelled to adjust their own military practice: The change was not simply military. Accordingly, Clausewitz then asked, “[I]s it true that the real shock was military rather than political? To put it in the terms of our argument, was the disaster due to the effect of politics on war, or were the politics faulty?” (OW, 609). In Clausewitz’s view the effects of the French Revolution were not the result of military success. Rather the military changes, and thus the success of the Napoleonic RMA, resulted from unacknowledged but “radical changes in politics,” including the altered condition of the French people. “That other governments did not understand these changes, which they wished to oppose new and overwhelming forces with customary means: all these were political errors. Would a purely military view of war have enabled anyone to detect these faults and cure them? It would not” (OW, 609). Not until the political changes brought about by the Revolution, namely the change from primacy to hegemony, were properly understood would it be possible to undertake an appropriate military response. “In short, we can say that twenty years of revolutionary triumph were mainly due to the mistaken policies of France’s enemies” (OW, 609), even though the effects of these political mistakes were most evident on the battlefield.33 The trouble was not that the statesmen ignored the views of the soldiers. On the contrary, both groups thought that they understood how war and state policy

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were linked. “But that form of [pre-RMA] war naturally shared in the errors of politics, and therefore could provide no corrective” (OW, 610). Clausewitz quite properly concluded that the transformation of war resulted from the transformation of politics.34 II. Genesis of Clausewitzian Theory “The purpose of Clausewitz reveals itself,” wrote Aron, “if you are prepared to read him carefully. (I should add that there have not been many careful readers.) Over a period of some fifteen years he sought to formulate a conceptual system, a theory (in the sense that we speak of economic theory today) that enables the concept of war and the reality of war (or real wars) to be thought through with lucidity” (I, 23; 5). Traditions, historical accounts, memoirs of statesmen and soldiers that detail their views of how politics and strategy were intermixed with combat, all had to be examined within an analytical or theoretical account that would be flexible enough to comprehend both the cabinet wars of Frederick the Great and the Revolutionary wars of Bonaparte, but also coherent enough not simply to be a reflection of circumstances. According to Clausewitz, “the primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled” (OW, 132). Theory “should cast a steady light on all phenomena so that we can more easily recognize and eliminate the weeds that always spring from ignorance…[I]t can give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action” (OW, 578; Aron, I, 328–30; 205–6). Clausewitz’s most comprehensive theory of war, which may be summarized as a contrast between pure and actual war, emerged from his study of history (I, 117; 67), and reciprocally, history was a means to test “genuine advances in cognition,” which is to say theory.35 Theory is also closely connected to what Clausewitz called critical analysis, “being the application of theoretical truths to actual events” (OW, 156). One “applies” theory, however, not as a measuring stick, but “as the soldier does—as an aid to judgement” (OW, 158). Thus, for example, if a critic wishes to judge the conduct of an engagement and “distribute praise or blame, he must certainly try to put himself exactly in the position of the commander; in other words, he must assemble everything the commander knew and all the motives that affected his decision, and ignore all that he could not or did not know, especially the outcome” (OW, 164). Neither theory nor critical analysis, however, is a manual for action, a compendium of rules, or a doctrine, so much as it is a guide to assist a commander in his self-education, nearly all of which is based on direct experience (OW, 141). “Rules,” Clausewitz said at one point, “are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves” (OW, 184). In contrast, a genuine theory, which never lost touch with empirical evidence, could be developed provided the analyst looked at the phenomenon of war as a whole. Theory, he said, should show “how one thing is related to another, and

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keep the important and unimportant separate. If concepts combine of their own accord to form that nucleus of truth we call a principle, if they spontaneously compose a pattern that becomes a rule, it is the task of the theorist to make this clear.” Rules are “idiotic” because there are always exceptions; principles are not because they admit of modification. In short, Clausewitz, like Aron, was an empiricist and a pragmatist. In contrast, advocates of “practical dogmatism” and purveyors of “eternal truths” about war particularly attracted Clausewitz’s scorn (I, 88; 48). Their great mistake was to ignore the importance of the moral virtues, especially courage, and the passions, especially fear. “Wherever decisions are based on fear or courage,” Clausewitz observed, “they can no longer be judged objectively; consequently, intelligence and calculation can no longer be expected to determine the probable outcome” (OW, 168). In Aron’s words, they ignored the human side of war and its conduct and “failed to appreciate the uniqueness of each conjunction of events and excluded the part played by accident and by good and bad luck” (I, 23:5). The reason why “fixed values” and a “mechanical” approach to war are wrong is that “military activity is never directed against material force alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces [the virtues and the passions] which give it life, and the two cannot be separated” (OW, 137). These moral factors are perceived by the “inner eye,” which is influenced by danger, the all-pervasive environment of war. This is also why “all war presupposes human weakness, and seeks to exploit it” (OW, 256) even though such weakness is not evident before it is forced to appear by military action. Or again, “in war more than anywhere else, things do not turn out as we expect” (OW, 193). And so, for example, it is never easy to determine the Schwerpunkt, the “culminating point,” literally, the center of gravity, of victory. A commander must guess whether the first shock of battle will steel the enemy’s resolve and stiffen his resistance, or whether, like a Bologna flask, it will shatter as soon as its surface is scratched; guess the extent of debilitation and paralysis that the drying up of particular sources of supply and the severing of certain lines of communications will cause in the enemy; guess whether the burning pain of the injury he has been dealt will make the enemy collapse with exhaustion or, like a wounded bull, arouse his rage; guess whether the other powers will be frightened or indignant, and whether and which political alliances will be dissolved or formed. Thousands of wrong turns running in all directions tempt his perception; and if the range, confusion and complexity of the issues are not enough to overwhelm him, the dangers and responsibilities may. This is why the great majority of generals will prefer to stop well short of their objective rather than risk approaching it too closely, and why those with high courage and an enterprising spirit will often overshoot it and so fail to attain their purpose. Only the man who can achieve great results with limited means has really hit the mark. (OW, 572–73)

Of course, the reality of war and the accuracy of Clausewitz’s account mean that those whom he criticizes for ignoring an important aspect of reality

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will also be found to have covered up or hidden their mistake. “There is,” said Clausewitz, “no theoretical concept in the art of war dearer to the hearts of critics” than the notion of “the key to the country.” It has been “the prize exhibit of innumerable accounts of battles and campaigns, the favorite theme of all arguments—one of those pseudoscientific terms with which critics hope to show their erudition. Yet the underlying concept has neither been established, nor even clearly defined” (OW, 456). In fact, as Clausewitz showed in some detail, “the key to the country” is “nothing but a convenient figure of speech” for the simple and obvious reason that “the real key to the enemy’s country is usually his army” (OW, 458). To take another example of an empty concept, “the command of heights” has a commonsensical meaning: He who is in possession of high ground has an advantage because “physical force is always harder to exert in an upward than in a downward direction, and this must also hold true of an engagement” (OW, 352). It can, therefore, mean genuine domination. But when all is said and done, such expressions as “a dominating area,” “a covering position,” and “key to the country” are, insofar as they refer to the nature of higher or lower ground, for the most part hollow shells lacking any sound core. These elegant elements of theory have been used above all as seasoning for the apparently overly plain military fare. They are the favorite topics of academic soldiers and the magic wands of armchair strategists. Neither the emptiness of such fantasies nor the contradictions of experience have been able to convince these authors and their readers that they were, in effect, pouring water into the leaky vessel of the Danaïdes. Conditions have been mistaken for the thing itself, the tool for the hand that wields it. Mere occupation of such an area and position is taken for a show of strength, for a thrust or a blow, and the area and the position for an active element. In reality, the occupation is nothing but a raised arm, and the position itself only a lifeless tool, a mere potentiality that needs an object for its realization, a simple plus or minus sign without any value attached. The real thrust and blow, the object, the value is victory in battle. It is the only thing that really counts and can be counted on, and one must always bear it in mind, whether it be in passing judgment in books or in taking action in the field. If the decision depends only on the number and scale of victories, it becomes obvious that the first consideration is the relative quality of the two armies and their commanders. Terrain can only play a minor role. (OW, 354)

There are many other critical remarks Clausewitz made in the course of developing his own theory and there are several individuals famous in their day but now unknown but to historians of military strategy whom Clausewitz dissects and demolishes.36 We have seen that Clausewitz has a theory of what a theory is and he has been willing to criticize others for presuming to advance an uncritical opinion as a theory. There remains, in this section, to account for how the historical development or the Napoleonic RMA, discussed in the previous section, was distilled into Clausewitz’s theory of war. Aron’s account was neither the first

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nor the last to make the connection between Clausewitz’s direct experience, his reading of history, and his theoretical grasp of the major issues.37 Arguably, however, it was the most thorough and complete. Clausewitz began Book Eight by recalling the arguments of the previous books. The overriding objective (Hauptziel) of military action is to crush the enemy by destroying his armed forces. The only means of doing so is battle. He then said he had analyzed the several situations that occur in war-making and now, in Book Eight, on “War Plans,” he would “revert to warfare as a whole” and to a consideration of “its most important aspect: pure strategy.” This meant “returning to the ideas put forward in Book One” (OW, 577). Book Eight, however, remained in rougher form than Book One. Its argument can be understood perhaps best as a culmination of the historical and conceptual analyses that preceded it. Moreover, Book Eight raised a question that was not properly answered until the revision of Book One was complete: What is the relationship between the pure theory of war and actual war (I, 102; 56)? One has the sense in reading Book Eight that Clausewitz is still, in part, groping towards the solution to a problem that he has not yet entirely and precisely identified. Certainly the language of Book One is more self-assured and crisp. Moreover, the key element that connected pure or absolute war and actual or real war, namely the “wondrous trinity” of people, army, and government, was not present in Book Eight, although it was the crucial culmination of Book One (I, 10; viii; I, 121; 69). War plans, Clausewitz said, deal with every aspect of war and their interrelations constitute an internal order or structure (Zusammenhang). No one in their right mind starts a war without a clear understanding of what he intends to achieve and how he intends to conduct it. “The former is its political purpose [Zweck]; the latter its operational objective [Ziel]” (OW, 579; see also I, 405–6). This distinction Clausewitz called the governing principle of warfare. Second, however, is the logic of military operations, which aims at destroying the enemy. “Since both belligerents hold that view, it would follow that military operations could not be suspended and that hostilities could not end until one or other side were finally defeated.” Yet this “original concept of war” is hardly ever found in actual war, which raises a new question: “[W]hy is it that the theoretical concept is not fulfilled in practice?” Why is actual war so “incoherent and incomplete” (OW, 579–80)? One answer is that the pure concept of war or absolute war is a fantasy and that incoherent and incomplete actual war is all that exists. But, Clausewitz objects, “with our own eyes we have seen warfare achieve this state of absolute perfection” when “Bonaparte brought war swiftly and ruthlessly to that point. War, in his hands, was waged without respite until the enemy succumbed” (OW, 580). Accordingly, the Napoleonic RMA has set a new empirical standard, “the absolute form of war” (OW, 581) by which all others are to be weighed. As Aron said, in somewhat Hegelian language, the exceptional character of Napoleonic war “conforms to its concept, of absolute war” (I, 298; 185).

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But referring these two types of war back to the governing principle, two distinct criteria of success in warfare exist: In absolute war, only one result counts, final victory. In the many varieties of actual war, the successes are separate and only the total score counts, when the war is concluded by negotiations that lead to peace. As Aron pointed out, this means that absolute war, which follows the principle of annihilation of the enemy, favors the victor and simply follows the ascending escalator towards “the extreme.” Non-absolute war, whatever its actual configuration, favors the vanquished, upholds the endlessness of policy and negotiation, and the political purpose that the end of war is peace (I, 146–47; 86). This is why, as Aron also pointed out (I, 174; 104), Clausewitz used the word victory, Sieg, only in the discussion of tactics, which makes victory inherently subordinate to the genuine strategic objective, peace. But this raises another question: What is the political purpose, Zweck, of a mode of war, namely absolute war, which aims only at victory, which, it seems, can only be an operational objective, Ziel? This was the issue that Clausewitz explored but did not resolve in Book Eight, and took up again in Book One. In chapter four of Book Eight, for example, Clausewitz considered a “strict definition of the military objective,” namely defeat of the enemy. During the course of an engagement, a certain culminating point or “center of gravity” (Schwerpunkt) develops, which then becomes the focus of the belligerents’ energy. “If the enemy is thrown off balance, he must not be given time to recover. Blow after blow must be aimed in the same direction: The victor, in other words, must strike with all his strength and not just against a fraction of the enemy’s” (OW, 596). Moreover, the victor must follow up his initial success. The “principle of continuity” in military action means that “there must be no talk of rest, of a breathing space, of reviewing the position or consolidating and so forth, but only of the pursuit, going for the enemy again if necessary, seizing his capital, attacking his reserves and anything else that might give his country aid and comfort” (OW, 625). Clearly, a recipe for endless attacks seems to be without political purpose in any normal sense of the term. The analysis to this point, however, has considered the military objective of battle only from the point of view of the attacker. The purpose of attack, however, is not to fight but to possess: How much more effective is a surprise attack, a lightning strike that minimizes fighting and time, and results in extensive acquisitions. Following the onset of attack, the only reason for fighting is because the defender refuses to give up and so fights to oppose or to delay the attacker’s acquisitions. This is why, as Clausewitz observes rather wryly, “the aggressor is always peace-loving (as Bonaparte always claimed to be); he would prefer to take over our country unopposed” (OW, 370). Defense, said Clausewitz, is the stronger form of war, but as noted above it has a negative purpose: to wait, to parry, to retain and hold ground. Thus, it should be employed only so long as a commander is compelled to do so by weakness (OW, 358). In reality, attack “is perpetually combined with defense” because most attacks “only lead up to

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the point where their remaining strength is just enough to maintain a defense and wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns and the reaction follows with a force that is usually much stronger than that of the original attack. This is what we mean by the culminating point [Schwerpunkt] of the attack” (OW, 528). Moreover, the culminating point, even of victory, is not self-evident. To find it, as noted above, a commander must guess. In short, what today might be called the asymmetry of defense and attack led Clausewitz to conclude that defensive battles offered “a greater probability of victory than attack” and defensive victories can take place on just as grand a scale as offensive ones (OW, 392). Moreover, this relationship of attack and defense, which is enacted by fighting, does not have fighting as its ultimate purpose or object (Zweck). “The ultimate object is the preservation of one’s own state and the defeat of the enemy’s; again, in brief, the intended peace treaty, which will resolve the conflict and result in a common settlement” (OW, 484). The citations in the preceding paragraph, taken from Books Six and Seven, were recapitulated in Book Eight, along with comments on the great historical example, the attack by the Grande Armée on Russia in 1812. Here, said Clausewitz, was an excellent example of how, by beginning on the defensive, the Emperor Alexander was able to destroy completely the French army (OW, 600). The phases of that enormous defeat are well known: From the beginning of the 1812 campaign the Russians could grow only stronger. At heart, all Europe was opposed to Bonaparte; he had stretched his resources to the very limit; in Spain he was fighting a war of attrition; and the vast expanse of Russia meant that an invader’s strength could be worn down to the bone in the course of five hundred miles’ retreat. Tremendous things were possible; not only was a massive counterstroke a certainty if the French offensive failed (and how could it succeed if the Czar would not make peace nor his subjects rise against him?) but the counterstroke could bring the French to utter ruin. The highest wisdom could never have devised a better strategy than the one the Russians followed unintentionally. (OW, 615)

Aron commented on the ambivalent outcome of the great battle at Borodino, so splendidly evoked by Tolstoy in War and Peace: Napoleon won the battle of Borodino (Moscow) because the Russians retired from the battlefield and by definition the victor is he who remains master of the battlefield. But did victory without the destruction of the Russian army correspond to the real intention of Napoleon? Was this outcome what he really had in mind? Assuming he wanted to destroy the Russian army, he failed. Assuming he did not want to destroy it, can we not say he failed in his plans? (I, 331; 207)

As Aron said elsewhere, “Napoleon had only one chance for victory, Alexander’s consent to a peace treaty after the taking of Moscow,” but Alexander did not consent (SR, 611). Clausewitz cited more examples from the 1812 campaign than from any other.38 It was not simply the scale of events and the terrible consequences for

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the French, the Russians, and, indeed, for Clausewitz himself that gave significance to the attack and destruction of the French army. “It is legitimate to judge an event by its outcome,” he said, “for this is its soundest criterion. But a judgement based on the result alone must not be passed off as evidence of human wisdom” (OW, 627). What is important about the 1812 campaign was not that it failed, but why. “Anyone who asserts that the campaign of 1812 was an absurdity because of its enormous failure but who would have called it a superb idea if it had worked, shows complete lack of judgement” (OW, 627) for the obvious reason indicated in section two above: Judgements must, in principle, be made only on the basis of evidence apparent to the commander. More to the point under consideration here, the 1812 campaign provided Clausewitz with the direct experience of how “absolute war,” or “pure war,” might be practiced by Bonaparte, but also how it was transformed into disastrous results for him. That is, the one example of the approximation of absolute war by actual war was not the kind of enterprise that a prudent captain would be likely to attempt ever again. Consider the remarks of Clausewitz quoted above on the limitlessness of attack in the context of pure war and the principle of continuity. According to the analysis of attack, taken in isolation, there is no reason for the attacker ever to break off an engagement. Our belief then is that any kind of interruption, pause, or suspension of activity is inconsistent with the nature of offensive war. When they [interruption, etc.] are unavoidable, they must be regarded as necessary evils, which make success not more but less certain. Indeed, if we are to keep strictly to the truth, when weakness does compel us to halt, a second run at the objective normally becomes impossible; and if it does turn out to be possible it shows that there was no need for a halt at all. When an objective was beyond one’s strength in the first place, it will always remain so. (OW, 599–600) We repeat, in short, that once a pause has become necessary, there can as a rule be no recurrence of the advance. (OW, 626)

Bonaparte’s advance followed just such a pattern of attack, and the Russians staggered back before him, past the Drissa camp, and never stopped till they got to Smolensk. He forced Bagration to withdraw as well, defeated both the Russian armies and occupied Moscow. He acted as he had always done. This is how he had come to dominate Europe, and this was the only way in which he could have done so. No one who admired Bonaparte as the greatest of commanders in his previous campaigns should feel superior to him with regard to this one. (OW, 627)

And then the “pause” by Bonaparte, with the occupation of Moscow following Borodino, “far from undermining our argument, merely confirms it” (OW, 627).

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In other words, Bonaparte had to stop in Moscow because he could go no further. He was compelled by the Russians to break off the engagement. In Clausewitz’s words, His campaign failed, not because he advanced too quickly and too far as is usually believed, but because the only way to achieve success failed. Russia is not a country that can be formally conquered—that is to say occupied—certainly not with the present strength of the European states and not even with the half-a-million men Bonaparte mobilized for the purpose. Only internal weakness, only the workings of disunity can bring a country of that kind to ruin. To strike at these weaknesses in its political life it is necessary to thrust into the heart of the state. Only if he could reach Moscow in strength could Bonaparte hope to shake the government’s nerve and the people’s loyalty and steadfastness. In Moscow he hoped to find peace; that was the only rational war aim he could set himself. (OW, 627)

The “only way to achieve success” was to compel Alexander to surrender or to negotiate a favorable peace, which in turn required the destruction of the Russian army (OW, 266). That did not happen because of a development entirely unexpected (to the French) in the area of Russian state policy: [T]he Russian government kept its nerve and the people remained loyal and steadfast. The campaign could not succeed. Bonaparte may have been wrong to engage in it at all; at least the outcome certainly shows that he miscalculated; but we argue that if he was to aim at that objective, there was, broadly speaking, no other way of gaining it. (OW, 628)

“No,” wrote Aron, “it is not the military commander who must assume the major responsibility for the Russian debacle—it is the chief of state.” He elaborated this distinction in a footnote: Clausewitz approved of Napoleon’s military plans, his refusal to commit his last reserves to the Battle of Borodino, and his choice of a route of retreat. He criticized Napoleon for the lateness of the start of the campaign, the delay in ordering the retreat, the wastage of manpower occasioned by his tactics, the lack of organization in the supplying of provisions and in the eventual retreat: but essentially, nothing would have been changed. Success required that the Russian army be crushed and Alexander’s will to resist be broken. This victory did not depend on him. (SR, 620)

Or, as Donald Rumsfeld has often said, “in war, the enemy gets a vote.” To summarize the meaning of the Russian campaign for Clausewitz: Bonaparte failed because Alexander refused to surrender and his subjects supported him. If he were to win in Russia, Bonaparte had to accept the risk of a bold attack, but his defeat resulted from the Russian defense, and from another factor that had not previously come into clear focus, the role of the Russian people in supporting the state embodied and personified in Tsar Alexander. By the time Clausewitz came to write Book One, all the elements of his theory had been assembled from the historical materials. All that remained was to bring them together in a coherent theoretical form.

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III. The Logic of the System Etymologically, a system is something that “stands together” or is interconnected, a Zusammenhang in Clausewitz’s terminology (I, 93; 51). In Book One can be found, according to Aron, “the last steps of a train of thought seeking its final expression” and the revelation of “the entire conceptual network that structures Clausewitz’s theoretical stance,” which is to say, his system.39 There are, according to Aron, four steps in Clausewitz’s analysis of the development of his understanding of war in terms of a dualistic model, which we have encountered already under the name of pure or absolute war, into what in Book One, chapter one, Clausewitz called eine wunderlich Dreifaltigkeit, a wondrous or strange trinity. The first definition declared: “War is an act of force [or violence, Gewalt] to compel our enemy to do our will” (OW, 75). This initial definition of pure war as a test of will by violence then compares war to a duel (Zweikampf): “War is nothing but a duel on a large scale,” though a better image is of two wrestlers, each of whom tries by physical force (Gewalt) to crush (or literally, to throw down, niederwerfen) the other in order to get him to do my will and to ensure he is incapable of further resistance.40 Physical force in such a struggle equips itself with the inventions of art and science to multiply its impact, but force thus becomes the means of war and so the imposing of our will on the enemy is its purpose (Zweck). To secure that purpose, it is necessary to render the enemy defenseless, which in turn is the true objective (Ziel) of war-making. That objective, namely rendering the enemy defenseless, takes the place of the purpose of war, namely imposing our will on the enemy. In short, war understood as a wrestling match combines Ziel and Zweck: you throw down the opponent and he is thus rendered defenseless and so becomes “something not actually part of the war itself” upon which we can impose our will. By this dualist model, war is struggle and indistinguishable from battle. Nothing is said either of its origins or of its end in the sense of conclusion as well as of purpose—namely peace. Clausewitz elaborated in some detail the implications of this dualist and abstract model, which, as we noted above in section two, looks very much like the Hegelian struggle of proto-conscious “sentiments-of-self,” Selbstgefühle, prior to the creation of the self-consciousness, Selbstbewusstsein, of Master and Slave. The first implication is that the level of force will increase because of reciprocity of action (Wechselwirkung). Aron called this the ascent to the extreme. There are three dimensions to this reciprocity, each of which increases the rate of ascent. First there is hostile intention, which may or may not, at least initially, be accompanied by hostile sentiment (Gefühl). Even if foes do not hate one another at the start, fighting soon changes that. War is never, therefore, simply a matter of “reason.” “That,” Clausewitz said, “would be a kind of war by algebra” (OW, 76). Precisely because war involves force, emotions are engaged, and the play of emotion accelerates the ascent to the extreme.

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The second element of reciprocity concerns the mutual fear of the opponents: So long as I have not crushed him or overcome him, I must be concerned that he will crush me. “Thus I am not master of myself: he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him,” and again the ascent to the extreme is accelerated (OW, 77). There are, however, two aspects to the power of the combatants, “the total physical means (capability) at his disposal,” which can approximately be measured, and his strength of will, which cannot (I, 197–98; 118–19). I will calculate, approximately, the effort necessary to overcome the other physically; he will do the same and again there is an escalation to the extreme. Although Aron does not note the Hegelian correspondence here, the argument by Clausewitz, that strength of will cannot be measured, corresponds within the Hegelian dialectic of Master and Slave to the moment when one sentiment-of-self chooses freely to fight to the death and the other chooses freely to submit. Before that act, that initiative, no one could tell which sentiment-of-self would turn into a Master and which into a Slave (or into masterly or servile self-consciousness). Aron summarized this first stage of the analysis as being constituted by a series of conceptual pairs: military objective and political purpose, hostile intention and hostile sentiment, physical capability and strength of will—all of which sustain the escalation to the extreme (AFS, 52). The second stage in the transformation of this dualistic understanding of war to the “wondrous trinity,” which, following van Creveld, we may summarily call “trinitarian war,” occurs when the dualistic and abstract concept encounters the empirical or historical reality of actual war.41 The “pure concept of war” is thus modified in practice so as to avoid becoming a “play of the imagination” or “logical dreaming” (OW, 78). Not two men fighting a duel, nor even two wrestlers, constitute the proper model for war, but two states. This shift from the abstract to the real world changes the entire dynamic of escalation to the extreme by introducing the effects of space, time, and politics. In order for the logic of escalation to play out between states, three conditions would have to obtain: (1) War would have to be an isolated act unconnected to prior political events; (2) war would consist of a single decisive act; and (3) the decision of an engagement would be complete and final and unconnected to any anticipation of the political situation that this single decisive act would bring about. Of these three conditions, only the second can plausibly be granted as applying to nuclear war, and even this is questionable.42 In reality, with respect to the first condition, neither opponent is unknown to the other; war does not spontaneously burst into existence, like fire from a heap of oily rags, nor does it spread instantaneously. Second, and notwithstanding the notional possibility of a surprise nuclear attack, war does not consist of a single, decisive engagement because it is impossible to prepare and deploy instantaneously owing to the importance of the physical features of the theater of operations and to the disposition of the population that inhabits it (to say nothing of allies, who do not instantaneously cooperate). In short, “the very nature of war impedes the

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simultaneous concentration of all forces” (OW, 80). Accordingly, the initial effort and the resulting decision will not be all they might be, and the escalation to the extreme is moderated. Third, “even the ultimate outcome of a war is not always to be regarded as final” because in reality the defeated state nearly always considers the result transitory and capable of future political remedy. “This, too, can slacken tension and reduce the vigor of the effort” (OW, 80). As Aron said, “war unfolds in space, it takes up time” and things slow down from instant logical dreaming to probabilities that weigh policy, motives, and purposes (AFS, 52). The return of policy, motives, and purposes now makes possible the deescalation from the extreme of absolute war to “mere armed observation [blosse gewaffnete Beobachtung].” The logic of de-escalation is also straightforward: “The smaller the penalty you demand from your opponent, the less you can expect him to try and deny it to you; the smaller the effort he makes, the less you need to make yourself. Moreover, the more modest your own political aim, the less importance you attach to it and the less reluctantly you will abandon it if you must” (OW, 81). That is, military effort may diminish as a result of the original political purpose the war was to serve. Of course, that political object, goal, or purpose (Zweck) can change, not least of all when popular emotions are involved, leading to re-escalation, and a disproportion between a relatively modest political purpose and the level of violence of a war. In short, “Clausewitz emphasizes the various degrees of violence possible in wars, from a war of annihilation to armed observation” (AFS, 53). The second stage in the argument, therefore, emphasizes the difference between actual war and the logical dreaming of scenarios that invariably escalate to the extreme. Again Aron summarized this stage of the argument in terms of conceptual pairs: Political goal and military objective are still there, but in the context of a difference between absolute and real war, which introduces the notion of proportionality and its modification by emotions once fighting begins. Clausewitz also introduced the importance of probability, which is not so much a mathematical determination of frequency as a prudential capacity to judge the character of an engagement, the intention of the enemy, and so on (I, 296; 184). The third stage introduces the asymmetry of attack and defense as an explanation for the suspension of hostilities that is, according to the pure theory of war, logically inexplicable. In other words, if war is conceptually a zero-sum game, if it is to the advantage of one side to wait for a better moment to act, it must be to the advantage of the other to act immediately. But the greater strength of defense may mean that it may be rational for both sides to wait. On the other hand, such rational action can be undermined by uncertainty, incomplete information regarding both the strength and purpose of the adversary, and morale, especially courage, which “involves a savor of risk, confidence in luck, and eminent audacity” (AFS, 55), none of which is subject to accurate calculation (OW, 81–86).

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The fourth stage in the argument focused explicitly on policy and on politics, which have been implicitly present from the beginning.43 War is not, Clausewitz said, a pastime, a joy in daring to win, a place of irresponsible enthusiasm. Rather “it is a serious means to a serious end” and all the vicissitudes of passion, courage, imagination, and enthusiasm are but contingent characteristics (OW, 86). When civilized communities go to war “the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always the result of a policy motive. Therefore, it is also an act of policy” (OW, 86–87; 18). If war were independent of policy, as it would be if the pure theory of war applied to reality, it would follow its own logic of escalation to the extreme, and resemble a single explosion that is limited only by the preparation made before it is ignited. “In reality war…is not like that.” It develops at varying speeds but “always remains subject to the will of a guiding intelligence [Willen einer leitenden Intelligenz]” (OW, 87; 18). As Aron noted, “The apparent supremacy of moral virtues (courage, boldness, confidence in luck) over the qualities of reasoning, present in the third stage, is reversed in the fourth stage, when war finally becomes subordinate to politics and policy” (AFS, 55) and thus to the guidance of the intellect and so of reason. The conclusion, thus, is that war is not just “an act of policy” as was indicated in the quotation (from Book One, chapter one, section 23) just given; it is also, in section 24, “a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means” (OW, 87), namely combat. Of course, the means can influence the political purpose, but it cannot alter it. “The political intention [Absich] is the purpose [Zweck], war is the means of gaining it, and never can the means be considered independent from the purpose [Zweck]” (OW, 87; 19). Clausewitz then reiterated the necessary conditions antecedent to the outbreak of war that would tend to push it in the direction of its abstract concept, namely escalation to the extreme: strong motives to fight, fierce tensions, and so on. Likewise, with less intense motivation the less will be evident the natural tendency of armies to act violently. Either way, however, both these kinds of war are political, as is every sort of war in between. Clausewitz then concluded quite reasonably that “war should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy” (OW, 88). This approach will provide both theoretical insight and it will account for different kinds of actual war as reflecting variation in the motives and the situations that condition them. Finally, Clausewitz described war as a “complete phenomenon [Gesamterscheinungen],” the chief tendencies of which always make it a “wondrous trinity” composed of: (1) a blind natural force made up of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity; (2) the play of chance and probability within which the creative soul is free; and (3) a subordinate nature that makes it an instrument of policy and so subject to reason alone (OW, 89; 21). Parallel to the wondrous conceptual trinity are three constituent elements of reality: (1) Corresponding to passions and the blind forces of violence are the people; (2) corresponding to creative

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action, courage, and talent is the character (and genius) of the commander and his army; and (3) corresponding to the rationality of policy is the statesman and his government. “Our task,” said Clausewitz, “is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets” (OW, 89). The trinitarian definition holds within itself the dualist definition with which Clausewitz began, but by expanding the duel from a contest of individuals to a struggle between states, he introduced additional elements that did not alter the essence of war, but did make the theory valid for real as well as “pure” or abstract war. This, in Aron’s view, was a tremendous intellectual and philosophical achievement. IV. Conclusions “One day,” wrote Aron, “perhaps the time will come when scholars can recover the subtlety of a theory—without the hope (or the illusion) of rehabilitating the theorist in order to find a teaching worthy of him” (I, 342; 213). For the better part of a century Clausewitz was read as he feared he might be—with great and even systematic misunderstanding. Aron’s study, along with others, has done much to clear up those errors and misunderstandings. “He and he alone,” Aron said, “had contemplated, on a philosophical level, the diversity of wars and the unity of the concept, the connections between political intentions and military means, and the reciprocal determination of political regimes and the modalities of warfare” (SR, 601). The last two elements, namely the connection between politics and war and between the French Revolution and the Napoleonic RMA, contributed directly to Clausewitz’s political moderation. He was as opposed to Napoleon’s quest for imperial hegemony as were Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, his two closest mentors and friends, but he never lost sight of the political purpose of war, which is peace (I, 110; 62). This is why, for example, he may have agreed with Gneisenau that there was great joy in “hunting Frenchmen by moonlight” after the victorious battles of 1815, but he nevertheless opposed the plan to blow up the Austerlitz and Jena bridges across the Seine.44 These connections, once forgotten, can only be recovered from the strenuous experience of actual war—which may be one reason, as Handel pointed out, that Clausewitz was so assiduously studied after Vietnam in American military schools.45 Finally, there is the impact of Clausewitz on Aron’s understanding not so much of nuclear war as nuclear non-war, the Cold War. Handel has suggested that, instead of the army, technology be inserted as the second term in Clausewitz’s trinity because the political end of nuclear war, namely deterrence, “is the art of not using force but of avoiding war.”46 Aron did not disagree: “[T]he United States and the Soviet Union,” he said, “are not waging war in a Clausewitzian sense. The absence of any decision through deterrence results logically from the very concept of deterrence. The rivalry between the nuclear powers can and must be continued without a decision” (II, 239; 382). In other

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words, nuclear deterrence is a new modality of the pure theory of war. And as for the actual Cold War, this, Aron said, was a form of “armed observation,” a thoroughly Clausewitzian concept that existed, moreover, at the low end of the spectrum of violence (II, 224; 373). Aron said he began his study of Clausewitz the better to understand his own times and the perils of nuclear confrontation. The results of his study constitute the evidence that a Clausewitzian study of allegedly non-Clausewitzian nuclear deterrence shows that it is, after all, open to a Clausewitzian understanding. This should not be surprising: Like Aron, the French embodiment of le bon sens, Clausewitz in Aron’s view was the embodiment of the German equivalent, der gesunde Menschenverstand (I, 66; 34). Invariably, political philosophy begins in no other attitude.47 Notes 1.

Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch, foreword by Henry A. Kissinger (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 408–9, emphasis added. 2. Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, vol. I, L’âge européen, vol. II, L’âge planétaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). A one-volume translation, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, trans. Christine Booker and Norman Stone (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985) reproduces most of Aron’s text. Citations in the text are to the original by volume and page followed by the page number (if available) of the English translation. Citations to On War indicated as (OW) are to the “Indexed edition,” eds. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). (Quotations from this edition are reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.) The edition of Vom Kriege available to me is the 1937 version edited by Karl Linnebach (Berlin: Keil Verlag). Occasionally I have modified the Howard and Paret translation. 3. Aron, Memoirs, 409. 4. See Elinor C. Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), and Bruce Berkowitz, The New Face of War: How War Will be Fought in the 21st Century (New York: Free Press, 2003) for a concise survey of the current meaning of RMA. See also Earl H. Tilford, Jr., The Revolution in Military Affairs: Prospects and Cautions (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1995). 5. See also Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 330. 6. Richard M. Swain, “Clausewitz for the 20th Century: The Interpretation of Raymond Aron,” Military Review LXVI (April 1986): 38–39. A less sympathetic appraisal of Aron’s study is Robert Hepp, “Der Harmlose Clausewitz,” Zeitschrift für Politik 3 (1978): 303–18, 390–429. 7. Aron, “Reason, Passion, and Power in the Thought of Clausewitz,” Social Research 39 (1972): 599, cited in the text as SR. 8. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 39. 9. Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), 10–11, 93. 10. W. B. Gallie, Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 42. 11. This is the thesis of Brian C. Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) and the premise of the present volume.

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12. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 357. 13. August Heinrich von Fallersleben, Mein Leben (Frankfurt: Klotz, 1998 [1868]), I, 311–12; III, 93–94. 14. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 149–50. 15. Quoted by Aron at I, 437. See also Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 161. 16. See Gallie, Philosophers of War and Peace, 52–55; Wendel J. Coats, “Clausewitz’s Theory of War: An Alternative View,” Comparative Strategy 5 (1986): 356; Paret, “The Genesis of On War,” in OW, 14. 17. See Azar Gat, “Clausewitz’s Political and Ethical World View,” Political Studies 37 (1989): 97–106. See also Bernard Brodie, “On Clausewitz: A Passion for War,” World Politics 25 (1973): 288–308. 18. Hegel, “Aus Jenenser Vorlesungen,” in Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Stuttgart: Fromann, 1936), 352. 19. Briefe von und an Hegel, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), 120. 20. This attitude of Clausewitz is, as Paret (Clausewitz and the State, 159, 169ff.) points out, close to that of Fichte, author of Addresses to the German Nation, though, as with Kant, it does not mean that Clausewitz was philosophically influenced by the author of the Wissenschaftslehre. See also Clausewitz, “Letter to Fichte,” in Historical and Political Writings, eds. and trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 279–84. 21. See Memoirs, 65–70. I have provided an extended analysis of this “reading” of Hegel, first and famously advanced by Alexandre Kojève in Paris during the 1930s before an audience that on occasion included Aron, in The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984). 22. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 84n13. 23. See Cooper, The End of History, chap. 3, for details. 24. Peter Paret, Understanding War: Clausewitz and the History of Military Power (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 98. 25. See Clausewitz, “On the Life and Character of Scharnhorst,” in Historical and Political Writings, 85–109. 26. See Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, 369–84. The original texts are reproduced in Karl Schwartz’s biography, which Aron dismissed as being of no scientific value (II, 343; see also SR, 610n12). 27. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 181. 28. See Paret, “The Genesis of On War,” 8; Clausewitz, “On the Life and Character of Scharnhorst,” 100. 29. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, chap. 8. See also Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, vol. I: The Prussian Tradition, 1740–1890, trans. Heinz Norden (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1969), chap. 4; W. Shanahan, Prussian Military Reform: 1786–1813 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945); Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army: 1640–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), chap. 2; Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform: 1807–1815 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966); Walter M. Simon, The Failure of the Prussian Reform Movement, 1807–1819 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955), chap. 9; Otto Büsch, Military System and Social Life in Old Regime Prussia, 1713–1807: The Beginnings of the Social Militarization of Prusso-German Society, trans. J. G. Gagliardo (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1997). See also the discussion of the controversy concerning the significance of these reforms by Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 198–207.

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30. See also Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), chap. 1. 31. For a thorough analysis of the technological and other innovations involved in the Napoleonic RMA, see Rothenberg, The Art of War, chaps. 4, 5, and 7. The novelties included: improved cartography, bookkeeping, moveable presses to pay the troops, better logistics, mobile medical units, the use of balloons (aerostatiers) to create an artificial “high ground” for observation, new command-and-control techniques, and so on. 32. Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 181. 33. See Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 20ff. 34. See also Clausewitz, “The Life and Character of Scharnhorst,” 102. 35. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 329. 36. See, for example, his analysis of “strategic reserves,” which turns out to be “an absurdity” (OW, 211), or of the views of von Bülow (I, 77–88; 41–48). 37. See, for example, H. Rothfels, “Clausewitz,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. E. M. Earle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941), 93–113; Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 20ff. 38. Roger Parkinson, Clausewitz: A Biography (London: Wayland, 1970), 148. See also the list in OW, 713–26. 39. Aron, “Clausewitz’s Conceptual System,” Armed Forces and Society 1 (1974): 49–59, cited in the text as AFS. 40. The image of wrestling is better than that of a duel because a duel (at least for a Prussian officer) was fought for reasons of honor. Because both honor and deadly weapons were involved it was next to impossible to “overthrow” the opponent without also killing him. The whole point of a duel, after all, is to avoid having to apologize or to do the will of the other. See Coates, “Clausewitz’s Theory of War,” 353. See also Aron, I, 116; 66. 41. Martin van Creveld develops a lengthy criticism of “trinitarian” war in The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press, 1991). In turn he (along with John Kegan) was criticized by defenders of Clausewitz. See Christopher Bassford, “John Kegan and the Grand Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz: A Polemic,” War in History 1 (1994): 319–36, and Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 2nd ed. (London: Cass, 1996), 257–65. 42. It is, however, the basis of the argument by Philip Windsor on the “farewell” to strategic thinking. See his Strategic Thinking: An Introduction and Farewell, eds. Mats Berdal and Spyros Economides (Boulder, Colo.: Lynn Rienner, 2002). We will reconsider this question briefly in the conclusion. 43. The word is identical in German, die Politik. Sometimes policy is the conventional translation of the singular, and politics of the plural. 44. Parkinson, Clausewitz, 218, 286; Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 253. 45. Handel, Masters of War, 9ff. 46. Handel, “Clausewitz in the Age of Technology,” in Clausewitz and Modern Strategy, ed. Michael Handel (London: Cass, 1986), 83–84; see also Coates, “Clausewitz’s Theory of War,” 367. 47. I would like to thank Holger Herwig for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

5 Raymond Aron and Alexis de Tocqueville Stanley Hoffmann (translated by Bryan-Paul Frost) Everyone knows the importance that Raymond Aron gave to the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. Aron’s pedagogical works—the three courses taught at the Sorbonne during the latter half of the 1950s as well as the lectures (published a few years later) that became that great book on sociological thought—put Tocqueville at the heart of the problems these books seek to elucidate. Aron professed himself a “latter-day descendant” of the “French school of political sociology, whose founder is Montesquieu and whose second great figure is Tocqueville,” and to which he added Élie Halévy: “a school of sociologists who are not very dogmatic, who are essentially preoccupied with politics, who do not disregard the social infrastructure but stress the autonomy of the political order, and who are liberals.”1 In a paper to the French Society of Philosophy in 1970, he took up this idea again, but this time by describing the “lineage of the three” authors as that of “the English school of French political thought,” more celebrated across the Channel and the Atlantic than in France, which was dominated by German thought.2 Now Aron himself had begun his career with German thought: All of his work before World War II demonstrates this, and he makes a point of informing us that “I owe nothing to the influence of Montesquieu or Tocqueville, whose works I have only seriously studied during the last ten years” (this was written in 1967).3 It is therefore a question of a convergence—of a kinship—and not of influence. For example, one finds only one reference to Tocqueville in The Opium of the Intellectuals, even though the critical analysis of the French intelligentsia in which he engaged in 1954–55 strongly recalls a famous chapter in The Old Regime and the Revolution, which Aron only discussed a few years later. Aron is a Tocquevillean after Marx and Weber, and this for two reasons: because these two great minds completed their work—and, in the case of Marx, 105

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changed human history—between that of Tocqueville and Aron; and because Aron had read and pondered them before discovering Tocqueville. The parallel between Tocqueville and Marx would often surface in his writings. Let us seek to clarify the nature and the limits of this kinship by first studying the convergences, and then the differences, between these two works. Aron Before His Encounter with Tocqueville Aron’s work rests entirely upon the Weberian-inspired, methodological foundation of his Introduction to the Philosophy of History. In the social and historical sciences, we not only seek to explain but also to understand. To understand is not to “relive” but to “reconstruct.”4 Now, on the one hand, we can only proceed to do this with typologies; and on the other hand, we will never succeed in apprehending history or society as a whole: “[T]he fact that the human past is immediately intelligible has as an inevitable consequence the plurality of retrospective interpretations and the necessity of cutting it up into discrete units.”5 Refusal of totalities; plurality of the possible meanings and “contextualizations” of events; continuous renewal of historical interpretations; the inevitably partial character of these interpretations (both because one only apprehends a part of reality and because everyone does so from their own point of view: “The selection of regularities inevitably is political in nature”);6 fundamental dichotomy between “analytic or scientific rationalism” and “historical Reason”7 (for “[a]bsolute universality can only be final or entirely abstract”);8 conviction that “the evolutions of various realms are neither independent of one another nor rigorously determined by one another”9—all of the stands Aron took signified a rejection of Marxism as well as an incompatibility with the method and temperament of Durkheim, with his notion of “society as a complete and integral unit.”10 Like Weber, however, Aron was concerned with “man in history”—with the problem of choice and decision. Choice is always between imperfections, “human relations” not being “reconcilable with the abstract laws of ethics”: “[T]he historicity of any sort of politics” meant that it could not be made into a science. Choice itself is the expression of the values of the actor in search of a “fleeting truth”; in addition, choice “varies indefinitely.” But Aron does not advocate any choice whatsoever: As early as the Introduction, he rejects the choice of revolution, the ideological choice, that is, an action for the sake of a “future totality,” which he doubts is “definable and realizable.”11 Furthermore, between “spontaneous revolt and conscious action,” there is “the humble necessity of empirical inquiry” in order that the choice be enlightened and responsible.12 Between Aron’s methodological analysis (developed over a long period of time in the works of his youth) and his values (never openly presented), there is a complete coherence—as, for example, his dazzling dissection of Sartre’s political philosophy demonstrates, since he criticizes both his “ontological individualism” (the “dialectical totalization” to which Sartre was committed)

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and the central, indispensable role of violence (the only possible response to the alienation of individual praxis, the only way of realizing “totalizing Truth” in a “world of scarcity and classes”).13 It was not the case that Aron was unaware of the importance of violence in history; rather, he hated “a philosophy of violence in and for itself.”14 “A true understanding of the past recalls us to the duty of tolerance; a false philosophy of history breeds only fanaticism.”15 After World War II, Aron was able to take a certain distance from the romanticism of the Introduction, and above all from the methodological relativism he displayed. Society is not incoherent and not all divisions of society into discreet units are equally well-founded or bound solely to “the personality of the sociologist himself”: “[S]ocial reality is neither a completely integrated whole nor an incoherent mass” for there is “an order…written into the system.” But he always maintains that this order is not univocal and that the “whole” cannot be grasped scientifically.16 As for relativism concerning values, Weber’s bothered Aron as early as 1935. Unlike Weber, Aron never tied his “political will” to this “partial reality” that is the grandeur of his country, nor his “human will to an inexhaustible value, but one lacking in all content, namely freedom.”17 For Aron, freedom was not only the psychological faculty of personal choice, or “the spontaneity of the for-itself,” but it was first and foremost a “reflective decision” towards a “Good” that—I repeat—he never explicitly formulated but that he very obviously considered morally superior to the conceptions of the “Good” that totalitarians were seeking to impose.18 Aron and Tocqueville: Four Convergences This apparent detour or preface seeks to explain why Aron and Tocqueville, if I may say so, found one another. Four points of convergence seem particularly important. The first is the sociological method of analysis: Aron found in Tocqueville a disciple of Montesquieu, and he admired in the latter an approach that prefigured that of Weber. Some of the principal features of this method are the following: to convey the variety of social facts by organizing them into types (and in Tocqueville, the fundamental opposition is between the ideal-types of aristocratic society and democratic society); to examine the relations between the social infrastructure and the political regime (and on this point, Tocqueville, unlike Montesquieu but similar to Aron, showed that different regimes could suit a given type of society); to seek to reconcile the variety of “partial relationships” and the “unity of historical ensembles” by appealing to the idea of the “general spirit” of a nation (as Tocqueville did in his books on the United States and France) and—what Montesquieu had only done for political regimes—by rigorously studying an ideal type (that of democratic society);19 to uphold a probabilistic conception of history (to the extent that certain tendencies of the type can be deduced but not “an irresistible movement toward a given regime,” just as the analysis of causal laws by Montesquieu did not exhaust the explanation of positive laws);20 and to defend, at the same time, a pluralistic conception

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of society, which recognizes “the plurality of social groups…coexisting within every complex society…and the conflict of moral ideas,” and which rejects the reduction of value judgments to judgments of fact.21 A second point of convergence is found in the nature of their empirical research. It concerns the analysis by Tocqueville of a social type of which Montesquieu was unfamiliar: democratic society (democracy here being defined not as a regime but as the “equalization of conditions” as well as, I would add, the recognition—sometimes purely theoretical—of a sort of popular legitimacy, often limited to universal suffrage, at the foundation of the regime).22 While recognizing the importance of the Comtean concept of industrial society, Aron, like Tocqueville, nevertheless retains the notion of democratic society as essential for his own analysis of modern society—at least to the extent that he recognizes the scale, or the revolutionary character, of the demands of equality, as well as to the extent that what interests him (in contrast to Comte) is the variety of political forms industrial society can take. As a result, Aron is led back to the pluralist and probabilistic problematic of Tocqueville. Like Tocqueville, Aron thinks that the democratic phenomenon signifies, in modern societies, the primacy of economic values and ambitions, the multiplication of “intermediate ranks” or the middle class (contrary to the Marxist prophecy), an inclination to “quarrelsome satisfaction” rather than to revolution, and the tendency to conformity.23 Like Tocqueville and unlike Montesquieu (who was only able to study ancient republics), Aron thinks that it is “self-interest…well understood,” plus respect for the laws, and not “virtue” in the sense of “intransigent patriotism and contempt for wealth,” that serves as the principle of modern republics.24 Thus, although several of his works start from the notion of industrial society, and although they consider the problem of class struggle, he offers a version of this notion that little resembles Comte’s, and often subjects this problem to such a critical analysis, that to a great extent he returns to the position of Tocqueville at the expense of both Comte and Marx. This stems largely from their third point of conjunction: the valorization and autonomy of politics. It is in part because Comte “neglected economics and politics in favor of science and ethics” that Aron felt far apart from him; it is because the “reduction of politics as such to economics” is unacceptable—both false in reality and disastrous in its effects—that Aron criticized the sociology of Marx. Tocqueville had very well shown that the “political order is as essential and autonomous as the economic order”—that the problem of leadership could not be eliminated.25 Aron cites Tocqueville’s analysis of the Revolution of 1848 and compares it to Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire. The latter (not without difficulty) “sought to explain political events in terms of what might be called social infrastructure” and to find an “exact correspondence,” whereas Tocqueville, while showing the scale of social conflicts—society split in two—is very careful not to “project onto the social infrastructure what we have observed on the political level,” and he wholly retains the validity of purely

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political factors, both among the general causes (centralization, the movement of ideas) and among the accidents that brought about the Revolution.26 Aron formalizes what Tocqueville showed in a less explicit fashion: the primacy of the political in a double sense—as a principal factor differentiating industrial societies and “because politics is concerned more directly with the very meaning of existence.” It is politics that moulds this part of human relationships that contributes the most to “the very definition of human existence.” For Aron as for Tocqueville, it was not a question of a “causal primacy”: Aron knew and Tocqueville proved by his “case studies” that the organization of public powers was widely influenced by the organization of society and the economy.27 But for both of them (and for Montesquieu as well) the “style of political authority” is philosophically and morally the most important aspect of social relationships. All three are political sociologists, both because they believe in the irreducible autonomy of the “problem of leadership” and because they judge this problem essential.28 In this matter, we are thus at the meeting point between an empirical postulate and a value choice. The fourth convergence is precisely concerned with values. For Tocqueville as for Aron, value judgments cannot be reduced to social data any more than the political order can be reduced to the “infrastructure”; and conversely, for both of them, empirical analysis cannot be entirely separated from value judgments: “Normative implications are inherent in every theory” (the distinction Aron makes between objectivity or neutrality, and equity, is well-known).29 Now, for both men—and again, for Montesquieu as well—political freedom was the supreme value (in Montesquieu, it was tied to his conception of a natural right prior to positive laws and derived from human nature). What Aron defines as Tocqueville’s question—“how can freedom be safeguarded in societies which are neither confined nor frugal”—was what Aron asked himself his entire life.30 The two men conceive political freedom in the same way: the security of each under the protection of the laws (we find ourselves back with Montesquieu), but also the participation of each in the development of the laws (which is the legacy of the “freedom of the ancients” analyzed by Benjamin Constant, and the necessary counterweight to “freedom as resistance to central authority”). It is, however, more than a matter of simply borrowing from the ancient and virtuous republics. It concerns a sort of enlargement of the aristocratic conception of freedom—from freedom understood as the power to act, which was the exclusive right of the nobility, independent of a “properly political position,” to freedom understood as a privilege that from now on will evolve into “democratic right,” attached to all citizens in the political sphere.31 This idea was already latent in the chapter on the English constitution (Book 11, chapter 6) in The Spirit of the Laws. One still encounters Montesquieu in the answers that Tocqueville and Aron give to the proposed question: equilibrium of social forces, freedom of the press and of association, decentralization, separation of powers, pluralism of political forces, and so on, but also the need to keep

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mores favorable to liberalism. (In this sphere, it is Tocqueville who is more systematic than Aron.) Both of them have an acute sense of the fragility of political liberalism and of the “artificial” character of the institutions that seek to preserve it.32 Tocqueville had this sense because he had analyzed better than anyone else the perils that threaten all liberal democratic societies (tyranny of the majority, stagnation, revolutionary violence when the society’s past has in some way prepared society for it, individual apathy leading to centralization and “democratic despotism”); Aron had this because he had behind him the experience of totalitarian phenomena, and because he had surrounding him the examples of countries in the process of development, whose political classes did not know how or did not want to play the constitutional game, and where the people, subject to the tensions of modernization, often preferred (here Aron cites the French political thinker Bertrand de Jouvenel) telocracy (the attainment of certain goals) to nomocracy (the rule of law).33 Aron and Tocqueville Confront French Politics Beyond these four exact points of convergence, Tocqueville and Aron resemble each other by a common attitude. They are both passionately interested in the evolution of human societies (here they find themselves back with Comte and Marx against Pareto); and like Weber, they both think that there “is no such thing…as unilateral determination of the whole of society by one element” and that “what remains undetermined is what interests us most.”34 But both of them—contrary to the paradoxical “Promethean faith” of the deterministic Marx—have but little confidence in the capacity of human beings to reconstruct society, and not any in their ability to erect a perfect one. There are too many sociological burdens as well as uncertainties about the relationships between the components of the real (Aron underlines the latter while Tocqueville emphasizes the burdens, both because he is an historian and because he audaciously believes he can draw out the tendencies of the political, intellectual, and social character of his ideal-type of democratic society). Furthermore, every willful effort to promote revolutionary upheaval can only do more evil than good. Both of them are therefore conservatives in respect to revolutionaries—both by their refusal of utopia and by their attachment to the steadfast liberal values of their society—and reformists (at the outer limit) in respect to reactionaries or to narrow-minded conservatives. Being skeptical (but only in respect to ideologies, aware of the perils that weigh on liberty), they both prefer dissatisfaction to conformism or stagnation, for dissatisfaction has a chance to defeat these former evils, and to stimulate the spirit—and besides, it “is the furthest removed from a revolutionary climate” and it corresponds to the democratic taste for change.35 But even if the perils do not materialize—if there is neither revolutionary turmoil nor spiritual numbing under “soft despotism”—and although both authors, to the very extent they believe the future open, do not sink into

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pessimism, a tone of disenchantment marks their analysis of modern societies, and (for very different reasons, moreover) a certain discouragement before the future is manifest in their last writings. In the case of Tocqueville, the principal cause of this discouragement was the condition of France (both that condition in the 1850s as well as the one whose disease he had diagnosed in his last great work). Among the principal factors that, according to him, had made the Revolution inevitable, and that continued to doom France to revolutionary cycles, was the nature of French intellectuals, who were inclined to general and abstract ideas, to radical and total constructions. This was a “frightening sight” because they infected the nation, which “brought all the habits of literature into politics.”36 Rightly or wrongly, Tocqueville attributed the responsibility of this fatal tendency to the rupture between the world of the writers and that of practical reality. This analysis has many points in common with the one that Aron put forward in The Opium of the Intellectuals, where he dissected some of their favorite concepts (left, proletariat, revolution) and showed that they did not correspond to reality, and where he asserted that the tendency toward revolutionary thought comes in part from the separation between intelligence and action, from the mixture of “nostalgia for a universal idea and national pride.” “[T]he art of the French intellectuals is to ignore and very often to aggravate the real problems of the nation out of an arrogant desire to think for the whole of humanity.”37 In one case as in another, the contrast between their preferences or ideals, and the leaps and dramas of French political life, have presented some serious moral dilemmas and given rise to some very interesting reactions. Members of the “English school,” the example of Great Britain (more so than the American example, which was too different) left them with a sort of permanent remorse. In Great Britain, liberal institutions were able to endure—and to allow for a wider franchise and an increasingly democratic society—because the nobility did not behave like a caste; because the elites knew how to reform in time; and because the people did not show the taste for radical change that was found on this side of the Channel. The dialectic of a blind and divided political elite, and of an impatient and ideological mass who were “excluded,” led to the repetition of “tragedies” in France, where nothing reasonable appeared realizable without revolution; but revolution risked endangering freedom, or again to provoke intolerable changes in society for those liberals who were enamored with order and moderation.38 Mutatis mutandis, the reaction of Tocqueville in 1848 was comparable to that of Aron in 1968. Having sought in vain to sound the alarm in order to awaken the sleepwalking conservatives in power; confronted with a France divided between the defenders of social order and property, and those who possessed nothing, between the “bourgeois” and the “people”; and although committed to “protect the laws of society” by relying on republican principles, Tocqueville was compelled to choose during the days of

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June, not between demagogy and democracy, but between what he considered as terror and subversion, on the one hand, and repression and (provisional) dictatorship, on the other.39 In spite of his personal reservations, premonitions, and preferences, he wanted a “strong executive power” and spoke in favor of the election of the president by universal suffrage when a constitution had to be drafted for the Second Republic.40 The case of Aron is less dramatic. But he had been one of those who wanted to reform higher education in France, notably the agrégation, and to loosen the yoke of the mandarinate. When the explosion of May 1968 occurred, we know that Aron was not on the side of the revolutionaries; the tone of The Elusive Revolution reminds one a little of Tocqueville’s Recollections. Due sometimes to social explosions, sometimes to political impasses, French revolutionary crises have often not appeared to leave any other means to escape anarchy other than dictatorship (and not simply of the Roman kind). In his notes to the unfinished volume on the Revolution, Tocqueville gave the most accurate definition of Bonapartism, which he loathed. And we know that, as minister of foreign affairs for the prince-president (for too short a time), he was opposed to the coup d’état of December 2, and he withdrew into an internal exile, where his work certainly predominated but also “bitterness…sometimes dull, sometimes piercing,” as well as anger against those siding with the new regime.41 Aron, who had not been blind to the faults of the Third Republic, and who was scarcely ever mistaken in his analysis of Vichy from London, had been in the curious situation of a supporter of the Free French movement but strongly suspicious of General de Gaulle, behind whom he saw (more than once) the shadow of Bonaparte, just as he later compared the Fifth Republic to the Empire: “[T]he Fifth Republic is clearly the Third Empire, liberal and parliamentary at first but increasingly less parliamentary after eight years.”42 In this admiring, fluctuating, often sardonic, sometimes exasperating resistance to de Gaulle, was Aron (who had analyzed so well the corruption of the Republic of deputies and who explained his joining the R.P.F. by his hostility to the “regime of the parties”) a consistent Tocquevillean, or rather, without knowing it, a latter-day “Alainist”?43 How one would like to know the analysis that Tocqueville would have made both of the founder of the Fifth Republic and of the regime itself! And how I would have liked for Aron, so prodigious in his editorials on the political life and destiny of France, to have written a great book on the last two hundred years of French history. The Fox and the Hedgehog While recognizing that he often made use of the parallel between Tocqueville and Marx, Aron had been seized by the latter from 1930, and he continued “to take more interest in the mysteries of Capital than in the limpid and sad prose of Democracy in America.”44 In fact, the differences between the works of Aron and Tocqueville are as instructive as their points in common.

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The principal difference is fundamentally one between two kinds of mind: To borrow a title from Sir Isaiah Berlin from his brilliant essay on Tolstoy, it is the difference between hedgehogs and foxes. Foxes know a lot of things, hedgehogs only one. Aron was a fox: A variety of themes, interests, disciplines, and even styles correspond to the ethical-methodological unity of his work, so much so that none of the authors who have contributed to this journal have been able to escape a feeling of dread, of discouragement, and thus of the necessity of retaining only a small aspect of a body of work as prodigiously diverse as his was.45 Aron had once written that social facts were more or less interesting according to whether the observer was more or less interested in them. In what did this “committed observer” not take an interest? By contrast, Tocqueville—a man of few books (but what books!) and of innumerable letters, where the themes of his books return—plowed the same field more and more deeply, seeking to answer the same question: the fate of political freedom in a world dedicated to democracy. While the aging Aron still questioned the future and always demystified the present, Tocqueville, especially in his later years, no longer wondered what the political future of democratic society would be—he had given his answer in the second volume of Democracy in America. He was seeking to understand why France seemed condemned to endure an incessant struggle between the passion for freedom and that of equality, to go from routine to adventure, from impasses to revolutions. Aron saw very well that there was a non-deterministic philosophy of history in Tocqueville. To the extent that his central intuition was correct (the inevitable march of modern societies towards democracy), and to the extent that the future seemed to entail at least two possible alternatives, this was undoubtedly the only philosophy of history acceptable to Aron. But Aron had always, at bottom, divided authors into two groups: those who, “with the courage of imagination,” start from a profound, original, and illuminating idea, and change, as it were, the course of humanity at the price of improper simplifications, at the risk of only being heralds of half truths; and critical thinkers who, irritated by the absence of nuance, blinders, ellipses, hasty progressions, and ambiguities, are left in the shadows by the great creators.46 Creators hardly care about others or glosses. The former strive to show the weaknesses, to correct the omissions of these hardy and dangerous spirits, to compare and contrast, and to reestablish in that fashion not the truth but the diversity and combined richness of truths. Not without regret, Aron placed himself in the category of critical spirits, Sartre being in that of the creators. Aron’s critical work on Sartre is exemplary, by dint of its respect, its genuine comprehension, and also by its pitiless, scouring analysis. Sartre’s silence on the work of Aron is just as typical. Tocqueville was of the breed of creators. Great and simple ideas attracted him: Aron has rightly suggested that if this correspondent of John Stuart Mill had taken America, and not England, as his test country, it is because it had seemed to him “simpler, easier to understand than England” and that “it lent itself to

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this systematic interpretation, starting from a central idea, which pleased [his] genius.”47 The leading conclusions of Volume II of Democracy in America attest to this taste: Many have subsequently accused their author of having conflated what follows from democracy, and what is characteristic of modern commercial society (this is Mill’s criticism) or what at bottom only belongs to American culture. Like many creators who are proud of their originality, convinced that no one had seen the problem before them, a subtle connoisseur of his work tells us that Tocqueville cited even less those whom he had read the most.48 This is certainly not the problem with Aron! Almost from the first sentence to the last, he describes, dismantles, drives out, and disenchants the thought of others—from Dilthey to Clausewitz, from Thucydides to Sartre, from Weber to Hannah Arendt—and he sometimes hides himself by virtually disappearing behind his critique of others. Of course, as I have said, one part of Tocqueville’s in-depth work did not greatly inspire him. Thus, in his analysis of the French situation, he showed himself a man dissecting the thought of others, of analyzing concepts, of putting to the test and sometimes to death current hypotheses or correlations, as well as a man of sumptuous snapshots of certain historical moments, such as 1914, or the world in 1960 or 1983, rather than a man of narratives (The Imperial Republic, whatever one says, is not such a book) or one who offers analytic and synthetic demonstrations across time, like Tocqueville, or even like Weber in a part of his work. On the other hand, there are so many Aronian spheres of thought that Tocqueville never entered: epistemology, philosophy, political economy, and the vast field of international relations and strategy! To this essential difference one must add another that relates to their manner of apprehending democratic society. Aron and Tocqueville differ in two ways. On the one hand, they are separated by more than a century. It is therefore not surprising that the author of Democracy in America is concerned first and foremost with prediction and prevention. He had the revelation of the universal evolution toward democracy (which distinguishes him from the majority of his French liberal friends of the epoch) at the moment when, in fact, in France as in England (which he visited in 1833 and 1835), important differences still existed between people’s “conditions,” whether owing to the imprint left by the old hierarchy of rank on the new classes or to the preservation of a part of the powers of the aristocracy. Tocqueville’s accurate vision was an anticipation—except in the United States. But even here, what interested him the most (besides the demonstration intended for his readers of the possibility of a liberal democracy) was this exercise in “futurology,” which consisted in drawing out from the democratic state certain consequences for the mores, movement of ideas, wars and revolutions, and the political order. Furthermore, it was important for him to underline not only the perils that one ran in preserving a liberal order but also the existence of the means appropriate to prevent its ruin. Aron himself had the advantage of writing when, in industrial countries, democratic society was a reality; when he had before his eyes the sight of the two main

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types of political orders that this society had yielded (or was to be subjected to) as well as the variations within each of these types; and when he could study the way in which this society began to establish itself in the developing world. He was therefore able, in some sense, to verify Tocqueville’s predictions, and, as we will see, to find him mistaken on several points. Tolerant as regards the principle of futurology, Aron was skeptical as to its significance, since “the limits of prediction result…from the limits of our social theory,” and that there neither existed a “theory of the reciprocal relationship of various realms” nor a “general theory of change.”49 On the other hand, not only is the historical perspective not the same but the angle of approach to modern society is not the same either. As Aron wrote, “[Tocqueville’s] thought was still deeply political,” and it is quite obvious that he is most interested in the political effects of democratization—the word political being here taken in its narrow sense (nature of the regime, of electoral and institutional sub-systems) rather than in its broad sense (national society as political society, relations between governed and the governors, public spirit).50 If the probabilist and comparativist Tocqueville has admirably seen the possible multiplicity of regimes (following the chosen type, liberal or despotic, and following the national temperament), he had a tendency to believe in a certain standardization of intellectual movements, feelings, and mores. Aron is a man of distinctions. Within a nation, he grants to different branches of reality a greater autonomy—a capacity for disjunction (to borrow Daniel Bell’s expression, which deals with the relations between capitalism and culture) more sizeable than his predecessor. When he deals with one of the two large types of modern political orders, that of totalitarian countries, he certainly seeks to show, given their ambition to shape society, in what way the regime acts upon it. But even in this case, and more still when he deals with liberal regimes, he tends to separate the analysis of the economic and social realms from that of the political realm. And concerning the former realm, he studies it for itself, as a realm not only democratic (a word that puts the interest on the confluence of the social and political) but also industrial (at the junction point between the economic and social). There is another difference of approach that was already noted: Aron adds an enormous and continually renewed study of the international realm (this time more under its interstate political aspects rather than under its transnational economic aspects), which corresponds both to historical differences and to those between different kinds of minds. Tocqueville was a man upon whose head the history of France had fallen; Aron was a man who was not able to separate in his life the catastrophes of French history from the revolutions of the international system. Aron’s Criticism of Tocqueville A third series of differences follows naturally from the preceding. It concerns divergences at the root of the analysis of modern society. A reader of Comte

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and even more yet of Marx, Aron begins not only from the observation of the equalization of conditions, “the disappearance of distinctions,” but also from the “primacy of the economy,” that is, of industrial society, and he considers Marx’s problem, namely the future of capitalism and class struggle.51 From this fact, he thinks that Tocqueville had not correctly identified the character of the economy of democratic societies. Contrary to what certain critics say, Tocqueville certainly understood very well the social importance of industry; but “Tocqueville still tended, in the manner of Montesquieu, to confuse industrial societies and commercial societies.” From now on, the source of wealth is not exchange but “the quality of machines and organization which, at the same time, determine the output of labor.” For Aron, the equalization of conditions is an established fact. The dominant features of his ideal type of modern society are the productivity of labor and, first and foremost, the phenomenon “which does not have, neither in Tocqueville’s work nor Marx’s, its entire significance: economic growth, or the development of productivity which renews, in a radical way, the problem of inequality.”52 As a result, Aron examines this problem in way quite different from Tocqueville. Tocqueville saw first and foremost a struggle between the democratic push toward equality and the survival, less and less tolerated, of the inequality of yesteryear, that is, of aristocracy. True, he rightly saw the birth of a very harsh “manufacturing aristocracy,” something worrisome to the friends of democracy if the inequality between owners and workers were to become permanent. But he did not consider this “aristocracy” too dangerous because it was restrained (industry was still not the central phenomenon) and unstable; in this he greatly underestimated the importance of the new de facto inequality (sometimes even written into law, which tended to reconstitute rank) and the class struggle that was going to result from it.53 Aron himself, even if he showed the limits of it, was very careful not to deny the existence of classes and this struggle (and to the extent that Marx’s prophecies were not realized, this was due to growth and not to the factors that reassured Tocqueville). With the experience of the preceding 100 years, Aron knew well that separate, hostile, and well-knit classes were often able to persist and do battle, and that despotism could result from their battles, as was the case in France as well as elsewhere. Furthermore, both the industrial realm and its growth renew the problem of equality independently even of that which pits the working proletariat in a struggle against capital. On the one hand, growth actually exacerbates further egalitarian demands; it is henceforth a matter of eliminating not only the old inequalities in rank that remain but also the economic gaps and all the obstacles that stand in the way of the equality of opportunity due to these gaps. Certainly growth allows them to be reduced; but at the same time it makes them less tolerable.54 But on the other hand, industrial society remains above all unequal. It tends to differentiate according to the branches of economic activity, and to hierarchical organization according to ability; there is both social stratification and, in

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businesses, functional hierarchy, the product of the organization of labor and the source of differences in wages.55 In addition, Aron analyzes the dialectic of these societies as a sort of race between the egalitarian ideal and the productive ideal.56 The former never definitively wins out owing to the increase in desires and because of the priorities that societies and states set down and that make it impossible to release sufficient resources to placate the demand for equality. Aron is here thinking of the will to power, which leads to the preparation of war and war itself. Naturally, he finds still other obstacles to equality outside of the economic realm: not only the will for distinction, which is expressed through snobbery, the “psychosocial counterpart” of the ideal of equality, but above all the different forms of racism and nationalism, the result of what he calls essentialist thought.57 As well, he reproaches Tocqueville for having believed that the equalization of conditions would bring about the loosening of the bonds of race, country, and class, because he had not understood that the dialectic of equality would conjure up “fresh demands” as soon as one sort of equality would be obtained, and that these demands would take a collective form: race, class, and nation.58 And he also reproaches him for having exaggerated the equality and uniformity of conditions: Intellectual levels remain different (Aron, who studied less the role that religion can play in liberal public-spiritedness, is more interested than Tocqueville in the role of education in modern society); scientific society increases the significance of cultural inequalities; and mental and moral heterogeneity can coexist with the homogenization of ways of life. This analysis is more disenchanting than Tocqueville’s (whose melancholy was rather that of an aristocrat in front of a monotonous and vulgar movement).59 If the two men reach related conclusions concerning the family in modern society (Tocqueville spoke of the strengthening of natural bonds, while Aron observes that the family does not break up even if freedom of choice is increased), Aron still has more reasons than his predecessor to think that modern society, where the regime is liberal, is destined to be turbulent if only because it is just about impossible both to prevent the constant rebirth of trends toward inequality and to placate egalitarian demands (Aron underlines the cacophony of different definitions of equality and the absence of a single and legitimate criterion of justice).60 Having failed to estimate correctly the “the principle of the movement that carries along modern democratic societies: the development of science and industry,” Tocqueville, according to Aron, exaggerated the conservative character of these societies.61 We here reach a fourth category of differences: those concerning the perils that threaten these societies. It is certainly not stagnation that Aron fears, whereas Tocqueville thought that democratic unrest could coexist with an absence of “leisure [and] the taste to go in search of new opinions.”62 Above all, Aron appears skeptical toward the notion of “democratic despotism,” which Tocqueville feared the most. As is well-known, democratic despotism was supposed to come from individualism—from the tendency of

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citizens to behave as subjects and to withdraw into their private lives such that only a single bond remains between human beings, namely that which binds them all to the state. Furthermore, the egalitarian passion, including the revolt of workers against the new industrial class, can turn toward the state and urge it to intervene. Thus, everything works toward centralization—toward the growth of a redistributive state, which contracts in public works projects and becomes in charge of assuring human enjoyments: a power “absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild,” the “unique agent and sole arbiter” of the happiness of its subjects over the “small passions” of which it reigns.63 Aron presents a threefold criticism. First, Tocqueville feared too much the withdrawal of citizens, the emaciation of civic vigor by an egoism ill understood by the individual, and the fragility of associations. As we said, Aron believed in the survival of groups and associations, whether classes or races or nations: It is a contrary tendency, which coexists with the one Tocqueville feared (the one and the other, moreover, contributing to conformism). Rather than “bureaucratic despotism,” Aron fears what some call “neocorporatism”: the proliferation of organized occupational or sector-based interest groups, which then besiege a state (even a centralized one) and lead to its becoming powerless.64 Next, Aron has more indulgence than Tocqueville had for the guardian-state he described: In the West, this phenomenon is sufficiently incomplete so as to make Tocqueville’s anticipation “seem both premature and somewhat unpleasant”—unpleasant because social security answers “an obvious need,” both material and moral.65 In other words, the liberal realm has not succumbed to the centralizing and insidious tendency that Tocqueville considered a natural, if not fatal, inclination. Above all, what strikes Aron is that where the liberal realm has collapsed, there one sees the death of collective passions, rather than “self-centered withdrawal,” and its replacement by a despotism that “was only secondarily tutelary, it was primarily violent and ideocratic,” produced by “fanatical minorities” rather than by the spineless aspiration of the majority.66 On this main point, one encounters the difference of a century. As regards “violent and ideocratic” despotism, Tocqueville was only familiar with the brief experience of the Jacobins. He had understood the essence of it. But he seems to have seen in this new ideological phenomenon a product of the French situation, so meticulously analyzed in The Old Regime, and destined moreover to persist in the subsequent history of France, since France appeared condemned to repeat the patterns of the revolutionary period. When he speaks of a despotism other than democratic, it only or really concerns this one—circumscribed in time—of the Terror, or of the Bonapartist phenomenon. When democracy (as in France) takes a revolutionary form, Tocqueville seems to think that the peril of democratic despotism has increased, owing to the persistence of the hatreds between the classes, since the scale and duration of the last struggle against the abuses of aristocracy are more important for the future than their extent; and it would be necessary to

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wonder what the kinship is between “soft despotism” and Bonapartism, at least in the case of the Second Empire. In any case, what Tocqueville has not foreseen is modern totalitarianism, whose essence according to Aron is certainly close to that of the Jacobin dictatorship—namely ideology and terror—but which is characterized by an ensemble of original institutional phenomena and by a variety of possible ideologies (contrary to Arendt, Aron refuses to regard Nazism and communism as more similar than different).67 In fact, the bureaucratic despotism that Tocqueville feared would seem, according to Aron, far more susceptible of emerging from totalitarianism pure and simple once the ideological fervor collapsed than from a liberal order: It is still a structurally totalitarian despotism, characterized by “the monopoly of the party, ideological orthodoxy [and] bureaucratic absolutism.”68 Before “discovering” Tocqueville, Aron—who already thought that modern society could take either a liberal or despotic political form—had been among the first before the war of 1939 to show that in this century despotism itself was often taking a totalitarian form due to collective national passion or classes.69 Aron’s reflections on the “hopes and fears of the century” introduce a fifth difference concerning the very conception of freedom. We have indicated above the very broad convergence between the two men on this definition. But Aron, cautiously, went further. From freedom-power, or the ability to act, Tocqueville had retained only one aspect, which was nonetheless central: the right of the citizen to participate politically. It is well-known that for him as well as for Mill, a liberal order could not survive without public-spiritedness—without active citizens taking their civic duty seriously and seeing in the right to vote the means to be fulfilled as participants in the general will. After the death of Tocqueville, this was exactly what the republican founders of the Third Republic sought to realize. But this indispensable combination of personal freedoms and political rights did not entirely satisfy Aron, the passionate reader of Marx. He himself always took seriously “formal freedoms,” without which there is only servitude; and he sympathized with several of the criticisms leveled by “pure liberals” like Hayek against all politics that tend to reduce the sphere of individual autonomy, whether it was a matter of bureaucratic or union power or ambitious state efforts at redistribution. Nevertheless, Aron sensed the importance of the Marxist critique of formal freedoms: They are not “the whole of freedom” and can “rightly appear ridiculous to people who lack a minimum of material resources or who are subject to foreign rulers, even under a constitutional regime.”70 In liberal regimes, there is a “dialectic of power and freedom”: The power that some exercise over others—the entrepreneur over the worker—is without a doubt explained by the freedom of the entrepreneur, but this freedom is “the authority of one and the obedience of the other.” As well, Aron states that he is opposed to both the “democratic dogmatism” of unlimited popular will (or rather majority will) and to “liberal dogmatism”: “[T]here is no one exclusive formula for freedom.” One must combine “two traditional criteria: the

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limitation of the power of the rulers and the non-dependence in certain activities of a large number of individuals.”71 If this second criterion is forgotten, the tendency of many recently decolonized peoples not to see in representative institutions “the necessary expression in our age of the universal desire for freedom” will become more pronounced: Opinion spontaneously associates “enslavement to anonymous forces” and “enslavement to other men.” “We are all Marxists in the sense that we believe that men are responsible for circumstances and that they must change circumstances when they deprive certain individuals of the resources regarded as indispensable to a decent life”—on the condition, of course, of defending formal freedoms and of respecting certain limits in the direction of egalitarianism, if only because doctrinaire egalitarianism suffocates freedom of enterprise, indispensable to progress, and only results in tyranny.72 Thus, while asserting that an “ideological concept, like freedom or equality, entails a valid definition only through the dialogue of possible definitions,” and while allowing the socialist or Marxist critique a limited but not negligible place, Aron drew an interesting consequence for the conception of freedom from the empirical analysis of modern societies (even if, as he said in 1976, the broadening to which he had agreed was not without problems): de facto contradiction between freedom-ability and equality; contradictions between freedoms and abilities; necessity of better distinguishing freedoms connected to fundamental rights from freedoms resulting from social conditions; and so on.73 The very exact liberalism of Tocqueville had induced him to fear above all an evil that did not prove to be the most fearsome. The eclecticism of Aron did not at all prevent him from locating and fighting the main enemy—totalitarianism—but left him somewhat uncertain before the evolution of liberal societies. There is a sixth difference of an altogether different nature. For a time minister of foreign affairs, Tocqueville was very careful not to take actions abroad exceeding the means of France, as he explained to his ambassadors.74 Be that as it may, he was a French patriot not wanting in nationalism, as his exchange of letters with Mill during a crisis between France and England in 1841–1842, and then the position he took during another Anglo-French crisis in 1843 on boarding rights, had demonstrated (the tone of a part of his instructions to his ambassadors in 1849 confirms it). Aron cites a letter from Mill sympathetically, and he interprets the famous passage with which The Old Regime concludes as “lyrical praise” of his country—in spite of the humiliation brought about by “the obliteration of freedom.”75 A French patriot, Aron himself did not succumb to the nationalist temptation. A subtle analyst of the impasses that Weber ended up in by making national grandeur the effective content of his ethic of responsibility; witness during his adolescence of the absurd horrors of World War I, and later of the atrocious consequences of Hitlerian nationalism; and without illusions about the possibilities of a “Kantian” solution to the problem of international order, Aron was nevertheless a man of moderation. Conscious of the limits of French power, Aron, who had preached and practiced resistance to Hitler,

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and rejected Alainian pacifism, nevertheless thought that after 1945 the break between the West and the Soviets required a German-Franco reconciliation and French participation in the Atlantic alliance, and that the spiritual evolution of the world—as well as a consistent liberalism—required decolonization. On all these points, at different moments, Aron and de Gaulle clashed with one another, both for reasons of substance and style: Aron scarcely had a liking for Gaullist nationalism. One could also compare these two men’s attitudes on political action. Aron was often tempted, but he remained outside of politics temperamentally (“[m]y scrupulous nature and my hatred of violence,” incapacity for the intrigues, servitudes, and compromises of public life), and yet he all the while blamed himself for sticking too close to reality in his work.76 Tocqueville was anxious to play a role at least as much as to have an intellectual influence: a parliamentarian easily exasperated by his colleagues and by his own incapacity to prevail, and then, after the frequent disappointments of 1848 to 1852, imposing on himself an almost silent return to historical studies—posterity being his sole recourse. Tocqueville was reassured, before his death, by the success of his last book; Aron was both unsatisfied and resigned as regards his work, and uneasy—uncertain but not discouraged—as regards the state of the world.77 Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 2 vols., foreword Pierre Manent, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, trans. Richard Howard and Helen Weaver (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998–1999), I: 332. [Translator note: In the original article in Commentaire nos. 28–29 (February 1985): 200–212, all references to Aron were to French editions of his work. In this translation, I will refer to and quote directly from the available English translations, whenever this is possible. All emphasized words are contained in the original. The books that resulted from Aron’s Sorbonne lectures (1955–56, 1956–57, and 1957–58), referred to in the previous sentence, are, respectively, Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, trans. M. K. Bottomore (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), La Lutte de classes (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), and Democracy and Totalitarianism, trans. Valence Ionescu (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969); the book on sociological thought is Main Currents, cited above.] Raymond Aron, “Pour le Centenaire de Élie Halévy,” Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 71 (Janvier-Mars 1971): 6. An abridged translation appeared as “Élie Halévy,” Government and Opposition 19 (1984): 407–22. Raymond Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 21. Raymond Aron, La philosophie critique de l’histoire: essai sur une théorie allemande de l’historie, 4th ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1969), 270. Ibid., 105. Raymond Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, trans. George J. Irwin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 324. Raymond Aron, Marxismes imaginaires: D’une sainte famille à l’autre (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 13.

122 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology Aron, Introduction, 340. Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), 481 (hereafter cited as Introduction à la philosophie to distinguish it from the English translation). Aron, Main Currents, II: 104. Aron, Introduction, 322, 320, 347, 325–26, respectively. Aron, Marxismes imaginaires, 115. Aron, History and the Dialectic of Violence: An Analysis of Sartre’s “Critique de la Raison Dialectique,” trans. Barry Cooper (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976), 188. Ibid., 192. Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 159. Aron, Eighteen Lectures, 27–28. Aron, La philosophie critique, 273. Aron, History, 186. Aron, Les étapes, 64–65. Aron, An Essay on Freedom, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: New American Library, 1970), 19. Aron, Main Currents, II: 104. Ibid., I: 242. Aron, Eighteen Lectures, 35–36, and La Lutte, 214. Cf. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 606–17 (II, 3, 21). Tocqueville, quoted by Aron, Essay, 17 (translation modified), and Aron, Les étapes, 634. Aron, Main Currents, I: 116 and 216. Ibid., I: 321–22, 328. Aron, Democracy, 11–12. Aron, Main Currents, I: 217. Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 575. Aron, Les étapes, 633. Pierre Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, foreword Harvey C. Mansfield, trans. John Waggoner (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 17, and Aron, Essay, 68–69. Aron, Essay, 24–25. Ibid., 63. Aron, Main Currents, II: 242–43. Aron, La Lutte, 230. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, eds. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 201. Aron, Opium, 248 Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Revolution, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), 198. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848, eds. J. P. Mayer and A. P. Kerr, trans. George Lawrence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1987), 96–106 (II, 5). Jean-Claude Lamberti, “Tocqueville en 1848,” Commentaire no. 25 (Spring 1984):

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150. 41. André Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Lydia Davis with Robert Hemenway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 474. 42. Aron, Democracy, xi–xii. 43. Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 166. 44. Aron, Les étapes, 21. 45. [Trans. note: Hoffmann refers to the journal Commentaire, which had dedicated the issue in which this article appeared to essays honoring the memory of Aron.] 46. Aron, Memoirs, 456. 47. Aron, Les étapes, 614. 48. Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville and the Two Democracies, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5. 49. Aron, Introduction à la philosophie, 481–82, 484. 50. Aron, Democracy, 252. 51. Aron, Eighteen Lectures, 41–42. 52. Aron, La Lutte, 349. 53. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 530–32 (II, 2, 20). 54. Aron, Democracy, 252–53. 55. Raymond Aron, Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 9–10. 56. Raymond Aron, Les désillusions du progrès: Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1969), 319. 57. Aron, Progress, 59. 58. Ibid., 87. 59. Aron judged this “morose severity” excessive: Les désillusions, 339. 60. Ibid., 316. 61. Aron, Main Currents, I: 289. 62. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 614 (II, 3, 21). 63. Ibid., 663 (II, 4, 6). 64. Aron, La Lutte, 217–18. 65. Aron, Essay, 98. 66. Aron, Essay, 97–98, and Les étapes, 639, respectively. 67. Aron, Democracy, 198; see also Arendt’s “On Totalitarianism.” 68. Ibid., 225. 69. Raymond Aron, Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983), 154ff. 70. Aron, Essay, 90. 71. Ibid., 156–58. 72. Ibid., 71 and 159; Essai sur les libertés (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1976), 240. 73. Aron, Désillusions, 322, and Essai, 222. 74. Tocqueville, Recollections, 230–62 (III, 4). 75. Aron, Les étapes, 615–17, 624. 76. Aron, Memoirs, 476. 77. Still another minor, but instructive, difference can be pointed out. Aron, Main Currents, 261–62, remarks that Tocqueville blends analysis and judgment in the tradition of the classical political philosophers. In his sociological (but not philosophical) works, Aron tends to separate more rigorously analysis and judgment. This corresponds both to the opposition between creator and critic, and to Weber’s influence on him.

6 Main Currents and Sociological Thought Liah Greenfeld Almost half a century since its first appearance in print, Raymond Aron’s Main Currents of Sociological Thought remains a widely read and important book. This presents an enviable contrast to most books in sociology, which rarely survive in the readers’ minds beyond the year of their publication, and almost never beyond the death of their authors. Intelligent surveys of sociological theory are rare; the thought of surveyors changes with the winds of intellectual and political fashion. Aron’s Main Currents stands out as a tried and true classic among such surveys, and a conscientious teacher of an introductory course on the subject is as likely to assign it as the basic text today, as happened in my freshman year in sociology in 1973. I first read these lectures in Jerusalem. A few weeks ago, a student of mine, now herself a professor of sociology, reported that her students were reading it in Tokyo. For many a novice sociologist it provides the foundation of their theoretical knowledge and very often the sole acquaintance with the thought of “the founding fathers.” Surveying sociological thought (not to be confused with the thought of sociologists) is a tricky business. For how does one decide which thought is sociological? The self-identification of a thinker as a sociologist is not enough: Only late in his life—in Economy and Society—did Max Weber decide that what he was doing was sociology; the great essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in his view, dealt with cultural history. Half of the authors Aron treated in Main Currents never identified themselves as sociologists: Why did he include Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Marx, and not Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith? Aron’s definition of sociology was admittedly vague: “the would-be science of the social as such,” while the choice of particular “would-be scientists” was personal on several levels.1 To begin with, Aron was interested in doctrines, rather than theories, that is, teachings relevant to action, and not rational analyses 125

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oriented to understanding. He wished to discuss, he wrote, “a social philosophy as well as a system of concepts and of general propositions”—the former much more than the latter.2 Moreover, he was looking for a social philosophy applicable to a specific historical period—modernity—and even more specifically to the problems of Aron’s own day—the post-World War II confrontation between liberal democracy and totalitarianism of the Left. His interest, therefore, was in a strictly applied “would-be science of the social” or, put differently, in the political and philosophical uses to which certain ideas might be put. He admitted openly that he wished to read into the authors he discussed, rather than merely explicate their thought. His intention was to create “a synthetic reconstruction of [this] thought,” to draw “sketches for intellectual portraits” of men whose ideas he, Raymond Aron, found suggestive, and “portraits, and sketches even more so,” he noted, “always reflect to some extent the personality of the painter.”3 A reconstruction is, obviously, a kind of construction, not a simple presentation or even interpretation. Montesquieu or Weber, consciously reconstructed by Aron, would be similar to Mozart reconstructed by Tchaikovsky. It is Tchaikovsky’s music we would be hearing in the latter case, Tchaikovsky’s characteristic sensibilities—inspired by Mozart, it is true, but still Tchaikovsky. And in the case of Aron’s reconstruction of Montesquieu or Weber, we will be presented with Aron’s moral concerns and intellectual interests, Aron’s political ideals and way of thinking, “the personality of the painter,” in short, not the thought of Montesquieu or Weber. All this was stated up-front, and yet, clearly, very few readers, if any, heeded what they were so explicitly told. It is as a straightforward introduction to sociological thought—an excellent way to familiarize oneself with the sociological theories of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber—that the editors of the new Transaction edition recommend Main Currents to its twenty-first-century readers; it is as such that I read the book in 1973; as such that my student—the Japanese professor—and her students read it today. But, of course, given Aron’s stated intention, this is a misreading. And in continuing to misread the Main Currents of Sociological Thought in this manner we do justice neither to Raymond Aron, nor to the young people who believe that the book introduces them to sociology. At a recent exhibition at the New York Historical Society, devoted to the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton—a “founding father” of another tradition—I saw a remarkable quotation. Ambrose Spencer, no friend of Hamilton while he lived, paid posthumous homage to him. Hamilton “more than any man,” he said, “did the thinking of his time.” Nothing, it seems to me, could express a more profound recognition of Hamilton’s greatness and the magnitude of his contribution than this short sentence. I believe the compliment could be applied to Raymond Aron too. Raymond Aron was very much a man of his time, and this time was conceived as broadly as concrete, historical, human time may be conceived—in terms of a civilization. Deeply committed to modern Western society, he constantly kept it

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in its entirety within his field of vision, sensitive to the forces that endangered it and dedicated to the self-imposed task of protecting it from these dangers.4 After World War II the main danger facing the West was the spread across the world of Soviet-backed Marxist regimes, animated by the bitter resentment of everything the West stood for, and even more the insidious advance of an anti-liberal, antiWestern mood, mostly clothed in Marxist ideology, among the educated classes in the West, which effectively robbed Western societies of intellectual leadership. In France as well as in the United States, Marxism and its ideological derivatives ruled the cultural establishment, and while the French Left frequently combined anti-Western attitudes with sincere French patriotism (however misguided), the American Left was deeply and uniformly anti-American. Even those American intellectuals, many of them Aron’s personal friends, who, after the war, exchanged their membership in the ranks of the international proletariat for the national identity of Americans—the so-called neo-conservatives—remained socialists at heart and (as demonstrated by the fallout after the revelation of CIA support for the Congress for Cultural Freedom) were embarrassed when caught in the act of serving their nation’s, and therefore, their civilization’s, interest in the midst of the Cold War conflict. In the entire North Atlantic community there was no other person comparable to Raymond Aron in intellectual stature and influence who stood as firm against the forces that attacked it. And, more than any other man, Raymond Aron did the thinking of his time.5 This is a great achievement, deserving of our utmost gratitude and recognition. But doing the thinking of a time, even of our own time, is not sociology. What I propose to do here is to give a sociological critique of Raymond Aron’s (re)construction of sociological thought, beginning where one must begin—with its definition. “A would-be science of the social as such” is not only vague and too general to be useful; it is also profoundly misleading. Let us start with a “would-be science.” Above all else, science—in distinction to such intellectual endeavors as philosophy, theology, ideology, or art—stands for objective knowledge of empirical (i.e., experiential) reality. Thinkers who would be scientists, one would assume, whether successful or not, wish to arrive at such knowledge; that is, they wish neither to evaluate this reality, approving or disapproving of it, nor propose another reality that, in their view, would be preferable to the existing one, but to understand it. In regard to human reality, as in other, exact or natural, sciences, such thinkers are moved by curiosity. In this sense, it is clear, Marxism, despite Marx’s frequent evocations of the name and the authority of science, would not be science, for Marx admittedly is moved by the desire to share his—strongly negative—opinion about existing reality, to change, rather than interpret, much less understand it.6 In other words, Marxist theory, even according to this vague definition of sociology, does not belong among the main currents of sociological thought. But then, of course, a survey of the main currents of sociological thought must include the most successful examples of the would-be science of the social,

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and not focus on failed, however sincere, attempts. What makes for a successful science (i.e., one actually capable of producing objective knowledge of empirical reality)? The experience of physics and biology demonstrates that in this respect science does not differ from other social institutions, all of which represent patterned activities oriented to a particular goal, value, or function. The goal prescribes to the activity a normative structure that provides for its continuous achievement. In science it is the scientific method that performs this crucial role. On the most general level the scientific activity consists of conjectures and refutations—this is, inspired guesses by individuals with powerful imaginations—followed by the methodical, often collective, testing of these guesses by the empirical and conceptual means appropriate to the reality in question.7 Different realities require different means. In physics, for instance, on the basis of assumptions regarding physical reality one builds mathematical models of it, or theory, then checks whether the mathematics is correct and manipulates the models to suggest highly structured laboratory experiments conducted under specially conceived, artificial conditions. In biology, by contrast, mathematical modeling remains of marginal relevance; hypotheses are tested statistically and by means of direct observation of the studied phenomena in natural or minimally modified environments. While normatively identical for all sciences, therefore, insofar as the character of the conceptual apparatus and empirical evidence is concerned, the scientific methods differ dramatically in accordance to the nature of the empirical realities different sciences study. Thus, to proceed, to advance, and to create a current of thought leading to objective knowledge—in fact to emerge—a science requires a conjecture regarding the nature of its subjectmatter, an inspired guess indeed, that prompts us to identify founders of scientific disciplines as men of genius. What is the subject-matter of sociology? To say that it is “the social as such” is to ascribe to Auguste Comte the authority he himself would have denied and to submit uncritically to this authority. Comte was groping for a name for a yet unnamed intellectual endeavor—a science of the distinctively human reality, autonomous, that is, different and independent in terms of its evidence, procedures, and methods of testing from other sciences—which, he sensed, was justified by the essential difference of its subject-matter from those of physics and biology. But he did not have a clear (or even a vague) image of the nature of this subject-matter and, in focusing on society, he misrepresented it. If one remembers that “sociology” is just a name, a sign by which we recognize a certain intellectual activity and current of thought, there is no danger in using it—and that is why, indeed, Weber decided to use it (a bilingual concoction as it was) in the end. But to take this name at its etymological face-value and be guided by it in one’s thinking is to elevate language from the instrument of thought (as it is quite a dignified position) to that of divine revelation, and therefore to substitute for the disciplined doubt (or, as it came to be called in the sociology of science, “organized skepticism”), indispensable for any scientific

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pursuit, an attitude more appropriate for the practice of magic. Unfortunately, the academic profession of sociology, as it exists today and as it existed in Aron’s time, is based precisely on this unreflectively magical attitude that presupposes that the name reflects the essence of the named thing; as a result, it in fact represents “a would-be science of the social as such.” The reason this is unfortunate is that the existence of the science of sociology is predicated on the irreducibility of humanity to life and matter. In other words, only the fact of the essential difference between human reality, on the one hand, and the realities of the inorganic matter and of life, on the other hand, only the fact that human reality, to use Durkheim’s phrasing, is a reality sui generis, justifies the existence of a current of thought, oriented to the creation of objective knowledge about this reality, which is separate from physics and/or biology, and is autonomous. Society, however, is unquestionably an integral element of the biological process, being the corollary of life among all the animal species beyond, perhaps, the most primitive. Social structures among animals are rigid and unchangeable, surviving uniform across vast geographical distances and thousands of years; they also can be significantly differentiated, allowing for the complex coexistence and interdependence between structures of socialization, stratification, power, and economic relations. The examples of animal societies—from the lowly anthills and beehives to the highly sophisticated wolf packs and lion prides to family groups of our close relatives the great apes—are too well-known to necessitate an extended discussion here. Their mention alone makes clear that “a would-be science of the social as such” that paid no attention to them would be a poor would-be science of the social at best. It also makes clear that it is not society—or social behavior—that distinguishes humanity from the animal world, making it a reality sui generis and allowing for the existence of “sociology” as a legitimate intellectual discipline. A remarkable fact, from our point of view, about animal societies is that there is no crime, no deviance in them—the fact explained by the genetic transmission of social structures, the social order being carried intact, as it were, in the blood of every individual organism. The understanding of this essentially biological nature of the social as such would make social integration—“the relation of the individuals to the group,” which Aron considers “the central problem of all societies”—a given, requiring no explanation beyond a strictly technical one, relating to the specific physico-chemical mechanism that assures it.8 What would become a central (intellectual) problem would be the relative independence of the individual from the group—the problem of Durkheim’s individual and of Weber’s, that is, the maker of choices and decisions, individual as an autonomous social agent. It is not social cohesion, which is characteristic of any animal group, but the essential autonomy of the human individual, despite the unity of a biological population, that distinguishes humanity from other animal species and lies at the root of other such distinctively human phenomena, as the extreme variability

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of human societies in space and time, and, therefore, history. What makes the human individual—in all societies—autonomous? If the answer to this question is not reductionist, it must necessarily reflect one’s image of a uniquely human reality, of humanity as a reality sui generis, which would justify the existence of “sociological” thought; if, in addition, this answer is empirical, it would make possible sociology as a science. The question of human distinctiveness has preoccupied the human mind from the moment we had it. We have been always aware of being part of the biological and physical world and also something else, and we have always tried to conceptualize this something else, to be reconciled with and make sense of our empirical duality. The question was inescapable and, left unanswered, painful; only conceptualization provided an escape from its pain. Throughout history there were numerous successful conceptualizations, which took the sting out of the problem; before there was sociology, all religions, and then philosophy and theology, offered answers. The first “sociologist” (in the sense of a thinker seeking to understand the human experience as such and using for this purpose the scientific method of conjectures and refutations by means of logical and empirical analysis) was, perhaps, Socrates. His intellectual courage was punished by death, and for long centuries no one followed in his footsteps. Monotheism, first in Judaism, provided a highly satisfactory solution of the unfathomable God creating man in his own image, which Christianity developed in the concept of the soul. Then, in the seventeenth century, while natural science—the “experimental philosophy”—was being institutionalized in England, history became a subject of the “critical method” on the Continent. In some scholarly circles, at least, it came to be considered good form “not being too ready to believe and, on a number of occasions, in knowing how to doubt.”9 A number of men, all, as Marc Bloch reminds us, born around the time of the publication of Descartes’ Discours de la Methode, revived the Socratic practice of submitting the human evidence itself—in their case written documents—to thorough interrogation, comparing various strands of testimony, watching for inconsistencies, and thereby forcing their subjects to reveal hidden truths about themselves in a manner similar to that in which the experiments of contemporary physicists forced secrets out of some natural phenomena. Later, however, the ways of natural and human sciences parted, the very success of the natural sciences in a sense precluding a parallel development on the part of the study of humanity. For the success of physics, in particular, implied the ascendancy of the materialist philosophy, denying the status of science to any preoccupation with things that could not be touched or measured and thus removing human experience from the sphere of science and abandoning it—again—to the undisciplined, though often inspired, handling of speculative philosophers, theologians, and artists. Marc Bloch, Aron’s compatriot and near-contemporary (only nineteen years separated them), whom he would certainly include in his survey of the

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main currents of sociological thought were he interested in sociology and not in politics and philosophy, noted that “a human phenomenon is always linked to a chain which spans the ages,” and that “however great he may be, no man can dispense with the labor of generations by the sheer force of his genius.”10 Given the state of the intellectual discourse and the definition of science in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, no one could conceive of the distinctively human reality correctly or to imagine it creatively enough to allow a progressive development of the thought based on this conjecture for a period of any significance. Only the emergence of biology as an independent scientific discipline, rivaling physics in its achievements and authority, and specifically the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origins of the Species, made this possible. Biology opposed to physics a model of science, equally grounded in the scientific method, but preoccupied with the particular rather than the universal (and therefore uninterested in universal laws), thinking in terms of populations, rather than essences, and probabilities, rather than certainties, and, most important, focused on an intangible, fluid reality—life—that, though no materialist would ever deny it, for the longest time defied definitions in materialistic terms.11 Thus, it brought into the world of thought the idea of an emergent phenomenon—a phenomenon irreducible to the sum total of its constituent elements, which was, therefore, more than the sum of its elements and as such could not be explained even on the basis of the most perfect knowledge of their nature, and which, moreover, consistently forced these elements into patterns of organization and operation, highly improbable given this nature.12 The biological idea of an emergent phenomenon, derived as it was from the study of life, in turn offered a totally new way of thinking about human reality—as new and for this reason shocking, in fact, as was in his day Socrates’ attempt to subject human affairs to logical scrutiny. It was also similarly prolific, prompting the formulation of more and more questions and thus allowing to bring under systematic investigation the ever expanding spheres of human experience. Obviously, it took a genius to perceive this new possibility and to begin thinking about humanity in this new way. Remarkably, the idea struck simultaneously and independently of each other two men. These were Emile Durkheim in France and Max Weber in Germany. With them sociological thought was finally born. That the idea of emergent phenomenon was behind this thought is unmistakable. But the idea preceded the term possibly by as much as a century. Therefore, the term (and the logical articulation that its appearance would indicate) was not available to the two men of genius who attempted to import the new perspective into the study of humanity. Thinking is dependent on vocabulary; indeed, it is its explicit, declarative character, that is, its use of symbolic systems such as language or mathematics, which distinguishes thinking from other mental processes such as intimations and intuitions.13 The fact that the idea of the emergent phenomenon was as yet nameless and existed only as an intimation or intuition

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made their task all the more difficult. Like blind men they were uncertainly feeling for their subject, unable to conceptualize it, for the appropriate words were lacking; they were dissatisfied and, as a result, inconsistent in their formulations when forced to resort to words that did exist. And yet, handicapped as they were, they were able to guess at the most important features of the distinctive human reality, offering us a seminal, compelling paradigm (perhaps most compelling in the unintended agreement between them), and suggesting methods appropriate for this reality that would make a science out of its study. Durkheim stated the case for such a science with “the admirable precision [characteristic of] a normalien” that Aron recognizes in his work.14 This precision, by definition verbal, in regard to a subject whose intimation in his mind was necessarily still so vague, might have been the reason for problems and inconsistencies of which he has been so often accused. Weber’s thought, by comparison, was murky (similar to the intellectual tradition at whose springs he was nurtured); his formulations, less precise, were not logically binding to the same extent, and they allowed him to avoid contradiction when evidence required slight changes. Nevertheless, both in the end called their science “sociology” and, what is much more important, both, as a result, claimed that the reality they focused on was “social.” A careful reading of the texts reveals that it was not—at least today it would not be so regarded (and “today” starts in the 1940s—certainly with the publication of Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft).15 Rather, it was cultural, symbolic, and more generally mental. The specifically human reality Durkheim and Weber focused on, the subject of sociological thought, was the human mind.16 The reasoning behind this, as argued above, could not be clearly stated at the time (“no man can dispense with the labor of generations”), but now can be reconstructed. What distinguishes humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom is not society, but the means by which social order is transmitted across generations. Among other species society represents a part of their genetic inheritance that individual organisms in effect carry in their blood. Human groups, by contrast, transmit their social arrangements symbolically—or via culture. Culture, we may say, is the process of transmission of human ways of life. Culture is a symbolic, which means not a material, process, and human reality, including human social reality, is a symbolic, not a material, reality. Of course, it is dependent on the material reality of life (which includes such material structures and processes as the brain and animal consciousness) and would be impossible outside of its framework. But as life is irreducible to the reality of inorganic matter, outside of which it would be impossible as well, so culture—and humanity as such—is irreducible to the material (biological) reality of life. This does not make this symbolic, non-material reality any less real. Durkheim ceaselessly attempts to drive this point home.17 He writes, for instance, in the preface to the second edition of The Rules of Sociological Method:

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When this book appeared for the first time, it aroused lively controversy. Current thought, shaken out of itself, resisted at first so loudly that for a time it was almost impossible for us to make ourselves heard. On the very points on which we had expressed ourselves most explicitly, views were freely attributed to us which had nothing in common with our own; and our opponents held that they were refuting us in refuting these mistaken ideas. Whereas we had declared repeatedly that the individual consciousness was for us not material, but only a more or less systematized aggregate of phenomena, we were charged with realism and with ontologism. Whereas we had expressly stated and reiterated that social life is constituted wholly of collective “representations,” we were accused of eliminating the mental element from sociology.18

At the same time, The proposition which states that social facts are to be treated as things—the proposition at the very basis of our method—is one of those which have provoked most contradiction. It has been considered not only paradoxical but ridiculous for us to compare the realities of the social world with those of the external world. But our critics have curiously misinterpreted the meaning and import of this analogy, for it was not our intention to reduce the higher to the lower forms of being, but merely to claim for the higher forms a degree of reality at least equal to that which is readily granted to the lower. We assert not that social facts are material things but that they are things by the same right as material things, although they differ from them in type…. To treat the facts of a certain order as things is not, then, to place them in a certain category of reality but to assume a certain mental attitude toward them…. One might even say in this sense that, with the exception of mathematical units, every object of science is a thing.19

By insisting on “the objective reality of social facts,” while stressing their “moral,” as opposed to “physical” nature, their comprising a “reality sui generis,” Durkheim in fact elaborates the idea of emergent phenomenon (without the term) and in doing so relies explicitly on biology.20 Because society is composed only of individuals, the common-sense view still holds that sociology is a superstructure built upon the substratum of the individual consciousness and that otherwise it would be suspended in a social vacuum. What is so readily judged inadmissible in the matter of social facts is freely admitted in the other realms of nature. Whenever certain elements combine and thereby produce, by the fact of their combination, new phenomena, it is plain that these new phenomena reside not in the original elements but in the totality formed by their union. The living cell contains nothing but mineral particles, as society contains nothing but individuals. Yet it is patently impossible for the phenomena characteristic of life to reside in the atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. How could the properties of life exist in inanimate elements? How would the biological properties be divided among these elements? These properties could not exist equally in all the elements because the latter are dissimilar by nature; carbon is not nitrogen and consequently cannot have the same properties as nitrogen or function in the same way. It is equally inadmissible that each of the principal characteristics of life be resident in a certain group of atoms. Life could not be thus separated into discrete parts; it is a unit, and consequently its substratum can be only the living substance in

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its totality and not the element parts of which it is composed. The inanimate particles of the cell do not assimilate food, reproduce, and, in a word, live; only the cell itself as a unit can achieve these functions. What we say of life could be repeated for all possible compounds…. Let us apply this principle to sociology. If, as we may say, this synthesis constituting every society yields new phenomena, differing from those which take place in individual consciousnesses, we must, indeed, admit that these facts reside exclusively in the very society itself which produces them, and not in its parts, i.e., its members. They are, then, in this sense external to individual consciousnesses, considered as such, just as the distinctive characteristics of life are external to the mineral substances composing the living being…. [T]hey presuppose something different from the properties of these elements. Thus we have a new justification for the separation…between psychology, which is properly the science of the mind of the individual [la psychologie proprement dite, ou science de l’individu mental], and sociology. Social facts…have a different substratum; they evolve in a different milieu; and they depend on different conditions. This does not mean that they are not also mental after a fashion, since they all consist in ways of thinking or behaving…. But…the mentality of groups…has its own laws.21

These extended quotations make it quite clear that “social” never means for Durkheim “collective” or “mass,” however common may be the tendency to treat these words as synonyms, and that he insists on “the explanation of a social phenomenon by another social phenomenon…rather than…by individual phenomena,” not because the individual and the social differ quantitatively in respect to their generality, but because they belong to different kinds of reality.22 Moreover, it is clear that the sui generis “social” reality consists of the things that are “mental” or “moral,” related to the psyche, consciousness, and (symbolic) representations, of “ways of thinking and acting”: The “social” may leave material traces (such as suicide rates, for instance), but in itself it is not made of material things that can be touched and measured. For this reason, among others, it is wrong to regard Durkheim’s “society” as a physical “milieu,” comparable to Marx’s stages of socioeconomic development and to equate his insistence on its sui generis emergent quality with reification (i.e., with ascription to it of material reality).23 It is true that at a certain point, in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, he makes this mistake—misled, as suggested above, by the precocious logical rigor of his argument—but the examination of his various texts in comparison forces one to conclude that such reification was contrary to his general view. All one can say is: errare humanum est.24 It is unfortunate that “the reader,” as Aron notes (as he falls victim to the ailment diagnosed), “is inclined to remember only the popular meaning of the word.”25 But, if Durkheim’s work lends itself to misinterpretation, the fault in most cases is ours, for he was aware of the inadequacy of popular meanings and did any man’s best trying to define his terms.26 To return to our reconstruction of the reasoning behind the “mentalist” sociological thought: The products of the cultural process, and culture considered statically as structures, exist everywhere around us—in tilled fields and domes-

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ticated animals, in villages and cities, buildings, cars, and computers, in clothes and hairstyles that we wear, books and paintings, languages that we speak and mathematical formulae, banks and shops and money, in our government offices and armies, and so on. But dynamically culture exists—that is, the process goes on—in our minds. New symbols emerge, changing the symbolic context, which is what gives symbols their meaning, as the mind interacts with the symbolic stimuli. The mind, therefore, participates in the creation of culture, making culture a mental process (in addition to its being a symbolic process). At the same time, the mind is created by culture: It is the product of the interaction of symbolic stimulate and the brain. One may say that the mind is “culture in the brain.” Like culture in general, the mind, which is individualized culture, is thus both a symbolic and a mental process, and, like culture, it is an emergent and self-proliferating phenomenon, a reality sui generis (of the same kind as culture). Like culture, the mind can only exist within the boundary conditions of human biology, but it is not reducible to human biology. That is why, while numerous animals have highly developed brains, they do not have minds. It is this point that Durkheim makes (in the Division of Labor) when he claims that the individual “is a product of society.”27 In this case, the word “individual” obviously refers to an autonomous social agent rather than a biological organism (which it did denote in the context of discussion of the emergent nature of social reality). Since the cultural process goes on in the mind, the only way one can study culture dynamically is by approaching it through the individual. This is the source of Weberian methodological individualism. Durkheim agreed that “individuals are the only active elements in society”; he focused, however, on proving the objective reality of the mental, moral, and symbolic sphere of representations he called “social” and on the articulation of its emergent nature, and was, therefore, content in examining it statically.28 Weber, in distinction, was more interested in the development of specific cultural phenomena than in the elaboration of the logic behind it. This difference of emphasis, which does not at all obscure the substantive agreement between the two thinkers, is evident in the stark definition of sociology in the beginning of the Economy and Society. “Sociology,” Weber writes there, a word often used in quite diverse ways, shall mean here: a science which seeks interpretive understanding of social action, and thereby will causally explain its course and effects. By “action” is meant human behavior linked to a subjective meaning on the part of the actor or actors concerned; such behavior may be overt or occur inwardly—whether by positive action, or by refraining from such action, or by acquiescence to some situation. Such behavior is “social” action where the meaning intended by actor or actors is related to the behavior of others, and conduct so oriented.29

Clearly, Weber did not see humanity through the lens of materialistic philosophy. Human society was for him a meaningful reality; human social process,

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a mental process. Within the framework established by his definition, social “structures” or “institutions” could only be metaphors for patterned activities that reflect the state of their participants’ minds, while the essential, radical questions within it had to be questions about meanings—how meanings emerge, are maintained, change; and how they—and these processes—are reflected in social action at any given moment and in the course of history. Because society was seen as a meaningful reality, Weber would see only meaningful factors—that is, variables the essence of which is their meaning—as exerting causal influence on human social processes or their combination in history. In other words, in the Weberian framework, historical causes would always be clusters of meanings. Their expressions (i.e., the ways of their operation) and effects could be material—as in the influence of shore urbanization on marine ecology or the effects of war or antiseptics on human mortality—but no historical causes could be of a material nature themselves. But while Weber did not view human society as a material reality, neither could he be characterized as an idealist. What is important for him insofar as ideas are concerned, similarly to what regards material phenomena such as land, population, natural resources, death, genetic composition, and so forth, is their meaning for the relevant actors—namely, the way they are reflected and refracted in, interpreted by, and interact with the individual mind. This focus on the mind distinguishes Weber’s sociology, even more sharply than Durkheim’s, from what generally passes under this name. When the nature of the subject-matter in the work of Durkheim and Weber is thus defined, that is, when it is realized that Durkheim is preoccupied with the emergent—mental and symbolic—phenomenon of culture and Weber with the emergent—mental and symbolic—phenomenon of the mind, one begins to appreciate the colossal achievement of the two men. For not only have they established a science of humanity, but they accomplished a breakthrough in philosophy, finally taking it beyond Kant and escaping the snare of the opposition between the “real” and “ideal” factors. Equally distant from philosophical materialism and idealism, they imagined a third possibility, that of an interaction producing an autonomous reality. And, again, it was Durkheim who (in the introduction to The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life) attempted to articulate the nascent theoretical position. Any person, driven by the demon (to borrow Weber’s term) of curiosity about the world—and among scientists, though not among sociologists, there are many who are so driven—could picture to oneself the exhilaration they must have experienced when the vast new horizons were opened before them. But for someone enthralled by a different demon it must be difficult to fathom that science can provoke—can be—such a passion. One’s own indifference to it creates an impression that it is, by its very nature, purely rational and cold, and, in spotting signs of emotion in a scientific discourse, one readily attributes it to the hidden devotion to one’s own demon. Thus Aron: “Weber belongs to the school of sociologists who were frustrated

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politicians, whose unsatisfied desire for action has been one of the motives, if not the motive, for their scientific effort.”30 It is this conviction that any serious intellectual must be above all involved politically, yearning for action in the interest of one’s contemporary society, that encouraged Aron to read the work of the two sociologists (among other authors included in his survey) as politico-philosophical interpretations of modernity—“interpretations,” that is, in the sense of social criticism, rather than in the sense of value-free analytical “interpretive understanding” advocated by Weber. “Durkheim approves of the phenomenon of the organic division of labor,” he says, for instance; or again, “Weber would have answered Durkheim that…it is not concrete society as such that we…should worship,” as if these authors’ normative assumptions intentionally entered into their analyses.31 The subject matter of Durkheim’s and Weber’s sociology, however, was humanity, rather than modernity, and so, even when for instrumental reasons or because of personal interest they did focus on modern society, the intellectual problems that concerned them were of a far more general nature. And in many instances (The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, much of the Economy and Society) they did not focus on modern society at all. Aron appreciated what he read as Weber’s interpretation of modernity, but was critical of (indeed unfair to, he felt) Durkheim. And yet, Durkheim’s treatment of modern society could be easily seen as its defense—a defense of the very civilization Aron tried to defend all his life, while Weber’s certainly could not. It is not that Durkheim “approved,” while Weber “disapproved” of modernity: Both men were too disciplined to allow their personal attitudes and temperaments to influence their analyses. But at least one reason for Durkheim’s theory, developed in The Division of Labor, was his skepticism regarding the position of Ferdinand Toennies, whose Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft offered an authoritative—because expressed in dry “scientific” language—reformulation of the traditional Romantic attack on modern society. Briefly, it argued that society (modern society), based on the rational will, which was self-interested, calculating, and artificial, replaced the traditional community, based on the natural will, which was group-minded and spontaneous. The model of modern social relations was a business corporation, the model of the community, the family—specifically, the relationship between mother and child. Society represented the male—predatory—element of the human nature; community—the female, self-sacrificial and nurturing, one. Society alienated man from himself and his fellow-beings, dehumanizing him in fact; community embraced and surrounded him with human warmth. In other words, as the Romantics claimed all along, society was mechanical and community organic, and for this reason society was on the way to disintegration, destroying natural solidarities that community so well expressed. Durkheim, with his lucid mind and the respect for logic characteristic of a normalien, considered this piece of conventional wisdom ludicrous. It is

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impossible, he claimed, to have a society, enduring over generations and not held together exclusively by force, which is antithetical to human nature. An enduring and self-sustaining society is integrated by definition, because by their very nature human individuals are social; in fact, they are a product of society. Therefore, one cannot weigh societies on scales of naturalness and integration: These are not quantitative distinctions. What one can do is to analyze the manner in which different societies are integrated, and logical reflection reveals that there might be two forces of social integration: one by means of uniform collective consciousness, another by means of functional interdependence as a result of the social division of labor. When one predominates, members of the society can be expected to behave in a uniform fashion, though the bonds between them are relatively weak; when the other force is dominant, the behavior of the members may create an impression of widespread dissensus, yet the bonds tying the individual to his fellowmen are much stronger. The difference, in fact, reflects the difference observed between inorganic bodies, on the one hand, and living organisms, on the other. The molecules of an iron rod, for instance, are all of a kind, and breaking the rod in two makes two smaller rods without in the least changing their nature. In distinction, the cells of a living body differ, depending on the functional organs to which they belong, and the entire body is affected if one cuts out the brain or drains it of blood, depriving it of a sufficient number of one or another kind of cells. In traditional societies, said Durkheim, the dominant force of integration was the uniform collective consciousness; in modern society it is the division of labor. Thus, solidarity of the former deserved to be called “mechanical,” and solidarity of the latter “organic”—precisely the opposite of the terminology proposed by the critics of modernity. This was a masterly polemical move. In making it, Durkheim was not so much defending modern society as his chosen discipline, and it deprived the detractors of modernity of a most powerful weapon: One could still express a dislike of business, or rationality in public discourse, or the stress on the individual, but one could not use the authority of science in support of one’s personal preferences. In distinction to Durkheim, Weber kept his politics and his sociological work strictly apart and did not allow polemics to penetrate into the latter deeper than the choice of a subject. For this reason, Weber did not have a theory of modern society. He did—in the famous Protestant Ethic essay—elaborate a hypothesis in regard to modern economy, a hypothesis he regarded as only provisional and likely to be replaced by a better one at a later date. But, insisting as he did on the autonomy of institutions, he never supposed that an explanation of an episode, however important, in economic development amounted to a theory of an entire civilization. It is often claimed that for Weber “the major characteristic of modern society is rationalization,” or, in other words, the “Entzauberung der Welt: the disenchantment of the world.”32 Here is Aron’s interpretation of this phrase:

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The sacred, the exceptional quality which was attached to the things and creatures surrounding us at the dawn of the human adventure, has been banished. The capitalist’s world—that is the world we all live in, Soviets and Westerners alike—is composed of forces or creatures which offer themselves to us to be used, transformed, and consumed, but which no longer carry the charm of charisma. [This is a] material and disenchanted world…. [T]he idea of a contrast between the enchanted world of primitive man and the disenchanted world of modern man is so important to Weber.33

However, a comparison of this reading with Weber’s own treatment of the concepts of “rationalization” and “charisma” in the several contexts where Weber discusses them reveals that this is a misinterpretation—based, again, as misinterpretations of both Weber and Durkheim so often are, on the tendency “to remember only the popular meanings of the words.” Rather than regarding rationalization as the main feature of modern society, Weber considers it the fundamental social process and historical principle. “By this term,” he writes, very different things may be understood…. There is, for example, rationalization of mystical contemplation, that is of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life, is especially irrational, just as much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of scientific research, of military training, of law and administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized in terms of very different ultimate ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be irrational from another. Hence rationalizations of the most varied character have existed in various departments of life and in all areas of culture. To characterize their differences from the viewpoint of cultural history it is necessary to know what departments are rationalized and in what direction.34

The general meaning of “rationalization” that emerges out of, and allows its application in, such widely differing “departments of life” as mystical contemplation and economy is that of articulation and organization, primarily cognitive, of an area of experience. The need for rationalization arises from the inherently disorderly nature of reality to which human beings are born (in distinction to other forms of life that emerge fully equipped with detailed blueprints and the means for organizing their environment, in effect carrying order in their genes) and the fact that the responsibility for introducing elements of order into it falls to themselves. “Rationalization,” in other words, refers to the fundamental process of the ordering of reality, or its cultural, that is, symbolic or mental, construction. It represents a biological imperative, because without it reality would be unmanageable and the survival of the human species impossible, and, as a result, it goes on all the time, in every society, and in all spheres of life. In this Weberian framework, to claim that one society is more rational, or “rationalized,” than another would be tantamount to claiming that it is more of a society, or more human (analogous to arguing, in a Durkheimean framework, that one society is more, or less, integrated than another). “Rationalization” is not necessarily a cumulative process, and the differences between societies (or

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spheres of activity in a society) in this respect are likely to be not quantitative but qualitative: While they cannot be more or less rationalized, they are, as a rule, rationalized in different ways. The “peculiar rationalism of the West”—which Weber, besides the economy, science, and law, it should be remembered, also discerns in music and architecture—is distinguished by the unusual capacity of the symbolic organization in all these spheres for a sustained development. This, however, does not result from the fact that modern musical imaginations, scientists, or even businesses offer themselves to us “to be used, transformed, and consumed,” and does not reflect a greater rationality of our “peculiar” rationalization. In fact, Weber stresses time and again in The Protestant Ethic, modern capitalism must be deemed “absolutely irrational,” if compared to other, non-modern, forms of economic activity and “from the point of view of utility to the single individual” (i.e., according to the accepted definition of economic rationality).35 Nor can one say that modern society is particularly devoid of “the charm of charisma.” One cannot say this, first of all, because charm, according to Weber, does not belong among charisma’s characteristics. In the two instances of extensive discussion of charisma in Weber’s work, the first, purest example of the phenomenon he points to is the behavior of the Nordic berserk warriors—it would be stretching the term a bit to call this behavior charming.36 More importantly, one cannot say so because charisma, in Weber’s definition, is not an historical phenomenon. In fact, he explicitly excludes it from the realm of the “social” as existing “on the borderline” of this realm and suggests that it is not an essentially sociological subject.37 Charisma, for Weber, is not social because it is not meaningful in its own right, and it is not meaningful because it is not symbolic. Under certain conditions it may be symbolized, that is, meaning may be attributed to it, but such meaning comes from outside and does not reside within charisma itself. It is, Weber surmises, a (neuro) psychological phenomenon, a trait of temperament or personality (but not of the mind), which, like many other (neuro) psychological phenomena, may play an important role in the cultural process, and, as a (neuro) psychological phenomenon it can be found in any type of society. In fact, political demagogues in a mass—modern—democracy (Weber specifically uses the example of Kurt Eisner, but also of American presidential candidates) are as representative of it as are Biblical prophets.38 And to consider, finally, the idea of modern society as “disenchanted”: Could Weber, given what he wrote of rationalization and charisma, intentionally have made such a claim? No, this would be a contradiction, and therefore does not make sense. His laborious prose also prevented him from contradicting himself unintentionally, in distinction to Durkheim, who on several occasions did get carried away by the very fluency of his style and thought. If so, the contradiction is likely to be in the reading rather than the writing. And indeed, the German word translated as “disenchantment” is Entzauberung—“demagicalization.”

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Metaphorically, “magical” means “enchanting,” but literally “magic” refers to a very specific manipulative attitude and activity in regard to transcendental forces—in fact, very much the attitude that these forces “offer themselves to be used” and an activity based on it. In this sense, Catholicism contained a significant magical element, while the Reformation, and specifically, the Calvinist dogma of predestination, which left man completely powerless visà-vis the unfathomable deity and unable in the least to influence one’s ultimate fate, represented the “demagicalization” of the religious faith. Life, clearly, became much more frightening and thus less charming as a result, but the way to “remagicalize” it, among other possibilities, was to lose faith altogether and imagine the world as an entirely material reality. In the end, it all boils down to “the fundamental problem of nomenclature.” Thinking exclusively “according to the categories of one’s own time, consequently in its words” is limiting.39 To read sociology as conceived by Durkheim and Weber, to think sociologically in the way they thought, one must transcend one’s time. This may be difficult, perhaps even impossible to a man who does his own time’s thinking, who is, necessarily, a man of politics above all. Politics and science are different vocations; those serving them serve different gods. The best one can do in life is to respond wholeheartedly to one’s calling. This is what Raymond Aron did. Notes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

Raymond Aron, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, trans. Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, foreword Pierre Manent, 2 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998–1999), II, xviii. Ibid. Ibid., II, xix. Edward Shils, the greatest American social thinker of the twentieth century, wrote about Aron: “He was a Frenchman and a French patriot to the depth of his spirit. He was attached to France as a whole and positively…. He was also a citizen of Europe—not in the narrow sense of being in favor of the Common Market, but in the way in which it was once said of Georg Brandes that he was a ‘good European.’ Aron was practically as at home in Great Britain and in Germany as he was in France. He was as at home in the United States as he was in Germany and Great Britain. He was more than a ‘good European’; he was a citizen of Western civilization.” Edward Shils, Portraits: A Gallery of Intellectuals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 63. Ibid., 55–56: “[Raymond Aron was] the most persistent, the most severe, and the most learned critic of Marxism and of the socialist—or more precisely communist—order of society of the present century…. In an important sense, Aron was a man of his time but not a product of the opinions that prevailed in the intellectual circles of his time. He was an anguished witness to the weakness—decadence, he called it later—of French society in the 1930s and of its humiliation under conditions of defeat and occupation in the Second World War. When he returned to France in 1944, the agenda for the rest of his public life was made firm. It included the rehabilitation of French society, the effectiveness of its political conduct, the renewal

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology of its self respect, the protection of its unity in a regime of liberal democracy that makes provision for free disagreement, its integration into the wider civilization of humane and progressive liberal democracies, and the protection of that civilization from the encroachment of totalitarianism and the destructiveness of war…. At the time of this death, on October 17, 1983, Raymond Aron was the most prominent and the most esteemed writer in the world on modern society and contemporary international politics.” Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” no. XI, in The Marx–Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 109. Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1–32. Aron, Main Currents, II, 26. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 82. Ibid., 122. It is debatable whether an adequate definition of this nature exists even today. Ernst Mayr, in What is Biology? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 16–23, suggests the organicist definition as the most generally accepted. Michael Polanyi, “Life’s Irreducible Structure,” Science 160 (June 1968): 1308–12. See also Mayr, What is Biology?, 19–23. See the discussion “What in effect is thinking,” in Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1996), 7–11. Aron, Main Currents, II, 27. “The first tool needed by any analysis is an appropriate language; a language capable of describing the precise outlines of the facts, while preserving the necessary flexibility to adapt itself to further discoveries and, above all, a language which is neither vacillating nor ambiguous. Now, there is where the shoe pinches…. Chemistry has fashioned its own supply of symbols, and even its own words…. That is because chemistry has the great advantage of being applied to realities which were, by their very nature, incapable of naming themselves…. It is quite otherwise with a science of humanity. Men gave names to their actions, their beliefs, and the various aspects of their social life without waiting until they became objects of disinterested research. Hence [this science] receives its vocabulary, for the most part, from the very subject matter of its study. It accepts it, already worn out and deformed by long usage; frequently, moreover, ambiguous from the very beginning, like any system of expression which has not derived from the rigorously organized efforts of technical experts.” Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 157–58. I have coined the word “mentalism” to designate the position of the two founding fathers of sociology, to which Bloch, the historian, clearly also belongs. See Liah Greenfeld, “Nationalism and Modern Economy: Communing with the Spirit of Max Weber,” Max Weber Studies 5 (no. 2 2005): 317–43. The fact that, despite the exemplary lucidity and logical structure of his presentation, it has been for a century consistently missed is a proof of its striking originality and foreignness to the materialist mentality of our age. These and subsequent quotes are reprinted with the permission of The Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Rules of Sociological Method (8th ed.) by Emile Durkheim, translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller, edited by George E. G. Catlin (New York: The Free Press, 1964), xli. (Copyright © 1938 by George E. G. Catlin. Copyright © renewed 1966 by Sarah A. Solovay, John H. Mueller, and George E. G. Catlin. All rights reserved.) Ibid., xliii–xliv.

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20. Ibid., xlvii and lv. (“Mais il y a entre ces deux modes de coercition toute la différence qui sépare un milieu physique et un milieu moral.” Les règles de la méthode sociologique, 8th ed. [Paris: P. U. F., 1996], xxi.) 21. Ibid., xlvii–xlix. 22. Aron, Main Currents, II, 24, 71. 23. Ibid., II, 103. 24. Of course, Durkheim also talks of individual psychology, but in this context evidently the word “individual” denotes a biological and neuro-psychological organism. 25. Aron, Main Currents, II, 72. 26. One could say of him, in fact, as Fontenelle said of Leibnitz: “Leibnitz laid down exact definitions, which deprived him of the agreeable liberty to misuse his terms upon occasion.” Quoted in Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 175. 27. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson (New York: The Free Press, 1964), 130, 279–80. 28. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, xvi. 29. Max Weber, “Basic Sociological Concepts,” in The Essential Weber, ed. Sam Whimster (London: Routledge, 2003), 312. 30. Aron, Main Currents, II, 250. 31. Ibid., II, 25, 251, emphasis added. It was also this conviction of the centrality of modern society for sociology that, I believe, led Aron to disregard Marc Bloch, who more than any other scholar developed sociological thought in the interwar period; for, though he was as politically involved as could be—actively participating in the Resistance and paying for this with his life—his substantive work concentrated on the Middle Ages. There, of course, could be a different reason: Bloch defined his field of study in a manner almost identical to Weber’s and very similar to Durkheim’s definition of sociology, but he called it “history.” 32. Ibid., II, 102. 33. Ibid., II, 272–73. 34. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), 26. 35. Ibid., 53. 36. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischoff et al. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 242, 1112. 37. Weber, “Basic Sociological Concepts,” 24. 38. Weber, Economy and Society, 242, 266–71. See also Liah Greenfeld, “Reflections on Two Charismas,” The British Journal of Sociology 36 (March 1985): 117–32. 39. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 158.

Part Three International Politics and Political History

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7 Raymond Aron and La France libre Michael Curtis On June 23–24, 1940, Raymond Aron, who had served in a meteorological unit from September 1939 until the defeat of France, left for England. When Marshal Pétain had taken power, first as prime minister on June 16, Aron had felt relief rather than indignation or rage. Within a few days, however, he was eager to be with those who wanted to continue the war against Germany. In a letter of July 20, 1940, from the Delville camp near Aldershot, Aron explained he wanted to fight in the French tank corps though he, now thirty-five, was considered too old.1 Others understood that better use could be made of this brilliant individual who had been an agrégé de philosophie, a member of the University of Cologne (1930) and of the French Institute in Berlin (1931–1933), a lecturer at the University of Bordeaux (1937–1938), had defended his thesis, and written a book on contemporary German sociology. A letter dated July 31, 1940 came from the headquarters of the Free French movement that General de Gaulle had established in London, wanting Sergeant Aron to be in charge of the history of the movement, and also to give a course on philosophy to students of the Lycée française. A second invitation from the section head of a department at de Gaulle’s headquarters was to change Aron’s life. André Labarthe, former socialist deputy and somewhat odd personality, who was unknown to Aron but who claimed to have read some of his writings, suggested a meeting on August 17 with de Gaulle.2 The general, who had been recognized on June 28 by Winston Churchill “as leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the Allied cause,” had already decided that Labarthe should publish a monthly French periodical in London.3 Aron agreed to join the periodical, La France libre, of which he was to be the de facto editor for fifty-nine issues, from November 1940 until the end of 1944, while Labarthe, the nominal director, was the specialist in public relations. 147

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The first issue, with 8,000 copies and 10,000 reprints, was successful; the circulation then increased to about 22,000 and some reports suggested it sometimes reached 40,000.4 These figures, for a journal of high intellectual quality in its political and cultural articles, compared impressively with the esteemed journal La Nouvelle Revue française in Paris, which had a circulation of about 5,000. Among the many distinguished writers in La France libre were Georges Bernanos, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Harold Laski, Julian Huxley, and H. G. Wells.5 La France libre was a monthly journal of French independence but it was not a Gaullist one: Neither Labarthe nor Aron considered themselves Gaullists. Indeed, in April 1942, Labarthe was reprimanded by the British Ministry of Information, which usually bought 7,000 copies a month, for criticism in the journal of “the head of a movement which H. M. Government supports.” The relevant article had been critical of de Gaulle’s military strategy. The delicate problem of freedom of the press had been raised. After a meeting on April 10 between Labarthe and Brendan Bracken, the minister of information, it was agreed that reasonable criticism of de Gaulle was permissible “so long as such criticism did not lend itself to quotation by enemy propaganda.”6 Similar problems occurred over other articles, with the British Foreign Office and Ministry of Information making known their displeasure with La France libre because of its criticism of French leaders “to whom great numbers of Frenchmen look for guidance and direction.”7 Aron was more circumspect in his writings than was Labarthe in his wartime behavior, and, as always, tempered and sober in his analysis. His style is in sharp contrast to that of George Orwell, writing simultaneously his pamphlet “England, Your England” with its opening lines: “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” In his Mémoires he wrote that what made La France libre “valuable and successful was precisely the fact that the journal was not war literature.”8 Aron, in fifty-seven issues, wrote articles and the monthly “Chroniques de guerre,” many under the pseudonym René Avord, which he used while his wife and daughter were still in France. The articles, most of which were collected and published in book form in 1945–1946 and arranged by Aron in three volumes, De l’armistice à l’insurrection nationale, L’Homme contre les tyrans, and L’Age des empires et l’Avenir de la France, have been assembled in one large volume, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre, 1940–1945.9 Near the end of his life Aron wrote that his books would have had more breadth and dimension “if I had not chosen the easy course, that is journalism.”10 Even disregarding the thousands of articles he wrote after the war for Le Figaro, Preuves, L’Express, Commentaire, and other journals, the quality and range of his articles in La France libre belie his self-deprecation. Cumulatively, they form an important part of his voluminous oeuvre in two ways: the lucid and invaluable analysis of political and economic conditions and individuals in

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France during the war, written in empirical, non-polemical, and understandable fashion; and the discussion, often for the first time, of many of the subjects to which he would devote several of his later books—war and society, the regulation of the modern economy, the fragility of democratic institutions, dynamics of violence, democracy and totalitarianism, problems of twentieth century industrial society, the changing military technology, international relations, the use of propaganda, warnings of dictatorial authority, secular religions. If General de Gaulle was not happy about the first issue of La France libre, a letter of January 4, 1943, from Nicola Chiaramonte in New York, complimented Aron on his helpful articles.11 Aron may not have been a creative writer, in the manner of his classmate Jean-Paul Sartre, but he was, as Stanley Hoffmann said, a critic of formidable quality.12 In the articles, Aron, both as historian and as philosopher and moralist, shed light in his sophisticated and subtle way on the troubling issues of his time. These articles—limpid, realistic, tolerant, honest, lacking in invective or personal attack—illustrate the Aronian approach to political or historical understanding. Aron never formulated a doctrine, but at the core of his writings was a discipline, a certain way of thinking, the search for truth.13 Curiously, Hannah Arendt was one of the few who found his writing difficult.14 Unlike Sartre, whose name “became an ideology, and his persona a temple with vestals and disciples,” Aron was content to bring the “poetry of ideology down to the level of the prose of reality.”15 His appreciation of Walter Lippmann—“philosopher of history by necessity, the commentator becomes inevitably a teacher,” explaining the world to his compatriots—could equally be applied to himself.16 The articles, especially those on the Vichy regime, also reflect Aron’s underlying philosophical approach expressed in his doctoral thesis. He saw human life “as dialectical, that is dramatic, since it is active in an incoherent world…. It seeks a fleeting truth, with no certainty but a fragmentary science and a formal reflection.” Rejecting historical determinism and certitude and the “tendency to mono-conceptual interpretations, always partial and arbitrary,” Aron in his analysis and his political theory was always aware of “the plurality of objectives and motivations” in the exercise of power.17 Aron’s fairness and concern for historical truth and exactitude lasted literally until the day of his death on October 17, 1983. The articles on Vichy also exemplified his aphorism that no one can grasp any one, final meaning of history, nor can all relationships be unraveled or all possible meanings exhausted. That undogmatic approach helps explain some of the more unexpectedly sympathetic passages about Marshal Pétain. The articles also reflect Aron’s wide-ranging knowledge of great political and social thinkers and his use of their ideas to illuminate contemporary issues. His stay in Germany in the 1930s had, among other things (such as recognition of the true nature of Nazism), induced a critical appraisal of the French school of historical positivism and of Léon Brunschvicg. More pertinent were Machiavelli, to

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whom he devoted a number of articles, Pareto and his theory of elites, the great eighteenth-century French philosophers, and Marx, on whom he ruminated the whole of his life. Amid the wealth of information and incisive comments on France in the almost 400 pages making up De l’Armistice, two points are apparent: There is almost nothing on de Gaulle or the Free French movement, and there is a somewhat surprisingly cautious, neutral, perhaps at times even benevolent, attitude towards Pétain himself and some of his associates. On the one hand, he believed that Pétain had come to power by defeat but in a legal manner; on the other, at least until November 1942, Aron did not enthusiastically regard de Gaulle as the embodiment of the national legitimacy of France. He was concerned about the possible authoritarian character of de Gaulle. Much later, Aron confessed that though he agreed with de Gaulle on the essential point that France must be on the side of the Allies, he was never a Gaullist in the same way as André Malraux.18 Paradoxically, the only direct governmental position held by Aron was as directeur de cabinet of Malraux, then minister of information, for a short time in November 1945. Throughout the articles Aron stresses the need for French unity. Rejecting propaganda that claimed a monopoly of patriotism for one side, he urged avoiding actions that might increase divisions among French people. Unlike de Gaulle he refused to regard everyone in the Vichy regime or its supporters as traitors. He was always careful to differentiate the Vichy attentistes (wait and see people) from the fascist or extreme collaborators, mostly in Paris. Collaborators were traitors; supporters of Pétain’s National Revolution were not. Capitulation Aron’s first article in La France libre, “Capitulation,” written in November 1940, was a painful and powerful critique of the armistice that France, with Marshal Pétain as prime minister, signed with Germany on June 22, 1940. For Aron, the Marshal had forgotten that France was not only bound to its ally Britain by solemn obligations but also by the most sacred interest: France’s very existence and “the spiritual liberties of our people.”19 Militarily, France, with its empire and its fleet intact, still possessed enormous resources. The armistice, or in Aron’s word “capitulation,” had been decided by a few individuals, not by parliament or the people. Aron explained some of the causes of capitulation. The French army had been poorly prepared for the war, militarily and morally. The military setbacks in spring 1940 had led to a rout. Parliament was dispersed, public opinion or a coherent press was not vocal, and the communist party, because of the 1939 Soviet-German pact, was hostile to the war. The Third Republic had died without properly defending itself. In a later article, in July 1942, Aron was still perturbed: “On all France, on each French person, the memory of the tragic spring of 1940 weighs like a kind of remorse, as a source of permanent humiliation.”20 In the 1940 article, Aron pointed to some of the factors responsible for

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capitulation: the moral decay of the ruling group; the generals seeking to save the remains of the army; reactionaries sincerely or hypocritically impatient to reshape the country; politicians anxious to obtain office in return for services rendered to new masters; and capitalists concerned for social order, if not for their country’s greatness. All of them, sufficiently ignorant to hope for a reversal of alliances or a compromise with the victor, resolved that France would submit before exhausting her means of resistance.21 Above all, France suffered from defeatism and malheur, attitudes that were present in all the parties. The French people, overwhelmed by their responsibilities, wanted tranquility and feared another war. Internal conflicts, especially those over the Popular Front government in the 1930s, produced resentments, making internal enemies more detested than the external enemy. In a moving passage, Aron wrote that “the élan of Valmy, the Marne and Verdun could not be reborn. The country was taking no part in its destiny; its soul was no longer in it.”22 The decisive factor was the new leader, Pétain, the man whom Léon Blum on May 3, 1939, had called “the most humane of our great generals,” the man who inspired general respect, the person who said an armistice was essential. Pétain and his supporters argued that the armistice would preserve national unity, would save the empire and the fleet, would ensure French neutrality in the war, and was the least bad policy. Evoking the duty of obeying the legal government, they stated that political leaders would be cowardly to leave France and continue the war from outside. In any case this was not possible because of the lack of arms, munitions, and factories in North Africa. In later writings Aron was to qualify his views on the armistice and be less critical of its proponents.23 In 1940, and in other articles in the La France libre, he strongly disagreed with the Pétainist assertions. A government determined to resist could have relied on the masses—at least those not weakened by the new pacifism of the communists—who were the most patriotic Frenchmen, had traditionally resisted the invader, and were anti-fascist. Aron rejected the view that the unity of France or its empire would be compromised if France had continued the war from North Africa. On the contrary, continuing the fight would unite the humiliated country in resistance to the enemy. The Pétainists, soon to form the French State (Vichy regime) on July 10, 1940, were deluded if they thought France would gain anything from the armistice. They had committed a double error. The more they abased themselves, the more they were despised by their German masters. In addition, the peace was a German peace: It meant no French military or general staff, no French control of the economy, no French policy, no part in a German Europe. Aron was defiant: “All French history did not stop in the summer of 1940. The capitulation did not seal the destiny of France, we need more force and clarity for our action.”24 In the 400 pages of articles gathered together in De l’Armistice, dating from November 1940 until May 1944, and in a final note written in Paris in February 1945, Aron wrote on a host of subjects. Among the more important

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were the policy in France of attentisme, the major personnel in the changing Vichy regime and their different points of view, collaboration, the economic plight of France because of German pillage and demands and control of the economy, the Vichy “National Revolution,” German and Vichy propaganda, the purported corporative organization of French industry, the Riom trial in February 1942, the German demand for French labor in German factories, the French empire and the navy, the disintegration of the Vichy regime after November of 1942, and the final control of power by the extreme collaborators, fascists, and gangsters in Vichy. Two subjects are conspicuous by their absence. Though in a number of articles Aron in a general way referred to the majority of French people opposed to the enemy, he wrote little on the resistance movements in the territory of France, partly for security reasons and partly because of conflicts in and between these movements. More disconcerting was his virtual silence, except for one or two occasional references, on the persecution of Jews in France and their fate, and these references were about Nazi, not French, behavior. Answering questions about his silence, in interviews and in Mémoires, Aron explained that between 1940 and 1943 he was more concerned with the pro- or anti-German feelings of the men of Vichy than with their opinions on domestic politics.25 He also responded that though La France libre was not subject to censorship, “we practiced a kind of self-censorship,” not wanting the journal to be a vehicle of Greuelpropanda, accusing the enemies of atrocities as had been the case in World War I. Even if this is an understandable defense of his silence about the uncertified German atrocities, it still overlooks his neglect of comment on the participation of French people themselves in discriminatory behavior and complicity in the Holocaust. The Vichy Regime Aron, in a series of articles starting in January 1941, was the first commentator to provide a comprehensive picture of the Vichy regime, its changing personnel and prevailing, sometimes contradictory, ideas, an analysis that is still a useful starting point for historical understanding. He perceived Vichy personnel not as a monolithic entity but as a heterogeneous group comprising different categories: reactionary intellectuals; some former politicians of the Third Republic that Vichy referred to as “the abolished regime”; officials who had worked for that regime; and the military. An early, though not lasting, influential figure among the intellectuals was Charles Maurras, “official doctrinaire,” whose anti-democratic writings continued as they had done for over forty years, whose counter-revolutionary attitude found delight in the liquidation of the detested Third Republic, and who took morose joy in the country’s misfortunes.26 The reactionary intellectuals at first centered around Raphaël Alibert, disciple of Maurras, who became minister

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of justice. Among other prestigious intellectuals was Jacques Chevalier, the philosopher who had written that the French victory at the Marne in World War I was the victory of Descartes over Kant, who became minister of education and of family and health. Hostile to individualism, this group advocated traditionalism and, some, the restoration of the monarchy. Alibert, himself a former advisor of the pretender to the throne, saw the choice of a new regime as between pagan totalitarianism and a new Middle Ages: He chose the latter, hoping for a Catholic medieval community. Aron saw this view, and the educational changes incorporating religious teaching in the state, hitherto secular, system as elements of a “Catholic-monarchist” system. Those former parliamentarians who had voted for capitulation were prominent in the first Vichy government, though they were soon eliminated. The most prominent was Pierre Laval, a decisive figure in the events that ended the Republic, about whom Aron was unfailingly caustic.27 High-level officials and military figures were also appointed to relevant ministries. Prominent among the officials were Marcel Peyrouton, former colonial administrator in the North African countries, who became an early minister of the interior, and Yves Bouthillier, inspecteur des finances, a high ranking civil servant, who was close to Paul Reynaud in 1938 and who became minister of finance for two years between June 1940 and April 1942. Among the military persons were Admiral François Darlan, at first minister of the navy who was to become vice-president of the council and foreign minister in February 1941, and General Charles Huntziger, replacing Marshal Maxime Weygand as minister of war until his death in November 1940. From the beginning Aron was careful not only to indicate this heterogeneity within Vichy, but also to differentiate between the major Vichy personalities and the political and cultural persons in Paris. Aron was unremittingly critical of this latter group, activists and writers who were not only anti-democratic demagogues and anti-Semites, and even anti-Vichy, but were also traitors to France with their pro-German stance. He was particularly critical of Marcel Déat, the former socialist intellectual who had moved from his political base to national-socialism, had become an appeaser and had written the influential pamphlet, Mourir pour Danzig, to oppose a war against Germany. Aron called Déat the French theoretician of the German empire. Déat agitated for collaboration in the creation of a German New Order, the economic unity of Europe, which corresponded to historic needs and which could not be realized by democratic countries. France was to be part of that New Order.28 Déat’s astonishing intellectual shamelessness was, for Aron, put at the service of treason and the most cynically imperialistic enterprise of modern times. What disturbed Aron was the participation of former members of the French political left, like Déat, in collaboration. They did not understand the real plutocratic nature of the Nazi system or the use it made of leftist imagery in its pretended socialism.

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Though he concentrated on Déat, Aron was critical of other extremists, not only former leftists, such as the well-known and influential Jacques Doriot, former communist (1921–1934) and then founder in 1936 and leader of the fascist Parti Populaire Française (PPF), but also the other Parisian fascists, collaborators and long-time friends of Nazi Germany, such as Jean Luchaire, close friend of Otto Abetz, representative of German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and ambassador in Paris, and Jean Boissel, violent anti-Semite and fascist editor. Aron regarded the Paris collaborators, a heterogeneous group of former leftists, pacifists, trade unionists, veterans, and academics, as traitors. In their journals, on the Paris radio, and in the group called Collaboration, they found Nazi themes congenial, denounced Jews and masons for tyrannizing France and dragging it into a war, supported the unification of Europe under German leadership, and attacked Vichy as reactionary and clerical. Vichy and the Germans Aron argued that those French people who supported capitulation in June 1940 believed the war with Germany had ended, not only for France, but also for Britain. After the defeat of France, Vichy’s stance was twofold. Officially it remained neutral though critical of Britain, which it claimed had abandoned France in order to protect itself. Vichy refused naval bases to Germany because it might lead to war against Britain. At the same time a rupture with Germany might lead Hitler to occupy the whole of France. Yet, the mainstream position of Pétain and his associates, though not of Laval, was rejection of French integration into the German New Order. Instead, France should be the model of a social and political order inspired by doctrines of the Holy See and by “modern necessities.”29 On October 30, 1940, Pétain made his radio broadcast that, in order to maintain the unity of France, he was entering into the path of collaboration with Germany. On many levels Aron argued this policy was mistaken. Economically, collaboration would not reestablish a normal economic life in France. French industry was being used for producing instruments of war for the Nazis, which in addition made those factories targets of British aircraft. In several articles devoted to economic conditions in France, Aron argued that, while pretending to be autonomous, the French economy was really working for the German war machine. The bargain made by Laval in 1942 that one prisoner of war would be released to France for every three French workers sent to Germany, was for Aron akin to the deportation of slaves. In the occupied zone the Germans, who had introduced the mark as the means of payment and fixed arbitrary favorable exchange rates for themselves, controlled the flow of essential raw materials and part of industrial machinery and rolling stock, and had imposed an exorbitant indemnity. All this was a modern form of pillage. Aron defined what collaboration really meant. German authorities gave direct orders to French firms or made arrangements with a whole industry, such

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as automobiles, artificial textiles, and insurance. Such arrangements implied unification of French industry, its integration into Germany’s global plan, and its concentration on a small number of products, all for supply to Germany. For French people the results were unsatisfactory. Unemployment remained high, prisoners of war remained in captivity, the products of French labor went to Germany, and their price depended on German decision. France had given the appearance of legality to pillage. In spite of Pétain’s rhetoric about a new economic system, Vichy, according to Aron, was organizing the economy of poverty. Food, transport, work, and primary material were all lacking. Vichy had sought to break the power of trusts in the economy, to subordinate individual initiative to the national interest, to promote the primacy of agriculture and the role of peasants as the most healthy and important part of the country, and to create corporative organization of agriculture and industry through comités d’organisation in its purported “National Revolution.” Aron was rightly skeptical about the contemplated changes in economic and social policies. Pétain’s “revolution from above,” which was supposed to be a moral reform, concerned with work, discipline, patriotism, with Christian teaching in the schools and with movements of robust youth, was never truly implemented. The Nature of Vichy In La France libre Aron sought to define the Vichy regime. It was neither fascist nor totalitarian, certainly not until its last months as a state controlled by police despotism; it was authoritarian, though he used the term with a certain caution.30 It was closer to conservative or traditional doctrine than to Nazi ideology. It had rejected the ideas of a single party controlling the state and of mass involvement in public affairs. It claimed it would establish effective authority, as the Third Republic had not done, which would safeguard the liberty of the state to act and overcome the coalitions of special interests. Without any popular representation, administration and legislation were essentially the work of officials, in ministries and in the Conseil d’État. In theory, Pétain had powers equal to those of Hitler and Mussolini, but Aron was not sure he would use them.31 Aron wrote of the rapid liquidation of the Third Republic by Vichy. Political parties and secret societies, particularly freemasons, were dissolved; professors were dismissed as well as officials considered to be of the Left. In a rare reference to the question of Jews he remarked that their situation in the economy of the occupied zone was threatened. Writing in March 1941 he was over-generous in believing that Vichy, in passing a racist law, was making a kind of compromise with the principles of the German occupiers.32 He saw the Vichy authorities on this issue less preoccupied by a racist philosophy than by political and cultural ideas. Vichy had discriminated against Jews because of their supposed attachment to revolutionary ideas, their excessive and fatal role in the Third Republic,

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and their passionate hostility to Hitler’s Germany. Nevertheless, he felt the Vichy discrimination had not reached the extreme form of the Nazis. In September 1941, discussing political changes, Aron wrote of the two ideological influences on leading circles in Vichy: traditionalist doctrines and totalitarian ones, especially national-socialism. Equally, two tendencies were present in attitudes on foreign policy: the attentistes with Maurras’ conception of neutrality; and the partisans of integral collaboration, led by Déat and Doriot. Maurras had influenced Pétain on domestic and foreign policy, but the difficulty was how to create an authoritarian state without imitating the totalitarian model. Pétain, in speeches in mid-1941, repudiated the principle of the sovereignty of the people, which should be replaced by people whose rights derived from their duties. He rejected individualism, substituting his view that society was made up of a hierarchy of families, professions, communes, administrative responsibilities, and spiritual families. Not surprisingly, Aron found these views not simply obscure, but intellectually embarrassing. However, in this system of government by a single person assisted by a small number of advisers, the Marshal had not dared to invoke divine right.33 Changes were constantly made in the personnel and policies of Vichy, but the decisive moment was the return to power in April 1942 of Pierre Laval, who had been dismissed in December 1940. Aron, in his May 1942 article, was scrupulously fair, perhaps with undue indulgence, about the plight of Pétain at this point. The Marshal, caught between German pressure and the anger of the French people, had desperately sought to gain time, not make irreparable decisions, to maintain collaboration within certain limits, and to remain neutral in the war. A certain equilibrium had been established between attentistes and collaborators.34 The return of Laval meant that partisans of collaboration and representatives of large industry and finance and professional politicians were more prominent. These new men were for the most part rejected by the majority of French people, though some of them had a certain prestige. Aron’s conclusion was acerbic: “[T]he pseudo-government of the French State will speak the language, will wear the mask of the enemies of France.”35 Writing in June 1943, Aron held that the only excuse for Vichy was that it was the intermediary between the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo, on the one hand, and the French population, on the other. There was no excuse for Laval. He called for a German victory, arguing that an Allied one would lead to the diffusion of communism across Europe. His argument served a double purpose: enhancement of his own power and creating a personal police force, and getting concessions from Germany.36 The vicissitudes troubled Aron. The Milice was becoming more powerful. The French administration had lost all autonomy, with German officers and the Gestapo more active. The best French officials had left their posts in Vichy.

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Enraged by the treason of Déat and the abstention of Maurras, people in France were beginning to fight and defeat the enemy. The gangsters were coming to power, led by the criminal Joseph Darnand, who adhered to the French section of the Waffen SS. The law of the new order had become the law of the jungle.37 Aron wrote an important final note on the specific issues in France in February 1945 after he had returned to Paris. He set his arguments in the context of philosophical assertions: Consequences of acts have almost nothing in common with the intentions of actors, and acts and intentions rarely coincide. He was now less severe about the June 1940 armistice, considering its effects, and more severe about the events in November 1942 as far as the responsibility of the actors was concerned. He explained that, in June 1940, he was revolted by the breach of honor and the abandonment of the British ally in the war by Vichy before resources were exhausted. Aron therefore condemned Vichy and had outlined in general what might have been done. In contrast, in November 1942, because of the speedy end of fratricidal fighting in North Africa, he had not sufficiently stressed that the men of Vichy, even the repentant ones, believing the myth of the defense of the French empire, had sacrificed thousands of French and American lives. Aron now appreciated that it was not possible to say what the military position would have been in 1940 and if the war would have been shortened if Pétain had not agreed on an armistice. He was uncertain that a decision to continue the fight in the French empire could have prevented the enemy from conquering the North African territories or would have altered the German decision to attack the Soviet Union in June 1941. He still held to the opinion that, by leaving the fight, France had increased the chances of a German victory. But the armistice was not simply a military issue; it also diminished the prestige of France, which had a solemn commitment to Britain. If the moral authority was not now too impaired, this was due to “the other act of June 1940” (De Gaulle’s Free French movement) that left France in the war and ensured the continuity of the Resistance and the maintenance of French honor.38 The armistice aggravated the divisions among French people. Had the whole of France been occupied, the country would have been united against Germany. Aron explained in a striking passage: “Half occupied, half governed by a halfFrench government, it was condemned to quarrels of contradictory loyalties, to doubts, to a war of religion all the more absurd because political unity did not exist on either side of the barricade.”39 It was not paradoxical to say that the armistice hurt France more than it did the Allied cause. The neutralization of North Africa for two years was the least bad solution from the military point of view for both sides, but the moral legacy of Vichy was reduced. In November 1942, if France had reentered the war on the side of the Allies, the equivocation in the past of Vichy, and of Pétain himself, could have been seen differently. If Vichy had the clairvoyance, the courage, or simply the good sense to make the right choice all its past would have a different significance. “The indispensable

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condition to its indulgence was that history finishes well.” The conclusion of “this lamentable adventure” was quite otherwise.40 Aron was caustic about the behavior of French military and political leaders in November 1942. The majority of them were, at the bottom of their hearts, anti-German, as were almost all of the French, but with so many uncertainties, Anglophobia, anti-democratic fanaticism, and opportunism, they could not shake off the chain of lies they had themselves forged and return to a straight path of French duty. By the cunning of reason, the armistice had caused more harm to French prestige than to the Allied cause, and was more harmful to French unity than to the unity of the anti-German coalition. Regarding the reversal of alliances in November 1942 (the switch by Darlan to the Allies) it was useful rather than meritorious. Aron also wrote critically of the purges (l’épuration) in France after liberation. They needed psychological interpretation. Supporters of the armistice in 1940 had different motives. Some accepted the German New Order, some wanted to save the empire, some believed Germany had won the war, some wanted a national revolution. A distinction should be drawn between people like Maurras, and others like François Brinon who were vulgar agents of Hitler, or pro-German opportunists like Laval. On this issue Aron applied his starting principles: Distinguish between the act and its effects, and between the act and the intention. It was wrong to attribute the worst motives to all people. The decisive factors were the attitudes towards the armistice of 1940 and the collaboration. After the High Court had decided on the cases of the leaders, one could logically deal with their subordinates and take account of differences in motives and time periods. Aron held that, because of the various motives, confusion about behavior was inevitable until November 1942. Some, especially many civil and military officials, regarded Vichy as the legitimate government; some tried to limit collaboration; some believed the major concern was to save the fleet and the empire. Aron’s conclusion was that penalties were appropriate against those who initiated the policy of collaboration, those who implemented that policy with exceptional zeal or with personal initiatives as in Syria, those who repressed the Resistance, and those who followed Pétain (“the seven stars of the old fétiche”) to the end.41 Again, the careful Aron recognized such a crude distinction did not cover the complexity of individual cases: Account had to be taken if people had been officials or ministers and of the extent to which official functions had been exercised. Returning to the subject after the liberation, Aron argued that the question of treason in the war should be defined by reference to patriotism.42 Both the Vichyites and the Gaullists, until November 1942, took opposed, perhaps irreconcilable, positions, but both could claim national interest, apart from their ideology. Similar difficulties existed concerning economic collaboration, on the behavior of business leaders or patriots who pretended to be collaborators.

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On this point again Aron was fair and moderate. “Who could fathom the hearts and minds, and determine the merits and demerits of the men engaged in this diabolical game?”43 Aron then turned to the present, 1945. France was rebuilding its unity, now that the vast majority of the French population accepted the authority of General de Gaulle. Yet the attitudes of Pétainism and collaboration had not disappeared. People of different backgrounds had acted together in the Resistance, yet unanimity in clandestine action did not necessarily lead to common political action. To talk of the “schism” of Vichy was to exaggerate the real differences among the French people. It was wrong to talk of a Vichy schism if it were meant that a significant part of France adhered to the myth of the New Order and had taken the side of the enemy. The resolute collaborators were always a small minority. Nevertheless, it was true that the traditional political divisions in the French nation, which had reappeared in 1934, took on a new form after the armistice. The question was, what was the effect of Vichy on the long-standing French schism? His “melancholy impression” was that things had changed less than one would have thought or wished. Some conservatives were infected by poisons of German origin spread in France. By contrast, many French people had been drawn closer to the mass of French men engaged in the fight against the enemy. Considering the existing divisions, Aron argued it was necessary to overcome the four tragic years, to eliminate the guilty and restore the weak and the straying conformists to the French community, and above all to overcome the traditional divisions of the nation. It was now a question of “building in broad daylight, but without hope of brilliant days and without the prospect of triumph. The task is endless and it requires an effort every day.”44 Modern Machiavellianism L’Homme contre les tyrans, a group of articles 250 pages long, written between November 1940 and July 1943, constitute both a political and philosophical defense of democracy and a denunciation of Hitlerism as an imperialist and totalitarian system. They clarify the nature of German aggression and call for the population of countries facing that aggression to resist it. The articles continually express concern about what Aron called “demagogic caesarism” or “plebiscitary democracy,” which was infecting some democratic countries. To illuminate the nature of the Nazi enemy, Aron made use of some great political theorists. In 1939, while in the army, Aron had been preparing a never completed work on Machiavelli. Not surprisingly one of his first two articles in La France libre was on “Machiavellianism, doctrine of modern tyrannies.”45 He carefully distinguished between Machiavelli and his mode of thought and “ the vulgar concept” of Machiavellianism, which was almost exclusively a theory of means. From this perspective, “If Machiavellianism consists in governing by terror and cunning, no era is more Machiavellian than ours.”

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To add to his argument Aron analyzed Pareto, “one of the masters of fascism” who, he felt, had created the themes of totalitarian propaganda.46 Pareto had introduced the idea of plutocracy or pluto-democracy, denounced bourgeois idealists and captains of industry, and derided progressive views by “unmasking” the individuals who hide behind those generous sentiments. He justified a new division of the world at the expense of “the senile democracies.” He used the weapons of socialism against humanitarian socialists. In a rational way Pareto argued, leaders use the irrational impulses of the masses and manipulated myths and religions. They ruled by violence and cunning. Aron summed up the essence of Machiavellian thought: a pessimistic conception of human nature, from which was derived a philosophy of historical destiny and techniques of power; an experimental and rationalist method that, applied in the political realm, seemed to lead to aggressive amoralism and to an exclusive care for power; and the exaltation of human will and the values of action. These three factors did not properly constitute a doctrine, but a certain manner of thinking about politics, which is the common foundation of all totalitarian philosophies.47 Modern Machiavellianism, Aron’s early formula for totalitarian systems, did not limit itself to giving advice to the ruler but implemented Machiavelli’s reflections, devising techniques for use in the march to power. Aron outlined some of these: first, the coup d’état, implemented by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 and by supporters of Hitler in Austria in 1934 and in Holland in 1940. A second technique was destruction of existing parliamentary democracy as in Germany between 1930 and 1933 in a number of ways: aggravating the deficiencies of the system; diminishing the power of the state that was being denounced; developing rival totalitarian style organizations within the very heart of democracies. Aron warned that revolutionary leaders got unconscious collaboration from many democrats in this work of destroying the regime. A third method was the organization of the totalitarian party. The first example, the communist party, was imitated by fascists and national-socialists. These parties recruit from all social classes, develop semi-military groups, and appeal to sentiments of different kinds such as self-sacrifice, need for fellowship and discipline, desire to play a role in life, envy, and pride in being part of a superior collective power. The parties resemble both armies and churches. The masses are passively obedient. The faithful, believing in the absolute value of the promised end and in the legitimacy of the prophet, accept everything, including brutalities, changes in policies, and treason. The militants illustrate the virtues of action and of cold fanaticism. A fourth technique was revolution from above, by the state itself without visible disorder. Hitler, once in power, eliminated all rival parties and organizations and gave his own national-socialist party the monopoly of political and police positions. Aron mentioned three other techniques: economic tyranny by state regulation of wealth and the means of production; propaganda; and destroying

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the elite of a conquered nation as Hitler did in Poland. Writing in November 1940 at a low point in French history, Aron, in this comprehensive analysis of the emergence of totalitarian systems, asserted that the enemy was not invincible, but it was necessary to understand it in order to defeat it.48 The Romanticism of Violence Six months later, Aron, still anxious to analyze and understand the mentality of the enemy and its hate for democracies, hate of men and ideas even more than of institutions, discussed the twentieth-century romanticism of violence. Such a sentiment cannot be refuted by arguments, but should be analyzed. Aron indicated, as others did after him, that Georges Sorel was the most influential exponent of this sentiment.49 Among Sorel’s assertions were contempt for humanitarianism and moderation, and an appeal to regenerate decadent societies. He praised the warrior not the pacifist. He lauded the innovative captain of industry though he was critical of the capitalist system and of “plutodemocracies.” The anti-democratic Sorel advocated and idealized proletarian violence, struggle, strikes, a combative attitude, and display of energy. Disciples of Sorel, including Mussolini, accepted his ideas: anti-democracy,energy or élan, the use of myths, the aspiration to grandeur, and the struggle between nations, if not between classes. Romanticized violence was the expression of the highest moral values. Hitler repeated this panegyric of violence, which would, for him, lead to a new order and create a new type of man. Aron translated Hitler’s emphasis on “violence and popularity” into “Gestapo and propaganda.”50 Violence for the national-socialists was not merely a temporary necessity in the march to power or to empire, but a permanent necessity, with executions, revolutionary terror, concentration camps, proscriptions, and persecutions of minorities or opponents. They had degraded Sorel’s ideas of noblesse and heroism into technical methods and inhumane reality. Aron’s admonition was clear. The violence of the totalitarian countries, with their barbarism and culture of fanaticism, had forced everyone to remember authentic facts of human existence. To exalt violence for its own sake or to refuse all use of force was to misunderstand the truth of civilization. Force was justified in a valuable cause. Aron argued that only actions could refute the doctrine of violence. If free peoples defended liberty with as much discipline, courage, and will as “the fanaticized masses” used in the service of their masters, they would dissipate romantic mythologies.51 Democracies, believing in themselves and in their mission, should use power and show there was no incompatibility between civilization and power or between humanity and temporal greatness. Related to the romanticism of violence was the revolutionary myth used by Hitler in the aim to conquer Europe and then the world. Hitler’s propaganda concept of Germany creating a European unity and a social revolution must be confronted by the “human ideal of revolution.” The word “revolution,” after

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having served as an expression of the highest hopes of humanity, must not be allowed to apply to the most terrible degradation facing civilized Europe. Aron defended the revolutionary tradition as a heroic one, implying acts of supreme virtue to achieve liberation and humanitarian ends, justice, equality, and liberty. The twentieth-century revolutions were different: All traces of liberalism disappeared when a single party had taken power in the name of an ideology which it then spread, which was intolerant and illiberal, and which controlled the economy by a new type of political and authoritarian bureaucracy. The true revolutionary task was to progress along the road to social justice and to save the most proclaimed values of liberal civilization, respect for persons and liberties. When Goebbels and his propagandists used the revolutionary myths for their profit, one should say this was simply the triumph of Prussianism.52 The Problem of German Socialism Aron used another important theorist to explain the link between German socialism and Hitler’s New Order. Oswald Spengler’s celebrated book, Preussentum und Sozialismus, equated the desirable socialist state and the Prussian state. Prussia, an authoritarian state, one of command and obedience, antiegalitarian hierarchy and organization, characteristics of military organization, was admired by Hitler. Spengler’s emphasis on the collectivity that commands was implemented by national-socialism, as was his concept that members of society would find unity in the service of the state. Aron was troubled by the nature of German socialism and its party, which of all those in the international socialist movement had the strongest organization and the least feeling for political liberties. German socialism had its roots in the political and intellectual past of Germany, a country in which officials, “the universal class” in Hegel’s term, were honored, respected, and admired. Though German socialism had the virtues of devotion to the collectivity, work, and discipline, it did not separate state and society as was the case with British individualism. National-socialism continued the tradition of German socialism, but it had vulgarized and degraded it, and made the doctrine more brutal and aggressive. Still worse, the national-socialists believed they were called to govern not only the Reich, but also Europe and the world, imposing the Prussian state. Their socialist verbiage in its clamor for a new order was not distinguishable from imperialism, governing and exploiting supposedly inferior peoples. Again, Aron called for liberation from national-socialism, an act of authentic revolution in the struggle against the foreign tyrant.53 Bureaucracy and Totalitarianism Though some contemporaries were writing or had published works on totalitarianism around 1940, Aron’s own contribution was one of the first, and probably the first in French, on the topic.54 In his article, “Bureaucratie et Fanatisme,” published in July 1941, Aron acknowledged that all great countries

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had developed a rational and centralized state bureaucracy. Germany, however, differed from other western countries in its Prussian state bureaucratic absolutism, with its high place for the army and interpenetration of the civil and military administration, and its indifference to liberal aspirations, the rights of man, and political liberty of the individual. Though Aron at this stage did not always use the term, he did provide a summary of the German totalitarian system: bureaucratic power of party officials; inhabitants powerless in a totally organized system; arbitrary extension of authority to all aspects of life. The Hitler regime, using rational techniques, organized not only industry but also culture, the propaganda process, and the shaping of the individual. In what Aron called a “kind of dialectical reversal,” these techniques seemed to lead to total irrationality.55 This resulted from the bureaucratic-military machine having a will to limitless power, and from national-socialism fostering among its adherents the most frenetic sentiments, passion, and violence. Secular Religions This totalitarian regime was akin to a secular religion, a term Aron coined in two articles in 1944. In a later article, in June 1980, Aron confessed that because in wartime London La France libre “felt bound to practice a certain amount of self-censorship,” he did not deal as freely with Stalin’s Russia as with Hitler’s Germany. He had, in fact, been preoccupied with the menace and nature of Nazism from his years in Germany, and his writing on the Soviet Union and critical comments on communists and intellectual fellow travelers were to appear in the postwar years. Yet his analysis of secular religions included both national-socialism and Marxism. Marx’s ideal, a society of free men, equal and fraternal, conformed to the Christian ideal, though it was supposed to result from a historical dialectic in which the contradictions of capitalism entail revolution, and then socialism. In the Nazi dogma, the will of men and the vitality of race govern history.56 Both of these secular religions offered supporters the comfort of a close and fraternal community. Both were Manichean, aware of evil opposition: Marxism warned against capitalism, Nazism against plutocrats and Jews. Both had a doctrine of salvation: The socialist one was a society open to all and based on universal law, the Nazi one was confined to one nation and identified with one race.57 In early writings on politics Aron had used terms such as belief, faith, and conviction, but his experience during the war, and his reading of Pareto, led him to coin the term “secular religions” to indicate perversions of real religious faiths. These secular religions can convert souls to the same kinds of devotion, intransigence, and unconditional fervor as traditional religions, placing the salvation of mankind in the future and in the form of a social order not yet invented. They set up an ultimate and quasi-sacred end, they give an overall interpretation of the world, they demand sacrifices.

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National-socialism designated an enemy, the source of all evil, on which hate and resentment would be focused; it had a prophet who was received with fervor; it proposed a small number of simple social principles; it had its sacred book with devils and saints, historical interpretations, and prophecies; it made an absolute of the nation; it proclaimed the superiority of the German race. National-socialism animated men fanatically in peace and in war. It provided people, bored by the banality of daily life, with a purpose and a sense of their existence, making their sacrifices bearable. Aron commented that fanaticism cannot last indefinitely and therefore substitutes were found. Attention was turned to ruling supposedly inferior peoples. The masses, through festivals, ceremonies of the new cult, participated in the collective grandeur of the New Order. In addition, the dream of gigantic booty replaced lost fervor. Against both secular religions, Aron argued that history was not moving toward a fixed end. People oscillate between extremes, sometimes passive, sometimes dreaming of grandeur. Aron was aware that belief in parliamentary systems, economic liberalism, and national sovereignty had declined.58 Yet, optimistically, he saw a reawakening of nationalism and a kind of humane liberalism. Aron made two main criticisms of secular religions. They are religions of collective salvation, not offering the same consolations or hopes to individuals. They were also undermined by a secret non-belief, because of the non-appearance of the ideal, and the uncertainty and struggle involved in the effort. Nevertheless, they aroused the passions that move people and produce leaders. On this issue of secular religion and totalitarianism, Aron was influenced by two recent books, Élie Halévy’s L’Ère des tyrannies, and André Malraux’s Les temps du mépris, and wrote “Tyranny and Contempt of Men” in February 1942. This contempt was one of the original traits of the tyrannical Hitler regime. Machiavelli had recognized the badness of men, but he did not conclude that authority had to be absolute or arbitrary. Whatever the consequences that Machiavelli drew from his pessimistic attitude, they differed from Hitlerism. Machiavelli’s maxims ran counter to the rules of Christian morality but he never denied their validity. Hitlerism rejected the very idea of rules, exalting, as if normal, admirable, and praiseworthy, the unleashing of the instincts of violence. For Aron, this was no longer pessimism but a vulgarized version of Nietzsche’s views. National-socialism, like Nietzsche, sought to “unmask” adversaries: Behind democratic values there was cowardice of old peoples; behind religion, instincts. Pretended ideals were only a camouflage or disguise for pure force.59 Pacifism In January 1941, Aron discussed the philosophy of pacifism, a state of mind, perhaps of soul, a condemnation of war based on humanitarianism and moralism. It oscillates between two forms: unconditional rejection of all war, no matter

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its origin or reason, or a theory or practice designed to avoid war. This latter view accepts the eventuality of struggle. In the real world, defense of a cause thought just, or for national independence or territorial integrity, implies the risk of struggle and the use of force. Absolute pacifism is not practical politics. Responding politely to English pacifists, Aron dealt with questions of conscientious objection and just war. He argued that a war that aimed at saving the independence of small nations, or equality of races and peoples, was just. He held that the triumphs of Hitlerism might make the vast majority of pacifists realize that one evil, slavery, was worse than war.60 Most German thinkers, Kant excepted, were hostile to the idea of pacifism, and to the application of ethics to political and historical questions. They accept the ethical value of war, and deny the possibility of an international statute that outlaws armed conflict. They admire and sanctify force. Hitler’s doctrinaires reiterated that argument of permanent war, but on a lower level. Hegel spoke of the soul of peoples, Hitler of race and blood. Nazis and fascists exalted combat, condemned pacifism, and despised those who believed in it as decadent. They made use of people’s desire for peace for their own purposes, such as preventing or delaying the rearmament of neighboring countries. Independent democratic nations must proclaim less their desire for peace than their will for liberty; the war was about freedom. Six months later, in September 1941, Aron strongly criticized Alain, the fashionable philosopher who had convinced a part of the Left that moral opposition to government was the best guarantee of liberties and peace. He influenced generations of young people in sterile hostility to the state and in being ignorant of the threat to France and of the task every member of the French community should fulfill. Aron rejected Alain’s view that the central idea of radical politics was the inevitable and permanent opposition between citizens and those in power, who tend to become tyrannical. Alain’s political thought led to absolute pacifism, that no war was just, and that the use of force erased justice. Negotiations and appeasement were the solution. Alain was blind to the reality of historical conflicts and the diversity of national psychologies. A nation had no chance of keeping its independence if it was not ready to defend itself with arms. Paradoxically, Alain did this when, at age forty-nine, he joined the army in World War I in 1914.61 Modern Tyrannies In a trenchant article in June 1944 Aron discussed contemporary tyrannies with their innovative techniques using rational methodology in the administration of day-to-day affairs and the management of crowds, and making use of irrationality in arousing the passions of the masses, creating official ideologies, and holding in their hands the power to construct or destroy. Aron used the terms “popular despotism” or “demagogic caesarism” for such a regime of

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personal, arbitrary power at the top and exaltation, approbation, and consent of the masses. Such regimes had historical precedents and Aron compared past dictatorial regimes with current ones. The originality of modern tyrannies is that they come about both through the revolt of the masses without resources against the privileges of the rich, and by the conquest of the state by a popular leader, using demagoguery and the military. Support came from those with resentments and hopes, who found community in a party. National-socialism had a new category of “enemies of the people.” The Nazi party went further than authoritarian organization, combining oligarchy and popular fervor and demagogic tyranny. Modern tyrannies emerge when three conditions are present: available masses, a predilection for nationalism or imperialism, and the absence of an authentically democratic spirit, sense of freedom, or personal consciousness of being a citizen. To prevent the emergence of tyrannies, democracies must act. They must provide security, especially in relation to work, for citizens, and must have a clear-sighted governing group and popular moderation. They must prevent demagogues from using liberty to destroy the system, even while respecting differences in beliefs. They must get support from the collective will of citizens. Democracies must be preferred not because they supply more “butter,” but because they represent a higher value than other systems.62 Intellectual Traitors Aron devoted three long articles in March 1943 to French writers who were “in the service of the enemy.” The writers substituted the legendary cultured Germany of musicians and poets for Nazi reality. In effect, they were agents of Goebbels. If there were no great names among the literary collaborators there were important ones. He dealt primarily with Jacques Chardonne, Drieu La Rochelle, Alfred Fabre-Luce, and Henry de Montherlant. Chardonne, a popular novelist, accepted the German victory as a fait accompli and supported the German European New World Order. Drieu, long an admirer of Hitler’s Germany and totalitarian regimes in general, believed in collaboration for two main reasons: European unity and the intellectual and moral revolution he would find in those regimes. Drieu, with his Nietzschean form of spiritual revolution, racism, adoration of force, radical amoralism, and acceptance of the German yoke in the name of historical reason, was indifferent to events. Aron regarded both Chardonne and Drieu as traitors.63 He dealt equally harshly with Fabre-Luce and Montherlant. The former could be regarded as an opportunist, or traitor, or fanatical doctrinaire, but above all he was a defeatist, accepting Hitler’s victory and believing in Franco-German reconciliation. Aron used Fabre-Luce to comment more generally on this attitude of defeatism. By this attitude and refusing to continue the fight, France gave Hitler more opportunity for a rapid triumph in the war. France lost prestige,

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its heritage of glory, heroism, and spiritual nobility, and exasperated divisions among Frenchmen. The most important of these writers, Montherlant, rallied to the German side and urged a national-socialist revolution in France. He exalted courage, energy, force, combat, and heroism, which meant a taste for risk. Aron’s rebuke was that it was absurd to believe that only a totalitarian regime had a heroic ethic, and that Montherlant’s version of heroism had no reference to the value of the cause. A generation earlier Julien Benda had written on the treason of intellectuals. Benda referred to extreme cases of national fanaticism, and sacrifice of spiritual values in the interests and passions of the nations in World War I. Aron, qualifying this view regarding World War II, argued that French people had not been animated by similar hatred against Germany. The treason was that of the collaborators, who by accepting the foreign Caesar, adopted a passion contrary to other French people.64 These intellectual collaborators had diverse motivations: a Nietzschean romantic view of European revolutions; a passion of hate, especially anti-Semitism; approval of a German empire and European unity; and adoration of force. They had all adopted a political religion and approved anything done in the name of the “cause” that admired military and economic power, forgetting the cost to individuals and to groups. In a more general way, Aron commented in June 1941 on the question of whether contemporary French literature had taken a wrong turn, and on the current French cultural world, which caused him concern.65 He admonished those who did not appreciate the only duty was to defend French heritage, French spirit and traditions. He was critical of the mediocrities who sought revenge on France, the bien-pensants who dream of making law, the complaisants who under the pretext of impartiality and serenity do not have the courage to say “no” to the invader. Too many journalists and some bad writers spat on national glories, and incriminated Baudelaire, Proust, Gide, and Valéry for the so-called collapse of French morality. War and Society A number of articles in May, September, and December 1942 deal with totalitarian strategy, the future of democracies, political and military revolutions, and national and imperial wars. In many ways they form a prelude to his later works on war and international relations. In May 1942 Aron wrote of the neglect by historians of the study of war, an essential factor in the life of collectivities. War and social and political factors are interrelated. Only a dynamic democracy, united but not uniform, can fight against a totalitarian regime such as Nazism, which was in essence a preparation for war. Respect for liberty does not exclude a strong executive, increasing use of technicians, and an economic plan. Democracies must also wage a propaganda war against the nationalsocialists who had cleverly exploited resentments, combined concepts of

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nationalism and socialism, used anti-Semitism, and attacked plutocracy. Their propaganda had made support for Hitler, an armed prophet, comparable to a religious faith. Propaganda of the allies centered on liberation, not only from Germany but also from bureaucratic despotism and economic difficulties such as unemployment. Democracies cannot emulate fanaticism of the totalitarian kind, but they can use patriotism, political idealism, and consciousness of mortal danger from the foreign enemy. In a brilliant essay on “the menace of Caesars,” Aron provided a historical picture of different kinds of conquest by a dominant leader.66 The Hitler enterprise could be compared with the Macedonians and the Romans. Like them, Hitler sought to unify the world, divide adversaries, march to hegemony in stages, and make use of conquered countries. Aron’s explicit response was rejection of historical fatality; the will of men, sometimes a few, shape destiny. Therefore, that of the democracies lay in courageously assuming the responsibilities of society after the war and dealing capably with economic and military techniques. In an anticipation of the postwar dialogue on the future of Europe, Aron in April 1943 discussed the destiny of nationalities and whether the division of Europe into many sovereign states was anachronistic. He outlined here his first thoughts, which he would amplify and sometimes change in later works, on the fragility of peace, the need for stable equilibrium in international relations, and the conditions for security, including a collective arrangement and common action in Europe. He concluded at this point that postwar Europe would be made up of independent states with more precaution taken against aggression.67 In an introduction, written in July 1945 in Paris, to his articles, discussing the postwar French political crisis, Aron related it to that of Western Europe. He suggested three possibilities. Europe might be divided into zones of influence by non-European empires, which would lead to cruel internal disputes in France. Europe might be united by the arms and laws of a conqueror; the Soviet Union might invoke a universal ideal, but was unlikely to displace the Anglo-Saxon influence. Europe might exist by itself and for itself, independent of external pressures. This would exhibit an original synthesis of liberty and planning, plurality and organization. Aron admitted he once favored a Western federation. Now he thought the idea was to enlarge economic and political units without suppressing the national state or alienating the patriotism that cemented European historical collectivities. A global unit of Western Europe, however, was a utopia, a seductive and vague idea. Reflecting on James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution, Aron in March 1943 wrote on historical pessimism in the light of Burnham’s remark that the unification of Europe by Hitler was inevitable. He disposed of Burnham’s propositions that capitalism was condemned to death and that postwar capitalist society would have a totally directed economy. He also disagreed that managers formed a unified class or would control society. A distinction must be made between the managerial group and political leaders. An economy

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could be organized without authoritarian methods by a political democracy and intellectual freedom.68 In his discussion, in the last part of the Chroniques, of the reconstruction of postwar France, Aron rejected any authoritarian solution. Although the country faced many problems and there was no unique or glorious solution for them, nothing justified alienation of liberties. During the war his suspicion about possible dictatorial or authoritarian intentions and ambitions of General de Gaulle led him in August 1943 to write his most controversial article, “L’Ombre des Bonapartes,” for which he later expressed regrets for insinuations about de Gaulle rather than for the text itself.69 In this stimulating article Aron used more than his normal historical allusions to comment indirectly on a future French regime. France, in addition to monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, had also had a composite, paradoxical, and contradictory regime called Bonapartist. A form of plebiscitary despotism, it drew on the memory and heritage of the French Revolution and conferred on a general or a crowned tribune a more discretionary authority than that possessed by a monarch. The myth of Napoleon was used by his nephew Louis Bonaparte to transform himself from a mediocrity to an emperor. The myth, founded on a memory, was reinforced by surprisingly strong propaganda, seeking to create an obsession with an indispensable man. Louis Bonaparte received support from various parts of the French population. The party of order, through a mixture of fear and blindness, supported this adventurer rather than a conservative republican. The masses linked him not to the tradition of French royalty but to that of popular sovereignty. He invoked revolutionary dogmas combined with the defense of order and social stability. This was a sovereign coming from the Revolution. Aron feared the same sentimental and political crystallization could occur around another leader without glorious ancestry. Aron defined this as plebiscitary caesarism: popularity of a man who represents a kind of reconciliation between the heritage of revolutionary romanticism and the stabilization of the established order; rally of the bourgeois classes to Caesar, because of social troubles and the impossibility of a monarchical restoration; the discredit of parliament; division among republicans; and participation by citizens in a system of plebiscites. Aron used the example of General Boulanger who had emerged in the 1880s as a political force and threat because of these factors. With a facile blending of themes to create popularity, he posed at the same time as defender of order and a friend of the workers, combining patriotism and democratic romanticism. His personal mystique and contradictory assurances gained support from those hostile to parliament and parties of the Third Republic. Aron drew a parallel between the Bonapartism of the nineteenth century and the fascism of the twentieth.70 In spite of differences there were similarities: the conjunction of extremes in the myth of a national hero, the rally of the party of

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order to the adventurer adulated by the crowds, the national fervor expressed towards the charismatic leader, the mobilization of irresolute multitudes, and the desire for strong power incarnated in one man. Bonapartism was therefore both the anticipation and the French version of fascism: anticipation because of political instability, patriotic humiliation, and social anxieties; a version of fascism because it was embraced by millions of French people hostile to the government, and because an authoritarian regime claimed to stem from the Revolution. Bonapartism appeared as the solution necessary to create the sentiment of unity. Aron’s criticism was that far from uniting the country it allowed all divisions to continue, and limited itself to arbitrary control of chaos. Since the leader’s legitimacy comes from popular acclamation, the Caesar was incessantly pushed to new enterprises by an insatiable need to renew the source of his authority, the favor of his people. As so often happens in history, the adventures of a man led to tragedy. In an article in 1958 discussing the new Fifth Republic, Aron again returned to the Bonapartist concept, the ability to transcend the country’s political divisions, to be at once of the Right and of the Left, to unite France of the ancien régime with the France of 1789. Aron was still wary of de Gaulle, who had returned to power. By origin and intellectual training he was a man of the Right. But since 1940 he had never ceased to appeal to the Republic as its authority. De Gaulle had not turned out to be Caesar.71 *** Reading, on the passing of the 100th anniversary of Raymond Aron’s birth, the articles in La France libre one can appreciate not only his impressive output on a variety of subjects—the politics of contemporary France, the historic parallels from the Greeks onwards that he used to illuminate current events and influential ideas, the great thinkers who have influenced modern activists, the philosophical reflections on political and moral questions, the problems confronting a restoration of postwar France—but also the relevance of so many of his concerns: from winning the war against Nazi Germany, to our present dilemma of the stark, unremitting challenge to Western democratic systems. One can question some of Aron’s judgments: a too fulsome praise for and optimism about the strength of resistance to the German occupier in France; the insufficient criticism of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church for its endorsement of Vichy; his reluctance to criticize the temporary ally, the Soviet Union; and of course his virtual silence on the persecution of the Jews by French citizens. Yet his articles as a whole can be seen, in more than embryonic form, as a prelude or prologue to many of the subjects of his voluminous writings over the next forty years. Speaking from time to time about his career, Aron remarked that as a student he feared that a taste for public life would divert him from philosophy.72 In fact, as La France libre shows, he was able magisterially to reconcile the two. Aron never claimed to be an original philosopher, certainly not in the manner

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of the rococo gyrations of barely intelligible writers in St. Germain-des-près, or as Aron himself put it, “in the provincial atmosphere inhabited by left-wing Parisian intellectuals.”73 Yet, he was certainly original in his formulation, in a number of articles, of the intellectual background and nature of a totalitarian system, and of the essence and danger of secular religions. Aron’s articles in La France libre comprise a cornucopia of accurate information and insights on public affairs and a comprehensive intellectual portrait of the Vichy regime, while at the same time placing those affairs in both a philosophical and historical context and interrelating them. In similar fashion he connected the thought of great political thinkers with their institutional impact: His long article comparing the theories of Montesquieu and Rousseau is in essence a commentary on the concept of legitimacy, particularly relevant in the case of Vichy, and the dialogue of law and liberty.74 The qualities in the La France libre articles are those that are apparent in all of his work: lucid, soberly reasoned, fair, calm wisdom, non-polemical, even towards contemporary fascists, unambiguous, and as he wrote, unwilling “ to confuse accounts of private life with political reflection,” as other writers have done. His style was not elegant in classical French fashion, but it was devoid of malice and lacking in acerbity. Throughout the articles, amid the wealth of information and analysis, two significant themes are present: his political realism, including advocacy of the proper use of power, and his appreciation and defense of democracy. He was always conscious of political reality and the constraints on the exercise of power. He was frank about the divisions in French society and politics, comparing in one article French political parties unfavorably with the solidarity and coherence of British parties. These divisions, as he noted in a number of articles in the third section of Chroniques, would make postwar reconstruction difficult since France needed a common objective, capable of arousing enthusiasm and the will to take action and make sacrifices. Aron never claimed omniscience, or made dogmatic claims. The subtitle of his doctoral dissertation was “Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity.” He rejected the idea of historical fatalism, that historical destiny had one end. In politics, choice and action were necessary, not verbal juggling. Aron was sanguine about the necessity to use force where required. In some brilliant articles in La France libre he rejected pacifism, which had attracted him as a young man, as politically impossible. Aron was never a Jacobin, but, while favoring limits on state control over policy and society, urged the proper use of authority, certainly to a greater extent than had been used by the Third Republic, which he criticized in his articles. Aron was a liberal, but a tough one.75 He showed in his exchange with Jacques Maritain, in an article of La France libre but excluded from Chroniques, that toughness in approving what might be called moderate Machiavellianism.76 At the same time he was continually wary of excessive power, of personal dicta-

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torship, and specifically suspicious of the possible ambitions and certainly the style of General de Gaulle. That suspicion is implicit in the brilliant article, “L’Ombre”; characteristically, Aron in later writings acknowledged that de Gaulle had not become a “shadow.” Linked to the realism about politics, international relations, and the need to fight the war against Nazi Germany was Aron’s concern for the existence of democracy, the contours of which he defined many times. He made clear, in a number of articles, the attraction for many people of the contemporary secular religions and their promises of salvation. The urgent task was to overcome this and make democracy more acceptable, by propaganda, by creating a more attractive alternative, and by the use of force. He was an unapologetic warrior for democracy. Raymond Aron was engaged in the adventure for liberty.77 Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Archives, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)/Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron (CRPRA), Paris. Ibid. British Cabinet Paper, 65/8, June 28, 1940; Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages, vol. 1 (Paris: Plon, 1970), 10–11. Christopher Flood, “André Labarthe and Raymond Aron: Political Myth and Ideology in La France libre,” Journal of European Studies 23 (1993): 139–58; Raymond Aron, letter to Roger Caillois, April 15, 1943, published in Commentaire no. 103 (Autumn 2003): 611–12; Daniel Cordier, “René Avord à Londres,” Commentaire nos. 28–29 (February 1985): 22–27. Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps des ideologies (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 174. Archives, EHESS/CRPRA. Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office to Labarthe, February 5, 1943. Raymond Aron, Mémoires (Paris: Julliard, 1983), 174. Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre: La France libre, 1940–1945 (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997), 254. Archives, EHESS/CRPRA. Stanley Hoffmann, The State of War: Essays in the Theory and Practice of International Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1967), 32–33. Alain Besançon, “Pourquoi nous aimions tant Raymond Aron,” Commentaire no. 110 (Summer 2005): 476. Letter of Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, March 31, 1959, in Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers: Correspondence, 1926–1969 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1985). Nicolas Baverez, “Aron’s adresse aux âmes fortes,” Le Figaro littéraire, March 10, 2005, and Aron, Mémoires, 320. Raymond Aron, “The Columnist as Teacher and Historian,” in Walter Lippmann and His Times, eds. Marquis Childs and James Reston (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959). Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: essai sur les limites de l’ objectivité historique, ed. Sylvie Mesure (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 347–48; Aron,

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18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

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Études politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 168; Franciszek Draus, “Introduction” to Aron, History, Truth, Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 24–25. Aron, Mémoires, 234. Aron, Chroniques, 29 Ibid., 187. Ibid., 30–31. Ibid., 32. Raymond Aron, Polémiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 112; Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), viii. Aron, Chroniques, 38. Aron, Mémoires, 175–76. Aron, Chroniques, 51–52, 269. Ibid., 175, 326. Ibid., 58, 63. Ibid., 61. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 84. Ibid. Ibid., 129–32. Ibid., 175; later, the same argument is made in Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 219. Aron, Chroniques, 180. Ibid., 306–7. Ibid., 328, 341–44. Ibid., 357. Ibid., 358. Ibid., 359. Ibid., 365. Aron, Polémiques, 122–23. Aron, Chroniques, 365. Ibid., 368. Ibid., 417–18. Ibid., 418. Ibid., 421. Ibid., 426. Zeev Sternhell, Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994) and Ni droite, ni gauche (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1987); Michael Curtis, Three against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barrès and Maurras (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959); Irving Louis Horowitz, Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges Sorel (New York: Humanities Press, 1961). Aron, Chroniques, 434. Ibid., 439. Ibid., 444. Ibid., 449. Rémy Freymond, “Présentation,” in Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1993), 37–40. Early writings of Aron on the subject included “États démocratiques et États totalitaires” (June 1939), published in Commentaire no. 24 (Winter 1983–84): 701–19, and “La révolution nationale en Allemagne,” Europe (August 1933): 125–38.

174 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology Aron, Chroniques, 457. Ibid., 927–28. Ibid., 930. Ibid., 946. Ibid., 472. Ibid., 486. Ibid., 500. Ibid., 518. Ibid., 533. Ibid., 552. Ibid., 106–7. Ibid., 584–95. Ibid., 620. Ibid., 633. Aron, Mémoires, 184–86. Aron, Chroniques, 773. Raymond Aron, “The Fifth Republic,” Encounter XI (December 1958): 12; “Le Général de Gaulle,” Commentaire no. 88 (Winter 1999–2000): 866–67; France: The New Republic (New York: Oceana, 1960), 66. Raymond Aron, Politics and History: Selected Essays, ed. Miriam Bernheim Conant (New York: Free Press, 1978), 82. Raymond Aron, The Industrial Society: Three Essays on Ideology and Development (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 4. Aron, Chroniques, 635–48. Jean-Claude Casanova, “Raymond Aron et la politique française: trois Républiques et leur institutions,” Commentaire nos. 28–29 (February 1985): 252–55; Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Histoire politique des intellectuels en France (1944–1954) (Brussells: Éditions Complexe, 1991), 21–22. La France libre, 6 (no. 33, 1943), 209–15, published in Raymond Aron, In Defense of Political Reason, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1984), 53–63; Pierre Hassner, “Raymond Aron on the Use of Force and Legitimacy,” Brookings Institution paper, February 2005. Aron, Chroniques, 723.

8 Raymond Aron and the Origins of the Cold War Carlos Gaspar Raymond Aron’s decision to intervene in the crucial strategic debate at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War was in line with his engagement in the Resistance during his London exile, but at odds with his intention to resume his academic career at the university on returning to Paris. Apparently, the obligation to continue the fight against war and totalitarianism proved a stronger calling. Raymond Aron committed himself as a philosopher, as a journalist, and as a politician, searching for a way to contain the parallel risks of war and capitulation arising from the double threat of imperialist domination and totalitarian uniformization. All fronts were relevant when the division between the “two camps” of the Cold War became the rule in both international and domestic politics. Aron had written extensively on war and totalitarianism during the war years, mainly in La France libre, and he started to outline his analysis of the post-World War II strategic equation during his seminar at the Ècole Nationale Supérieure. After the war, he was, for a brief period, senior adviser of the Gaullist party, and in 1947 he started writing his weekly column in Le Figaro. In the following year, Aron published Le Grand Schisme, the first long essay on the nature of the Cold War, where he initially addressed issues that would be further developed in a more structured book, Les Guerres en chaîne, published in 1951. His voice was a singular one in the debates in France and in Western Europe. To be sure, others stood up with equal courage to defend liberal values against both the perils of the Soviet strategy of chaos and the illusions of the compagnons de route. But no one else was able to so accurately define a coherent position in favor of the restoration of pluralist democracy and national states, and also of the institutionalization of the transatlantic alliance and European integration, 175

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as the right strategy to oppose communism and Soviet imperialism. Raymond Aron was equally remarkable in his defense of the moral, political, and strategic foundations of that narrow path. As a man of outstanding qualities, he took his stand against conventional wisdom, political conformity, and historical fatalism, combining the integrity of his analytical method, the elegance of his writing, and the political intelligence of his arguments, to convey a clear message on what had to be done. His deep humanity and confidence enabled him to resist the temptations of historical determinism and the vision of an irreversible decadence, even in the face of the most terrible catastrophes. The great debate, crucial for the survival of European states and Western democracy, discussed the strategy to contain the totalitarian enemy but also to moderate overzealous allies. The boundaries between international and internal conflicts tended to fade away and the strategic fault lines cut across states and domestic politics that, in a sense, were as important for the final decision as the conventional military balance. The urgency to confront the “Soviet party” led to building-up an “American party” where socialists, labor, and Christian-democrats came together, sharing the obvious risk of allying with former foes. The principles, as well as the efficacy, of the Cold War strategy also demanded a clear-cut separation between the Western coalition and European colonial interests. It would be quite problematic to oppose the imperialism of the future and at the same time to protect the imperialisms of the past, namely in Asia, where Stalinism proved a powerful magnet for local revolutionary nationalism. Last, it was imperative not to repeat the fatal error of opposing an anticommunist totalitarianism to the Soviet menace and to avoid resisting totalitarian expansionism by resorting to similar tactics of expansion, repression, and manipulation, damaging liberal values and possibly risk provoking the Soviet Union into an escalation of violence. What was at stake in the struggle against communist totalitarianism demanded political engagement, analytical precision, and strategic moderation. Raymond Aron was present at every turn in the great debate. Uncompromising in matters of principle, he seemed always ready to listen to his opponents’ point of view and to engage in serious discussion. His arguments centered on three main issues: first, the links between war and revolution since the beginning of the twentieth century; second, the unification of the champ diplomatique and the deep changes in the distribution of international power since World War II; and third, the thorough analysis of alternatives as an indispensable step in the effort towards defining a strategy that could reverse the infernal logic of total war and thus avert the suicide of Europe. War and Revolution The dialectics between war and revolution—the chain of total wars and totalitarian revolutions—was a key issue for Aron and his dark vision of the history of the twentieth century.

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In 1914, nationalist passions and industrial society combined to create the conditions for awakening the “war monster” that had been silenced by the European Concert for almost one hundred years.1 The last European war became the First World War, as well as the first hyperbolic, or total, war.2 The most immediate consequence of this new kind of war was the demise of the defeated powers’ political regimes. Even before the end of the Great War, in February 1917, a revolution brought down the Russian empire at a crucial moment when the closing of the Eastern front could still mean the victory of the Central Powers. However, the fall of czarist autocracy also removed the last obstacle delaying the American decision to intervene on the side of the democratic powers. The American intervention would bring victory to the Entente, but the parallel decision to keep a ravaged Russia in the war, after the February Revolution, caused the transitional regime to collapse when the small Bolshevik party, led by Lenin and Trotsky, staged a successful coup d’état in October 1917. The first decision of the Soviet authorities was to declare a unilateral ceasefire and take Russia out of the hostilities. The Soviet leadership, unaware of the limits of its movement, believed that the prolongation of the “imperialist war” would provoke a revolution in Germany—without which both the expected European transition towards Marxist socialism and the survival of the Russian communist revolution were quite unthinkable. Élie Halévy thought that “the world crisis of 1914–1918 was not only a war but also a revolution.”3 In a broader sense, Raymond Aron stressed that the Great War was at the origin of modern tyrannies. The Bolshevik party could not have taken over without Russia military defeat in the war and German Nazism was inseparable from the psychological and material consequences of World War I. Reactionary tyrannies were a response to the Soviet revolutionary threat, but fascism and communism shared a common enemy in Western, or bourgeois, democracy.4 The first totalitarian revolution was an outcome of total war, and both the war and Russian communism were at the origins of the second totalitarian revolution. Carl Schmitt, who followed Heraclitus in thinking that “war is the essence of everything,” took the next step in exploring the dialectics of war and revolution. He wrote that “total war determines the nature and the form of the total state.”5 Totalitarian regimes adopted military organization as their model in the formation of a “garrison state,” and they were created in order to be able to fight an industrial war in a mass society. The new strategic conditions demanded total concentration and mobilization of resources, including the “mobilization of enthusiasm,” where totalitarian techniques were unrivaled. Raymond Aron could not have accepted the normative sense of Carl Schmitt’s constitutional formula, but was not far from empirically reaching similar conclusions. During the First World War, the “technical surprise”—the sum of democracy, which changed the old wars into people’s wars through universal conscription, and of modern industry, which transformed mass production into

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mass destructive capabilities—did subvert all military plans, namely after the failure of Germany’s offensive strategy at La Marne forced the contending armies into an endless defensive stalemate. More than passions or idealism, technology was the engine of the escalation towards a war of annihilation that was responsible for trench war massacres. The mobilization of nationalist hatreds became necessary to sustain the terrible human losses and protect internal cohesion, and this made it impossible to accept a diplomatic compromise to end the war. It also imposed upon the parties an uncertain peace, tentatively subordinating international order to the principles of constitutional democracy and self-determination under the aegis of the League of Nations. The origins of the Second World War were to be found in the absence of a will to impose the peace settlement and in the rise of the German totalitarian movement yearning for revenge with its strategy of imperialist expansion. The Great War had destroyed the traditional institutions that could have checked the tendencies towards leveling and collectivism, and from their ruins emerged the revolutionary movements that wanted to go back to war and restore a universal empire.6 In that sense, war was the origin, the vocation, and the fate of totalitarian revolutions. The regimes of “permanent civil war” took hold of the great European continental powers—Russia and Germany—and provoked an “international civil war” that seemed at once the continuation and the negation of World War I.7 At the outset of World War II, James Burnham and E. H. Carr defined the conflict as a revolution or as a revolutionary stage.8 Burnham explained that Russian communism, German Nazism, and the American New Deal were mere variants of the same post-capitalist and post-socialist revolution leading to a “managerial society.” The First World War had been the last capitalist war, and the Second World War was the first of the “managerial era”—opposing three great powers, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the current names for the three major strategic centers corresponding to the most important modern industrial concentration areas. The new war was to be a permanent war that none of the three great powers could expect to win. No great power was in a position to destroy any of the others, even if two combined against one. The world war was supposed to stabilize a tripolar balance between the super-states of the new era.9 Edward Carr was rather more prudent in his predictions, but he also underlined the revolutionary dynamics of the war and shared the same expectation that war would destroy the old political, economic, and social structures. War was the outcome of the same conditions that made revolution a necessity and accelerated its fulfillment: No war had ever restored the status quo antebellum.10 The First World War aims were democracy and nationalism, but these could not resist the revolutionary crisis that began in Russia as early as 1917, preceding the authoritarian wave in Turkey, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Germany. To rescue the principles of democracy and national self-determination it would

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be necessary to overcome liberal capitalism and consolidate the supranational movement towards a European order.11 Aron was quite aware of the arguments of Burnham, who would become his friend after the war. War accelerated change and total war demonstrated the strategic necessity for an increased concentration of military, economic, and demographic resources. It also confirmed a tendency towards the formation of “greater spaces.” On the other hand, the successive European wars made clear that it was imperative for its survival to overcome the divisions among the old powers, which meant articulating economic and military unification with diversity and the permanence of national states, imposed by their long histories. But Aron opposed not only Burnham’s catastrophism but more generally detested any determinist logic representing war as a stage in a revolutionary process. Aron’s critique referred to the nature of war, to historical analysis, and to the relationship between totalitarianism and war. His argument on the nature of war relied upon a theoretical premise: “[W]ars are essentially unpredictable” and their final consequences are usually rather different from their intended consequences.12 The World War of 1914–1918 became a war of annihilation against everyone’s hopes and expectations. Its dynamics opened the way to an unforeseen Bolshevik revolution, whose equally unexpected, and improbable, survival represented a clear denial of the principles of democracy and national self-determination proclaimed by the United States and later imposed by the victorious Entente. The brief interval between the two wars demonstrated the instability of the First World War settlement when winners and losers traded places. In a few years, the pariah powers—Germany and Russia—recovered from defeat to start a new war against the weakened status quo powers—France and Great Britain. Historical arguments are important to moderate the rationalist hubris of the wise men who forget their limitations as men. With or without Sarajevo, the Great War was probable but still not inevitable. During the long peace of the European Concert, great power diplomacy was able not only to delay the worst consequences of the latent merger between tyranny, technology, and terror, but also to contain wars and revolutions, especially general wars between the major powers. The transformation of World War I into a total war was the outcome of an avoidable failure: If the German armies had been capable of concentrating more units and improving the speed of their advance towards Paris, the war would have been over in two or three months. With even greater certainty, it would be reasonable to admit that if the Russian Provisional Government had backed out of the Great War, the Bolshevik coup d’état would never have taken place.13 Total wars were at the origins of totalitarian movements and the totalitarian dimension was a new factor in the war among great powers. Rational competitive strategies rejected hyperbolical war and, after 1933, the German High Command did want to go to war but was determined to avoid the repetition of escalation

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and of the trench massacres that exposed belligerent powers to the twin risks of annihilation and revolution. The strategic justification for the totalitarian regimes was their unique capacity to win without risking a catastrophe. Modern wars were total wars throwing entire peoples against each other, but they need not be hyperbolical wars. Totalitarian regimes were supposed to be the form of the state best capable of concentrating the will, resources, and might of a great power, so as to obtain a quick decision in a total war and avert the fateful slide into prolonged hyperbolic war. According to Raymond Aron, “the totalitarian regime results from total war and accepts its law, but aims at shortening its duration.”14 His analysis completed Schmitt’s formula: Total war determined the nature and form of the total state, and the total state determined the form of total war. The Red Army invented the offensive doctrine of the modern war of movement, and its innovative military theories were later adopted by the German army. German military strategists developed and applied the operational concept of blitzkrieg, trying to win the war by defeating its enemies as fast as possible, if possible one at a time.15 The first blows of World War II confirmed that German totalitarianism was capable of obtaining decisive victories against a major power like France without falling into the trap of prolonged war. But its ideocratic nature commanded the Nazi regime to aim at universal empire, and the drive towards unlimited expansion forced Germany into permanent war. Sooner or later, it would become a hyperbolic war, as happened when Hitler’s plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union utterly failed. In that sense, Burnham’s anticipation of a limited permanent war, where there could be no winners, did not resist the ideological fury that often drives the dynamics of totalitarian revolution. He expected Russia’s defeat, since it was no more than a backward area stuck between the European and the Asiatic poles of the world industrial triangle. However, the quick victory predicted by the German High Command did not occur: Moscow did not fall before the end of 1941 and hyperbolic war came back.16 The Nazis then exceeded even the most demanding requirements of total war as they proceeded with the extermination—deliberated in cold blood and scientifically organized—of six million European Jews.17 Against all previous forecasts, the first totalitarian revolution prevailed over the second totalitarian revolution, a more modern, more demented, and briefer one. War, by definition, is unpredictable, and the origins of modern war cannot be set apart from the emergence of totalitarian movements. But democracies do not have to implement the strategic programs of their totalitarian foes, and it was not inevitable that the outcome of a total war must be a totalitarian revolution. Aron’s strategic analysis was a theory for action that relied upon a moral obligation to resist historical fatalism. The Era of Empires While the Second World War may, or may not, have been a stage in a revolutionary process, its outcome nevertheless deeply changed international

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politics, as is usually the case at the end of a hegemonic war. For Aron, the three major changes were: first, the return of the empires, taking the place briefly occupied by national states as the main actors of the international system; second, the unification of the champ diplomatique, at once a consequence of a war fought in every continent and of the totalitarian regimes’ world domination strategies; and third, the emergence of a bipolar structure in the distribution of international power where radical, perhaps irreconcilable, divisions opposed the United States and the Soviet Union in a struggle where the survival of an old civilization was at stake. The return of the empires caused a change in the nature of the international system as it altered the principle of the formation of its political constituent units.18 The First World War had accelerated the demise of the old European empires and the triumph of “triumph of French Revolutionary” principles. It was a war between nations where the nationalist passions of the masses, intensified by the press and the modern propaganda machinery, became an indispensable weapon. Nationalist mobilization imposed self-determination as an integral part of the war aims of the winning coalition. Only the illusions prevailing at the end of the Great War could explain the anticipation of a durable democratic peace resting on the recognition of the right of nationalities to organize into sovereign autonomous units, out of which a dozen new states rose in Eastern and Central Europe. In the nineteenth century the national principle reduced the number of European states, with the unification of Germany and Italy, whereas in the twentieth century the same principle increased the number of states and accelerated the disaggregation of the European continent.19 National states were dominant in the international system only for the duration of the twenty-year interregnum in the European civil war. Their rule was being questioned even before the armistice of November 1918 had been signed. Although the Soviet revolution had momentarily defended the principle of national self-determination to ally with Ukrainian and Caucasian nationalists against the “White Russian” armies, communist doctrine stood against nationalism. This rejection became clear with the creation of the Komintern and the baptism of the new state. The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was the proper name of a universal empire that did not recognize geographical, or national, limitations, and the Third International did not pretend to be anything but an instrument of its revolutionary worldwide expansion. Later, the National-Socialist revolution also built up its strength by exploiting nationalist resentments and invoked national self-determination when it launched on its offensive strategy of German unification—Anschluss and the annexation of the Sudetenland, which destroyed Austria and Czechoslovakia in the name of self-determination. But its essential claim to become a Third Empire represented a design beyond German nationalism, in the sense that its racial program aimed at the creation of a “new man” through war and the extermination of entire peoples. At the same time, its expansionist strategies

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and projects went much further than the wildest dreams of old pan-German imperialism. Restoration of the old empires was not the aim of the totalitarian revolutions in Russia and Germany, since both wanted to bring back the millenarian empire.20 The enjeu of World War II was the survival of the old international order of the national states against the new world order of the universal empires. National states were also challenged in the debate about the emergence of the “greater spaces.” This objective was not restricted to the totalitarian movements, or to the comparatively moderate German Geopolitik school that proposed a lasting alliance between Germany and Russia—the co-hegemony of the two great continental powers as the key for the consolidation of the Eurasian space.21 In fact, Burnham and Carr, as well as Joseph Schumpeter and William Fox, anticipated a profound reorganization of the international system at the end of the war through the radical reduction in the number of states and the concentration of power in two or three poles. Before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Burnham and Schumpeter separately predicted the stabilization of the then existing status quo, anticipating a lasting balance between the United States, Germany, and Japan—the three major industrial centers of America, Europe, and Asia.22 The tripolar model concentrated the most dynamic modernization forces in non-contiguous peripheral strategic centers. Their separation was a factor of stability, while the contiguity between the old European great powers had proved to be a factor of conflict. The imperatives of modernization and the virtues of geographical distance were the solid grounds on which stood the prospect of a prolonged strategic stalemate—which did not exclude armed competition among the major powers in order to control the intermediate areas separating them, or wars of resistance in the more backward peripheries against the tripolar condominium.23 After 1941, the earlier predictions were revised and the probable victory of the United Nations alliance became an alternative scenario to tripolar stability. Carr hoped that the Soviet-British alliance to contain Germany would endure in order to consolidate the economic integration of Western Europe led by Great Britain as the major European power.24 William Fox’s preferred scenario was the Anglo-Saxon union—the alliance between the two Western super-powers, the United States and Great Britain—representing a single international pole ready to cooperate with the third super-power—the Soviet Union. This was an original anticipation of both post-World War II bipolarity and of post-Cold War Western unipolarity.25 During the war years, Raymond Aron accepted without enthusiasm the probable emergence of the “greater spaces” while rejecting the totalitarian models, as well as the projects for European political unification that he considered a dangerous imperial utopia. War dynamics could bring the “greater spaces” into being but political unification was not inevitable. Aron also claimed that the concentration of power in a very restricted number of powers was not a factor

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of international stability. European unity should be limited and supra-national integration was necessary only in the economic dimension, to contain economic nationalism and isolationism. The international order of national states should be restored and the return of the empires should be avoided. Aron apparently had no doubts that “great and small states live and die together,” since the world order of universal empires was no longer an international order of national states.26 However, in 1945, empires were back: “[T]he peace that is coming must be on the scale of the war that is ending.”27 After victory, the formidable power of the United States and the Soviet Union—the two great peripheral powers claiming uncontested control over the international system, including Europe—as well as the military revolution brought about by atomic weapons (which initially enhanced the tendency to concentrate power) confirmed that the peace of the total war would be the peace of the empires. Together, the United States and the Soviet Union had accumulated power on a level unprecedented in modern history. Both were multinational states on a continental scale, with large modern armies and populations of over one hundred million—the new standards that became the measure of great power. The Soviet Union ceased being a revolutionary experiment and became a totalitarian empire. It was dominant in the Eurasian continent and implemented the conventional part of the strategic program of its former German totalitarian rival. The United States, able to wage war simultaneously in Europe and Asia, had won a hegemonic war for the second consecutive time. Victory meant America must overcome its isolationist past, sustain its will to be recognized as a major power, and impose its model of international order. American belief in the universality of liberal values and its vision of democratic peace stood at odds with communist internationalism and the Soviet doctrine of the inevitability of war between the two camps. The bipolar directoire could impose international order and stability, if the United States and the Soviet Union reached an understanding; or peace would be impossible, if the two great powers split. The inevitability of their division soon became manifest. The opposition between the two empires was strategic, political, and ideological, as in the case of the struggle against Nazism. In that sense, the Cold War was a continuation of World War II, but the reduction in the number of contenders made the conflict even more dramatic. In a bipolar competition there would be only a single winner, and atomic weapons could make the outcome an apocalyptic dilemma—an impossible choice between universal empire and extinction.28 When Burnham revised his earlier predictions, he insisted that the atomic surprise was a radical change that made nuclear monopoly imperative. This was the only possible way to ensure that such weapons would never be used and that civilization could survive them. Since it was impossible to create a world state, the United States must seize that monopoly, which would in turn

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consolidate American hegemony and neutralize the Soviet threat, once the adversary was forced into permanent strategic inferiority.29 Aron concurred with the impossibility of advancing towards a world state—the divide between the two super-states was so deep they did not even speak the same language—but remained skeptical about the anticipation of a universal empire that would not just flow from the world military unity imposed by the control of decisive weapons, including atomic weapons, long-range bombers, and missiles.30 American hegemony would not translate into world government but rather subordinate all states to a set of international rules.31 The second change was, according to Aron, the unification of the champ diplomatique determined by technology and scientific progress as well as by the military and strategic intercontinental solidarity, a fact also without historical precedent.32 That unity was demonstrated by the chain of strategic interactions since the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. Stalin had to defeat the Japanese army in Mongolia before signing his pact with Hitler; the surrender of France in June 1940 triggered the Japanese offensive against Vietnam and Southeast Asia; the attack on Pearl Harbor led Hitler to declare war on the United States. The exponential increase in power projection capabilities during the war, in terms of distance, strength, and intensity, was apparent in the comparison between the first American raid over Tokyo, the invasion of Normandy, or the Hiroshima bombing. It also contributed to the tendency towards unification, as did the massive presence of foreign armies in Europe and East Asia, including the permanent occupation of Germany, Japan, and Korea. The rupture between the United States and the Soviet Union confirmed the persistence of a competition without borders, overcoming geographical divisions, and also the separation between international and domestic politics, ineffective against the political and ideological dimensions of the bipolar conflict. The ruin of Europe, the occupation of Japan, and the civil war in China neutralized the intermediate areas that would have been indispensable to counter-balance, or to moderate, the confrontation between the two super-powers. Their struggle opposed a continental power to a maritime power on a worldwide scale. The Soviet Union attempted to expel its adversary from the Eurasian rim while the United States tried to hold on to its alliances in Western Europe, Japan, and China. The bipolar duel opposed an ideocratic universalist empire that could not recognize any limitations to its expansion to a liberal empire confident in its newly acquired military strength and in the universality of its constitutional ideals. Their division was so deep that it could only end if and when one of the contenders admitted defeat. The third change was the exceptional concentration of power in two gigantic states located at the peripheries of Western civilization. The war fulfilled Tocqueville’s prophecy on the parallel rise of Russia and the United States, the two colossuses of continental size quickly expanding in each other’s direction. They would finally meet, more than one hundred years later, in May 1945, at

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the opposite end, along the lines of demarcation separating the armies of the United Nations in Berlin, Germany, and Europe. Their victory was decisive and the emergence of a bipolar regime consolidated their hold on the international system. The tripolar war between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany ended with the destruction of one of the poles, the one that had been the strongest at the beginning of the war.33 The armies of the winners stood facing each other, in Europe and Asia, in empty spaces when the war came to its conclusion. The collapse of Germany left the Soviet empire without a continental rival while Japan’s defeat and the decline of Great Britain let the United States rise as their natural successor and sole maritime power. No other state was in a position comparable to that of the two major powers, and the huge power gap separating the United States and the Soviet Union from all other powers, even without taking atomic weapons into account, was unprecedented. This validated Fox’s distinction between the super-powers, capable of projecting their armed force around the world, and the lesser great powers, limited to regional intervention. Aron considered bipolarity as an inherently unstable regime: “[B]etween two candidates to empire, rivalry, not entente, is the natural course of things even when the empire of the universe is at stake.”34 In that sense, bipolarity should be understood as the natural result of the post-World War II distribution of power. In any case, the opposition between the Soviet Union and the United States was aggravated by the opposition between communism and liberal democracy, adding an ideological dimension to the structural conflict and making bipolar divisions even more rigid. Even as the Second World War was coming to an end, the verdict of the poet was already clear: “[T]his war will extend beyond platonic armistices.”35 Neither War, Nor Peace The most important purpose in Aron’s decision to intervene in the Cold War debate was the search for a comprehensive Western strategy that would be a realistic alternative to imperial peace and hyperbolical war, which at the time meant, for Europe at least, a nuclear war. The outcome of the Second World War was at once the end of a nightmare and a catastrophe. Total wars were always presented as the last war but its dynamics, which presupposed the annihilation of the enemy, created the conditions for a new war.36 The United States and Great Britain were prisoners of that logic during World War II. Their leadership imposed unconditional surrender and, in that sense, forced both Germany and Japan to fight to the end when neither the Americans nor the British had consistent assurances on the alliance with the Soviet Union, to which the war opened the doors to Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. In 1945, Great Britain and France were counted as winners but had both ceased to be first-rank powers: “[A] great power is defined by its capacity to choose between war and peace and every European power has

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lost this capacity.”37 Europe was occupied by American and Soviet armies and none of its old states were counted among the powers. There was no longer a European Concert, only a world concert. What was to be done? The first step must be to define the nature of the strategic situation. Raymond Aron characterized the stalemate of the Cold War with his famous formula “paix impossible, guerre improbable”—peace was still impossible and yet war remained improbable.38 Peace should have been possible between two major powers roughly balancing each other, but the ideocratic nature of the communist regime made impossible any stable arrangement on the respective spheres of influence of the United States and the Soviet Union. Leninist theory postulated the inevitability of war between the “two camps” without allowing for any lasting diplomatic settlement. Communism’s strength relied on its claim to universalism, its refusal to set boundaries limiting its expansionism, and its will of total domination of states, nations, and classes but also of ideas, customs, and men, at the expense of the lives of millions. Almost by definition, any real truce was out of the question so long as the Soviet Union remained a totalitarian power. Nevertheless, war was still improbable, at least for the time being. There existed a fundamental balance between the two great powers, one that would be consolidated by the atomic surprise. Nobody knew whether this was the decisive weapon—capable of forcing the capitulation of great powers by its own very existence—and this made for a precarious stability that could yet become a lasting one: “[T]hat uncertainty is favorable to the paix belliqueuse [belligerent peace]. One does not throw the dice to gamble on the future of mankind.”39 There was also an important difference between Nazi racism and communist determinism, the latter being more confident in history and its final victory: “Stalin’s imperialism is not a lesser one than Hitler’s, but it is a less impatient one.”40 Finally, the operational codes of Leninism referred to movements of flux and reflux in the revolutionary process. The Great War made the Russian revolution possible and World War II reinforced the international position of the Soviet Union dramatically, opening the way for a new cycle of revolutionary and imperial expansion that must be exploited by all means short of a new war: Stalin did not have the means of striking immediately at the United States or even of repeating Pearl Harbor on a nuclear scale.41 Circumstances could make escalation possible and provoke World War III—the Korean War highlighted those risks and justified Aron’s growing pessimism. But that was not the essential direction of Stalinist strategy and neither was it an inevitable outcome of the bipolar division. The second step would be to translate the formula—“impossible peace, improbable war”—into a strategy that could compensate for the instability inherent in the Cold War. First, it was indispensable to avoid the repetition of the capitulation scenario and also of the opposite scenario of preventive war against the Soviet Union. The Munich syndrome was present at all times in

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the debates and revealed a persistent anxiety, evident in the tendencies to surrender in the face of Soviet power and in repeated attempts to save the United Nations’ “world order.” The Red army was the main force that destroyed Nazi armies and, at the end of the war, the Soviet Union had considerable prestige. Communism was seen by many in Europe and Asia as the “wave of the future.” Against those trends, Aron insisted that the victory of communism was a catastrophe equivalent to the victory of Nazism and came out in defense of pluralist democracy, national independence, and progress against the subordination to an autocratic, poor, and oppressive continental empire. Worried about the United States, the indispensable ally of an unarmed Europe, Aron wrote that, like Neville Chamberlain, Truman only recognized the totalitarian threat after Prague (although, it should be noted, the president of the United States had begun to change his mind in 1946—reading George Kennan’s long telegrams from Moscow—and was fully alert to the Soviet menace as early as the Marshall Plan, which demonstrated America’s decision to remain in Western Europe).42 At the opposite end, it was necessary to neutralize the strategies of preventive war against the Soviet Union resulting from the American nuclear monopoly.43 This seems always to have been a minority position but it was important to stress that “the victory of a nation through the total destruction of its rival inflicts an incurable wound on civilization itself.”44 In 1948, preventive war, as well as unilateralism, isolationism, and the rejection of alliances, were no longer relevant alternatives in American strategy. Pearl Harbor and Franklin Roosevelt had consolidated the new strategy relying on coalition- and institution-building and the rejection of preventive war. The containment doctrine was willing to put an end to Soviet expansionism by resorting to every possible measure—including military reinforcements in Western Europe and Eastern Asia—short of a general war. Finally, it became the official strategy of the United States, which calmed down European anxieties, at least for a while. From the start, Aron recognized the fundamental qualities of Kennan’s theory: “Containment is the minimum objective, the further objective being to populate the no man’s land with regimes not subordinated to international communism and with the means of political and economic aid, under the protection of the atomic threat.”45 But the skeptical French analyst did not follow the American strategist’s optimism. In fact, Kennan overestimated the legitimacy crisis of the Russian communist regime while Aron thought Soviet power was reaching its apex at the end of the war. In a sense, the wise strategy of the American diplomat proceeded from a wrong calculation of the balance of power and this would later reflect on his opposition to measures essential for consolidating containment when he came out against the London program, the division of Germany, and the Atlantic Alliance, fearing the militarization of the relationship between the two major powers.46 Far from the centers of political decision, the French philosopher did not make any of those mistakes in evaluating the current situation as it unfolded before his eyes.

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Aron maintained his support for the United States’ defensive strategy, namely against those who wanted to replace the containment doctrine with a liberation doctrine in order to compensate for the asymmetries between the Western position and the communist, and go over to the offensive against the Soviet Union.47 His moderation was even more remarkable as he had always been a staunch critic of American passivity towards the Sovietization of Eastern Europe. However, once the right moment was over, it would have been a dangerous illusion to think that liberating Eastern Europe from communism was possible without war. The Cold War, according to Aron, was “a third way that the two camps have followed since 1946: neither war, nor peace.”48 Time was the essential element in the containment strategy.49 Everything could change in the Soviet camp, if totalitarian expansion was stopped and the internal forces were allowed to do their work in the Soviet Union and in its relations with the satellites. The Yugoslav split and Tito’s survival after challenging Stalin and condemnation by the Kominform were the most serious defeats of the Soviet Union since 1945 and such a precedent could be followed, in the future, by China.50 Communist totalitarianism was not invulnerable and the Soviet empire was not indestructible from within. In any case, gaining time was the only possible strategy for Europe where the alternative to the Cold War was total war. Three steps were needed to stabilize the precarious truce: to consolidate a balance at the center of the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union—the division of Germany; to establish a principle of legitimacy—pluralist democracy; and to define a vision of the future—European integration. Germany was the key to the European question.51 Aron understood right away that Nazism had died with Hitler and he stood for reconciliation with yesterday’s enemy and for a reversal of alliances. As with the defeat of 1815 for France, the German defeat of 1945 closed the imperialist period and from then on everything was possible.52 From the beginning, the Soviet Union opposed any possibility of restoring German unity when it decided to Sovietize its zone of occupation in Eastern Germany. The division of Germany, like that of Europe, was temporary and the Germans would maintain their national will beyond the international split. But since the division would last as long as the Cold War, the only realistic alternative was an alliance with Western Germany. The reconstruction of Europe would need a strong German state; the restoration of European autonomy asked for the rearmament of Germany and its reconciliation with France. In the early stages, European integration would perhaps mean no more than the consolidation of a continental segment of a space the center of which lay in the Atlantic. The United States, whose political fortune symbolized the decline of Europe, could support European integration because they needed stronger democratic allies willing to recognize its status as a great power in order to consolidate America’s regional hegemony. European vulnerability, as well as growing uncertainties about Soviet strategy since the Berlin crisis

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and the Korean War, demanded the institutionalization of an Atlantic defense community. After having cured America from its former isolationism, Stalin himself created the coalition that his mythology postulated by proclaiming the division of humanity into two camps.53 European integration and the Atlantic Alliance completed each other, setting the framework for the reconstruction of a Western Germany that was the starting point for Europe’s recovery and the restoration of international balance. In Aron’s view, “the prospects of peace will be improved with the increase in the numbers of centers of force.”54 Within that institutional context, the European ideal could acquire a concrete meaning and become synonymous with the Western values of freedom, democracy, and national independence, which defined the principle of legitimacy of the transatlantic order. With those core values, European reconstruction, the restoration of democracy, and of the national states would still be possible. Domestic politics were the key to the success of this strategy in Europe and it failed in China because of corruption and the deep internal divisions in the Nationalist Guomindang regime. The last step, perhaps the most difficult one, would be a firm stand to sustain the Cold War stalemate for at least a generation. The Cold War was a limited war as to its means—including, in 1950, the military invasion of South Korea and the ensuing war opposing the American armies of the United Nations and the Chinese “volunteers” of the People’s Army. But it was an unlimited war as to its ends and could at any moment slide into an escalation. Three factors moderated such a risk: the power balance, the codification of rules of strategic engagement, and nuclear weapons. The balance was the result of the asymmetries between the imperial republic and the totalitarian autocracy, and between the continental power and the maritime power. Defensive containment strategies, after the show of force in Korea, were effective against offensive communist strategies, except in China. Each crisis taught the adversaries the rules of the bipolar competition, which excluded direct confrontation between the armed forces of the two super-powers.55 Step by step, the nuclear revolution found its place in the strategic equation as the parties came to understand that atomic weapons were not the decisive weapon that could impose imperial unification and were useless as military, political, and diplomatic tools in the Cold War. Nuclear arms served no purpose other than stabilizing the bipolar balance and the international preponderance of the United States and the Soviet Union.56 In the early 1950s, notwithstanding the multiple crises engaging both superpowers, Raymond Aron was of the opinion that the Cold War had reached a state of relative stability: “[T]he partition of the world between two coalitions armed to the teeth, living under siege, fighting limited battles at key points, very much resembles the world described by George Orwell in 1984.” This scenario of permanent war without decision had been first outlined by Burnham as the outcome of the tripolar war. Burnham’s theory of war had proven inaccurate as a model for simulating the tripolar war among the United States, Germany,

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and Japan, but it fit the later Cold War stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union.57 Still, to resist was not enough and it was also necessary to wait. Aron tended to be cautious on the issues of Soviet decline, which was the only acceptable result of the Cold War. The strategies of survival of the communist elites were at odds with totalitarian dynamics. Aron recognized that “the Soviet bourgeoisie desires the end of revolution, yet the regime, unless paralyzed, is condemned to a kind of perpetual fuite en avant.”58 The totalitarian regimes, unlike democratic regimes, were expert at suppressing their weaknesses, but this advantage only lasted “up to the end, when disaster strikes,” bringing everything out in the open for all the world to see, as finally did happen at Chernobyl.59 In his Mémoires, Aron wrote critically about the essays he wrote during the crucial debates at the outset of the Cold War. But those writings have stood the test of time and remain the first systematic statement of many theoretical problems that Aron later developed in his work. They were summed up in his early synthesis of the Cold War: The present constellation is located at the juncture of three series. The first leads to planetary unity and the bi-polar structure of the champ diplomatique; the second to the diffusion, in Europe and Asia, of a secular religion of which one of the two giant powers claims to be the metropolis; the last to the making of weapons of mass destruction, to a total war simultaneously animated by modern science and primitive furies, by the franc-tireur and the atomic weapon, the extreme forms of unlimited violence.60

In the first Cold War essays, Aron laid out a complete version of his original narrative of the history of his century as the century of total wars and totalitarian revolutions that has since been adopted by the historians of the “short twentieth century,” and he also explained the dialectics between the extremes of faith and skepticism, production and destruction, and modernity and barbarism. Everything he said on hyperbolical war, the decline of Europe, the secular religions, and the dilemmas of the Cold War has become common knowledge. But Pierre Hassner is right to recall that this was not always the case and that Aron formed his analysis in a critical debate where he was often isolated against his opponents, the terribles simplificateurs, whose arguments have been mercifully forgotten.61 Notes 1. 2.

Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), 13–14. The term “hyperbolic war” was used by Guglielmo Ferrero, La fin des aventures (Paris: Rieder, 1931), to describe the Great War of 1914–1918 as a new type of war that could destroy European civilization. Raymond Aron takes this expression from Ferrero and uses it quite often. A footnote in the first American edition of The Century, 19n2, attributes it to Vilfredo Pareto, but fails to quote from any specific source.

Raymond Aron and the Origins of the Cold War 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

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Élie Halévy, “Une intérprétation de la crise mondiale (1914–1918),” text of a conference given at Oxford in 1929, reprinted in Halévy, L’ère des tyrannies (Paris: Gallimard, 1938/1990), 172. Raymond Aron, “Le socialisme et la guerre,” in Halévy, L’ère, “Postface,” 253, 257, 260. Carl Schmitt as quoted by Sigmund Neumann, Permanent Revolution: Totalitarianism in the Age of International Civil War (New York: Praeger, 1942/1965), 231. Aron, The Century, 17, 19, 26, 31. Aron, The Century, 141, described the Russian and Chinese communist regimes as civil war regimes—“communism is a theory and practice of civil war in the first phase, and of totalitarian tyranny in the second one”—while Neumann, Permanent Revolution, used that definition for all totalitarian regimes and linked the concept of civil war to international politics during the period dominated by the parallel rise of Russian and German totalitarianisms. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (London: Pelican Books, 1941/1945), and E. H. Carr, Conditions of Peace (London: Macmillan & Co., 1942). In his biography of Carr, Jonathan Haslam writes that the thesis on the revolutionary dynamics of war was developed earlier by Lawrence Dennis, a former isolationist diplomat and one of the very few fascist intellectuals in the United States. He also states that Carr knew of Lawrence Dennis’s book and did not quote from it deliberately. James Burnham seems to have done the same thing. See Jonathan Haslam, The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr (1892–1982) (London: Verso, 1999). See also Lawrence Dennis, The Dynamics of War and Revolution (New York: The Weekly Foreign Letter, 1940). Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, 148–52. The affinities with George Orwell’s description of the world map in 1984 are quite evident. Orwell had written extensively on Burnham’s book. See Orwell, “James Burnham and The Managerial Revolution,” in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. IV (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 192–214. In 1947, Burnham’s essay was published by Aron in Liberté de l’Esprit, a series he edited at Calmann-Lévy under the title L’ère des organisateurs. Aron had reviewed Burnham’s book while still in London during the war years. See Aron, Chroniques de Guerre: La France Libre, 1940–1945, ed. Christian Bachelier (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 623–34. Carr, Conditions, referred explicitly to Halévy and his thesis on war and revolution in his first chapter, entitled “War and Revolution,” 3, 4–5. Carr, Conditions, chaps. II–IV, elaborated on the conditions necessary to reconstitute and continue the process of European integration that was started by Nazi Germany during the war. Aron, The Century, 17. Aron, Le Grand Schisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 128. Aron, Chroniques, 563. On this issue, Aron, Chroniques, 565, quoted Hermann Rauschning, La révolution du nihilisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1939), adding that the Nazis copied from Soviet military doctrine as the Prussians had imitated Napoleon’s army. This issue has been studied by Mary Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union (1919–1939) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003). See also Richard Overy, Russia’s War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1997). Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, 189, added a note on the Soviet issue in 1943. Aron, The Century, 43.

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18. Ibid., 32. 19. Aron, Le Grand, 55–56. 20. Hans Kohn, World Order in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1942), 111–41. 21. It was the case with Karl Haushoffer, master geopolitician and Hitler’s adviser, and also the position of some Nazi leaders, including the German minister for foreign relations. Neumann, Permanent Revolution, 291–96, discussed General Haushoffer’s positions. 22. Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, and Schumpeter, “An Economic Interpretation of Our Times: The Lowell Lectures,” in The Economy and Sociology of Capitalism, ed. Richard Swedberg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 339–400. 23. Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, 150–53. 24. Carr, Conditions, chaps. VIII–X. 25. William T. R. Fox, The Super-Powers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—Their Responsibility for Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1944). 26. Aron, Chroniques, 619. 27. Ibid., 975. 28. Aron, Le Grand, 19. 29. Burnham, Pour la domination mondiale (Paris: Liberté de l’Esprit, Calmann-Lévy, 1947) (French translation of The Struggle for the World), 76–78, 133. 30. Aron, Le Grand, 93, 341–42. 31. Aron, Les Guerres en chaîne (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 9. The American version did not include the preface of the original French edition, which is cited here. 32. Aron, Le Grand, 17. 33. Randall Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 34. Aron, Le Grand, 19. Fox, The Super-Powers, 101–10, was of a different opinion, as he wrote that bipolarity could be a stable regime if both super-powers cooperated to protect the status quo and oppose a return to tripolarity, meaning the resurgence of Germany and a united Europe. 35. René Char, Fragments d’Hypnos (1944), VII. 36. Aron, The Century, 53, described the mechanism of total war: “So that it should be the ‘war to end wars’ it was carried to the limit. Because it was carried to the limit, it gave rise to its successor.” 37. Aron, Le Grand, 33. 38. The formula was first used in September 1947 in an article for Le Figaro (see Aron, Les articles du Figaro I: La Guerre Froide (1947–1955) [Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1990], 49) and would then become the title of the first chapter of Le Grand Schisme (chap. 1, 13–31). Aron explained its meaning once again in his Mémoires: Cinquante ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983). 39. Aron, Le Grand, 29. 40. Ibid., 31. 41. Aron, The Century, 216. 42. Aron, Les Guerres, 129. The passage on President Truman was no longer included in the American version. On Cold War American strategy, see inter alia John Lewis Gaddis, The U.S. and the Origins of the Cold War (1941–1947) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972/2000). 43. On early preventive nuclear war theories, see Marc Trachtenberg, “A Wasting Asset: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance (1949–1954),” in History

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44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

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and Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 100–152. See also Aron, Le Grand, 27. Aron, The Century, 171. Aron, Le Grand, 47. On the Soviet Union in 1946, see Kennan, “The Background of Current Russian Diplomatic Moves,” in Measures Short of War: The George F. Kennan Lectures at the Naval War College (1946–1947) (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1991), 71–87. The positions of Kennan on crucial policy issues at the time were analyzed by Wilson Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy (1947–1950) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). Aron developed his argument in his preface to Burnham’s Containment or Liberation? This book was published by Aron, as were all French editions of Burnham’s books to that date: Contenir ou libérer (Paris: Liberté de l’Esprit, Calmann-Lévy, 1953). “Ni guerre, ni paix” was famously the answer of Lev Trotsky when faced with the Central Powers ultimatum at the Brest-Litovsk talks in 1918: Aron, “Postface,” in Burnham, Contenir ou libérer, 293–94. Ibid., 323. See also Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954), 78. Aron, Les articles du Figaro, 114, would later repeat his prediction on China, stressing the nationalist specificities of the Chinese communist revolution. On the German issue, see chapter III of Le Grand Schisme (“Deux Europes?” 52–68) and chapter X in The Century of Total War (“Reversal of Alliances,” 181–94). Aron wrote on the same subject in his Mémoires, when he recalled his early statements in favor of reconciliation and was told that he could take that stand because he was Jewish. Aron’s ironical comment underlined that in his case it was the only time this condition was taken to be an advantage. This reference to 1815 and 1945 was made both in Le Grand, 81 and The Century, 182. Aron, The Century, 350. Ibid., 186. See Aron, Les Guerres, 427–43, and Études politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 446–59. On atomic weapons, see Aron, The Century, “The Atomic Age,” 149–58, and Études, “A l’âge atomique peut-on limiter la guerre ?” 479–94. Aron, Les Guerres, 442. This passage was omitted in the American version. Aron, The Century, 336. Ibid., 235. Author’s translation: See Aron, Les Guerres, 197, and The Century, 158. Pierre Hassner, “L’histoire du XXe siècle,” Commentaire nos. 28–29 (February 1985): 229. See also “Aron, un penseur contre les ‘terribles simplificateurs,’” Le Figaro, March 23, 2005.

9 Raymond Aron: From the Philosophy of History to the Theory of International Relations Stephen Launay (translated by Paul Seaton and Daniel J. Mahoney) The philosophy of history appears at the outset and at the end of Aron’s intellectual itinerary. One can even say the same thing about international relations, as long as one places oneself at the end of the author’s university studies, that is to say, at the time he went to Germany in 1930. The anxiety that German politics engendered in him led him in 1932 to share what he saw and what he thought with an undersecretary in the Foreign Affairs Ministry. There, as he tells us in his Memoirs, he had the occasion to receive his first lesson about politics and, for the intellectual he was, his first lesson of intellectual modesty before the constraints that a situation imposes on the decisions of governments.1 However, despite the attention that he paid to “history-in-the-making” beginning with his first stay in Germany, it was not until the occasion of the Second World War that he developed his learning and capacity for reflection concerning international relations, first of all with respect to strategic analysis.2 However, the terms of Aron’s investigations were politically posed from the beginning of the 1930s, and his doctoral dissertation was oriented not only by the problem of the limits of historical objectivity on the epistemological and critical plane, but also by an obvious anxiety before European political developments. The transition from the philosophy of history to international relations therefore occurred rather naturally, although one cannot find in Aron’s pre-1940 works the structural categories he would develop later. We can also see, in the manner of Daniel J. Mahoney, the fusion of these two preoccupations in the essay entitled “The Dawn of Universal History.”3 Two of the principal themes of

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Aron’s thought are broached there: industrial society (or that “mutation” of the universal course of history known by humanity for millennia, which occurred over the past two centuries) and war, which is simultaneously a permanent phenomenon of international relations and has suffered the backlash of the industrial mutation. Here the perspective is that of Aron’s critical philosophy, that is, his historical probabilism. “By the same token,” writes Aron, “ideologies are also becoming discredited.”4 On the one hand, the industrial process renders the great encompassing visions of history “useless and uncertain” (as Pascal said of Descartes). But on the other hand, by losing their explanatory capacity they reveal their reductionistic character as they violently level reality. The best response to such a danger is found in the primacy bestowed upon politics: a primacy of approach and a primacy of action. However, the intellectual trajectory that led Aron to this affirmation passed through the recognition of an impasse inherent in the philosophy of history, one that finds its expression in historical relativism. This is one of the (always fruitful) obstacles to the development of an authentic political understanding of the international scene.5 We will see therefore that the strict delimitation of relativity is for Aron the condition for thinking about international relations as international politics. On Relativity In his dissertation, Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity (1938), certain readers, as well as the members of his jury or examination board, have been able to discern a profession of relativistic faith.6 The following passage is essential for conviction in this regard: One fundamental idea emerges, it seems, from the preceding discussions: the dissolution of the object. No such thing as a historical reality exists ready made, so that science merely has to reproduce it faithfully. The historical reality, because it is human, is ambiguous and inexhaustible. The plurality of spiritual worlds in which human life unfolds, and the diversity of contexts in which ideas and elementary facts take place are both equivocal. The meanings of man for man, of the masterpiece for its interpreters, and of the past for succeeding generations, are inexhaustible.7

This description of a possible “dissolution of the object” (such being the very title of the conclusion of a part entitled, “Intellectual Universes and the Plurality of Systems of Interpretation”) was not called into question by its author, but the expression “the dissolution of the object” was judged by the later memorialist as “gratuitously aggressive, paradoxical.”8 This is because it could conceal, and sometimes did conceal, the heart of the conclusion, which was that the “dialectic of detachment and appropriation tends to justify much less that uncertainty of the interpretation than the freedom of the mind.” This conclusion continued with the central problem of the articulation of theory and of practice that is at the horizon of political thought (“the true goal of the science

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of history…like all reflection, is, so to speak, as practical as it is theoretical.”).9 We therefore can distinguish three moments in Aron’s discussion of relativism: the moment of knowledge, that of judgment, and that of decision, which is the positive limit of relativism. The relativism of knowledge to which Aron appeared to bow was especially shocking because of what he himself called his antipositivism. Certain members of the jury, such as the Durkheimian of strict observance, Paul Fauçonnet, were particularly struck by it. The idea of a “dissolution of the object” introduced very manifestly a “paradox,” the instrument of this style of polemicist that he would employ masterfully in what followed. But at the time it was possible to think that Aron adopted the idea according to which the definition of a theme of investigation was only the adoption of a perspective, an idea that runs from Nietzsche to Foucault, perhaps even passing through Paul Valéry. In On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, Nietzsche has effectively subjected the utility of history to what it contributed to life (“We will only serve history to the extent that it serves life.”). However, when presenting the phrases of the emergence of historical science in an article for Chamber’s Encyclopedia, Aron distinguishes the first, the calling into question of myths, from the second, the utilization of scientific method, and the third, critical reflection.10 And in connection with the latter he contrasts the author of Untimely Meditations (Nietzsche) to the Kantian tradition whose representatives (Dilthey, Rickert, Simmel, Weber) did not, like Nietzsche, separate the work of the historian who assembles data from the one who attempts to reflect upon history.11 Since for Aron “the brute fact is unthinkable” reconciliation is possible between historical knowledge and human existence; it is even a condition of historical knowledge and thus of historical awareness. It is because the historian is situated in history and that reality is rich with multiple possible meanings that several interpretive systems are imaginable. Do not these reasons show us that history does not teach us anything and why, in fact, it teaches us nothing? Valéry’s objection is not retained. At the same time an antipositivist inspiration is common to Aron and the author (Valéry) of Regards sur le monde actuel. This is what renders even more unsettling the Aronian position of an ambition for objectivity accompanied by a sense of the relative. “Perhaps Valéry and Nietzsche,” writes Aron, “have in common an important idea found at the very threshold of this essay: for collectivities as for individuals forgetfulness is no less essential than memory.”12 The “contradictions of historical consciousness” become acute and indicate the delicate character of the philosopher’s task: Between relativism, necessary critique and arbitrary apodicticity, reason seeks the motives of a knowledge that must trifle with chance. What we later would freely call the relativity of knowledge reflects the context of the 1930s (the dissertation defense took place in March 1938, shortly after the Anschluss) as well as the desire to comprehend a modernity experiencing a full “crisis of the spirit” (Valéry) that was expressed by

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a disarray before the exhaustion of traditional truths. The Aronian sense of relativity is therefore also a reaction against the sentiment of incomprehensibility, the disarray before the historical novelty that it bears in itself. Aron is therefore close to the Valéry who considers history as a product of the imagination but for Aron imagination supports rather than undermines objectivity. In his last (unfinished) text, Aron declares that he wants “to prepare a reedition of Peace and War” and to pursue “a prospective analysis of the end of the century” as Oswald Spengler did, in his own way, in Jahre des Entscheidung.13 Now, Spengler’s theme is that of historical relativism: The irreducible plurality of cultures renders communication between them impossible. Spengler’s enterprise, though, contradicts itself. But it does rejoin the Machiavellian themes whose study Aron had begun before the Second World War: of irrationalism, action as the appanage of an elite, naturalism, permanent conflict.14 For this tradition the essential resides in command and “the political genius of the mass is nothing but its confidence in a command.”15 Aron does not fail to connect the Machiavellians, more precisely, their eponymous head, to Marx because they belong to that “family of thinkers who are more aware of what divides men than of what unites them.”16 The Machiavellian tradition and the Marxist tradition conceive social structure in terms of domination, the first as a permanent element, the second in the context of a process of transformation toward communist society. Machiavelli unveils the constancy beneath the inconstancy of men. He does not discern any progress in a history of extreme situations. But it is here that any possible rapprochement between Spengler and Aron must cease. According to Aron, Spengler is only apparently empirical: He camouflages his philosophical presuppositions.17 Aron develops a refined analysis of the Machiavellian theory while showing its communist ramifications but also the astonishing resignation of the pessimists before regimes and an action that exceeds them.18 Aron himself is far from this self-renunciation by submitting to the force or power that directs the city; similarly he firmly distances himself from Marxist prophetism. He rejects the confusion of the Idea and of real action that Spengler defends when he sees in “the expansion of States” the manifestation of “a conflict of historical Ideas.”19 A commentator reveals a “surreptitious ontological argument” in Aron’s critique of the Spenglerian “metaphysical decree,” as well as in the critique he addresses to the Marxist confusion of historical becoming and the teleological Idea superimposed upon it.20 In such philosophies actions become unintelligible because they are neither placed in an historical perspective nor understood in their non-miraculous originality but, on the contrary, are inserted in a politically rigid structure and in the ineluctable process that is intrinsically bound to a doctrine. Moreover, for Aron historical pessimism (Spengler) is as paralyzing for reasonable action as is “catastrophic optimism” (Marx). A text of 1957 is particularly interesting for the question of relativism. It bears upon the place of the philosopher and the status of philosophy, as Leo

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Strauss was doing at the same time but with a somewhat different intention and consequences, even if for both the change of place of philosophy in modernity is the focus.21 We note in Aron’s text that the central antimony of modernity is no longer that of integral relativism and eternal truth.22 Today the philosopher, the sophist (or ideologue), the technician, and the social scientist manifest different relations to history. At the center rises the philosopher, who “holds a dialogue with himself and others in order actively to overcome this oscillation” between “historical relativism and the frenetic, unreasoning attachment to a cause.” If the question of relativism cannot but be permanent for Aron, the philosopher, it must be placed in its modern context, that is, in a world where “faith in the transcendent is lost” and in which individual or collective actors have a tendency to want to replace the fleeing faith with rigid antinomies (Right-Left, for example) or with some absolute truths.23 The ideologue justifies without any qualification a particular political regime; this is to the detriment of a true dialectic, that of dialogue, by erecting his own dialectics into the revelation of a necessity of which it is the sovereign master. For Aron technique cannot do without the reflection of the philosopher who no longer can deny the historical dimension—and thus a certain implication for social life. Hence he sees himself confronted with regimes that manifest one of “the most disquieting features of our time” since they “are not content with the passive or indifferent obedience of the masses. These regimes want to be loved, admired, adored by all, by the very people who have solid reason to detest them.” It is therefore demanded of the philosopher “no longer simply to obey but to justify obedience.”24 The spirit or mind remains free, despite the tyranny, only on the condition of providing it means, especially those of an authentic sociological study or “comparative and objective study of institutions.” On the other hand, the philosopher becomes a sophist (an ideologue) if he privileges “the spurious dilemma” (or illusory antinomy) of consistent relativism (which declares that every regime is the instrument of the domination by one class) or “the absolute worth of a regime.” In order to avoid the reduction of the political problem to a technical problem or to ideology one must avoid the antinomies that muddle the givens of action and destroy the possibility of judgment. Now, judgment has for its foundation an effort at philosophical reflection that provides an opening to the social scientist by recognizing the specific traits of the democratic idea (a combination of economic growth and the universality of citizenship) and by not letting itself be disturbed by injunctions founded upon the unverifiable. This effort engages us in the direction of the construction of a modern political science that would be “a judgment based on facts and causal relations” and that would be the historical renewal of the inquiries conducted by certain philosophers of antiquity and would insist on the distinction between the possible and the impossible, the probable and the improbable.25 Aron’s intellectual prudence thus starts from pluralism but in order to reject—with a certain impatience—any confusion of it with radical relativism.26

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He rejects in historicism what perverts the true sense of historicity, that is, what suppresses and destroys the possibility of free action: be it fatalism, skepticism, or irrationality. The human person establishes his spiritual being outside these illusions. Reflection postulates universality in order to develop itself and to show “man what his decision commits him to.”27 It reveals to conscience the ambiguous dialectic of the decision that only has worth for the individual and of the judgment he brings to bear on others and on society. It shows the importance in historical science of the search for the truth that is oriented toward the future, that “primary category” for individuals and for collectivities that radical historicism all but denies by the impossibility to think it because it no longer knows how to think the past. Even more, historical relativism erects into philosophy something that cannot be philosophy because it denies legislating reason as well as science: I can no longer think my own philosophy. But it is by the doubling of reflection that reason constitutes itself as critique. There is therefore a historical truth of thought that is not an historicist truth but “partial or hypothetical.”28 The introduction into historical consciousness of political understanding occurs therefore by the reflection that elaborates an idea of truth: by the acceptance of particularity and of becoming, while giving oneself the means of reflective detachment, by insisting on its historical character, and by being attentive to what makes decision foundational for a politics, while connecting it with constraints that make it intelligible. Decision inscribes itself therefore in the heart of the antinomy that makes up the texture of the relations of man and of history: the antinomy of existence and of truth. Decision can be viewed as a suspension of relativism, a sort of arresting of previous history and the beginning of an antihistory because “decision imparts to the choice its unconditional quality.” This suspension of relativism by decision is however not unlimited because “[i]f decision imparts to the choice its unconditional quality, the latter in return gives the decision its particularity.”29 Without doubt there are strong or decisive decisions, but every decision is debatable no matter how morally good and adequate to the particular situation it might be. Now, as in critical periods “political choices show their nature as historical choices,” the agent ought, therefore, “if he wishes to be lucid, face the consequences of his decision.”30 The moderate relativism of Aron, therefore, is political: because the dimension of the decision is not intellectual but real. It implies certain aspects of individual and collective existence. The historical relativism of Aron’s philosophy—or what we prefer to call its sense of historical relativity—finds its outlet in the political: reflection and reality. But that is not the same as a solution: The philosophical aporia remains intact. The outlet is an invitation to continue the discussion on the plane of the decisions that concern common life. Aronian relativity is the philosophical condition of the possibility of discussing a decision and of understanding it. For there is no understanding without discussion and no discussion without the postulate of a certain freedom of choice in history.

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The political becomes the domain par excellence of the free, thus discussable, act. Relativity opens both to freedom and to the political study of that freedom. Hence—and especially in international politics—the necessity to reconstruct the universe within which the decision appeared (the historical configuration, diplomatic constellation, the historical systems of values or ideas, and so on). Correlatively, between the philosophy of history and political science there is simultaneously rupture and continuity: rupture because political knowledge substitutes for the search for the meaning of history, and continuity because Aronian political science preserves the awareness of the triple historicity put forth in the Introduction to the Philosophy of History (section IV). Man is in history by his action; he is historical by the decision that he takes definitively on himself; and he has a history to the extent that he seeks the truth. Action can therefore be positively studied in an historical perspective. The sociology of action is the center of political study and the notion of “historical truth” crosses as well the “theory of political theory” as the only political theory concerned about its limits.31 The fact of raising the question of the historical truth of the theory proceeds from a will to transcend “historicism,” which shows the importance that Aron grants to reflection by which “the mind escapes the limits of individuality.”32 The forgetting of reflection leads to positivism or raises to a universality that is not lacking in problems when it affirms itself de facto and not simply de jure. For in that way it touches upon ideology: an “engaged” doctrine that does not recognize its particularity and forgets its relation to history. On International Politics International relations are very particularly concerned with the form of historical consciousness that recovers “the antinomies of human existence” within the “theory of practice” (what Aron sometimes calls “praxeology”): The course of international relations is eminently historical, in all senses of the term: its changes are incessant; its systems are diverse and fragile; it is affected by all economic, technical, and moral transformations; decisions made by one or several men put millions of others into action and launch irreversible changes, whose consequences are carried out indefinitely; and the actors, citizens or rulers, are forever subjected to apparently contradictory obligations.33

The Aronian theory of international relations reflects philosophical anxiety. This theory can be defined in a narrow or strict sense and also in a large one. The latter possesses a philosophical significance that is inherent in the praxeology that one finds in The Federalist or in the liberal Benjamin Constant. This means that Aron does not rest in a theorizing theory that takes itself as its end; his philosophical problem is the articulation of a theory of practice; and his problem as a social scientific observer of politics is to define the conditions of the possibility of action.

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Methodical doubt—a rigorous conceptualization—is composed of simple categories that are open to being modified by reality, and the awareness of distinctions in the orders of reality: These compose the elements of Aron’s study of international relations.34 To confirm the necessity of having Aron’s work always present when thinking about these matters one could observe that no work similar to Peace and War has been published in France since it appeared in 1962.35 But how then has it happened that it has been largely ignored by French specialists in international relations?36 Some answers are obvious, including the partial dismissal of a thinker who spent a good part of his life commenting in journals and newspapers on history-in-the-making.37 In addition, Aron himself did not choose the easiest path since he ceaselessly critiqued the ideologies of his time, most especially Marxism and its variants. A liberal by temperament, he was therefore classified as a man of the Right, which hardly improved his reputation. But more profoundly, however (even if the foregoing sorts of reasons bearing upon historical circumstances and the sociology of intellectuals should not be neglected), the type of question that he posed seemed outdated by the evolution of international relations. The Cold War period belongs to the past or has taken a different form. But, to relegate an author to the museum of antiquities because he belongs to a by-gone era (even if it is acknowledged that one still has to precisely comprehend what did occur, as well as what remains of it in the present) is to condemn oneself to only reading books a few years old. This form of thinking effectively offers a “presentist” bias that above all else would abolish historical consciousness. One could add to that criticism an observation concerning the exponential multiplication of new phenomena and new agents on the international scene. To take as one’s subject global society and its multiple fluctuations and transnational or supranational phenomena is surely to want to embrace too much and thus to poorly comprehend. Even a minimally clear map of international politics could hardly emerge. Now, the originality, and thus the permanent contemporaneity, of Aron’s reflection consists precisely in this attention to the politics that orient and fashion international life and must do so ever more now that violence has become “polymorphous,” to use a term he employed in 1957.38 His question is the following: What is it that confers its specific character to the domain of action that one calls international relations? Or, again: In virtue of what does the study of international relations contain some originality or distinctiveness, according to Aron? Quite simply: How to think about international relations? It is clear that, for Aron, to think about international relations is first and above all to think about war, the dominant form of conflict in the history of international relations. One has to think about its transformations; this however was something he did not fail to do, not only in the essay “On War” in Espoir et peur du siècle and in Peace and War, but also in Clausewitz (1976), and even in his latest texts.39 These considerations were always situated in the

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context of the predominant configuration of forces. To think about war thus meant to think about the relations of politics to war and to think about the subordination—at once historical and necessary (i.e., a deontological necessity inherent in political judgment)—of war to politics. Not only do all of Aron’s texts devoted to international relations manifest this orientation, but when we reread Peace and War the movement of Part I entitled “Theory: Concepts and Systems” forms an exemplary intellectual and rhetorical totality. It opens with a commentary on Clausewitz and concludes with “the dialectic of peace and war” that shows the strict continuity from one phenomenon to the other, that is to say, their imbrication. We should note a few characteristic traits of Aron’s thinking. First of all, it should be noted that in this first part it is a matter of theory in the strict sense, concentrated on the exposition of concepts, tools of analysis developed by more than twenty years of the study of international politics and confrontation with the major events of the twentieth century. This is theory in a strict sense because it “starts from,” as Aron says, “the plurality of autonomous centers of decision, hence from the risk of war, and from this risk it deduces the necessity of the calculation of means.”40 It is a theory, therefore, that is formal and historical. It formalizes a domain of action in abstract and rational terms, seeking to end with a rationalization of behavior that expresses itself in “the necessity of the calculation of means” by agents. It is also historical because it is immanent to the reality—the chain of events—that it desires to explain; and because it appears as the product of historical experience. In history and historical this theory is therefore also the result of a history, that of the gaze fixed by Aron on the situations he has confronted. From that comes Aron’s insistence on the event, at a time when the Annales school devoted to “long-term” history was all the rage. The defect in this approach was very clear to Aron: It ignored politics and rendered impossible the understanding of history in the making, the impossibility, more precisely, of understanding political decisions and the conditions in which they are taken. As we apply the word “political” to an action that tends to unite, maintain, and carry on the social order, political conduct immediately seems to us an event since decisions that affect existence, prosperity, or the decline of collectivities are made by individuals and often cannot be thought of as the same if one supposes them made by others. In this sense, the great decisions that overturn economic organization are by definition political since they are made by individuals who, through virtue of their position, are capable of affecting the lives of their fellow citizens.41

We cannot therefore forget the weight of an existence whose theory is a culmination, no doubt provisional, but whose provisional character reflects the sense of the relativity that expresses itself even in the definition of “concepts and systems.”42 This sense of relativity reflects back on strategy’s dependence with regard to politics, to which it refers: the free choice in the context of

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uncertainty. There is no absolute good strategy in and of itself but only strategies that are politically defined and oriented. “The choice of a strategy,” writes Aron, “depends on both the goals of the war and the available means.”43 And the aims of the war are not only those goals in the war defined by the military leader and that derive from what Clausewitz called “the strategic or military grammar,” but they are also the objectives posed by that political intelligence that must see beyond the war even while the armed conflict unfolds. That is why, as Liddell Hart had done, Aron denied the requirement of unconditional surrender asserted by FDR in January 1943. This is because looking beyond the conduct of wartime operations means to assume responsibility for the way in which the war is conducted. This is something that the nature of the regime of negotiations, as well as of postwar organization, necessarily condition. Strategy and diplomacy are the two indissoluble components of international politics. There is no complete rupture between the situation of war and that of peace, except in the case of total war. But one has seen that even in a situation as pacified at that of the relations between European countries today, whether members of the European Union or not, war can reemerge. This occurs at the margins, not the heart, of Europe, to be sure, but it is a war whose conduct—diplomatic as well as military from its beginnings—significantly conditioned the ability of Europe to pass from the status of a “civilian power” to a truly independent power. Peace and war, strategy and diplomacy, thus unfold their dialectic thanks to the relations between ends and means. War is the instrument of politics, which must know war’s nature and its possibilities, that is, it must assume its risks. This conjunction of diplomacy and strategy must be maintained precisely in order to reduce the risk of the “non-politics” that manifested themselves in France between 1919 and 1936, and in 1945 when the Americans repatriated “the boys” without considering the new situation they were leaving behind. The risk in these instances was the illusion of a possible uncoupling of politics and its military instrument, or even the illusion of a possible effecting “of the radical break between war and peace.”44 The articulation of theory and practice is therefore effected by the primacy that Aron grants to politics. He summarizes this stage in the following terms: The primacy of [politics]…permits the control of escalation, the avoidance of an explosion of animosity into passionate and unrestricted brutality. The more the leaders calculate in terms of cost and profit and the less they are inclined to relinquish the pen for the sword, the more they will hesitate to abandon themselves to the risk of arms, the more they will be content to limit successes and renounce the intoxication of dazzling victories. The reasonable conduct of politics is the only rational one if the goal of the intercourse among states is the survival of all, common prosperity, and the sparing of the peoples’ blood.45

Aron deploys his realism by allying an observation (the importance of war) and a demand (the need to conduct a reasonable politics).46 A few notions that

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today are underappreciated further support Aronian realism: power, force, glory, and ideas. Like the term “sovereignty” (admittedly equivocal but still useful), that of “power” demands certain precisions but remains relevant.47 Power encompasses the ability to act on the international scene. It is real or potential, guided by a combination of the will to power and the search for glory; it is also guided by ideas. Each portion varies. But three determinants hem in the structure: the milieu, the resources, and the capacity for collective action.48 Power therefore does not arise from a simply equivocal source; it is not exercised as “the pure and simple expression of relations of force.” According to an abstract, supra-historical, series, which assembles the objectives that political units give themselves, Aron estimates that “space, men, and souls” states well enough what has always made them act and exercise their power.49 These finalities of foreign policy are themselves dependant upon “the state of techniques (of combat and production),” on “historical ideas” and the customs that prevail on the international scene. That means that one cannot present a fixed portrait of “eternal diplomacy” and that there never will be a homo diplomaticus comparable to the homo economicus of economic theory. And, in the same way that power does not constitute an immutable given, the national interest varies with the political regime, and the ideas of both the populations and the political elites. The importance Aron bestows on political regimes is also one of the traits that distinguished his theory from the “realism” of Anglo-Americans such as Hans Morgenthau or the “neorealism” or “structural realism” of Kenneth Waltz.50 Taking into account political regimes Aron distinguishes between “homogeneous” international systems, composed of political entities sharing the same type of conception of politics, and “heterogeneous” systems in which the political units obey different principles and values. This dichotomy is completed by the description of multipolar systems and bipolar ones, a distinction that has a supra-historical significance according to Aron. The return to the dialogue of the agents themselves is therefore necessary because this is what “establishes the meaning of the action.”51 The “law of antagonism” that permanently reigns makes peace precarious and a structure that resembles the situation of a Degas dancer: someone in a necessary, and deliberately willed, disequilibrium. Of the three types of peace that Aron distinguishes (peace by equilibrium, peace by disequilibrium, and peace by empire), the first one is also one of disequilibrium, a managed disequilibrium one might say, because it promotes a balance of forces that is never attained once and for all time.52 This is clear if one considers that in addition to these three types of “peace by power” there is “peace by impotence” of which the peace by terror is one type: “Peace by terror is that peace which reigns (or would reign) between political units each of which has (or would have) the capacity to deal mortal blows to the other. In this sense, peace by terror could be also described as peace by impotence.” The fragility of permanent disequilibrium is owing to the elements of uncertainty that nourish the respective situation of the

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protagonists and the perception that each has of the other. Finally, the “peace by satisfaction,” a notion inspired by Paul Valéry in his Regards sur le monde actuel, which would consist in “universal consent and mutual confidence” that would entail “a revolution in the procedure of international relations”: an overcoming of power politics by empire or by law.53 The theory of international relations, an essentially political theory, must possess the flexible character appropriate to theories bearing upon objects that are always changing and with unexpected reversals, whether because no one can anticipate the extent of a response to a situation or because stupidity—that entirely distinct political category, according to Bertrand de Jouvenel—has done its work. “If,” Aron writes, diplomatic behavior is never determined by the relation of forces alone, if power does not serve the same function in diplomacy as utility in economy, then we may legitimately conclude that there is no general theory of international relations comparable to the general theory of economy. The theory we are sketching here tends to analyze the meaning of diplomatic behavior, to trace its fundamental notions, to specify the variables that must be reviewed in order to understand any one constellation. But it does not suggest an “eternal diplomacy,” it does not claim to be the reconstruction of a closed system.54

The distance taken by Aron from certain scientific—that is, scientistic— claims of some theorists of international relations leads us to suggest that with Aron there exists a theory in the large sense, which he calls praxeology and which can be found in Part IV of Peace and War and which is particularly clear in its “Final Note.”55 Aron’s critique therefore comes more from his praxeology than from theory stricto sensu, to the extent that the former is the product of his attentive consideration of history in the making and its conceptualization, and not just the result of epistemological joustings or of pure conceptualization. This follows not only from the fact that the conceptualization of Part I is always illustrated by historical examples but, in general, because the law of antagonism includes an irreducible portion of chance, which is part of the givens of war making. To the economist (Oskar Morgenstern) who claims that political science ought to formalize, for example, “the counsels given by Machiavelli in order to discover whether a consistent system of rules of behavior could be constructed on that basis,” Aron retorts by highlighting “the mixture of rigor and confusion, of profundity and naïveté, characteristic of certain scientific minds at grips with problems external to their discipline, especially political problems.” From this one sees that there is not one single approach that can be characterized as scientific and that, moreover, would be uniformly applicable to all the disciplines—mathematical, physical, economic, political, or whatnot. In this way Aron continues the reflections begun with his 1938 dissertation, Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Political science cannot be rendered operational in the manner of physics or economics. “It remains to be seen,” Aron asks, “if it is the insufficiency of knowledge and of the experts that is responsible, or the

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very structure of the object and the activity.”56 If the first possibility contains a part of the truth, it is intimately connected with the second. The structure of the activity leaves only a small place for mathematization, even that of game theory. “For there to be a game in the rigorous sense of the word, for a mathematical solution defining rational conduct to be possible, there must be a beginning and an end, a finite number of moves for each of the players, a result susceptible of cardinal or ordinal evaluation for each of the players. None of these conditions is, strictly speaking, fulfilled in the field of international relations.” The reason for this is owing to the fact that the “real strategic-diplomatic game…has as its essential characteristic the eventual recourse to arms and the fact that this recourse, in most cases, involves simultaneously the incalculable risk of the course of operations and the possible transformation of utilities and even of hierarchies of preference, as the result of the military character assumed by the conflict.”57 In addition, the scientism of modeling too easily resolves the antinomies of political action and the distinction between morality and politics. It resolves them by avoiding them. Now, there is a form of morality proper to international relations that comes neither from a pure ethics of conviction (which, strictly speaking, belongs to the single individual who does not take results into account) nor from the pure ethics of responsibility (which by obsessing solely over consequences becomes, or will become, immoral because of a deeper lack of realism: it will neglect the moral judgments of men on their political elites).58 On this antinomy of the “Machiavellian problem” (concerning legitimate means) and the “Kantian problem” (concerning universal peace), Aron introduces a somewhat forgotten aspect of Proudhon’s teaching.59 In War and Peace: Investigations into the Principle and the Constitution of the Law of Nations, Proudhon recognized a certain subjective right in the force exercised by men in groups, one against another. This collective force raises humanity above bestiality and gives it “its revolutionary faculty, the most marvelous and fruitful of all.” Not that every recourse to force is justified. But if one makes an irreducible dichotomy of the antinomy of right and of force, then no international legal norm is justified since its origin in the action of states is largely due to the use of force. One’s appreciation of the actions of foreign policy therefore most often cannot consist in judgments that lack nuance. “In short,” concludes Aron, the ethical judgment of diplomatic-strategic conduct is not separable from the historical judgment of the goals of the actors and the consequences of their success or failure. To stop at the alternative of law and force is to lump together and condemn all revolutionary attempts en bloc. That this historical judgment is uncertain (no one knows the future), often partisan, there is no doubt. This is not a valid reason for abandoning all discrimination.60

The hope inherent in the ethical judgment, the Kantian hope, is thus maintained at the same time as the requirements for a judgment of fact are main-

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tained. Political judgment cannot deploy itself in the abstract without risking the blindness of a mad logic that will lead one to condemn always imperfect situations and regimes, but which guarantee some liberty, while one also supports regimes that deny the most elementary rights (rights that one demands be entirely realized in the previous regimes). This Aronian morality of analysis was defended in The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955). It continues to be relevant if one considers certain segments of the anti-American demonstrations that took place in France on February 15, 2003: The opposition to the American desire to intervene against the regime of Saddam Hussein transformed itself into support for the Iraqi dictator. Neither moralistic nor Machiavellian, the political morality that Aron advocates addresses itself to the statesman as well as to the observer. Since both are implicated in history-in-the-making, each one, in his proper manner, ought to know how to take the measure of the exigencies of their own activity while confronting the exigencies of action in a situation of uncertainty and risk. This morality Aron calls “the morality of prudence.” The “arguments of principle and of opportunity” form the complex but unsurpassable texture of the “judgment of prudence” that flows from it, a judgment that is never definitive but is always founded on the most exact possible knowledge of the questions under discussion. With this last the reader senses, once again, Aron’s appeal to those intellectuals “drunk on mere concepts” and above all given to ill-considered judgments. They intervene and pronounce in areas in which they, at best, only have grossly approximate knowledge, which they abstain from filling in and deepening. The prosaic character of political knowledge must be shouldered by the political writer worthy of the name; this does not mean that he in any way abandons the principles that guide his gaze. Let us give the final word to Aron: The morality of prudence, the best on both the level of facts and that of values, does not resolve the antinomies of strategic-diplomatic conduct, but it does attempt to find in each case the most acceptable compromise. However, if the procession of states and empires continues endlessly, are the historical compromises between violence and moral aspiration little more than expedients? In the thermonuclear age, is a policy enough which reduces the frequency and the amount of violence? Proudhon proclaimed the right of force but also heralded an age of peace. Now that humanity possesses the means of destroying itself, have wars a meaning if they do not lead to peace?61

Notes 1. 2. 3.

Raymond Aron, Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983), 59. La Guerre des Cinq Continents, by the military critic of the journal La France libre (London, French edition: Hamish Hamilton, 1943). Raymond Aron, “The Dawn of Universal History,” in Politics and History: Selected Essays by Raymond Aron, ed. Miriam Bernheim Conant (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 212–33. As Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond

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4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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Aron (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 17, has accurately noted: “It is my argument that the whole of Raymond Aron’s political science is contained in his 1960 Lord Samuel Lecture on The Dawn of Universal History.” Aron, “Dawn,” 228. The very interesting book by Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) is typical in this respect. He combines the scope and the flaws of a vision that claims to be all-inclusive (as “global politics” is his preferred system of comprehension), since civilizations (centered on religions and taken as the unit of meaning in his study) essentially communicate through armed conflict (they constitute the fractures between civilizations). The final request is therefore logical: The United States and the West in general need to withdraw as much as possible from the rest of the world. On this point see Stephen Launay, La Guerre sans la guerre: Essai sur une querelle occidentale (Paris: Descartes et Cie, 2003), chap. 1. See, for example, Henri-Irénée Marrou, De La Connaissance historique (Paris: Seuil, 1954), 52 and 59. Raymond Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. George J. Irwin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 118. Aron, Mémoires, 122. Aron, Introduction, 119. Aron, “The Philosophy of History,” in Politics and History, 5–19. These four thinkers were the subject of Aron’s secondary thesis: La Philosophie critique de l’histoire, ed. Sylvie Mesure (Paris: Julliard, 1987). Raymond Aron, “De l’objet de l’histoire,” in Dimensions de la conscience historique (Paris: Plon, 1961), 113. Raymond Aron, Les Dernières Années du siècle, préface de Pierre Hassner (Paris: Commentaire/Julliard, 1984), 13. Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, ed. Rémy Freymond (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1993), Part I. Oswald Spengler, Le Déclin de l’Occident (1918), trans. M. Tazerout, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 406–7. Aron, “Machiavelli and Marx,” in Politics and History, 91. Aron, “Philosophy of History,” 14–16. Aron, “Machiavelli and Marx,” 100–101. Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre, ed. Christian Bachelier (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 447. Sylvie Mesure, Raymond Aron et la raison historique (Paris: Vrin, 1984), 31 and 75. Aron, “The Social Responsibility of the Philosopher,” in Politics and History, 249–59; Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 40–55. Aron, “Social Responsibility,” 253. Ibid., 258–59. Ibid. Ibid., 255, 257 Aron, Introduction, 305–6. Ibid., 301. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 334. Ibid., 323, 331. Raymond Aron, “Sociologie de l’action,” Encyclopédie Clartés, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, fasc. 12040 (1964), 1–16.

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32. Aron, Introduction, 300. 33. Aron, “What is a Theory of International Relations?”, in Politics and History, 184. 34. These characteristics can be found in a magisterial work by a disciple of Aron: Jean-Pierre Derriennic, Les Guerres civiles (Paris: Presses de sciences po, 2001). 35. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003). 36. There are some rare exceptions, including (quite obviously) Pierre Hassner, La Violence et la paix: De la bombe atomique au nettoyage ethnique (Paris: Éditions Esprit, 1995), and (outside of Aronian circles) Guillaume Devin, Sociologie des relations internationales (Paris: La Découverte, 2002). 37. Christian Bachelier, “Le journalisme de Raymond Aron,” in Raymond Aron et la liberté politique, eds. Christian Bachelier and Elisabeth Dutartre (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2002), 59–69. 38. In Raymond Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle: Essais non partisans (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). 39. Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, trans. Christine Booker and Norman Stone (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983). 40. Aron, Peace and War, 16. 41. Aron, “Thucydides and the Historical Narrative,” in Politics and History, 35. 42. The meaning of relativity is therefore of a completely different nature than the relativism that is not philosophically very far from nihilism. On this point, see Daniel J. Mahoney, “Dépasser le nihilisme: Raymond Aron et la morale de la prudence,” in Raymond Aron et la liberté politique, 133–47. 43. Aron, Peace and War, 30. 44. Ibid., 42. On the French case, see Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat, trans. Gerard Hopkins (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). 45. Aron, Peace and War, 45. 46. For an approach to Aronian realism, see Alessandro Campi, “Raymond Aron et la tradition du réalisme politique,” in Raymond Aron et la liberté politique, 235–48. 47. Aron, Peace and War, 738–49. 48. Ibid., 54. 49. Ibid., 69, 74. 50. On this subject, see Mahoney, Liberal Political Science, chap. 5, and Stephen Launay, La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), 218ff. 51. Aron, Peace and War, 167. 52. Ibid., 151–52. 53. Ibid., 159, 161. 54. Ibid., 93. 55. We call it “theory in the large sense” rather than a “general theory” because, as we have seen, this latter expression refers to theories that can claim to be scientific. 56. Aron, Peace and War, 768. 57. Ibid., 772–73, 774. 58. It will be remembered that this concerns the two ideal-types elaborated by Max Weber in his 1919 lecture “Politics as a Vocation.” Concerning the above passage, see Aron, “What is a Theory?”, 184. 59. Aron, Peace and War, 577. 60. Ibid., 604–5. 61. Ibid., 609–10.

10 Raymond Aron, Critic of International Law: A Reading of Peace and War Claude Lefort (translated by Daniel J. Mahoney and Paul Seaton) I reread with the same interest as I did formerly Raymond Aron’s book of forty years ago—now become a classic—Peace and War.1 I imagined without any difficulty that his “review of crises” would have been enriched by those that happened since 1991, if he had been witness to them. I asked myself what lessons he would have drawn. And whatever the answer to that question, my admiration for the amplitude of the inquiry, and for the elaboration of a theory that included the examination and refutation of all those that had preceded it—and that sought to escape from the traditional opposition between idealism and realism—remains undimmed. Nonetheless, today I better take the measure (doubtlessly because of the interest that I bring to questions that formerly I was wrong to neglect) of the place that the critique of international law occupies in the work. This, sometimes virulent, critique is not marginal to the work. I would even say that one cannot disconnect it from the conception that Aron has of the relations among states. In fact, it is on the condition of disabusing oneself of the illusions that sustain belief in international law, in other words of revealing “the hypocrisy” (the author’s term) of those who claim to establish it or who appeal to it, that it becomes possible to grasp the essence of these relations. The argument goes even further: The international law that since the end of the First World War erected peace into an absolute value caused political agents themselves to misunderstand the constraints imposed by coexistence in a state of nature. Aron treats international law and the directive principles of the League of Nations and of the United Nations in several chapters of Peace and War. The first of them (chapter IV) merits special attention. Entitled “On International 211

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Systems,” it establishes a fundamental distinction between an international system and transnational society. Then it poses the question of the validity of international law by successively examining the law that was in place in Europe until the First World War, the modern international law established by the League of Nations, and the contemporary international law whose principles were fixed by the United Nations Charter of 1945. The arguments developed in the chapter are all instructive, but so too is the manner in which they are connected. Since they are reformulated in the rest of the work they call for a few excursions into other chapters. What must one understand by the international system? It is “the ensemble constituted by political units that maintain regular relations with each other and that are all capable of being implicated in a generalized war” (94). What must one understand by transnational society? It comprehends “commercial exchange, migration of persons, common beliefs, organizations that cross frontiers and, lastly, ceremonies or competitions open to the members of all these units” (105). These two concepts are put forth in order to make sense of the relations that recur throughout history and especially those that multiply in the contemporary world. To hear Aron, the system does not change; it only includes a greater or lesser number of units and a more or less complex network of relations. On the other hand, the substance of transnational society seems to be capable of modification or change: “[T]ransnational society flourishes,” Aron specifies, “in proportion to the freedom of exchange, migration or communication, the strength of common beliefs, the number of non-national organizations, and the solemnity of collective ceremonies” (ibid.). The abstract term political unit allows one to understand that whatever their nature—tribe, empire, city, or nation-state—the relations they have remain the same. If one of them is absorbed by another, the model remains the same: It remains that of interstate relations. To be sure, Aron is not ignorant of the fact that neither the cities of ancient Greece nor—even less—tribes possess a permanent executive power and administrative apparatus to which the entire population would be subject. Therefore, in fact, his analysis only bears upon states in the strict sense of the term, especially the European states as they were formed beginning in the sixteenth century. The notion of political unit is only advanced in order to introduce the idea of the constants of the international order or, more precisely, of an essence of interstate relations. Thus international politics show themselves removed from the effects of changes affecting transnational society. The latter, however, is not held to be formless. In some measure it shows itself to be regulated. To suit it, international law presents itself under a double aspect: on the one hand, insofar as it applies to the movements of all sorts that occur across and beyond the frontiers of state territories and, on the other, as it applies to the relations between states whose sovereignty defies all superior authority. However, if he easily shows that international commerce, the circulation of persons, the presence of foreigners on a state’s territory, or

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the activities of non-national organizations are the object of regulation, Aron neglects one of the principal manifestations of transnational society that he had mentioned: the growth of “common opinions” that escape the control of states. In addition he does not say a word about the multiple phenomena that are characteristic of a transnational society perceived as more and more vibrant: the diffusion of knowledge, of techniques, of religious and aesthetic conceptions, of modes of conduct, and finally, styles of life in an ever more extensive space. Societies, as anthropologists have taught us, always develop by means of mutual borrowings. Why did Aron want to limit the exchanges—of which transnational society seemed to him to be the theater—to those that lend themselves to regulation? To limit myself to this question—before examining his motives for a certain distrust toward transnational life—I believe I can say that it was important for him to circumscribe what one could call an international private law in order to show that these innovations could be assimilated by the internal law of states. Thus they do not reach the essence of interstate relations. Wholly other is the problem posed by the idea of public international law. This finds its source in treaties concluded by states and the obligations that result from them. As for the right of peoples to manage themselves and the principle of nationalities or of collective security, they are only “vague formulas,” with an “ideological” character (107). Aron’s first target, therefore, is the theory according to which the treaties established to put an end to war are the expression of an international public law that detaches itself from the practices of politics. In his eyes, treaties only translate relations of power: They only consecrate the victory of one state and the defeat of another. As a consequence their import is conservative. The stabilization of relations between the contracting parties does not necessarily imply the establishment of a new order that is just and, in fact, the party that esteems itself wronged, provided it regains the means to take its revenge, retains its sovereignty and therefore its freedom of action. How can one think that it does not have the right to do so? Moreover, this hypothesis implies the validity of the distinction between a just cause and an unjust cause. But each state appreciates a situation in accordance with its own criteria and these, moreover, are rarely devoid of all foundation according to Aron. Later he formulates this thought: “States are not, some all good, others all bad, most often wrongs are not all on one side.” In order, therefore, to sanction the violation of a treaty and, first of all, to gauge the violation by taking account of the treaty’s clauses and by interpreting juridical norms, international law would have to be formulated and applied by a supreme and impartial authority…and none exists. It is necessary to emphasize that Aron does not intend to denounce the uselessness of treaties. His goal is solely to show that they insert themselves in a process determined by a permanent confrontation between states of which

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each one knows that it cannot increase or maintain its power except by taking the measure of its adversary. Treaties can only create a state of transitory peace. Only idealistic jurists do not know that it will always be precarious. The function of treaties being strictly limited, Aron underscores that international public law as it was formerly conceived never had for its purpose the elimination of war. Quite the contrary, it provided the forms in which war must be declared, it forbade the use of certain means, it regulated the modes of armistice and the signing of peace, it imposed obligations upon the neutral powers with regard to the belligerents, upon the belligerents with regard to civilian populations, prisoners, etc. In short, it legalized and limited war, it did not make it a crime. (111)

To the consideration of treaties he adds therefore an examination of the generally recognized principles to which the leaders of states submitted themselves and that made up what was called the law of peoples (jus gentium). One has to acknowledge that this law did not require any supra- or extra-state authority that was entitled and empowered to verify its application and to sanction its eventual transgression. I note that Aron did not ask himself about the foundations of this law, which does not allow itself to be reduced to conventions between sovereigns. He however was not unaware that the law of peoples, in the classical conception, was not summed in the twofold jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Rather than ask himself what announced itself in the notion of a law that heads of states are held to obey, he turned to the philosophers, Rousseau first of all, then Hegel, in order to affirm that war appeared to them to result from the sovereign will of states and that they both conceived it as limited and, by the same token, temporary. Thus, according to Rousseau, since war takes places between states but not between men, “[v]iolence is limited to the clash of armies” (112). According to Hegel, states do not cease recognizing one another during the course of war; the latter, therefore, is transitory. But granting that their writings make war appear to be legal—a contestable interpretation since Hegel sees in war “a non-juridical situation of violence and contingency” (113)—the two philosophers conceive international relations within the horizons of the universal: for Rousseau, “the rights of man,” for Hegel, the culmination of History with the appearance of the state, in which he sees the incarnation of Reason. Next, the second stage of Aron’s argument. European international law presented itself under the aspect of a hybrid or mongrel law, neither wholly reducible to conventions, concluded and broken at the pleasure of states, nor—even less—to a system of obligations that assured the cohesion and permanence of an international political system. As such its merit was, at least, to have an anchor in reality, that of interstate relations that nonetheless necessarily did not have a social foundation. In contrast, the law conceived by the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand pact, which then found its full development after the Second World War, declared itself to be purely formal and thus, in addition,

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dangerous. Juridical formalism triumphed because of a pretension to forbid states recourse to arms, without any means of coercion. The League of Nations, Aron recalls, showed itself impotent either “to impose by peaceful methods the changes justice eventually required” (we should understand: changes able to appease the resentments of the states defeated in 1918) or to put a stop to the reestablishment of their former power (we should understand: to forbid German rearmament and the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy) (113). At this stage of the argument mention is made of the Nuremberg trial. Intended to bolster the critique of the new international law it possesses even more interest given that the creation of an international criminal tribunal has been and remains the subject of an endless debate. There is no doubt that in Aron’s eyes the Nuremberg trial was an exemplary event. It illustrates the difficulty—nay, the impossibility—of identifying, then of punishing those supposedly responsible for a “crime against the peace” (114); but it also indicates the danger inherent in defining as criminals the heads of a defeated state. These latter, knowing that they are exposed to the ultimate punishment, will see themselves provoked to pursue their struggle beyond the limits that the certainty of defeat must, at some point, impose on them. This argument surprises the reader, because such is the immoderation of totalitarian leaders or the great conquerors that they never imagine their defeat. Aron, however, lets it be seen that Hitler had no other choice than to sacrifice himself or his people in order to escape from punishment and that the Nuremberg trial risked persuading future adventurers that they must never capitulate. Even more significant is Aron’s concern to present the last world war as a simple episode—as important as it was—of international relations. Speaking of the conflict that opposed the Allies to a Hitlerian state or even to an enemy state, Aron suggests that the characteristics of Nazism do not affect the character of an international system, which implies a competition between political units of the same type. I find other signs of language of this sort later in the work. While he attributes to Soviet strategy the goal of a universal revolution or that of a world empire, Aron judges that Hitler’s was “concretely defined”: “a German Empire within an enlarged space” (283). Elsewhere he notes that “Hitler preferred, for himself and for Germany, the possibility of empire to the security of survival” (598). The formula would apply as well to Bonaparte. One could hardly better “banalize” Nazism. I only find one passage where the expression ideological state appears. Not only is the problem posed by totalitarianism set aside (we know that Aron had his doubts about the term), but silence reigns over the practices of Nazism, the fate of prisoners of war, the massacres perpetrated in occupied countries, the concentration camps, the deportation and extermination of German and European Jews. Aron therefore does not take into account the chief accusations considered by the Nuremberg tribunal, that is, in addition to war crimes (which belong to jus in bello), crimes against humanity and genocide, which became

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subjects of international law. Since Aron was one of the most lucid, and earliest, observers of National Socialism, it appears that his concern to discredit a law that would make war illegal and would thus contradict the principles of state sovereignty, caused him to ignore—for a moment—the nature of a regime in which the notion of law no longer had meaning, where only obedience to the supreme leader mattered. So sharp is the distinction that he establishes between internal or domestic law and international law that the image of the permanent “German state” underneath the Nazi regime caused him to veil the loss of fundamental guarantees that citizens of a nation-state enjoy. The Nuremberg trial certainly marked a turning point in the conception of international relations. But did it only sanction a law that, since the creation of the League of Nations, had criminalized war? Does it suffice—in order to take the measure of the change—to invoke Hegel and to recall that states continue to recognize one another during war? Rather, must not one admit that the new law was established as a consequence of the transformation of war and its stakes? On the other hand, the Nuremberg tribunal was only in part an innovation. The defeated state saw its sovereignty somewhat impaired but its juridical identity was not contested. In fact it was solemnly reaffirmed. It was only sentenced to repair the damages that it had inflicted upon the victims of its aggression. As for the indictment of persons considered responsible for crimes, it did not imply a violation of international law except on the condition of conceiving it on the model of domestic law and of distinguishing between politics and law. Assuming that the accused claimed that they only executed the orders of the Führer, their trial was the only way to destroy the Nazi myth of a community within which its members were so incorporated that they found themselves deprived of the capacity of distinguishing the just and the unjust, the legal and the illegal. Beyond individual persons, it is true, it was a political system that was put on trial; but this system had abolished juridical criteria. And, Aron asks, why stop at the selection of a small number of guilty, when others are suspect of the same crimes? The question surprises even more because it is formulated by an analyst who never ceases to denounce juridical formalism. To paraphrase Aron: Perhaps it is immoral but it is most often wise to abstain from a purgation that would hurt the chances of reestablishing the coherence of a political society. Under the circumstances does not justice consist in restoring the dimension of law in a society in which it had been effaced? The Nuremberg trial receives another criticism: A Soviet judge was seated beside judges representing the democratic states. According to Aron this presence allowed the aggression of which the Soviet Union was guilty vis-à-vis Poland, Finland, and the Baltic countries to be blotted out. This was an “inevitable discretion, but one that illustrates all too well the formula of injustice: two weights, two measures” (116). Now, despite this remark, which emphasizes even further his concern to disassociate law and politics, Aron does not hesitate to imagine that Soviet aggression responded to the threat that Hitler presented

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to neighboring countries. The guilty state (the Soviet Union) whose invitation to Nuremberg appears to be rather indecent benefits from the supposition that it had undertaken, at the opportune moment, a “defensive reply.” Earlier Aron had noted that if “in the case of the last war, for which the major responsibility was manifestly Germany’s, it is far from the case that innocent states and guilty states were all on one side or the other” (115). The last section, entitled “Ambiguities of Recognition and Aggression” (117–24), does more than confirm the doubts raised as much by the policy of the Soviet Union in 1939 as by its alliance with Western states in 1945. This section seems to concern only the international law established by the United Nations, since for the first time it provided for the recognition of all the nations on the planet that decided to subscribe to the Charter, granted that their candidature was deemed legitimate by the community of member-states. However, the definition of aggression has since been the subject of a longtime debate in international law. Aron shows without difficulty that the decision to recognize or not a state requires the agreement of the great powers, while they are profoundly divided. He puts in relief the historical and political heterogeneity of the states, the first (historical heterogeneity) appearing to him masked by the principle of the equality of states according to which small countries, whose status before then was that of a colony or protectorate, are now qualified as sovereigns in the same way as the great Western powers. As for political heterogeneity, even more than historical heterogeneity, it makes an abstraction loom over the juridical order, since the state of a communist type and a state of a democratic type are “not only different, they are, as such, enemies” (117).2 Whether it is a question of Lebanon, the German Democratic Republic, North Korea, or the status of the Hungarian state once its legal government was abolished by the Soviets, the examples abound that demonstrate the primacy of political relations. It is true that Aron attributes to the United Nations an important role in the transformation of the relations that the European powers and the dependant countries (colonized or under mandate) have. “But,” he asks, “is this evolution a happy one?” And to this question he does not respond clearly. But it is important enough that he insists once again on the contribution of the United Nations to the emancipation of colonized countries in the last section of his work (chapter XVIII). There, even while rejecting the thesis that the “empires were lost in New York,” he observes that the United Nations made available a forum for the representatives of countries won over to the anti-colonial cause, that it amplified the echo of anti-imperial propaganda, and that “it did influence the style and probably the speed of decolonization” (558–59). The context does not clarify his thought. He notes, successively, that “history is also written to a degree in New York,” adding that “the delegates of the small states find it difficult to avoid the illusion that this degree is a large one” (559), then that “the international organization [the UN] has not modified, though it has somewhat complicated, the course of international diplomacy” (561). “Original,” he adds,

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“as an institution, it is not so in its principles, which are contradictory, nor in its language, which is more hypocritical than idealist, nor in its action, which is effective in proportion to the remove at which it remains from the major conflict of our time” (ibid.). Without being strictly incompatible, these judgments leave the reader in uncertainty. Everyone knows that Aron is not a defender of colonial politics. But, attentive to the benefits that the communists derived from the weakening of the great European powers, he is not inclined to credit the United Nations with the influence it could exercise in favor of the emancipation of dependant countries. I recall that he spoke of the law of peoples to dispose of themselves as they please as a “vague formula.” The problem posed by the definition of aggression renders even sharper the critique of international law. It requires the accord of states considered as equal despite their heterogeneity. In such a system, Aron emphasizes, “only ‘armed aggression,’ according to the French expression of the Charter, the crossing of frontiers by regular armies, is clearly identifiable” (122). Which is to say that all the forms of indirect aggression are ignored. One of them, whose importance will be underlined later (chapter XVIII), consists in the support given by a state to revolutionary movements that aim to overturn the legal government of a foreign country. This is a widespread contemporary practice that is not the sole province of the Soviet state, although that state appears to be the principal source in the Third World. Thus “[p]ropaganda, agents of subversion, terrorist commandos pass across or through frontiers without being formally condemned by the international organizations or even by the interpreters of international law” (124). But before mentioning this phenomenon Aron had denounced every pretension to define aggression, whatever the historical circumstance and the condition of international law. Such a definition in effect would suppose that one did not limit oneself to the recognition of the use of armed force but that one took account of the threat of such a use. Aron’s text merits citation because it best expresses one of his principal arguments: But how can a threat be disclosed that has no need of being explicit in order to be effective? What rights should be granted to the state that is, and regards itself as being, threatened? It is true that the United Nations Charter forbids the threat as much as the use of force, but such a formula is pure hypocrisy: lacking a tribunal capable of deciding differences equitably, all states have relied and continue to rely on themselves to obtain justice; none genuinely subscribes to the view that threats in the service of a just cause are, as such, culpable. (121–22)

The use of arms ought not to cause one to forget the means of economic, psychological, and political constraint. It is in this way that we understand that, in a homogeneous system composed of states of the same type as well as in a heterogeneous system in which the states are engaged in ideological conflict, it is impossible to define aggression. There therefore is no justice that is not conceived by a state and of which it is not the agent.

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Lack of a tribunal: This expression is not a sign of a reservation since the validity of such an authority is vigorously contested. On the other hand, there is room to wonder at the equivocation in the concept of justice. Since all states use force to obtain justice, and without such recourse they would suffer injustice, the distinction between the just and the unjust appears to be maintained. However, in lieu of observing in this place, as his other propositions would cause one to believe, that a threatened state has the right to take the initiative of war, Aron advances the hypothesis of a state that has decided to threaten another for a just motive. As curious as the inversion of places is here, the second expression does not weaken an interpretation a minima of the right to do justice oneself. This right is opposed to the pretensions of an international authority that only admits legitimate defense in the case of a flagrant violation, whether manifest aggression or a threat that justifies recourse to arms. Nonetheless, the portrait that Aron draws of the tensions among states, his repeated affirmation of their sovereignty, leads one to conclude that they—each one—are equally judges of their own cause, and finally, that it is meaningless to conceive of a place from which one could judge their action and its stakes. In the penultimate chapter of the work the author specifies: “A doctrine of peace must not be attached primarily to the stakes and to the actors, but to the basis of the Hobbesian situation: the claim by states on the right to dispense their own justice, hence to reserve for themselves the ultimo ratio of a recourse to arms” (709). Which doctrine of peace is he talking about? The fact is that when he examines the doctrines of “peace through law” and of “peace through empire,” he judges them equally chimerical. Aron lets there be no doubt: The state has more than one motive to undertake war. The defense of the national interest is one, but it must be understood that this concept is no easier to define than that of aggression. The fact is, Aron observes, that “[a]ll great states have jeopardized their survival to gain ulterior objectives” (598). One does not resolve the difficulty by restricting oneself to the case of legitimate defense because, in this case too, the concept eludes strict definition. If one refers to “anteriority,” we are told, if the aggressor is he who fires the first shot, one is “caught in the casuistry of attack and initiative” (122). Aron’s refusal to admit that it is possible to designate an aggressor on the international scene is so complete that he prompts the reader to ask himself about his personal judgment in circumstances that appear obvious. However, there is no reason to doubt: Aron has no doubt that Hitler committed an aggression against Czechoslovakia or Stalin against Finland or North Korea against South Korea or France and England against Egypt (during the Suez crisis). The question posed by the absence of criteria defining aggression appears, it is true, during the course of an argument whose target is international law. Is it not, in fact, because the League of Nations foresaw the difficulty, that is, the impossibility, of obtaining from its members a common condemnation of aggression committed by a state that it sought to render all war illegal? On the

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other hand, I note that, when he criticizes the functioning of the United Nations in the last part of the work, Aron agrees that the Kellogg-Briand pact did not consider all wars as illegal and it abandoned the idea that war as such was deemed criminal (710). He merely specifies that the right of legitimate defense was the object of a rather subtle commentary, in order to leave a large place for diversity of opinion. However, his “review of crises,” which occasioned fully convincing analyses, lends itself to different interpretations. Either his sole aim is to demonstrate that the accusation brought by a state against an aggressor runs up against the denial of his adversary, in such a way that their respective arguments find echoes with their respective allies—their protectors or their clients—within the international organization, or he risks saying that aggression is always relative to the agent’s point of view, but this thesis contradicts the law of peoples or simple good sense. When he observes the failure of attempts to constrain Italy to renounce the conquest of Ethiopia, Aron rests on the example not in order to impute it to lacunae in the pact but in order to bring into relief the responsibility of France and of England who possessed the means to oppose themselves to Mussolini’s ambition. How can one not derive from these propositions the impression that it finally matters little to denounce the incapacity of international law to define aggression or the threat of aggression, and its efforts to render war illegal, while the fault lies with the states that deliberately exempt themselves from the juridical order? This impression is confirmed by the analysis devoted to the United Nations whose philosophy—qualified as legalistic and pacifist—was inspired by that of the League of Nations. The rapid examination of the Charter (709–17) refers to “vague formulations” concerning the use of force and the resolution of differences by peaceful means—both of which express an ideal rather than obligations. Aron agrees that one clause forbids every intervention of the Organization in the affairs pertaining to national competence and that another recognizes the right of legitimate defense, but he judges them to be purely formal because they are subordinated to the decision of the Security Council, an institution that in appearance reinforces the authority formerly given to the League of Nations, but whose initiatives are most often paralyzed by the veto-right of each of the permanent members. The equivocation of aggression appears in the light of three arguments presented as decisive. In the first place, in order for the concept to be operational it would be necessary for all of the members of the Security Council to agree on the identity of the guilty party, while the divergence of their interests most often prevents this; in the second place, in order to have a well-founded judgment it would be necessary to take into account the situation as a whole within which a state was led to have recourse to arms; and in the third place, assuming these conditions are met, it would be necessary for the international authority to dispose of its own means of coercion to impose a sanction, because

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without them the judgment would remain merely formal. Through and by means of these objections is sketched the thought that only states find themselves in a position to appreciate the stakes of the conflicts in which they find themselves, either directly or indirectly. The right of a state to do justice for itself therefore finds no limit except in the analogous right possessed by another, or other, states more powerful than it. However, do we have to grant that it is rights that confront one another? Does the very concept of right retain a meaning in the context of a theory that only takes into account the sovereignty of states, of the free determination of their objects and of their relations of force? Before returning to this question, I think it is worthwhile to notice that the Aronian critique of the concept of aggression, when allied with that of the Charter of the United Nations, tends to place in a new light the dangers of this international law. As I have already noted, dangerous is the international law that makes war inexpiable by raising over the heads of belligerent leaders the threat of a punishment that encourages them to sacrifice everything rather than to accept defeat. The danger now reveals another dimension. As soon as an international organization proposes to include all the states of the globe by characterizing them as sovereign and placing them on a common footing of equality, it is led to ignore and thus tacitly to legalize all the wars that do not bear the name. These are those that do not involve states with one another but are conducted by groups that aim to overthrow the legal government in thisor-that country, who benefit from the support of a foreign state, in fact who often are its instruments. This argument, sketched in the section devoted to the “Ambiguities of Aggression,” is amply developed in the section of chapter XXIII devoted to the United Nations. “The recruitment and training of partisans destined to fight the government of a foreign country…are henceforth common currency,” notes Aron. And, he adds, “at the present time international law is a permanent incitement to hypocrisy, it creates an obligation for the Greats to dissimulate what they cannot not do, to whit, involve themselves in the internal affairs of the member-states of the United Nations.” Such is the heterogeneity of the international system, the permanent confrontation of two blocs, that most countries become the theater of their designs. Thus operates the combination of an international law tending to criminalize war and a civil war at the international level or a transnational organization of subversion. If one substituted for this polemical judgment the observation that the competence of the United Nations is necessarily limited to the domain defined by the member-states, critical reflection would take another path. Law, no one can doubt, is the product of an interstate organization, even though an authority is conferred upon it that it can have prevail over one or another of its members. Why did an important number of states, including Great Powers, conceive or accept in 1945 the project of a new international organization, why did they subscribe to the idea of a law to which each ought to submit? I looked for the reply that Aron could give to the question. It seems more difficult to grasp

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given that he sees in international law founded on the sovereignty and equality of states “not the reflection but the negation of current reality.” It is true, the political heterogeneity at the time when Aron wrote seemed to have changed the givens of international politics; but the opposition between the Soviet Union and the communist parties in Europe and in Latin America that appealed to it was apparent before the last world war and its end, despite the solidarity provoked by the alliance against Nazism. How could the idea of an organization (the United Nations) founded on the negation of reality obtain the adherence of an important number of states, soon joined by many others? If I restrict myself to the line of thought prompted by the fiction of an assembly of sovereign and equal states, it would relate to Stalin’s ruses and the naivety of Roosevelt, each one claiming a universal mission. Stalin presented himself as the defender of the sovereignty of states all the while having as his objective the subversion of those that did not have the strength to resist his interference in their affairs. He played a double game. Roosevelt, inserting himself in the Wilsonian tradition, wished for peace and a policy that would break with isolationism and would assure the United States a major role on the international scene. However, I do not believe that this would suffice to take full account of Aron’s thought, because he had an awareness of what there was of the extraordinary and irrational in the advent of the utopia of universal peace. It was sketched at the moment of the creation of the League of Nations; it expanded when Europe was deemed to have melted into the mass of nations that peopled the earth. Now, the origin of these two events seemed to him to be the same. Invoking the consequences of the First World War, he writes in his fourth chapter (according to which I am taking my bearings): “So many dead, so much material destruction, so many horrors could no longer be accepted as in accord with the course of human events. War must no longer be an episode in inter-state relations, it should be outlawed, in the true sense of the word” (113). Now, it is in similar terms that he describes the sentiments following the Second World War: “The horrors of twentieth-century war and the thermonuclear threat have given the rejection of power politics not only an actuality and an urgency, but also a kind of obviousness. History must no longer be a succession of bloody conflicts if humanity is to pursue its adventure” (703). However, he does not allow it to be thought that the horror of war in these two circumstances affected the essence of international relations. After having observed that the aspiration toward peace succeeded nationalistic passions, he soon remarks that the Kellogg-Briand pact failed, while its goal was to outlaw war. The reader cannot fail to think that public or popular opinion caused the artisans of the new international politics to err. As for the aspiration to universal peace that intensified from 1945 on, Aron does not condemn it, he even says he shares it, and he consents to imagine that it can contribute “to blaze the path to the future” (a thought that will be belied by his conclusions). It, however,

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prompts him firmly to reiterate the distinction that he had formulated between an international system and transnational society: “This aspiration,” he notes, “pertains to transnational society; it rallies millions of individuals as men and not as citizens of a democratic state or militants of a revolutionary party” (ibid.). A striking formulation: it is to say that there is no possibility of regulating international relations. Aron is so persuaded that nothing can take form, either on this side of or beyond states, that he denies in the same movement of thought all consistency to transnational society and to international law. In a section of his penultimate chapter, entitled “Progress or Decline of International Law,” his judgment is formulated without any ambiguity: “Personally, I confess I cannot see much progress, whether it is a question of transnational society, of the international system, or of the consciousness of the human community” (731). The reader recalls that at the time when he defines his fundamental concepts, transnational society was held to be more or less vital as exchanges of all sorts across borders of states grew, as well as common beliefs. Now, though, he ridicules a connected thesis and says that “it would be illusory indeed to regard the percentage of persons who have left their own country, or the average number of kilometers covered by certain merchandise before being consumed, or the statistics of world trade in kilometer-tons as a valid criterion of transnational society” (ibid.). Aron’s language is rarely polemical; if he sometimes becomes polemical it is because the common usage of the concept of transnational society or that of international law seems to him not only aberrant, he also sees in it the sign of a dangerous mystification that blocks access to real thought about politics. The phrase common beliefs initially appeared to me to be rather vague and I attempted to render it more precise. My commentary, however, was inadequate: It is remarkable that Aron does not imagine that these beliefs could be of a political nature. Now, one of the characteristics of what he calls transnational society, in the historical conjuncture that he describes, dominated by the antagonism between two power-blocs, is the permeability of peoples by principles, doctrines, and ideologies that were condemned by their leaders. Because he was only attentive to the efforts deployed by the Soviet government to withdraw their populations from dangerous influences, he ignored this phenomenon. He thought the Iron Curtain had rendered more and more impervious the societies of both the communist type and the democratic type. Nonetheless, this separation of the East from the West was only relative and the near past as well as the suite of events contain an additional lesson. In 1956 the Hungarian Revolution and the Polish uprising already had spectacularly testified to the attraction that the political, religious, and social rights characteristic of Western democracy exercised over Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union the ubiquity of censorship and the state’s means of coercion led observers to suppose a total coherence of the regime. But from the first signs of a relaxation of international tensions the demonstrations of the Soviet dissidents, who appealed to the rights of

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man, demonstrated the influence of ideas circulated by the Western press and literature and by the United Nations. Finally, one should admit that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the product of interstate conflict; it resulted from the disintegration of a political system. And the last blow struck against this system, the fall of the Berlin Wall, testified to the decomposition of the ideology of the East Germans when they came in contact with the liberties enjoyed by the West Germans. On the other hand, if one turns toward the Western countries at the same time, one can see the importance of the diffusion of communist ideas that developed largely under the influence of the Soviet model. Thus the notion of transnational society—supposing it relevant—sends us to more varied phenomena than Aron believed. To reduce international relations to the sole relations among states leads one to ignore what Marcel Mauss more appropriately called intersocial relations, a milieu that predates all institutions. *** Why did Aron work to deny all signs of progress, or merely of novelty, on the international scene? To be sure, he wanted to persuade his readers of the constants of politics. However, as rich as were the facts on which he based himself, and whatever his concern to take into account the diversity of historical conjunctures, his interpretation was rigorously mandated by a theory: that of a return to the state of nature, one which occurred as an effect of the formation of states. He judged that their competition led us back to the “Hobbesian situation.” But the point of departure, the itinerary, and the conclusion of Aron’s thought distinguished him from the philosopher to whom he appealed. Hobbes constructed a model that was deemed to give an account of the genesis of the state (without thereby ruling out the hypothesis that a primitive state characterized by the war of all against all was a fiction). Leaving to one side the political meaning in his time of a construction that combines the idea of a rude individualism with that of a supreme authority whose function is to assure each one’s security, I will observe that Hobbes’s project consists in describing the passage from natural existence to history. The Hobbesian situation contains the possibility of a denouement (while men’s irrationality means that this new state of things is not irreversible). Aron, in contrast, inserts, if I can put it that way, the state of nature in history: It recurs in, and by, history. His point of departure is the existence of states, the institution thanks to which men know themselves as identically subjects of the same sovereign, bound together by a pact that confers the same rights and obligations upon them. The narrative, I mean the account of events, henceforth frees itself from fiction. Now, it is not the least of the difficulties that the theory bumps up against than the one that consists in describing the changes introduced by the struggle of states and, first of all, the difficulty of defining the very notion of the state.

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To be sure, the state as conceived by Hobbes, put in the singular, is an abstraction; only states in the plural are the concrete beings for the historian or the sociologist. But according to which criteria does one recognize that something has acquired the form of a state in the course of history? And if one judges that there are political bodies of a distinct character that merit the name, given the integration they succeed in achieving—by law—of the members of a nation—an integration that has the effect of converting them into collective individuals who cannot not see one another as potential adversaries—then must not one ask when the state of nature returns in history? Not only can one not remain satisfied with the notion of political units (such exist from the most ancient times), but the states that were formed in the sixteenth century only approximate the features of the type of state conformable to Aron’s framework, that is, whose first characteristic is “the participation of all the governed in the state under the double effect of conscription and universal suffrage.” Now—and Aron agrees—one finds very few political bodies of this type before 1914. I would add that the image of the participation of the governed in the state hardly corresponds to totalitarian systems. I conclude that the idea of a return of the state of nature on the international scene is not convincing. And this conclusion calls into question all the arguments, on the one hand, aimed at demonstrating that war is solely the product of states, and on the other, that international life reduces itself to interstate relations. If I am not mistaken, reflection on international law and the nature of intrasocial relations then regains all of its pertinence. But to attempt to make them out would be the subject of another study. Notes 1.

2.

Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003). All references in the text are to this edition, and all italicized words are contained in the original. “In other words, the states in each bloc do not present, in the eyes of the other bloc, the peace-loving character which, according to the Charter, would qualify them for United Nations membership” (ibid.).

11 The Threat of Danger: Decadence and Virtù Miguel Morgado More congruent with the facts is to think that there is no safe progress, no evolution, without the threat of involution and retrogression. Everything, everything is possible in history—both triumphal and indefinite progress and periodic retrogression. For life, individual or collective, personal or historical, is the only entity in the universe whose substance is danger. Life is composed of incidents. It is, rigorously speaking, drama.—Ortega y Gasset1

Raymond Aron was one among several thinkers who have been noticed for their awareness (in the case of Aron, a melancholy awareness) of the frailty of what we can call “civilization.” Today we might be suspicious of the relevance of such a word, “civilization.” What is “civilization”? In the words of a great contemporary of Aron, “the term civilization designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian”; it is the “conscious culture of humanity, that is to say, what makes a human being a human being.” Essentially, “civilization” is the “conscious culture of reason.” Therefore, the “twin pillars” of “civilization” are theoretical and practical reason or “morality” and “science.”2 “Civilization,” then, seems worthy of protection; it seems to be the good that allows the enjoyment of all remaining goods. It seems to be another word for the conditions that allow for the good life. Aron could add that, consequently, one of civilization’s main elements is freedom, namely “the freedoms we enjoy in the West.” Liberal and democratic freedoms, or Western freedoms, are indeed “humanity’s most precious” “acquisitions”; but they are also their most “tenuous” acquisitions.3 Threatened by dangers never completely eliminated, “civilization,” which shelters and protects man, depends on con-

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stant care, and on an always realistic disposition. Confronting reality means to understand that human solutions to human problems, whether one means the “technical” problem, the “political” problem, or the “economic” problem, are always imperfect and provisional. More often than not, those solutions incorporate in themselves more or less unstable contradictions, something that sooner or later becomes a threat to the institutions that represented what was thought to be the definitive solution. The forgetfulness of danger (to use in my own way a very famous expression) or the forgetfulness of threat as such may be due to excessive confidence, to anomic apathy, or to a process of devaluation of civilizational structures (what someone like Ortega y Gasset would call “ingratitude”), which in turn can be put in motion by traumatic experiences or by waves of bad conscience.4 But whatever its origin or psychological explanation, politically speaking, the forgetfulness of danger is always a synonym for crisis. Aron liked to quote (his once teacher) Alain: “[C]ivilization is a thin film that can be torn apart by a single blow; and barbarism enters through the breach.”5 In this regard, historical experience is a precious teacher: “[T]hose who lived in the time of Hitler and Stalin know that the worst is always possible.”6 One of the main lessons of the events of May 1968 was precisely the “fragility of the modern order.” All societies, whether “pluralist” or “non-pluralist,” “incorporate elements of weakness.”7 Civilization requires care, it resists ingratitude only with great difficulty, and it dies at the hands of contempt. Above all, without “historical vitality,” that is, without the ability and will to identify and accept the inevitability of the enemy, political regimes, namely the moderate ones, put their survival at risk.8 In this regard, Aron’s comments on Alain are noteworthy, for they indicate the spirit of the “eternal left.” Alain, said Aron, represented the “eternal left,” that is “the left that never holds power, since it is defined by the resistance to power, which by its very essence leads to abuses and corrupts those who hold it.”9 Of course Aron would never admit (nor would any intelligent person for that matter) that the forgetfulness of danger is a fault monopolized by the left. But the comment on Alain and the spirit of the “eternal left” can be read as saying that the latter fears (and denounces) power as such. Now, danger has to be met, not exclusively, but nevertheless unavoidably, with the use of power. Or to put it more rigorously: Danger has to be met with the readiness to use power. It has to be said that Aron was not blind to the misuses of power. On the very contrary, he spoke very eloquently on the misuses of power even by the most well-intentioned of men. He condemned the misuse of power whenever he had the chance to do so. However, Aron knew that politics implies the use of power. Political existence as such implies the use of power against enemies. An important part of Max Weber’s ethics of responsibility, which Aron took very seriously, said that the dictum “do not resist evil by force” had to be refused as apolitical. The responsible statesman must say instead “you should resist evil by force, otherwise you are responsible for its triumph,” or, as Machiavelli would

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say, “an evil should never be allowed to persist out of consideration for a good if that good can easily be overwhelmed by that evil.”10 For evil will not simply go away. As the French historian-statesman François Guizot taught: “To see what is, is the first and excellent character of the political spirit.”11 The amount of good and evil in the world does not change according to our dreams. Evil has to be fought by the word and, unfortunately, sometimes by the sword. The fight against evil must be balanced, on the one hand, by the knowledge that “antagonisms” will never be eliminated, and, on the other hand, by the belief that the worst is possible, but “not always certain.” Some readers of Aron may suspect the use of the word “evil” here. After all, Aron argued that “politics is never a conflict between good and evil.” However, by saying that “politics is never a conflict between good and evil,” Aron did not mean that politics is outright immoral or that morality is radically separated from politics. He was arguing that political conflict is never about “pure” causes, but rather that political battles are “equivocal.” Because politics, and especially foreign policy, is always a conflict, elements of immorality inevitably creep in. “Pure” causes in politics must compromise with reality. Thus, politics becomes a “choice between the preferable and the detestable.” But the distinction between the “preferable” and the “detestable,” although it is in part contingent, is solidly based on what is evil and what is not. One could say, like Hobbes, that although the summum bonum is (metaphysically, epistemologically, and politically speaking) something enclosed by great difficulties, one can at least agree on what the summum malum is. The basis for our knowing what in the concrete situation is “preferable” and what is “detestable” is not arbitrary, nor is it a question of pure convenience. This is what it means to “think and act politically.”12 During the Cold War, Aron reflected on the situation of Europe and he started by questioning the adequacy of the words “decline” and “decadence” to describe it. “Decline” is more, let us say, value-neutral.13 It seems to limit itself to coldly record a reduction in relative power or a reduction of the “contribution of a collectivity to the great works of humanity.” “Decline” is a concept that can be submitted to quantitative determinations. During the Cold War one could argue that Western Europe was “declining,” but one could also plausibly argue that it was not “declining.” For example, in the 1970s, from the point of view of demography or military strength, Western Europe was unquestionably declining. But “decline” was by no means evident from the point of view of economic prosperity. From the 1950s to the 1970s Western Europe could show better economic statistics than the United States, not to mention the rest of the world, especially the communist bloc and the Third World. One could say that indeed until the beginning of the 1980s it was usual to speak of American decline in comparison to (yes) Europe and Japan and Southeast Asia. As a concept, “decline” is not useless, but it seems to fail to capture the reality of Europe. As a concept, “decline” is “entirely relative.”14 Another term that could be applied is, of course, “decadence.” What is “decadence”? Instead of giving

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a ready answer, Aron preferred to resort to Machiavelli, one of the thinkers par excellence of “decadence” and “rebirth.” To the question “What is decadence?” Aron replied: “Machiavelli would have answered: the loss of virtù, or the loss of historical vitality.” “Decadence” means, therefore, a loss of virtù or historical vitality. Machiavellian virtù, according to Aron, means “the capacity for collective action and historic vitality”; indeed, virtù is “the ultimate cause of the fortune of nations and of their rise and fall.”15 Thinking of England at the end of the 1970s, Aron understood “decadence” to imply “the inability of a nation to shake off its indolence.”16 “Decadence,” in contradistinction to “decline,” involves strong value judgments. At the very end of In Defense of Decadent Europe, Aron concluded: “But rejecting servitude is not enough: one must also recognize the dangers, and face up to them.”17 Some may say that Aron was merely referring to the Red Army’s divisions ready to assault Western Europe. And, of course, he was. But the sentence has a universal content; it is a general reflection typical of a political philosopher. Notice that Aron emphasized the need to recognize danger and the will (as well as the ability) to stand up to it. When Aron was asked if there still existed “collective resolution” in Europe, he replied straightforwardly: “no longer.”18 The crisis of Europe is many-faced and complex, but one of its elements is, according to Aron, its loss of “collective resolution,” of “historical vitality,” of awareness of danger, of readiness to face up to danger—in a word, Europe lacks virtù. It might sound strange to us Europeans, who take pride in having been cured of Machiavellianism, as Montesquieu would say, to learn that we suffer from a lack of Machiavellianism.19 But to mention Machiavellianism is one thing; to face Machiavelli’s thought may be another. Aron never mistook Machiavelli’s complex and open-ended thought for “vulgar” Machiavellianism, which is the doctrine taken from his writings by Machiavelli’s “unfaithful disciples.” Even if one wishes to refer to Machiavellianism there is still an intelligible and moral difference between a “civilized Machiavellianism” and the “vulgar disciples of Machiavelli.”20 Since the sixteenth century, “vulgar” Machiavellianism has been enjoying a successful career in Europe. It has been used to promote a conception of politics that claims a necessary distinction between leaders and masses, reveals contempt for the people, allows the people only passive obedience, and produces power as the sole end of every means available to the ruler(s). It affirms the right to rule in favor, not of those who are intellectually or morally superior, but of those who have a superior “capacity for violence.” As its first impulse comes to be felt, “vulgar” Machiavellianism stands for “indifference towards spiritual values”; but with the realization of its full consequences, it proclaims an outright reversal of the “traditional scale of values.” Underlying its conception of politics, there is a conception of history without “meaning” or “end,” driven only by force. Force in history manifests itself through the mortal struggle between men, and “above all between peoples.” In practical terms “vulgar” Machiavellianism is

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nothing more than a “technique of power” at the service of internal domination, as well as of “imperial conquest.” In other words, “vulgar” Machiavellianism has been used as a legitimizing theory of tyranny. As imperial tyrannies, communism, national-socialism, and fascism may be seen as obvious heirs of “vulgar” Machiavellians. Although Aron knew perfectly well that one must separate Machiavelli’s thought from what his “vulgar” disciples took from it, he was not blind to the fact that the “classical answer” to “vulgar” Machiavellianism is insufficient. It is not enough to answer that “the technique of tyranny is not equivalent to the eulogy of tyranny.” One does not solve Machiavelli’s ambiguities, nor does one understand his strange inheritance, by stating this “logically indisputable” but unsatisfactory answer.21 It cannot be denied that Machiavelli himself wrote, not exclusively, but nevertheless intentionally, for tyrants. Every reader of Machiavelli knows that to be an “adviser of the Prince” is to be an adviser also of tyrants.22 The free republic won Machiavelli’s preference, but the necessity of tyranny in politics is considered to be unavoidable, especially when legitimacy becomes a nebulous notion. The twentieth-century enemies of freedom may be called “Machiavellians” for they inherited what Aron called a Machiavellian “attitude,” that is, they “spontaneously conceive[d] politics upon a Machiavellian mode.”23 But they were the children of extremist—and also “vulgar”—Machiavellianism. There is another way of learning with Machiavelli and thereby acquiring a deep sense of political reality: a way that presupposes a critical reading of Machiavelli, rendering the Florentine philosopher’s teachings more moderate or “civilized.” There is consequently a moderate or “civilized” Machiavellianism, in contradistinction to an extremist and “vulgar” Machiavellianism, which generates important insights concerning the political world, not to mention the protection against “illusions” and thus against prophetism.24 The difference between “absolute” Machiavellianism and “moderate” Machiavellianism became the main point of Aron’s critique of Jacques Maritain’s politics. In the End of Machiavellianism Maritain had argued, for several reasons (both moral and political), for the end of every form of Machiavellianism. Aron agreed that “absolute” Machiavellianism, with its emphasis on the quest for power as the sole objective of politics, leads to the idolatry of the state, which inevitably produces the unlimited state and, as a result, the violation of individual rights. “Absolute” Machiavellianism, said Aron agreeing with Maritain, is not able to stand without collapsing into a sort of nihilism that denies every form of reality that is not recognized as a condition of power or as an object of power. It opens the door to a fury of violence and declares all wars to be wars of extermination or, in the conditions of modern society, total wars.25 But this specific agreement with Maritain’s vision of politics did not prevent Aron from criticizing the former’s “naïve optimism” regarding the practical realities of rule. It is naïve to expect that a statesman’s responsibility towards his community can be fulfilled without resorting to some dubious methods. The good intention

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of rejecting Machiavellianism is not enough for the statesman who will never have “a free choice of means.” The fundamental conditions of political action, as well as human nature’s imperfection, combine to deny eternal coherence between efficacy, on the one hand, and moral imperatives, on the other. It is impossible to apply a general moral rule regarding the use of dubious political means. The determination of what separates legitimate from illegitimate force, legitimate from illegitimate deception, depends on the “analysis of particular cases,” through a “sort of casuistry of political morality.”26 It could be argued that the need for determining such a delicate borderline only comes out in full force in “extreme situations”; “normal” political life does not evolve around “necessary evils.” Aron would agree. But he would point to the sad fact that it is “very difficult to find moments where there are no extreme situations.” Furthermore, he would note that to accept the different demands of “extreme” and “normal” situations, regardless of their relative frequency, is tantamount to accepting at least the occasional need for “moderate” Machiavellianism. It is to “moderate” Machiavellianism that the responsible statesman turns to whenever the “extreme” situation arises. The responsible statesman strives to uphold “peace and the good,” but he “cannot forget the permanent risk, the risk of destruction.”27 Accepting the priority of the common good is indisputable, as long as it is also accepted that power is an “indispensable condition” of the actualization of the common good. Given the conditions of political action, one must face the necessity of the acquisition of power, as a subordinate end, that is to say, subordinate to the ultimate end, the common good of the community. However, the acquisition of power and its exercise call for different political methods in comparison to the political task of creating a just society. Aron knew that the contradiction between the “quality of means” and moral ends is not without risks. “Too often, cynicism at the service of the ideal degenerates into pure and simple cynicism.” This possibility is not to be underestimated, but it does not change the reality of man’s political existence, which never loses its dramatic or tragic character. And yet, this is what gives political life its “sombre greatness”: statesmen act often with the use of means they detest because “they believe themselves to be, in their soul and conscience, responsible for the common destiny.”28 Perhaps this is what it means to be a “liberal disciple” of Machiavelli.29 With these qualifications in mind, let us, then, accept Aron’s invitation to read Machiavelli and let us take seriously the diagnosis of Europe as having little or no virtù. Machiavelli’s virtù can be examined through several angles. But I do not wish to go through all of them; that would take me too far. Nevertheless, let me try to offer an analysis of Machiavelli’s virtù relevant enough to understand Aron’s comment on Europe. Machiavelli became famous, among other reasons, for radically distinguishing goodness (bontà) from virtue (virtù). According to

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Machiavelli, something is called “good” if it is done out of a benevolent, altruistic, and “pure” intention, regardless of what the final outcome is. A “good” deed is done out of concern with moral symmetry between means and ends. To be considered “good” a man must not compromise his ends with dubious means. He must abstract, as it were, from the imperatives of efficacy. To the “good” man, the good is always the most useful and the most convenient. It is only the “bad” man who separates those categories, and then chooses convenience over “goodness.” But as Machiavelli put it, [T]here is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince who wishes to preserve himself to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge or not to use it according to necessity.30

The reality of necessity is incompatible with constant and universal “goodness.” In the world of necessity to abide by the rules of goodness is to invite disaster. It is the “human condition” itself that forbids that one live by all the good qualities that the life of goodness demands. In Machiavelli’s work, in order to think politically, one “must presuppose that all men are evil and always prone to exercise the malice in their minds whenever opportunity gives them free rein.”31 In the world of necessity something more adequate and fierce than goodness is necessary. Virtù is necessary as a way to respond affirmatively to necessity. I think I shall not be very far from the truth if I say that, to Machiavelli, “necessity” may be understood as another word for danger. But perhaps it is safer to say that necessity does not arise without danger.32 For Machiavelli, virtù is the only adequate response to danger. Either danger is opposed by virtù or it brings servitude and destruction. Virtù is a sort of practical wisdom or, to avoid confusion, political wisdom. It is a quality of action. It is in acting that one shows one’s virtù. But if Machiavelli used the word virtù to denote political wisdom in action, then one is forced to conclude that it includes not only proud and brave action, but also deceitful action. Virtuous “princes” are those who can be both the “lion” and the “fox.” Whether one should be either the “lion” or the “fox” depends on circumstances. But in order to understand if circumstances demand one or the other animal the ability to read circumstances correctly is required. Virtù, then, provides also a hermeneutics of reality. Virtuous princes recognize their occasion or opportunity. Virtù is the ability to know the times we live in, to know its opportunities and dangers. Virtù not only allows one to correctly see opportunities and dangers but it is also that creative energy (or “vitality”) one needs in order to respond to opportunities and dangers.33 But virtù, it has to be said, is neither fury nor warmongering; it is only the acceptance of war, and of war-like virtues, when there is no other alternative to war. Fury is disproportionate, irrational,

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unambiguously violent, sterile, blind, and barbaric; virtù is disciplined, balanced, reasonable, fecund, mindful of consequences, and prudent.34 Nevertheless, if danger is, by definition, violent and menacing, and if virtù is the only adequate response to danger, then virtù is also a disposition for violence, or, rather, for disciplined violence. We do not know what Machiavelli would have said about contemporary Europe, for Machiavelli is not alive. But we all know that Aron regretted contemporary Europe’s lack of virtù. Is it at least probable that Machiavelli would agree with Aron? No one can give a definitive answer. But we do know what Machiavelli said about the disgraced Piero Soderini. In fact, the portrait of Soderini made by Machiavelli captures some of the traits that may be associated with a Europe without virtù: [Soderini] believed that with time, goodness, his good fortune, and benefits to some, he could eliminate envy…. [H]e believed that he could overcome those remaining men who opposed him out of envy without any disturbances, violence, and uproar. He did not know that time waits for no one, goodness is not enough, fortune changes, and ill will finds no gift that will placate it.35

In a certain sense, it may be said that Americans today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, agree with Aron in criticizing Europe’s loss of “historical vitality.” Indeed, it appears to be one of the great differences between America and Europe. This disparity among members of the same civilization is a remarkable fact, since Aron himself, in the 1970s, was becoming increasingly apprehensive for America’s own loss of “historical vitality.” Aron asked: “Faced with an increasingly powerful and militant Soviet Union, do the Americans still have the same resolution they did thirty years ago?”36 In the 1970s both Europe and America seemed to be on the path of “decadence,” although in different degrees. This means that in the last thirty years great changes occurred in America, if not in Europe. Europe, both the “Old” and the “New,” still stands for more or less the same abstract principles that America also shares; both have more or less the same strategic interests. That is why, in spite of everything, America and Europe are still allies, not enemies. But Americans tend to see Europeans, at least the “Old” Europeans, as lacking in virtù, or in resolve to act. If one looks at both sides of the Atlantic dispassionately, it is easily noticed that American self-confidence in respect to the willingness and ability to rise up to the challenge of its enemies is in much better shape than Europe’s. One sees the virtue of patriotism being cultivated in America in a way that astonishes many Europeans. But patriotism is precisely that quality which makes concrete citizens out of men. Patriotism deepens the distinction between the citizen and the stranger, especially if the stranger is identified as an enemy. It is in need when the occasion for collective action arises and when sacrifices are demanded. Patriotism is one of those “ideas or prejudices that hold a community together”; it cannot lose its strength without undermining the “capacity for

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collective action.”37 On the other hand, Europeans tend to denounce America’s so-called virtù as plain hybris bred by excessive power. Europeans tend to see America’s self-assertion, not as a sign of “historical vitality”—which would be tantamount to admitting their own inferiority—but as a dangerous form of collective selfishness coupled with an incomprehensible thirst for power. To Europeans, patriotism is much more ambivalent a virtue than it would appear to Americans. Be that as it may, it is difficult not to recognize that Europe wishes to dismiss the need for virtù in a way that America does not. In this particular sense, it may be said that the America of today is better prepared than Europe to fight off “decadence.” The loss of “historical vitality” has an immediate political consequence, which is the loss of resoluteness, or the ability to choose decidedly. According to Machiavelli, “the worst quality that republics have is irresoluteness, so whatever course of action they take, they do of necessity; and any good that happens to be done to them they do out of necessity and not out of their wisdom.”38 In politics, as in life, there is no such thing as a non-choice; even when we refuse to choose we are already choosing. But Machiavelli was trying to warn us that the tendency not to choose, or delaying choice until there is no alternative, is fatal. Sometimes we hate the exclusiveness of a given choice, that is, the fact that by deciding on a given course of action one excludes other possible courses of action. In this case, according to Machiavelli, the worst to be done is to try to have it both ways, that is, to try to come up with an irresolute course of action that apparently does not exclude other ends. But to decide thus is just another manifestation of irresoluteness. One recalls Aron’s admonition of Europe’s policy during the 1970s of remaining America’s allies and engaging the Soviet Union in a friendly relationship. One could say in a Machiavellian way that Europe’s policy could only incur the suspicion of its ally and the scorn of its enemy; the former was beginning to lose its trust and the latter would never feel respect towards countries in which a structural weakness could be detected.39 Decisions of this sort, Machiavelli would say, “arise either from weakness of courage and armed forces or from the ill will of those who have to decide.”40 Machiavelli famously recommended a remedy for the “renewal” of political communities threatened by “decadence.” According to him, a republic “has to be taken back frequently towards its beginnings/principles.” Machiavelli wished to indicate the need for a polity to be taken back toward its “origins” in order to accomplish its own renewal. To be taken back to its “origins” or “beginnings/principles” means to remember the good things incorporated in each polity at its “origins,” and that became inscribed as “principles,” and then reenact that remembrance. Moreover, Machiavelli emphasized that, in order to fight off “corruption” or “decadence,” the return to the principio must mean the regaining of the awareness of danger. Because the memory of danger dies out, it has to be recovered politically. Otherwise, forgetful men will become “idle” men.41 Does contemporary Europe need to be taken back toward its principio

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in order to regain “historical vitality” or virtù? America, it seems, is more willing to be periodically taken back to its principio, namely to the principles of its Founding. But Europe is more ambivalent toward its past, among other reasons because its past is much more ambivalent than America’s. According to this Machiavellian rationale, contemporary America seems to retain more easily its capacity for “renewal” than Europe. Europeans are more ambivalent than Americans with regard to the things worthy of being remembered and “renewed.” But Machiavelli makes Europeans despair, for in order to proceed to a return to its principio, a community, or at least some of its citizens, must already possess some virtù. So Europe seems to be trapped between its lack of virtù and the lack of will and ability to overcome its loss of virtù. Because Europe lacks virtù it has little or no “historical vitality,” and, at the same time and for the same reason, it denies itself the remedies to regain “historical vitality.” For many people, the loss of virtù may seem no great loss; it may even appear to be a sign of moral “progress.” After all, we all have renounced heroic politics for a long time. Aron, a thinker of impeccable liberal and democratic credentials, knew that democracy is the only regime that “confesses,” or rather, that “proclaims that the history of states is and ought to be written not in verse but in prose.”42 In Aron’s thought, this liberal-democratic trait is an immeasurably precious antidote against lyrical or literary politics. It is an important element of soberness in politics, which is a realm of human activity where the interference of “poetry” and “lyrical exaltations” necessarily generates catastrophic effects. But, as Aron argued so many times, liberal-democratic politics is always threatened. The freedoms that our civilization proudly claims need to be defended in order for them to be enjoyed. Freedom needs virtù. However, Europe in the 1970s was “reduced to the enjoyment of its own well-being and freedoms,” since it was “incapable of defending itself” and had “no great plan in common.” Above all, Europe (and also America) was described as a “hedonistic” society, that is, a society of “self-centered enjoyment.” In this sense, “hedonistic” society is a society whereby individuals devote themselves completely to the private enjoyment of their pleasures and pursue their own conceptions of happiness. But because such a society tends to become obsessed with the present moment and “loses interest in the future,” Aron thought that it thereby “condemns itself to death.” In spite of being the motherland of historicism, Europe seems to live in what could be called an “eternal present”: It feels uncomfortable with its past and stands in an indifferent relationship with its future. Ironically, Europe’s common consciousness is averse to historical reason whenever it has to face its most urgent challenges. The life in the “eternal present” becomes more fully revealed as the life of the individual enclosed in himself or, in other words, the self-sufficient life in the pursuit of one’s incommensurable conception of happiness. Lost in the absolute moment of the present, Europe asks of someone who questions its capacity for renewal: Why do we have to supply ourselves with the resources necessary for renewal? What is there to renew? In view of what should

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this putative renewal be accomplished? These questions become transparent only from the point of view of historical reason. But historical reason is contradictory with life entrenched in the “eternal present.” Hence, the questions remain unanswered. Moreover, they risk becoming unintelligible. A total morality of pleasure and individual happiness, with no regard for “civic virtues” puts, in Aron’s words, “survival in doubt.”43 Thus understood, “hedonistic” life seems to play the same role in Aron’s concerns as “idleness” plays in Machiavelli’s thought. “Idleness” is the condition of men who are incapable of virtù. An easy life without some political effort to create habits of sacrifice and duty breeds “idleness.” In order to balance the tendency for “idleness” generated by too easy circumstances, other sets of circumstances have to be politically created in order to counter those malign effects.44 “Idle” men are effeminate men; they are easy prey to enemies and tyrants.45 Virtù is the opposite of “idleness.” Whereas “idleness” makes men weak, virtù makes them good defenders of freedom. “Idleness,” then, makes the defense of freedom impossible.46 And this is precisely Aron’s point. A radically individualistic and hedonistic society not only makes increasingly painful the acceptance of “civic virtues,” but it creates a strongly apolitical environment for human existence. Civic duties, which imply some sacrifice of the self-centered enjoyment of private pleasures, are a reminder that men are also citizens, and that they must be “ready to fight in order to conserve the opportunity to enjoy their pleasures and their happiness.” “Civic virtues,” “civic duties,” and “civic traditions” are an indispensable moral equipment to allow men to become genuine citizens. They are part and parcel of the psychological and moral conditions “required to safeguard the chances for the pursuit of happiness so passionately desired by everyone.” Europe risks becoming, not a political community, which presupposes an understanding of what is common, which presupposes a common good pursued through some form of “collective action,” but a collection of private individuals, bearers of rights with no duties attached besides the obvious one of paying high taxes. If Europe, said Aron, had become a radically “hedonistic” and “individualistic” society, then “we are both brilliant and decadent.”47 Either “hedonistic” society integrates some measure of “civic” consciousness, which is a way of referring to the assimilation of the perception of danger, or it will fall. As Machiavelli said, “a people completely permeated by corruption cannot live free at all.”48 In other words, a decadent people cannot defend its freedoms for very long. Even the Romans in the end “grew sure of their freedom and thought they no longer had any enemies to fear.”49 As I have mentioned, many people will not regret the loss of virtù. They will consider that it is Europe’s sole moral triumph to live according to other principles or standards. Some Europeans may believe that to think exclusively in terms of “human rights” and “equality” is enough in order to think politically. But that would be their mistake: One should not, like Léon Blum before

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the Second World War, “confuse an abdication with the sign of a new world.”50 In the conditions of modern democracy, obsession with equality is not only “contrary to the survival of a liberal-spirited society,” but it is also conducive to hostility to the political order as such.51 This passion for equality is strengthened by an intellectual vogue that seems to be a reaction to “the madness of Hitler’s racism.” As an ideology, it is an extreme response to political extremism of a different variety. In our times, the voice of extreme equality rises up against the brute ideology of extreme inequality. As ideologies, both are blind in the face of constant facts. In the case of the ideology of equality one witnesses the “forgetting that the inequality of individual gifts is the least contestable of all facts.”52 The obsession with equality forgets that in modern society the relation between equality and hierarchy is dialectical. Modern society puts itself under two great imperatives: to maximize production and to accomplish equality among individuals. Equality is the “supreme norm,” but the other purpose of conquering and mastering nature renews the need for hierarchy and discipline. On the other hand, modern society is still a political society. Now, the political problem is founded on “two constant facts”: the physical and intellectual inequality among individuals and the necessity of “discipline in collective action or existence.”53 Thus, obsessive concern with equality is a (conscious or unconscious) form of denial of the conditions for the accomplishment of the tasks that modern democratic—that is, egalitarian—society sets for itself. But because some of those conditions are common to all decent political orders, one may say that the obsession with equality goes against the grain not only of modern society’s demands, but also of every political community. But there is another obsession shared by both Americans and Europeans: the obsession of “the need to defend human rights.” Aron read this obsession as another means to stop thinking politically, as a way to avoid the political, to escape from it. To think solely in terms of human rights is to avoid the typical political reasoning of examining which political regime best protects human rights.54 To think solely in terms of human rights is an expression of that desire for immediacy so dear to modern democratic societies. On this particular subject, Pierre Manent has been one of the most profound writers. It is probably no coincidence that he was also a student of Aron’s. According to Manent, the reigning understanding of equality and human rights in modern democracy makes the political order resemble the state of nature. If we take what the several conceptions of the state of nature had in common, we conclude that the state of nature can be defined by a “state of independence, freedom, and equality.” But modern democratic man wants to be independent, free, and equal. He desires the “immediacy of experience,” or to put it more rigorously, he desires the immediacy of his particular, individual experience. He wants to be free and equal in order to be able to live the experiences of his particularity with the minimum amount of mediation. Modern democratic society seems to exist solely to protect this individual desire. Any other ends or purposes that go

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beyond the protection of this desire are interpreted as being unnecessary and illegitimate demands on individual existence. That is why modern democratic man affirms his “independence” against the political order. “Humanitarian” politics, with its exclusive emphasis on equality and rights, is a kind of politics that wants to make the political disappear.55 The contractarian variant of liberalism, both the old and the new, is oblivious of the fact that it is not the agreement of individual wills that generates society. In fact, any agreement of individual wills presupposes the existence of society, of something common in which human beings develop the necessary abilities and habits for agreements to occur. And contractarian liberalism avoids the question of knowing where the objects of agreement come from. Society, understood as a common historical space where the contents of life gain substance and consistence, is essentially the living together of men who relate to each other through speech, and who make this living together a subject of their speech. Aron thought that particularly in Europe this apolitical conception of democratic society was reaching a very dangerous point. “Europe must remember that individuals in a democracy are at once private persons and citizens,” and that “our civilization, to the extent that it is a liberal one, is a citizen’s society and not simply one of consumers or producers.”56 Before the Second World War, Aron wrote that Europe “recognizes the particularities of expressive creations and of individual existences, at the moment when it threatens to destroy unique values.”57 Aron showed us that this problem is not accidental. It is derived from a certain conception of human life, including political life, congenial to Europe’s temper. But he also demonstrated that this problem is not a historically neutral question; it is a threat to some of Europe’s most precious goods. As Aron saw it, the West at the beginning of the 1980s faced a most subtle challenge: The “danger” came, not so much from the “totalitarian temptation,” but rather from the “exorbitance of liberal ambitions,” and the “impetuosity of egalitarian demands.”58 The problem was (and is) both political and intellectual. For political thought that rests exclusively on the concern with equality and rights is really not political thought; for it is a way of thinking that avoids the political, and examines individual existence without concern for individuals’ relations to each other. Most importantly for our purposes here, this way of thinking is a way to avoid facing danger. It constructs an ideal of “citizenship” (conceding that the word makes sense in this context) that abstracts from the political conditions of human existence and wants to make this abstraction a concrete reality. It is a way of thinking that forbids the question concerning danger. Aron would never forget what his former teacher, Léon Brunschvicg, had told him: “Fortunately my political opinions have no consequences.” In these words, Aron read a symptom of weakness, or maybe even of intellectual duplicity. To Aron there was no alternative: “[I]t is easy to think about politics, but on one condition: recognition of and submission to its rules.”59

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

Ortega y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995), 102. Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism,” Interpretation 26 (Spring 1999): 365. Cf. Raymond Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, trans. Stephen Cox (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996), xxviii. Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, 86. Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 452. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, xxvii–xxviii. Raymond Aron, La révolution introuvable: Réflexions sur les événements de Mai (Paris: Fayard, 1968), 15, 45. Cf. Daniel J. Mahoney, “Introduction” to the Transaction edition, In Defense of Decadent Europe, ix. Aron, Memoirs, 29. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III:3. Cf. Max Weber, Le Savant et le Politique, ed. Raymond Aron (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1959), 170. Note the example of the “pacifist” described by Weber. François Guizot, La démocratie en France (Paris: Victor Masson, 1849), 142. Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, trans. James McIntosh and Marie McIntosh (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 242–43. Cf. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, xxv. Aron, Memoirs, 424. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, xxvii. Aron, Memoirs, 424. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, 263. Aron, Thinking Politically, 245. Cf. Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois, XXI:20. Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1993), 60–61, and Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 298, 609. Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 72, 120, 121, 75. Cf. ibid., 262. Ibid., 194. See ibid., 273. Aron also denounced the tendency of Machiavellian “pessimism” for giving in to the “temptations of conservatism,” as well as its propensity for constructing a base image of man incompatible with his essential dignity. Aron acknowledged (ibid., 82) that Machiavelli’s thought was directly responsible for some of the traits exhibited by “absolute” or extremist Machiavellianism. In particular, Aron was very critical of a philosophy that does not recognize ulterior dimensions of human life other than the political. In Machiavelli’s theory “what is essential is not only the amoral consideration of political means, nor the open suggestion of the necessity of immoral means, but the extension of pragmatism to the whole of human reality, thereby reduced to the status of means. Means in view of what? Of the social order, in itself a means of power. But this power of states, towards what does it tend? Having no other end besides itself, does not politics become meaningless?” Ibid., 391–92. Ibid., 430–35.

The Threat of Danger: Decadence and Virtù 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

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Ibid., 394–95. Ibid., 267. Machiavelli, Il Príncipe, XV. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:3. Ibid., I:2. Il Principe, XVIII, VI; Discorsi, II:13, 29. Cf. Discorsi, III:36. Ibid., III:30. See also III:3. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, preface to the American edition, xix. Aron, Memoirs, 423. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:38. Cf. ibid., II:14. Ibid., II:15. Ibid., III:1, 22. The Italian word principio is somewhat ambiguous. Aron, “Introduction” to Max Weber, Le Savant et le Politique, 23. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, xx, 251, and Thinking Politically, 247. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:1, 3. Ibid., I:6. Ibid., II:2. Aron, Thinking Politically, 247. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:16. Ibid., I:18. Aron, Memoirs, 98. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, 246. Aron, Peace and War, 753. Cf. Raymond Aron, Les désillusions du progrès: Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), xxiii, 21, 14, 10. Aron, Thinking Politically, 241–43. Pierre Manent, Cours Familier de Philosophie Politique (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 227, 335–36. Aron, Thinking Politically, 248. Quoted in Aron, Memoirs, 81. Aron, In Defense of Decadent Europe, note H, 284. Aron, Memoirs, 96.

12 The Anglo-American Vision of Raymond Aron: British Principles and American Practices Revisited Irving Louis Horowitz A standard item that appears on applications for senior professorial status in the United States and the United Kingdom is a request for referees or other information to assist in evaluation of the international reputation of the aspiring candidate. For the most part, this is a pro forma query, one easily satisfied with an occasional essay in a foreign journal or a monograph translated into a foreign language. The gulf between the actual global importance of a scholar and contrived importance is often great. Indeed, reputation is a tricky concept to start with. Adding international significance multiplies the difficulties. The international role of a particular scholar is difficult to measure because more is involved than the scholar’s quality of writing or thinking. To be sure, every once in a great while, a figure achieves such special notoriety or fame that he or she need not leave a hometown to be viewed as a figure of transcendent importance. But such figures, usually drawn from physics, philosophy, and literature, are rare, few, and far between. Figures like Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant are not everyday people. Genius is rare. Academic talent is commonplace. Giordano Bruno called itinerant philosophers “cheap as herrings in the market place.” The more typical path to gaining world stature, in what is already an atypical group, involves elements of personal travel and travail. Such individuals become part of a world picture as a result of circumstances far beyond their career management. Fame in one generation may become notoriety or even loss of interest in the next generation. We are, after all, considering how a community of scholars views a specific person, and not the conventional self-evaluation to which many academics are ready and willing to fall prey. 243

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Figures of national importance who are deemed enemies of the state and sent into exile head the list of those for whom international reputation is a prospect. To this must be added those individuals who elect to go abroad—one step ahead of the gendarmes—in times of war and invasion. To this group one might add people who elect to go beyond their native lands in search of new positions, cultural affinities, and linguistic familiarities. This may seem to be an eccentric digression in introducing the subject of the impact of Raymond Aron in an English-speaking world. But I think not. For with Aron we have a rare and remarkable confluence of circumstances that add up to an unusual scholar who merits the international status he achieved. I should like to devote the remainder of this essay to explaining how this came about, and why Aron’s international standing has suffered little diminution over time or space. Indeed, his reputation has grown considerably, even if those who claim his mantle offer little evidence of agreement among them as to what the master had in mind. I. Aron was one of those French intellectuals who studied and taught abroad, first in Germany in the early 1930s, then in England in 1940 with the de Gaulle-led government in exile, and for a brief period after World War Two in America—specifically at Harvard University. Many of his views on political principles—ranging from nationalism, the cult of personality, the Jewish Question, and the type of policies that would best suit France in a postwar Europe—were formulated during his London period in a series of articles for the monthly publication, La France libre. And while the emphasis in this publication was clearly on the French condition, Aron’s living and working in Great Britain during the war years had an obvious and profound influence on his thinking. He acknowledged the titular leadership of General Charles de Gaulle of the Free French forces, but Aron’s measured but unmistakable emphasis on the dangers of Bonapartism and Boulangism, and their affinities with fascism, had more than a touch of British historiography behind it. This does not imply that Aron had a love affair with English mores and manners—he definitely did not. Michael Curtis has a remarkable appreciation of both the French and British traditions in intellectual history as well as international affairs. He states that de Gaulle considered Aron one among several advocates of the French cause as seen from abroad. Aron was not the principal person; that role was reserved for René Cassin, who later became vice president of the nation and also head of the Higher Court of Arbitration. De Gaulle was hardly an advocate of Jewish causes, and perhaps was closer to the anti-Dreyfusard theme that French nationalism and Jewish commitment were inimical. But during the London exile period, French Jews were important to the lifeblood of the Free French cause.1 In addition to Aron, there was Emile Herzog, Georges Boris, Leo Hamon, and Pierre Mendes-France. J. R. Tournoux, in Pétain and De Gaulle, testily referred to Paris in London as “France of the metro and the synagogue.” But there is

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little evidence of French Jews in exile doing religious devotionals or theological exercises.2 Indeed, there is precious little evidence that they took tea at four in the afternoon either. It would be more accurate to speak of Aron during this period as belonging to the France of the French tradition in sociology, especially the work of such distinguished assimilated Jews as Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, and Léon Brunschvicg. The influence of Léon Blum, and the popular front socialist government of the mid-1930s, was a factor in Aron’s thinking yet to be fully explored, but that on the basis of simple comparison in policies and positions, one can hardly overlook as an influence a French figure who was both socialist and Jewish. The purpose of this exercise is not a review of Aron on the Jewish Question or Israeli-Arab struggles—that task has been well done by Aron himself. Rather, it is to indicate that the deep background of Aron’s special relationship with the quite distinct Anglo-American communities did not begin as a latter-day response to the triumph of the West and the emergence of these nations to prominence, but rather as a quotidian fact in the life of Aron during the British wartime period. The exile period in England for Aron corresponded to one of high national fervor tinged by a sense of betrayal and defeat by its military and political leadership. The cause of French liberation was central, and it drove out extraneous troublesome considerations, such as how to rally the French people behind de Gaulle and against the false Vichy option of Marshall Pétain and his collaboration with the reactionary credo of Action Française. The struggle against Nazism made all other issues subsidiary if not secondary. By the same token, the end of the war, and the restoration of France as a sovereign power, served to reintroduce the idea of choice: of being French and Jewish, of being a nationalist and internationalist, of being a citizen of the world or an advocate of Europe as an integrating culture. Aron was plainly troubled by “Gaullist nationalism,” and an Axis alliance that even in death embraces sought “to forget rather than understand.” In what for Aron was a universe of false options, and demands of faith that he could not possibly meet, he increasingly elected to identify his activities with a Europe struggling to be re-born in consciousness as it was with the Marshall Plan in the economy. He became one of those much-feared “cosmopolitans” often despised by totalitarians of the Left and barely tolerated by the temporarily subdued, but no less benign, nationalists of the Right in the postwar epoch. II. It is important to distinguish Aron’s different approaches to the United Kingdom and the United States. It is clear that Aron granted high marks to the British tradition in political liberalism and social democracy. England emerged from the war, victorious but wounded. Its parliamentary institutions were intact, but its imperial pretensions had been shattered once and for all in India and

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other colonial possessions. Aron could be far more critical of the United States as the next imperial pretender, while holding as a model the British approach to foreign policy and domestic affairs—based on a benevolent welfare model. Again, this was something from which the United States remained remote. The long tradition in France of seeing Americans as wonderful savages with dangerously hegemonic intentions, a position embraced by such polar opposite types as Alexis de Tocqueville and Georges Sorel, clearly rubbed off on Aron. So while the phrase Anglo-American rolls off the tongue easily—perhaps too readily—from the very start of the Second World War period Aron distinguished the inner workings of the Allied cause, and clearly preferred British reserve to the American robust style; not so much in cultural style as in political consequences.3 But Aron’s concerns, as expressed in his major study Peace and War, was hardly confined to Montesquieu’s aphorism in The Spirit of the Laws, that “nations ought to do, in peace, the most good to each other, and, in war, the least harm possible, without detriment to their genuine interests.” Indeed, in the present context, Aron felt that such a credo “is further from practice now than it has ever been”—adding “it has probably never been very close.” In its place, Aron saw dependence on a bipolar world, or at least a world in which Clausewitz’s formula of “war is the continuation of policy by other means” is joined at the hip by “policy as the continuation of war by other means.” In that harsh reading of post-World War Two events and structures, England is viewed as a great nation that was, a nation that “obtained or extorted” legal and diplomatic advantages by being part of a winning coalition, but in fact more a nation of prestige than of power. Indeed, since Aron saw France as being in a similar, if not the same, boat, a certain sympathy for a politics of politesse, and a series of diplomatic relations based upon noblesse oblige obtains. At least a part of Aron lived in the moral universe of Montesquieu, even if the harsh glare of the empirical universe of Clausewitz was very much in the foreground.4 At the time of his major writings, the power of the United States and the Soviet Union seemed incontestable: in every sphere—from demographic to diplomatic. So the language reserved for the United States was definitely influenced by Aron’s belief in bipolarity as the operational codebook of the age. Both major powers were termed to be hegemonic, imperial, aggressive, coercive, and interventionist (for Aron, spheres of influence rather than legitimate interests became dominant). On such premises, one might argue that in a unipolar environment, in which there is one rather than two major military, and to a lesser extent, economic forces, the same harsh rhetoric does not so much disappear, but is simply reserved for the surviving power by the rulers and ruled of every other nation. As a consequence, those who accepted Aron’s outlook were, and remain, compelled to look at the antinomy between politics and morality for some sense of operational accountability. And so it has come to pass, that those who see issues in strictly geopolitical terms view Aron as a

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source for sharp critiques of the American Project—such as it may be at the time. Whereas those who see issues in ethical or legitimating terms, in which matters of the rule of law, custom, liberality, rules of evidence, toleration of dissent—and the usual trappings that are part of a free society—can with equal merit claim Aron as their defender. The harsh, unrelenting assaults by Aron on the totalitarian nature of communist societies, especially the USSR, make it evident that whatever reservations Aron had about the United States, at the moment of choosing sides, he stood with the Americans against the Soviets. That so much of Peace and War is aimed to prevent such an ultimate struggle may be gratifying to the enemies of totalitarians (and galling to its advocates), but it hardly permits a casual slippage over into the idea of Aron as some sort of early supporter of the premises of American principles—political or cultural.5 That clearly was not part of Aron’s agenda. I would dare to conjecture that Aron’s bifurcated vision of the post-World War Two world was strongly reinforced by a psychological preference for a West Europe that lost heavily in two world wars to military and ideological forces greater than even he had imagined as a younger man. The fall from grace of the British Empire made Aron feel keenly positive about potential English expressions of cosmopolitan identification with the New Europe. This was a far more easily accepted position than arguing on behalf of the American belief in its singularity of Western purpose in the postwar struggles against totalitarianism. And so in the depths of Aron’s theoretical construct in his thinking of who and how best to address and deal with the English-speaking intellectual class, he gravitated far more readily to Encounter in London, than say, Partisan Review or Commentary in the United States. The very fact that Melvin Lasky, its senior editor, for much of the time resided in Germany as well as in England, was important. Indeed, Lasky’s Jewish commitments were of a similar broadly grounded non-religious sort. Both men were more comfortable with the cosmopolitan approach than with the more militant posture of American Jews—even those with whom Aron shared a general political belief in liberal values, and anticommunist postures.6 This is the larger, if all too brief, picture of Aron’s distinction between principles and practices he found within the Anglo-American tradition. It is time now to turn to the exact relationships Aron formed as found in correspondence and related books of his that addressed that strange world across the English Channel and then the Atlantic Ocean with which he was both fascinated and perhaps, as a proper French citizen, out of sorts or at least out of sync. I would emphasize once again that these remarks are not intended to provide a complete overview of the life and work of Raymond Aron, but only one thin sliver of that career—one that pertains to how well his ideas and influences have traveled, and just what it means to be a figure of international repute. It must be said plainly that Aron’s career is hardly a blueprint that can be repeated. Claude Helvétius was fond of declaring that great events make for great men. To that

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one must add every once in a while a great man makes for great events—not in the Thomas Carlyle sense of dynastic impact on ordinary events. Rather, individuals can take a mass of material, and give them shape and coherence by fashioning a unified vision of a world that would otherwise appear chaotic if not entirely random. This, Aron did. Perhaps the central essay of Aron’s on the subject of the Anglo-American connection is not specifically on those two English-speaking nations, but rather on Western Europe as a canvas upon which British principles and American systems and values play out. Aron saw Marxism as essentially a Western heresy, a search for a theory of mass freedom that emanated from English, German, and French sources that gravitated to the Soviet Union where it became a practice of mass totalitarianism, what he called “Sovietism.” The highpoint of that confrontation came in an essay unfortunately translated as “My Defense of Our Decadent Europe.” I say unfortunate, because the sense of irony from the French original title (Plaidoyer pour l’Europe decadente) is lacking. This is Aron’s most vigorous defense of Western Europe as a whole, against the Soviet empire as a whole. It flowed from a long gestation period, one in which Aron made the trek “From Marx to Solzhenitsyn.” It remains a masterpiece of the essay form, and a highlight in his own effort to reach the English-speaking world in the pages of Encounter—which in point of fact published the essay at the same time as its appearance in France.7 The communist world, according to Aron, produced a series of contradictions that led it to the brink of economic disaster and possibly political exhaustion. While he did not prognosticate the end of the USSR, his analysis of the variety of contradictions built into the Soviet system are such that his thinking has since become part and parcel of the analysis of that system’s change. Even the loosening of controls, the increased trade with the West, the demands of technology, all experienced by the post-Stalinist leadership, led to prospects of decay if not dissolution. The European world, for all of its backsliding, its socialist and social welfare flirtations from Spain to Sweden, exposed the Soviet regime in ideology as well as economy. It is the progressive substitution of planning for the market, and of collective for private ownership, that ultimately defeats any prospects of universal appeal or even international victory for communism. It is precisely the “decadence” of Europe—its openness to the new, its appeal to individual conscience—that serves as the basis of Aron’s “defense.” In an extremely well crafted, one might say tormented essay, which later was to became a full-scale book, Aron concludes with an explosive defense of Western Europe against the tyrannies of the Soviet Union. He reminds his core audience, “Western Europeans dare not seek salvation where they too would only find slavery. The cause is not yet lost or won. The struggle between the totalitarian temptation and liberal ideals continues and will continue as far ahead as we can see. The liberties we enjoy in the West have the fragility of humanity’s most precious acquisitions.” Aron’s reference to “decadent Europe”

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is predicated on its liberty; even more telling, it is not based on the futuristic appeals of socialism, but on the past and present values of democracy. It was this somewhat unfashionable vision that Aron addressed to Europeans, and above all, to his readers in England, who perhaps better than most others, could appreciate the implications of a schism between East and West in Europe that had to be healed before the broader, international worth of the open society could be achieved. III. In a little recollected essay dating from 1954, “Nations and Ideologies,” Aron provided his sense of England in the overall scheme of the postwar epoch. He begins with a statement that seems no less true now, a half century after originally written, than it was in the far more problematic period directly after the Second World War. “Two facts dominate the British situation: first, the prevailing democratic institutions are unchallenged, and second, socialism (which in Britain has never been doctrinaire or Marxist) represents the present rather than the future. It is a fact rather than a program.” Aron goes on to note that England is a consensus society, not a command system.8 “Agreement upon the general lines of foreign policy and upon the community’s fundamental ‘way of life’ is almost unanimous.” And he concludes the point with a characteristic whimsy: “If and when the British are in error, they err resolutely and all, or nearly all, together.” One might argue that the demographic changes in the United Kingdom since these words were written serve to mitigate the consensus, but in truth, such newer ethnic and racial elements remain largely outside the decision-making stream. Aron’s portrait of the United Kingdom is clearly sympathetic, but not uncritical. While he cites the benefits of redistributive wealth, he notes that the rich get poorer but the poor do not seem to get any better off. The “victims” of Labour Party control are “the salaried middle class and its intellectuals, upon whom cultural continuity and scientific progress depend.” It is somewhat reminiscent of present-day attitudes of British subjects today to read Aron’s remarks on their sense of double standards: They “are indulgent to the cruelties of Russia while implacably condemning any error or folly or infraction of liberty in the United States.” But again, it is the paradox of a people dedicated to Queen and Parliament to view monarchy as standard and sufficient. And with his customary whimsy Aron adds, “In all countries, nationalism works strange paradoxes in the soul of the intellectual.” Like William Hazlitt, in his 1825 Spirit of the Age, Aron saw politics as “a succession of drops, not a stream.” He drew from the British tradition a sense of political life as a series of discrete events rather than a preordained historical blueprint operating behind the backs of men. This did not blind him to the double standards invoked by the British to exonerate their own past follies; he managed to see the weakness of others in such a patronizing form.

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At the time of his own encomium to Aron’s life, another European, Ralf Dahrendorf, was director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. They had in common shared editorial responsibilities for the European Journal of Sociology. Dahrendorf came closest to appreciating the European character of Aron’s thought—not least as a “a lover and friend of England”—something set apart from his being a “friend of the United States.”9 Those latter relations provided for a “difficult friendship, in which admiration and disappointment are intermingled.” As if to underscore the Europeancentered orientation of Aron, Lasky reminded the readers of Encounter that Aron went to Cologne in 1930 as a lecturer and from there to the Institut Français. Aron cemented his German connection in his writings on Clausewitz and Weber. Indeed, Dahrendorf agreed that Aron, “in his wide sphere of interest, his combination of analysis and action, commitment and power of understanding, his blend of critical revolt and critical reserve, may be compared in terms of significance with Max Weber.” Apart from the value judgments implicit in this comparison—judgments with which I concur—is this mid-twentiethcentury example of the tug of cultural war, intended to redirect England from an Atlantic Power within the English-speaking union to a European Nation whose economic system and cultural traditions belonged squarely in the heart of the Continent. That struggle continues. Aron clearly saw England as part of the European camp. IV. When we turn to what Aron actually wrote about the United States, it is easy to see how sharply different viewpoints emerge in reading him. The truth is that Aron knew less of the United States than of England, and certainly far less than he knew of Europe as a whole. His differences with de Gaulle and Gaullism as an ideology notwithstanding, something of the Francophile legacy stuck to the bones of Aron’s thinking. His central work on the subject of the United States was The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945–1973. It appeared in 1974, clearly dismaying those for whom Aron was the carrier of the anti-totalitarian, indeed anti-Soviet torch. At the same time, Americans who harbored a strong attachment for French Enlightenment traditions were quite pleased by this effort. Stanley Hoffman referred to this as a “lucid and wideranging study, which will leave the defenders of every orthodoxy unhappy, the readers starved for simple answers hungry, and those eager for intellectual stimulation satiated.” While Charles Frankel, who authored a dissertation on the French Enlightenment long before joining the Johnson administration, spoke in equal superlatives of The Imperial Republic: “I know of no other book on the subject which is saner, more worldly yet humane, less intellectually compromising or compromised.”10 It is dangerous in 2006 to read a thirty-year-old book as illustrative of Aron’s overall position, since it is based on his reading of American actions in Vietnam.

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The struggles in Iraq are not the same as those in Vietnam. The conditions in the world as a whole are different, and the causes, sources, and consequences of conflict today are not what they were thirty years ago. Finally, the players themselves are cut from a different cloth. That said, in evaluating Aron fairly and properly, it would be a gross mistake to see him as some herald of European conservatism. Quite the reverse, what made him odd, even eccentric, was his continuing championing of the ideas of classical liberalism. He was more like Arthur Schlesinger of the days of The Vital Center, than a latter-day Russell Kirk. It is true that Tocqueville loomed large in Aron’s theorizing about America and its executive powers and federalist system. But from start to finish his thinking was centrist: against the Lenin-Hobson theory of imperialism, and no less, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. He developed a political, and not an economic rationale for intervention for the sake of the protection of foreign nations-states in a Cold War atmosphere. That this book satisfied few Americans either in the policy world or in the academic conservative world should occasion little surprise. Indeed, there was a good deal of waffling in Aron’s effort: The Marshall Plan in Europe “may be legitimately credited to American diplomacy.” Then again, “in requiring Great Britain to restore the convertibility of the pound prematurely, American diplomacy committed an abuse of power and an error.” The United States did not basically change its policy in Europe; if there was any change in that policy, “it was in the right direction.” America was capable of providing generous foreign aid to the Third World, but also of perpetuating warfare in that same Third World. Still, Aron believed that “the fact remains that the Vietnam War tore apart and impaired the image of the American nation.” In some measure, the problem resides in the title: Words like “imperial” and “republic” are hardly axiomatic associations. In his Preface to the American edition of The Imperial Republic Aron makes plain his view that the “dualism” between imperialist designs and democratic structures inheres in the American system itself.11 Aron develops a sophisticated, carefully textured view of American foreign policy, one that is based on distinguishing economic imperialism of the older European varieties, and political imperialism, which amounts to the expression of a compatible if not parallel system of governance allied to American interests. He is careful to state that his purpose is neither “to justify nor condemn, but rather to provide a realist framework that is something between a nationalinterest approach at one end and a moral centered approach at the other.” Aron shows great respect for the writings of Stanley Hoffmann and George Ball, two strong opponents to the Vietnam War at the time. But he also is fully aware of the literature to the Left and Right of his views. Within America, the neo-Marxist efforts of Gabriel Kolko and Harry Magdoff carried little weight, but they provided the sort of imposing foil that permitted Aron to stand tall against the more impressive challenges posed by Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger.

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For Aron as for many other intellectuals, the war in Vietnam was simply a “mistake.” But unlike some of those critics, Aron remained convinced that America possessed a democratic core. Whether this dilemma between imperialist ambitions and democratic values was a fatal weakness in American foreign policy or a fatal flaw in the thinking of Aron about the United States and its policies is not something that can be resolved here. In this sort of retrospective, it is important to distinguish Aron’s critique of American foreign policy after the Second World War, and especially in the Vietnam War, from any defense of the communist regime of Ho Chi Minh. There was never any doubt as to Aron’s plainspoken contempt for communist rule. He has a singular antipathy for all forms of communism, wherever it was preached or practiced. That this simple point even needs to be highlighted is indicative of a conflict within the bowels of the American experience, that not only divided its people on the worth of the war, but also on the worth of America as such. Not a few prominent individuals were quite frankly dedicated to the victory of the North Vietnamese as a fit and proper lesson to an arrogant American power. Aron would have none of that. While his pain was evident in his unusual excursion into American affairs, his belief in the American experience as a positive development in the politics of the West was unshakeable. His frequent references to Tocqueville and Democracy in America reflect a sense of cultural continuity. While retaining its critical edge, it was also a bemused reflection on a new nation that carried forth the premises of the Enlightenment arguably with greater ability than the French soil that nourished it to begin with. In a separate essay from the same period, immediately following the Vietnam War, Aron clarified a few points left open by his book. First, he saw the European and the American economies as so “interwoven” that it is really difficult to separate them. He saw multinationals, or what we now call globalization, as a genuine economic fusion on a world scale, and not as an American imposition. He saw the United States less as a nation than as an “island continent.” By this he meant a sense of America predicated on autonomy and even invulnerability. But he also reviewed the economic limitations of America, and predicted “the quarter-of-a century of American predominance is coming to an end.” That said, the United States has political, moral, and economic interests in maintaining its close ties with Europe, “which belongs to the same type of civilization as their own.”12 In his interviews, as in his larger works, Aron reveals much of the situation at the time, but also a close analytic distinction between America as leader in the Western democratic world and America as a new imperialism, dedicated to sending forth democracy from above around the world. Whatever one wishes to make of this distinction, it is evident that on the hundredth anniversary of Aron’s birth, the issue of which way for the United States is still an agenda item, perhaps more so now than at the three-quarter pole of the last century. Aron’s focus was the emergence of a new grand alliance, one dedicated to the

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removal of the Soviet communist threat, if not the communist project as such. His was a world in which the threat of Moslem fundamentalists, jihadists, and terrorists from the Arab world hardly touched his (or any other) radar screen. Aron appreciated the role of the Middle East in world affairs, but more as a supplier or a withholder of oil reserves than as an independent player on the world military scene. There is little point in speculating how Aron would respond to the United States role in the present period. The vocabulary of motives is infinite— penetrating politics no less than persons. He might well have seen the web of treaties and associations extending from Mali to the Philippines cobbled together as an effort to fight global terrorism, as an extension of “imperial design,” or as a reinforcement of America as an “arsenal of democracy.” Aron’s appreciation of the yin of imperialism and the yang of democracy aside, I venture to speculate that his instincts and impulses as a European would have been to oppose United States participation in the war against the Iraq regime of Saddam Hussein, support the American effort to combat international terrorism, and cast grave doubt on the doctrine of democracy from above, or spreading democracy and electoral politics via military means. Aron was a practical man’s theorist, a maker of distinctions not of ideologies. He would in all likelihood have stood with the United States against all forms of fanaticism and certainly against terror as an instrument of national-theological strategies. But he would also have reminded the West that its strength came from an economic system and a political culture of liberal democracy, not a doctrine of hegemonic export or cultural uniformity. From large books to slim essays and brief interviews, what emerges is Aron’s troubling sense of “dualism” within the West as a whole, and specifically within the United States. Anti-totalitarian, pro-democratic regimes, which yet display global ambitions, are hardly an ideal fusion of ideal types. It might be said that the period between the Vietnam War and the Iraqi invasion has only deepened the sense of quandary, or the dualism that has splintered professional policymaking and public opinion alike. It is the fate of great figures to give rise to differences of opinion among those who claim the mantle of the master. It is also that window of opportunity that makes possible new intellectual frames of reference. Aron knew this full well, which is why he speculated little either about distant political systems or even proximate strategies. V. In some special way, the relationship between Melvin Lasky and Raymond Aron was unidirectional. Interest flowed from the former to the latter. This was essentially so on intellectual grounds. Aron rarely spoke of Lasky’s intellectual achievements, preferring to see him as a crucial window of Europe into AngloAmerican affairs. To be sure, in practical, editorial terms, Lasky and Encounter served as an extraordinary vehicle for the dissemination of Aron’s ideas. Not

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only did Lasky avoid tampering with Aron’s prose, he himself bridged many gaps with Aron: They shared knowledge of Germany through Monat. Lasky was an American serving as long-term editor of a British publication—indeed, living in London in permanent exile, as it were. The two shared a belief in the anti-totalitarian mission of the West, a common background in the Jewish tradition and strong secularist characteristics. In other words, Lasky was the hyphen that served as the glue between American postwar eminence and British postcolonial autonomy. Aron knew many American intellectual leaders—Henry Kissinger, Herman Kahn, and Daniel Bell, among others. And he was likewise acquainted with an even larger variety of English academics and politicians. But it was that rare bird, the Mannheim-inspired freishwebende intelligenz, Melvin J. Lasky, with whom he shared sentiments in common and antipathies in even greater commonality. It is therefore appropriate to conclude this brief excursion in the history of ideas with an exchange of perspective on these two friends—now both departed, but forever linked in the common mission of the twentieth century to alert the free world to the threat of totalitarianism and also enlighten Western societies of the prospects for the unfettered conscience and personal choice. Aron had the occasion to write an appreciation in 1980 on Lasky’s sixtieth birthday. His comments spoke not only to his friend but also no less to himself. He began by noting that Lasky’s life in the postwar period was one in which he “devoted the lion’s share of his time and energies to running a review—first Der Monat and then Encounter, and for some years both at once.” Aron goes on to identify Lasky’s “persistence in anti-Sovietism” with his own anticommunism. He added that such “hostility has never turned to obsession. It does not close its eyes. For a review which intends to last, the secret of success is to change, and at the same time to keep faith with itself.” Aron concludes with the hope that Lasky “will long pursue his ministry in the service of freedom, without illusion but without despair.”13 But the closing words were apocryphal, of the sort that identified Lasky as both a product of American life, and an advocate of European policy. We never find out if those final words, “in the autumn of the ‘American Century’ which has lasted no more than twenty five years,” are part of the service to freedom or the consequence of illusion. Four years later, in 1984, Lasky had the sad obligation to speak of the death of his friend, Raymond Aron. He noted some special characteristics of Aron that too easily pass without notice at a time of intense ideological combat. He singled out Aron’s “sly self-mockery” and “wit”—elements that came through in conversation as well as in writing. Lasky said that Aron “has no true successors or counterparts. Even to describe him is a compromise with impossibilities.” He noted that the names of Walter Lippmann, Isaiah Berlin, Alexis de Tocqueville, and William Hazlitt came to mind—but curiously, Lasky did not mention the great social philosophers with whom Aron himself preferred comparison. A certain parochialism entered into Lasky’s appreciation, with fully one third of

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the statement being taken up with the now quite forgotten “Grenada Crisis.” In comparing Lasky’s position with that of Aron, one must conclude that Aron comes off best. Lasky acknowledged that he differs with Aron. “He with stony realism would probably have recognized ‘spheres of influence’ as President Reagan did. Myself, I hanker after collective international effort, by the Commonwealth, by a United Europe, by the Western Alliances, one day perhaps by a reformed United Nations.” It may not have been a “debate” with Aron that Lasky never held, but he did hold it with others in that strange embrace “to safeguard small states from coups d’état or tyrannies.” Indeed it might have been a debate among the Europeans, or it may have been a debate among an American who looked to Europe at a time when a European looked to America for succor and support in the democratic cause.14 Postscript Perhaps nowhere in the corpus of Aron’s writings is the respect for and faith in America better expressed than in his two-volume masterpiece on the European tradition. Main Currents in Sociological Thought opens with a remarkable contrast of ideological versus empirical modes of analysis. While American sociology has moved far from its liberal origins, the sense of the American tradition is well sketched by Aron. In his own experience, sociologists in the United States “never talk about laws of history, first of all because they are not acquainted with them, and next because they do not believe in their existence. Because they are men of intelligence, they would prefer to say that these laws have not been established with any certainty.”15 Continuing in the same vein—in a work dedicated to the European tradition— Aron points out that American social thought “is fundamentally analytical and empirical; it proposes to examine the way of life of individuals in the societies with which we are familiar…. American sociology prefers to explain institutions and structures in terms of the behavior of individuals and of the goals, mental states, and motives which determine the behavior of members of the various social groups.” Aron concludes this paean of praise for American thought by noting “this empirical and analytical sociology is not a state ideology, nor is it a conscious glorification of American society. As a matter of fact, it is carried on for the most part by persons belonging to what is known in the United States as the liberal school of political opinion.”16 And in truth, one could hardly read a postscript on Aron himself that is more on target. For it is this classical liberalism, rather than any confirmed conservative vision, that expresses the Aronian worldview. In its final issue for 2004, the Times Literary Supplement in its Commentary segment notes, “The coming year, 2005, marks the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre. It is hard to think of any writer whose ranking has dropped so sharply, and in so many fields: philosophy, fiction, drama, criticism…. [I]t requires an effort to recall the power exercised by Sartre over the intellectual life of Europe and

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American from the 1940s to the late 1960s.” In true British fashion, the anonymous author concludes, “a stout defense of this centenarian would be useful.” It might be more to the point to see the career of Raymond Aron, who also is now a centenarian in absentia, as moving in a diametrically reverse, or upward pattern since his death. I hope that the reasons for this inversion of fortunes has been made clear, at least in part, by this essay. Aron’s impish aside about Sartre reveals that he believed unquestionably that Sartre’s star would fall in the same meteoric fashion that it had arisen—in relation to Soviet power and student protests. I also imagine that Aron was less certain that his own reputation would be in the ascendancy. That being the case, we are left with something more than the vagaries of reputation—the burnout for those who see the solutions of ideas in the streets, and longevity for those who see the worth of ideas in colleges and universities. At the end of the day, better yet, into the dark long night that awaits us all, Aron deserves the last word—both on his friendly rival Sartre, and on what defines the core distinction between the political ideologue and the social philosopher. “If we must judge societies according to what they are and not according to what they pretend to be, why should the Communist enterprise be defined by its alleged goal rather than by the regimes to which, temporarily at least, it has given birth?” He is unsparing in his assault on Sartre and in so doing makes it clear what distinguishes a liberal, democratic society from an illiberal, anarchistic collection. “The Sartrian consciousness is solitary, self-translucid, and alienated in matter, and as a result of scarcity, each man becomes the enemy of every other.” It bears notice that this critical analysis of an anarchist subtext of existentialism was made when Sartre was still at the height of his reputation. Time may not heal all wounds, but it does reveal what is living and what is dead in the carcass of the twentieth-century remnants, a century that bore witness to British principles without corresponding feasible policies, and no less, an American pragmatism, too often lacking a firm set of principles. But such dilemmas also opened the way to a facile concept of a “New Europe” that offered less a chance of success, than it did open a wedge between Western culture and its enemies. But that is a paper of another sort for another occasion. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Raymond Aron, De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews, intro. Michael Curtis (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004), vii–xxxii. J. R. Tournoux, Pétain and de Gaulle, trans. Oliver Coburn (London: Heinemann, 1966), 206–7. Raymond Aron, “Ideas on the Wing” [on the sixtieth birthday of Melvin J. Lasky], Encounter (January 1980): 12–13. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 58–59, 162–73. Ibid., 780–87.

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Aron, “Ideas on the Wing,” 12–13. The expanded book appeared under the title, In Defense of Decadent Europe (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996 [1979]), 297. Raymond Aron, “Nations and Ideologies,” Encounter (January 1955): 24–33. (This essay originally appeared in La Nouvelle N.R.P., 1954, #22.) Ralf Dahrendorf, “The Achievement of Raymond Aron,” Encounter (May 1980): 29–35. Raymond Aron, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945–1973 (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1974), 108–9, 199, 242–54. Ibid., Preface and 251–54. Raymond Aron, “Of Passions and Polemics,” Encounter (May 1970): 49–55. This is a far stronger statement than the one Aron offered five years earlier in his essay on “Sartre’s Marxism,” Encounter (June 1965): 34–39. Aron, “Ideas on the Wing,” 12–13. Melvin J. Lasky, “Column: On the Death of Raymond Aron,” Encounter (January 1984): 29–30. Raymond Aron, “Interview with the editors of L’Express” (August 1973): 16–22; translated and published in Encounter (December 1973): 81–90. Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. 1 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 5–6. The original edition was published in 1965.

Part Four Aron on Aron

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13 Faces of Moderation: Raymond Aron as Committed Observer Aurelian Craiutu Let us pray for the arrival of the skeptics so that they may extinguish fanaticism.—Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

Raymond Aron’s books stand out as examples of lucid political judgment in an age of extremes in which many intellectuals shunned moderation and were attracted to various forms of radicalism.1 As an engaged spectator raised in the tradition of Cartesian rationalism, Aron (1905–1983) produced an impressive body of writings that include not only valuable reflections on abstract topics such as the philosophy of history, the philosophical underpinnings of modernity, and the virtues and limitations of liberal democracy, but also systematic and well-informed commentaries on concrete issues such as the war in Algeria, the student’s revolt of May 1968, American foreign policy, and the Soviet Union. Aron’s most important works, in particular Peace and War, The Opium of the Intellectuals, Main Currents of Sociological Thought, Essays on Freedom, and Clausewitz, along with his writings on Marx and his followers, shaped the intellectual climate in France and gained wide recognition in the United States five decades ago or so. Aron was one of the few Frenchmen who really understood and appreciated America and never succumbed to the temptation of anti-Americanism that has always loomed large in France.2 In this essay, I examine Aron’s conception of the role, virtues, and limits of political moderation and focus on the metaphor of the committed observer (spectateur engagé) that was central to his understanding of political judgment.3 Nonetheless, if Aron brilliantly played the role of a spectateur engagé for more than four decades, he never gave a clear theoretical statement regarding the main characteristics of the “committed observer.” Hence one has to reconstruct the 261

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portrait of the latter piece by piece by using scattered insights from Aron’s own books in which he described his own political engagement and commented on the shortcomings of other forms of political engagement espoused by French intellectuals such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. None of Aron’s works seems better suited to this task than Le spectateur engagé (reedited in the United States as Thinking Politically), featuring his dialogue with two younger interlocutors, Dominique Wolton and Jean-Louis Missika. Aron himself expressed a particular liking for this book that was favorably received by the French press in the early 1980s.4 In addition to this volume, I also use Aron’s Memoirs, The Opium of the Intellectuals, and a few important essays, such as “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith” (republished as an appendix to the 2001 English edition of Opium), “History and Politics,” and “Three Forms of Historical Intelligibility.” Aron’s Political Moderation Arguably, the choice of a French author might surprise given the radical legacy of the French Revolution and the high propensity to extremes displayed by the French over the past three centuries. As Tocqueville once argued in The Old Regime and the Revolution, France has always been—and, one might add, has remained to this day—a country of paradoxes, “more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of common sense, ready to conceive vast plans rather than to complete great tasks.”5 What other country has simultaneously given the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Terror of 1793? What other country had produced spirits as different as Descartes and Bossuet, Montaigne and Pascal, Rousseau and Constant, Robespierre and Napoleon, Sartre and Aron? In all its incarnations, France emerged, to quote again Tocqueville, as “the most brilliant and dangerous nation of Europe, and the best suited to become by turns an object of admiration, of hatred, of pity, and of terror, but never of indifference.”6 Appearances notwithstanding, the French political tradition offers an excellent starting point to anyone interested in studying political moderation. It is precisely because France had a long record of radicalism in politics that it also developed a certain tradition of political moderation in response to various forms of political extremism. As Ran Halévi demonstrated, in eighteenth-century France those who praised the English constitution used the idea of political moderation as a powerful tool for criticizing the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV and his heirs.7 Raymond Aron’s unique intellectual trajectory illustrates both the virtues and limitations of political moderation and his writings are a goldmine for students of political judgment and phronesis.8 He was blessed and condemned to live in the “most brilliant and dangerous nation of Europe” at a point in time when the survival of European civilization itself was in doubt. In many ways, as Aron acknowledged in his memoirs, his writings contained the aspirations and doubts “that filled the consciousness of a man who was impregnated by

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history.”9 Aron’s career and writings teach us important lessons about a particular face of moderation, the committed observer, whose values, choices, and predispositions differ from those of the romantic intellectual eternally dissatisfied with the order of things. At first sight, one might be tempted to say that the position of a committed observer fits best what we usually call the public intellectual who lives halfway between the ivory tower of academia and the bustling space of the agora. Or, it might be argued that Aron’s committed observer bears striking similarities with Michael Walzer’s connected social critic, in spite of their different political allegiances.10 But the tone and substance of Aron’s arguments were different. Based on his firsthand experience with those who wanted to create a new ethics of authenticity out of a problematic blend of Marxism and existentialism, Aron argued that it is characteristic of most intellectuals not to seek to understand the social and political world, its institutions and practices. Instead, they often rush to blame the society in which they live because they feel overwhelmed by its complexity and murkiness. As a result, Aron criticized the tendency of intellectuals to denounce too quickly the capitalist civilization as excessively rationalistic and antiheroic without attempting to understand sine ira et studio the functioning of its institutions in practice. He took to task those who, without having a basic knowledge of economics and sociology, indulged in endless diatribes against the rationalization of the soul and the (bourgeois) enthusiasm for efficiency and productivity and pretended to offer viable solutions to the alienation of the working classes.11 What is particularly remarkable in Aron’s works is his lucid and meticulous analysis of the politically pernicious effects of the excess of speculative intelligence, sometimes accompanied by a good dose of “irresponsible metaphysics,” that is often the cause of immoderation and poor political judgment.12 As Aron noted in The Opium of the Intellectuals, the limitations of industrial civilization, the power of money, and the price of economic success often offend the susceptibilities of intellectuals who become overemotional in preaching a strange form of political evangelism while claiming at the same time to be more competent than ordinary citizens in judging the flaws of society.13 Moreover the need for bargaining and compromise inherent in political life goes against their aesthetic sensibilities. Thus many intellectuals tend to refuse to think politically and “prefer ideology, that is a rather literary image of a desirable society, rather than to study the functioning of a given economy, of a parliamentary system, and so forth.”14 In so doing, they eschew real political responsibility and come to think that their only responsibility is to vituperate, being all too ready to leave the other practical questions to the care of experts whose language they often do not understand and with whom they are not engaged in a sustained dialogue. As a result, many intellectuals form opinions based on emotions and moral imperatives rather than a careful analysis of each particular situation and conceive of their political engagement only (or primarily) as a pretext for self-aggrandizement.

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Three key principles define Aron’s political outlook. The first is the rejection of any dogmatic interpretation of politics and society. As Aron wrote in his essay “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” any student of politics ought to take into account the plurality of considerations on which political and economic actions depend. In so doing, he must be aware of the inevitable conflict between various ideas and principles such as economic growth, equality, and justice. According to this view, a responsible politician must search for reasonable compromises between these values rather than seeking a fictitious harmonization, and ought to be aware that his solution is always a temporary one.15 The second key principle of Aron’s political philosophy is the rejection of any global determinism of history such as Marxist historical materialism that deprives politics of its own autonomy. The third principle concerns the conditions of political action as defined by choice and decision in an environment that is in constant flux and is characterized by structural uncertainty. What these principles have in common is the emphasis on the complex nature of the “political,” that represents one of the most important contributions of Aron to modern political thought. In The Opium of the Intellectuals, Aron made a seminal distinction between three types of social criticism that have different agendas and philosophies. The first type is “technical criticism” that seeks to offer practical remedies for social, economic, and political problems. Different from technical criticism are two other types of criticism, moral and ideological, which reject the present society in the name of an imaginary society, whose contours are always fuzzy and imprecise.16 Aron was skeptical toward the last two forms of criticism because in his opinion they distort political judgment and promote bad politics. In his memoirs, Aron candidly acknowledged that he, too, had occasionally practiced his own type of ideological criticism, albeit in a different manner than Sartre and his followers. Aron particularly criticized and opposed the tendency to sketch out a blueprint of a radically different order against which existing institutions are likely to be found defective. In his view, this type of criticism was highly impressionistic and lacked solid grounding in reality, much like utopian speculations and all forms of “literary politics” that ignore reality, remain at the level of abstract theory, and end up by misunderstanding the nature of the political. In his essay “Three Forms of Historical Intelligibility,” Aron went to great length to demonstrate the intrinsic shortcomings of all attempts to find higher forms of intelligibility in history. Such endeavors, he wrote, are doomed to fail because most political matters are uncertain and cannot be decided with the exactitude characteristic of natural sciences. Aron criticized Hegel, Marx, and their followers for their obsession with finding higher forms of intelligibility in history. Aron recognized, however, that it is necessary and possible to search for distinct forms of historical and political intelligibility that are derived from and linked to particular contexts. But, he added, to speak of the “goal of History” as if one possessed a mystical eye that would allow one to view this historical totality from a privileged Archimedean point makes little sense.17 Moreover this

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is a dangerous enterprise because it might foster a particular form of fanaticism trying to justify the worst cruelties in the name of noble ideals that should allegedly be pursued at all costs. Aron’s defense of “probabilistic determinism” was based on his belief that, far from advancing inexorably toward a certain goal, the actual development of history forces the responsible philosopher to take note of the plurality of values and principles underlying human action as well as of the unique nature of each political situation and context.18 In many of his writings, Aron commented on the factors that political analysts must take into account in order to grasp the multifaceted nature of politics. In his view, there is no recipe for good political judgment. Applying principles of rational analysis and concepts from natural sciences to politics amounts to a serious misunderstanding of the political sphere. In politics it is highly important to know when to act and when to refrain from acting. Exceptional circumstances matter and human actions have many unintended consequences.19 To understand the forces at work in political life and in order to make informed judgments, one must pay attention not only to structural factors that limit our freedom but also to contingency and human nature: One must consider (1) the plurality of goals, from short-term to distant, from tactics to strategy; (2) the actor’s knowledge of the situation, as well as the relative effectiveness of means…; (3) the nature, lawful or unlawful, praiseworthy or not, of the end or means in relation to religious, mythological, or traditional beliefs; and (4) the duly psychological motivations of the act, which is sometimes appropriate but sometimes apparently irrational with respect to the actor’s objective.20

In other words, one must take into account the plurality of goals and perspectives of political actors and must seek to understand the functioning of diverse political and economic institutions such as parliament, the market, interest groups, and political parties. In turn, this requires an adequate perception of the range of available choices for reforming these institutions. While being aware of the importance of rational and scientific analysis, Aron never went so far as to believe, like Hobbes, that a political science more geometrico would ever be possible and desirable. Aron understood that not all types of claims in political and social life can be demonstrated and defended rationally.21 Moreover he always searched for the right tone for addressing qualitatively different matters. For example, he insisted that analyzing economic matters requires a different tone than writing about international relations. When addressing economic issues, Aron sought to be clear and factual and avoided any sentimental tone that would have been inappropriate. On political topics, he wrote as a man who observed, reflected, and sought the best solution for the welfare of the entire community, convinced that in the end, thinking politically amounts to making a fundamental decision: “To think politically in a society, one must make a fundamental choice. This fundamental choice is either the acceptance of the kind of society in which we live, or its rejection…. From this

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fundamental choice flow decisions.”22 It will be recalled that Aron wrote in his usually balanced, non-partisan, and moderate style even when treating events that he disliked or disapproved of or when he faced tragic events such as the Algerian crisis.23 He was aware that anyone who writes about political crises must always ask the fundamental question: “What would I do if I were in the place of the statesman?” Aron justified his allegiance to liberalism (in the European meaning of the term) by resorting to a complex and nuanced sociological analysis of modern society that sought to determine and evaluate critically the economic and social conditions that permit freedom and pluralism to survive in modern society. In so doing, he spent a great deal of time and energy studying various aspects of modern society: economics, social relationships, class relationships, political systems, and relations among nations. He rejected the once famous theory of the convergence of capitalism and communism and believed that capitalist liberal societies could be peacefully reformed in spite of their inherent shortcomings. Furthermore, Aron believed that even in difficult times, one can (and ought to) be committed to reason by upholding the idea of a decent society while also being fully aware of the inherent imperfections and antinomies of the political world. This idea was Raymond Aron’s guiding principle. Although he lived in dark times, Aron retained confidence in rational inquiry and the individual’s ability to see the difference between illusions, emotions, hopes, and demonstrable truths. He refused to despair of any man, even though his century and contemporaries gave him many reasons to despair.24 “I was a disciple of Kant,” confessed Aron, “and there is in Kant a concept to which I still subscribe: it is the idea of Reason, an image of a society that would be truly humanized. We can continue to think, or dream or hope—in the light of the idea of Reason—for a humanized society.”25 Aron’s moderate optimism grew out of his awareness of the frailty and fallibility of the human condition (did not Kant, after all, speak about the crookedness of human nature?) and allowed him to recognize the concrete possibilities for reasonable action in our imperfect world. While being fully committed to such principles as freedom, pluralism, and rule of law, Aron opposed the dogmatic interpretation of these values and realized that anyone who endorses the principles underpinning Western liberal democratic societies must resist the temptation to gloss over their inherent limitations. That is why Aron was never an ideologue of capitalism like, say, Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman. “I have tried to serve the same values in different circumstances and through different actions,” wrote Aron. “Having political opinions is not a matter of having an ideology once and for all; it is a question of taking the right decisions in changing circumstances.”26 In other words, our opinions must be based on careful consideration of facts and should take into account the ways in which changing circumstances affect our decisions, strategies, and goals. Aron’s critique of freedom as negative liberty is a case in point. It will be recalled that the concept of negative liberty was at the core of the theories

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of liberty advanced by European Cold-War liberals such as Berlin, Popper, and Hayek. While agreeing with their general political outlook, Aron did not shy away from showing the inadequacies of the definition of liberty as freedom from interference. At a point in time when the very notion of citizenship was related to “positive” liberty, Aron, who was no friend of totalitarian systems, affirmed the importance of citizenship in modern society. “Individuals in a democracy,” he argued, “are at once private persons and citizens. What bothers me most is that it seems to me almost impossible in France to have courses in citizenship in the schools…. Our societies, our democracies, are citizens’ countries.”27 It was this belief that led Aron to emphasize not only the centrality of mores to the preservation of liberal democracy (a lesson he learned from Tocqueville and Aristotle), but also the importance of a distinctive type of liberal civic education meant to cultivate certain traits of character needed by citizens living in modern liberal democracies.28 This view ran against the “doctrinaire” conception of freedom defended by another prominent twentieth-century liberal and contemporary of Aron, Friedrich von Hayek. In “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” Aron defined “doctrinairism” as the tendency to attribute universal value to a particular doctrine and set of institutions.29 In his 1961 review of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, Aron put forward a different theory of freedom that rejected the idea that a free society is defined only by free elections, the free market, and the rule of law. Unlike Hayek, Aron believed that a moderate welfare state is not incompatible with political freedom and the rule of law. He expressed reservation toward that tradition of liberal thinking that equates liberty above all with obedience to general laws in order to reduce as much as possible the potentially arbitrary control exercised by individuals over their fellow citizens. Liberty, affirmed Aron, depends on the universality of the law but it is also much more than absence of constraint: “All power involves some element of the government of men by men; liberty is not adequately defined by sole reference to the rule of law: the manner in which those who hold this power are chosen, as well as the way in which they exercise it, are felt, in our day, as integral parts of liberty.”30 Liberty and power have a variable character that circumscribes the shifting limits of the individual sphere that must be protected against the interference of the state. The upshot of this view is that there can be no objective, eternally valid definition of constraint and consequently of liberty, since general rules, too, can sometimes be oppressive. Aron believed that for all the brilliance of his analysis, Hayek neglected this point when drawing a radical distinction between obedience to persons (which he equated with unfreedom) and submission to abstract and universal rules (which he equated with freedom).31 Interestingly, a similar critique was advanced by Oakeshott, who once wrote: “This is, perhaps, the main significance of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom—not the cogency of his doctrine, but the fact that it is a doctrine. A plan to resists all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics.”32

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Aron’s non-dogmatic position is also evidenced by his attitude toward Marx, perhaps the most controversial modern thinker, capable of eliciting either uncritical admiration or outright rejection. Aron carefully read all of Marx’s works, in particular The Capital, which he regarded as one of the greatest sociological works ever written. In this regard, it can be argued that Aron knew Marx much better than most of his own critics on the Left, who often referred to Marx without having carefully studied his works. But Aron never converted to Marxism primarily because he grasped the serious contradictions of Marx’s economic, social, and political thought.33 He saw Marxism for what it was: a global interpretation of history predicated on two main ideas—the preeminence of class struggle and the priority of the relations of production vis-à-vis the forces of production. Aron perceptively noted that from the materialistic interpretation of history Marx drew a radical conclusion unsupported by logic or facts: He claimed that every progressive spirit must be on the side of the proletariat (the children of the light) in the fight against the bourgeoisie (the children of darkness and forces of evil). The endpoint of history, argued Marx, is socialism and one must fully embrace it to be on the side of progress. Aron rejected this conclusion because he saw in it a leap of faith that he was not able to make in spite of his appreciation for Marx’s genius as a perceptive critic of nineteenth-century capitalism. “After having studied Marxism for almost an entire year,” affirmed Aron, I concluded with regret that, in this form, it was not acceptable. The analysis of history does not permit one to determine the policy to follow and to foresee, as an end result, a society from which contradictions among men would be eliminated…. Even today, I am interested in the Marxism of Marx, but not in that of Brezhnev, which is very boring. But Marx’s Marxism is very, very interesting.34

The departure from Marx is further illustrated by Aron’s nuanced position on determinism and probabilism in history. He opposed the idea that the forces of production determine history and acknowledged instead the importance of ideas and contingency in determining the course of history. Every political situation, argued Aron, “always allows for a margin of choice, but the margin is never unlimited.”35 Hence, he went on, the task of political theorists is to elucidate the goals that societies should pursue as well as the means that they have at their disposal. They must also investigate the realm of the possible by taking into account prior goals, preferences, and principles. To study these goals in a vacuum, concluded Aron, would be absurd because ideas arise out of specific political, cultural, social, and economic contexts that always limit the range of the possible. Another example of Aron’s political judgment was the highly controversial episode of Algerian independence. This issue had polarized all of French public opinion and generated sentimental and violent reactions that often made rational dialogue difficult if not utterly impossible. Aron recognized early on

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that denying Algeria’s independence would be both morally illegitimate and economically unfeasible. Although he was not blind to moral considerations, he defended Algeria’s independence on economic rather than moral grounds. Aron foresaw that denying the independence of Algeria would have involved a military and economic commitment that France was unable to sustain at that point in time (the whole decade of the 1950s marked the decline of France’s military power). On this topic as on many others, Aron preferred to think politically rather than in moral terms and resorted to an ethics of responsibility rather than one of absolute ends: “I based my policy on reality…. The policy that I recommended could just as easily have been based on moral principles, because they were compatible…. My purpose was to analyze a political problem in order to demonstrate that a given solution was the least bad…. [T]he avoidance of a national tragedy, that is, a civil war, depended upon the courage of the politicians.”36 The same “politics of understanding” underlay Aron’s realist position toward the Munich accords of 1938 and the students’ revolts of 1968. While acknowledging that the Munich accords were not honorable, he argued that in terms of Realpolitik it is open to discussion whether the opposite approach would have saved lives given Hitler’s personal irrational agenda and the balance of power in Europe in the late 1930s. “In any case,” opined Aron, “it seems to me unjust and egregious to make a clear-cut distinction between good people and bad people, according to whether they were for or against Munich.”37 The turbulent events of May 1968 in Paris showed another face of Aron, the trimmer, concerned with keeping the ship on an even keel in times of social and political unrest.38 Isolated between two camps with which he disagreed, Aron noticed that the students’ revolutionary fervor fueled the discontent of the Parisian workers (who launched a massive strike following the student’s demonstrations) and could jeopardize the foundation of the French Republic. Although Aron’s relations with Charles de Gaulle were notoriously ambiguous and tense, he declared his support for the president during the final week of May 1968 when the survival of the regime was threatened by the most radical demonstrators. Rejecting Sartre’s claim that the president of the French Republic had launched a “call for murder,”39 Aron commented: “Not even a vulgar demagogue would have used such an expression in reference to General de Gaulle, to a government that had tolerated the ‘demos,’ the semi-riots that had gone day by day.”40 Aron adopted a similar trimming attitude afterwards when he was invited to comment on the governance of the universities in the wake of the crisis. “Whenever I discussed the future or questions of reform at university meetings,” remembered Aron, “I was always on the side of the reformers. But as soon as I saw that honorable and decent teachers were being treated in a shabby manner, I defended them. I didn’t agree with them, but I defended them.”41 In spite of his outright rejection of the violent means chosen by demonstrators, Aron acknowledged that the pseudo-revolution of May 1968 also had a few positive unintended effects.

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French society became more aware of the problems created by low wages, universities were granted greater autonomy, and the predominant views about economic growth were revised. The Solitary Center Not surprisingly, Aron’s moderation marginalized him in the middle and his balanced and detached position irritated sensibilities on both ends of the political spectrum. He once described himself as “a man without party, who is all the more unbearable because he takes his moderation to excess and hides his passions under his arguments.”42 To be sure, Aron paid careful attention to the ideas of those who opposed his principles (Sartre was the most famous example). Seeking to promote empathy for others’ points of view, Aron attempted to make people understand that those who disagreed with them were not necessarily their enemies. Alas, he was far from being successful in this regard. As Aron himself acknowledged, he often found himself isolated, the usual destiny of an authentic liberal. This was a paradoxical situation, because he spent his entire life going to the Left, while speaking the language of the Right, and going to the Right, while speaking the language of the Left.43 Sometimes, for example on the Algerian war, Aron’s positions were closer to the Left than to the Right. On Stalinism, he was seen as a man of the Right because he denounced Stalinism and communism in unambiguous terms. Aron saw himself as an intellectual of a rather peculiar breed and one could say, paraphrasing Tocqueville, that the liberal party to which he belonged did not exist during this time.44 Aron was rarely in agreement with those he had voted for and the best example was his uneasy relation with Charles de Gaulle. While sharing with the latter the same strong commitment to the values of the French Republic, Aron never became a Gaullist, a confidante of the general upon whom the latter could always rely. Aron went so far as to criticize on more than one occasion what he called a certain form of “Gaullist fanaticism” that went against the main principles of his own philosophy. “To be truly Gaullist,” claimed Aron, “it was necessary to have faith in de Gaulle and to be ready to change one’s opinions to agree with his. I could not do it, but that didn’t prevent me from being André Malraux’s directeur de cabinet.”45 Under the Fifth Republic, Aron’s attitude toward de Gaulle was defined by the principle “Solidarity in times of crisis and independence in normal times.” While in Aron’s view de Gaulle’s foreign policy—“la politique du joyeux célibataire international,” to use Pierre Hassner’s words—was sometimes unnecessarily provocative, its main initiatives were in line with the general interests of the French Republic and the free world.46 At the time of the Liberation, noted Aron, General de Gaulle’s government was “much the best and…it was necessary to support it.” A decade later, de Gaulle’s return to power, “even though the circumstances were unpleasant, was rather desirable” because, thanks to his prestige, he had a better chance than anyone else to find a solution to the Algerian crisis.47 As

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the latter degenerated, the General “had dirtied his hands as little as possible.”48 Moreover, de Gaulle fought hard to restore a democratic republic, even if his constitutional plan gave the president the opportunity “to exercise an absolute and limited power.”49 In Aron’s view, he was a perfect example of the charismatic leader who had “historic ambitions comparable to those of Washington.”50 In an article published on the first anniversary of de Gaulle’s return to power, Aron concluded: The Fifth Republic exists, and in present-day France, General de Gaulle is the best possible monarch in the least bad of possible governments. He possesses personal power, but he restored the Republic in 1945. He manipulated the 1958 revolution in order to produce an authoritarian republic, not fascism nor a military despotism. He wants to save the remnants of the French empire, but he has granted the territories of black Africa the right to independence.51

If Aron was a moderate of a peculiar breed with a keen sense of intellectual and political independence, he took, however, a firm and clear stance on all the great questions of his time: fascism, the Soviet Union, decolonization, Algeria, May 1968, the role of the United States in the world, and the famous press conference of de Gaulle on the Jews from 1967 in which he described the Jews as an elite people, sure of itself and overbearing. That on all these issues Aron was more or less “right” is certainly remarkable given not only the complex nature of political events but also the number of brilliant intellectuals who chose to defend the indefensible (the crimes of communism). But it is important to try to understand how Aron arrived at his conclusions, what enabled him to take a correct stance when others seemingly failed to do so. To make him an infallible judge would certainly be absurd and would moreover contradict the spirit in which Aron himself conducted his entire public life. At the same time, it would be difficult to deny that he was a far more reliable judge of modern politics and society than Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Kojève, or Foucault. Aron’s moderation and lucid political judgment played a key role in this regard. He constantly affirmed the superiority of free society over any form of totalitarianism and chose the “preferable” over the “detestable.” When really great issues were at stake, when situations arose in which, politically or existentially, it was vital to be on one side or the other, Aron took a firm and lucid stance. His reasoning was surprisingly simple, unencumbered by the futile existential anxieties that plagued, for example, many of Sartre’s political works: I have chosen the society that accepts dialogue. As far as possible, this dialogue must be reasonable; but it accepts unleashed emotions, it accepts irrationality…. The other society is founded on the refusal to have confidence in those governed, founded also on the pretension of a minority of oligarchs that they possess the definitive truth for themselves and for the future. I detest that; I have fought it for thirty-five years and I will continue to do so. The pretension of those few oligarchs to possess the truth of history and of the future is intolerable.52

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Aron could have never have said, with Merleau-Ponty, that “there is as much ‘existentialism’ in the stenographic record of the Moscow debates as in all of the works of Koestler.” Nor could Aron have ever affirmed, with Francis Jeanson (speaking for Sartre against Camus) that “we are simultaneously against [the Soviet Union] and for it.”53 Aron was unwilling to gloss over the fact that millions of people were sent to concentrations camps or left to starve in the name of lofty ideals. The choice was clear and simple: Either break with communism or embrace its ideology—tertium non datur! Aron’s analysis of the major political events of his time shows that he did not take refuge behind cold or neutral concepts even if, as he once put it, he sometimes took his moderation to excess and hid his passions under his arguments. He analyzed each situation with a mixture of calm attachment and detachment, reason and passion, without giving arrogant advice of the sort “Let me tell you what you should do.” He was aware of his own fallibility and limited knowledge and considered himself a well-informed amateur who did not feel obliged to tell others what they should think or do. As an editorialist for Le Figaro for thirty years, he believed that a well-informed journalist must not seek to indoctrinate his readers, but ought to give them at least the basic facts the ministers should also use in making their decisions. When appropriate, he shared with his readers his own beliefs, but he did it with his characteristic “icy clarity” and detached attachment.54 Last but not least, he realized that he did not possess the qualities necessary to exercise power or to advise princes. Prudent in his writings, he had a difficult time controlling his speech and often found himself incapable of adopting a neutral diplomatic language. Aron lacked a certain capacity for performance that is an important prerequisite of success in politics. As he put it in his memoirs, “Intelligence, knowledge, and judgment are not enough. Performance is also required, of which I would have been most probably incapable.”55 Is it possible, however, for a committed observer to “perform” in a moderate manner in politics and public life? The Committed Observer This question prompts us to ask what would be the “right type of intelligence” or the proper mindset of the committed observer that makes one capable of correctly understanding the fundamental antinomies and constraints of political life. Such a person would have to be aware of the general trends of his time and would refuse the temptation to judge absolutely and unconditionally, a position that suits better the prophet than the committed observer. The latter seeks to understand the complexity of political and social phenomena by cherishing it rather than seeking to ignore it or simplify it. As such, the committed observer attempts “to disintoxicate minds and to calm fanaticism, even when it is against the current tendency.”56 While being aware of the importance of passions, he continues to believe in the power of reason and works to make reasonableness and lucidity triumph even in the midst of terrible events. As such, he is convinced

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that when it comes to analyzing political phenomena, one must divest oneself of any sentimentality and should strive to be as lucid as possible.57 Thus, to borrow Weber’s famous dichotomy, the committed observer prefers the ethics of responsibility to the ethics of conviction, or to use Aron’s own words, he engages in the politics of understanding as opposed to the politics of Reason (with a capital “R”). This is not to say that the committed observer distrusts reason per se, or that he no longer believes in the power of rational inquiry. The key point is that, while acknowledging the virtues of reason, the committed observer resists the temptation of idolizing reason. His goal is to maximize the presence of reason and moderation in a world dominated by human passions, cruelty, and an eternal competition for scarce resources. The engaged spectator understands that politics involves the inevitable exercise of power for maintaining order and security, with all its ensuing risks and costly choices made in an environment fraught with uncertainty and in constant flux. Because he refuses to think of politics as a means of implementing radical reforms or changing human nature, he shuns the idea of government or any one single agency acting as the chief agent in the pursuit of perfection. As such, the committed observer chooses piecemeal improvement over perfection.58 Like Dr. Rieux in Camus’ The Plague, the committed observer (as described by Aron) is inclined to say: “Salvation is just too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health; for me, his health comes first.”59 His position is characterized by a fundamental modesty that teaches him a sound order of priorities, as he seeks to help his fellow citizens understand better their political environment and is committed to “truth and liberty, the love of truth and the horror of lies.”60 If the committed observer is somewhat detached from the actual game of politics, his is a form of detached attachment because, as Aron points out, he loves his country and puts the survival and security of the community above everything else. That is why when the danger of civil war looms large, he does everything in his power to avoid the worst.61 But, while understanding the importance of order and social peace, the committed observer also grasps that “there is a barbarism of order no less to be avoided than the barbarism of disorder.”62 He distrusts not only those anarchists who fail to understand the necessary prerequisites of political life in modern society but also those conservative who always emphasize order above all. Above all, the engaged spectator refuses the posture of a seer or prophet. His is not a politics of faith but, to use Michael Oakeshott’s dichotomy, one of skepticism. Those who espouse the politics of faith often take the activity of governing as instrumental in achieving the perfection of social and political order and have almost unlimited confidence in human reason. On the contrary, the proponents of the politics of skepticism view the activity of governing as detached from the pursuit of perfection in this world and claim that the most important aim of politics is to reduce as much as possible the intensity of conflict in the world. This explains why Aron’s committed observer does not have

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the pretension of knowing the future, nor does he claim to know the direction in which mankind proceeds. He tries to remain as close as possible to the facts themselves and accepts that both the world and the vocabulary with which we try to make sense of it are essentially and irreducibly ambiguous, heterogeneous, and infinitely complex, susceptible of various interpretations. Hence the committed observer views with skepticism the initiatives of those who embrace the ethics of absolute ends. He is equally skeptical toward those who claim to have a clear and infallible knowledge of the future and make their decisions based on this final station and on what they think necessary to attain their distant goal. Working with a simplified Manichean view of politics, the enthusiast partisans of the politics of faith see themselves as confidants of Providence and have the illusion of knowing the denouement of the drama of history. The committed observer rejects these ambitious claims because he is skeptical toward any vision of politics that has a messianic or soteriological ring. His commitment is of a particular nature that deserves special attention. To be true to his vocation as spectateur engagé, he needs both knowledge and judgment, that is to say “knowledge of the polarity of the politics within which he moves, and judgment to recognize the proper occasions and directions of movement.”63 While being aware of the limits within which one can be at once an objective spectator and an effective actor, the engaged observer believes that objectivity is not at all incompatible with commitment to a set of principles and values.64 He realizes, however, that these values and principles do not always form a harmonious whole. What distinguishes his position from that of the romantic type is the ability to grasp and to correctly interpret the antimonies at the heart of the human condition and modern society, the inescapable tradeoffs that people face in their daily lives. That is why the committed observer distrusts simplicity as well as all attempts to reduce the complexity of the social world to a few basic elements that would fit our black-and-white categories and concepts. In order to grasp the inevitable constraints of the social and political world, he studies not only the ideas, choices, and actions of real political actors but also the institutions that shape and limit their actions. He acknowledges that “when one analyzes present-day societies, one is so aware of the constraints that weigh as much on those who govern as on those governed that it is difficult to dream or invent as you suggest.”65 When acting in an environment that does not fit his categories and concepts, the committed observer does not seek refuge in the comfort of an imaginary perfect society. Nor is he bothered by the nuances of gray that characterize the political sphere; on the contrary, he believes that gray, too, can be beautiful under certain circumstances. That is why he does not aspire to angelic purity and does not dream of building a world purified of all traces of impurity or evil.66 He acknowledges that the relationship between politics and morality is a notoriously difficult one that cannot be properly studied by borrowing and applying concepts from ethics and religion in a rigorous manner. Moreover, he admits that political thought and action are essentially impure and

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equivocal and will always remain so.67 Because politics involves constraint and a certain level of violence, it combines elements of morality and immorality in such a way that it often makes difficult to apply philosophical and religious criteria for deciding upon the best course of action. The committed observer admits that “politics is not coterminous with the activities of good Samaritans” and cannot always be judged against the precepts of Christian morality.68 Above all, the engaged spectator as described by Aron is aware that “politics is never a conflict between good and evil, but always a choice between the preferable and the detestable.”69 He acknowledges that “in political affairs, it is impossible to demonstrate truth, but one can try, on the basis of what one knows, to make sensible decisions.”70 Moreover, he recognizes that in times of great misfortunes, even truth may be “prosaic and insufferable.”71 The committed spectator does not ask which ideology is appropriate in each case, but ponders what one should do to save the state from ruin if one were at the helm of the state. He refuses to think in terms of black-and-white categories and does not see the world through ideological blinders that inevitably end up distorting the facts themselves. He rejects cheap tirades of indignation and vituperation that might cloud or affect his perception of reality. His reasoning is simple and straightforward: If a political system causes the suffering of millions of individuals, this is an undeniable fact that unambiguously condemns it in the face of history. Despite his image as a hesitant spirit, the engaged spectator (as described by Aron) is capable of espousing firm positions and making clear decisions. He is not neutral when neutrality is inappropriate and is not afraid of recommending tough measures when circumstances require them. But he is not likely to rush to act even when he has the determination to see and to seize upon truth and reality. While being aware that “to think politically in a society one must make a fundamental choice,”72 his motto remains “neither Dionysius nor Apollo, but each in his place and season.”73 In other words, although his judgment closely follows specific events, it is not entirely driven by them. On the contrary, it is integrated into a larger vision that ensures that his choices are based not on wishful thinking, but on a realistic assessment of each particular situation. He has the ambition to form his own viewpoint on the main issues of the day and refuses to embrace the ideas held by others without first questioning their accuracy. It is the almost religious respect for facts that explains why the committed observer is neither a political activist nor a moralist. He does not find difficult to accept that other people’s arguments are as plausible as his own opinions and refuses to believe that those who disagree with him do not have a moral stance worth respecting. Nonetheless, the engaged spectator is not a mere pragmatist either. If he pays due respect to facts, he does not idolize them. Moreover, he does not believe that political action is a mere game or an arena for expressing personal preferences and choices. His tone is often sharp and critical and he does

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not shy away from criticizing those in power when making serious mistakes, nor is he reluctant to criticize those in opposition when they are in error. Finally, the committed observer is aware that nothing is so evil that it does not contain some good, just as nothing is so good that it does not contain some evil. No choice is clear, perfect, or cost-free, and every decision requires careful thinking and evaluation of alternative paths. That is why his sober style does not seek cheap rhetorical victories and retains a certain decency of expression that prevents him from being carried away by temporary emotions. His conduct is guided by the belief that it is neither his habit nor his duty to make strong moral judgments of other people, even if he is allowed to register his moral disagreement with their ideas and principles. His rejection of all moral posturing is also motivated by his own self-doubt and self-questioning. While acknowledging the need for difficult and costly tradeoffs in politics, the committed observer is perfectly aware that there are rarely heroes on one side and villains on the other. Because he believes that there has always been in politics a mixture of heroism and cruelty, saints and monsters, progress and reaction, reason and passions, he seeks to work with what is given rather than attempting to reform the world according to a utopian or perfectionist blueprint. As a moderate, the engaged spectator understands and accepts that liberal democracy is by nature an “eternal imperfection, a mixture of sinfulness, saintliness, and monkey business,” a regime that, in spite of its patent shortcomings, is capable of improvement and needs constant nurturing.74 Furthermore, although the moderate committed observer does not believe in the existence of a general sense of history, he retains a certain degree of optimism and believes that there still remains a certain degree of maneuver and liberty even in the face of adverse circumstances. He accepts the fact that there is no progress without a negative side and seeks to give due consideration to both the bright and dark sides of progress, while remaining a moderate and unbiased advocate of piecemeal reform. More importantly, the committed observer does not seek to deduce the desirable solutions from a body of first principles. Instead, he applies discretion and considers each problem separately, step by step, taking inspiration sometimes from history, sometimes from theory, experience, and the discussions with his fellow citizens.75 Sound political judgment requires the capacity to understand the unique nature of political phenomena and actors’ intentions. The committed observer knows that it is a great error to speak of political things “absolutely and indiscriminately and to deal with them, as it were, by the book.”76 Instead, he insists that in nearly all things one must make prudent distinctions and exceptions because circumstances change and new constellations of factors always require new approaches. To judge by the book would amount to a serious misunderstanding of political life because every tiny difference in each case always has significant, large-scale effects. To discern these small differences is of paramount importance since political affairs cannot be judged from an Archimedian point away from the sound and fury of the world.

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Can One be Enthusiastic about Moderation? By examining Aron’s writings we have had the opportunity to follow a moderate mind at work prudently navigating between the ideological temptations of his times. Aron had many skeptical readers who found his arguments unpersuasive and his moderation unattractive. That is why, after dwelling on the positive aspects of moderation, it is time to conclude by saying a few words about its shortcomings, which might explain why moderates are sometimes seen as lacking vision and the capacity to implement successful reforms.77 It is difficult to be enthusiastic about moderation and its practical political incarnation, middle-of-the-road liberalism. The latter might appear as unappealing and weak because it lacks uplifting dreams that can inspire individuals. In politics moderates are portrayed as indecisive and ambivalent and their initiatives and ideas are sometimes dismissed as expressions of political opportunism or weariness. Yet a closer and unbiased look at the virtues of political moderation demonstrates that moderates do not lack political vision, courage, and practical wisdom, even when their vision appears to be less inspiring and appealing than millenarian and radical movements searching for ultimate certainties and solutions on Earth. One might be tempted to claim that today we are in dire need of creative moderates. Moderation is sometimes the only position that allows one to defend reasonable policies and courses of action that are often eschewed by overzealous radicals and ultraconservatives. Aron’s writings shed particular light on this topic and contain important reflections on the chief task of the political philosopher in modern society. Through his own moderation and balanced judgment, he must attempt to contribute to the civic education of his fellow citizens and is always expected to speak out against injustice in unambiguous terms: Whether he meditates on the world or engages in action, whether he teaches obedience to laws or respect for authentic values, whether he urges revolt or encourages persistent effort toward reform, the philosopher fulfills his calling inside and outside of the polity, sharing the risks but not the illusions of his chosen party. He would cease to deserve the name of philosopher only on the day that he came to share the fanaticism or skepticism of ideologues, the day he subscribed to inquisition by theologian-judges. No one can blame him for using the language of those in power if it is the price of his survival…. But if he turns away from the search for truth or encourages the mindless to believe that they hold the ultimate truth, then he abjures his calling. The philosopher no longer exists—only the technician or the ideologue.78

This passage prompts us to ask if there is a school of moderation and if moderates, marginalized in the middle, can have disciples. At first glance, one might argue that there is no Aronian school of thought. It will be recalled that many Frenchmen believed that it was better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron. As Nicolas Baverez pointed out, there is no doctrine associated with Aron’s name, a fact confirmed by Aron himself.79 “In adopting certain

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positions,” he once said, “I have been a man very much alone in the face of history.”80 His intellectual trajectory shows that the practice of moderation can lead to a peculiar form of exile. Yet, although the moderate is not destined to be the leader of any sect, he is perhaps in the best position to teach us how to love freedom and democracy. This point was clearly made by Etienne Mantout who once told Aron: “You have shown us…that one can admire democracy without failing to recognize its faults, that one can love liberty without being sentimental, and that ‘he who loves well punishes well.’”81 It is undeniable that Aron’s ideas influenced an important number of friends and disciples who have subsequently risen to positions of political prominence in France.82 The fact that political luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and Charles de Gaulle paid heed to Aron’s analyses is another proof of the enduring significance of his works. Aron was aware of the antinomies, paradoxes, and tragic choices in politics and understood that some conflicts are irreconcilable, require firm decisions, and may sometimes have tragic and unintended consequences. Among the clearly identifiable features of Aron’s moderation are: reason, prudence, perceptive understanding of the antinomies of the political sphere, rejection of political prophecy, opposition to determinism, and a distrust of any form of moral posturing.83 The committed observer strives to have a good knowledge of history, grasps the irreducibly complex nature of politics, and is aware not only of the tragic nature of political events but also of the inevitable plurality of social, moral, and political values and goods. The ideal proposed by the Aronian tradition of moderation is the political philosopher who understands the seminal role played by passions in politics and is convinced that “to reflect upon politics, one must be as rational as possible, but to be active in them, one must inevitably play upon the emotions of other men.”84 More importantly, Aronian skepticism designates a form of philosophical reflection on politics that does not let the intellectuals’ characteristic romantic (or utopian) attitude toward politics to get the better of their sense of reality. To conclude, it is Aron’s moderation that makes him relevant today, in an eclectic age when doctrines and ideas are again mixed, after having lost their previous sharp contours and identities. The age of extremes, one hopes, is over, and with it also disappears the notion of politics as the pursuit of certainty. The principles of liberal democracy properly understood can immunize the body politic against the seduction of perfectionism and the tyranny of abstractions in politics. Yet, because of their many imperfections, to love liberty and democracy well or, to put it differently, to fall in love with the subtle beauty of gray, is no easy task. It demands not only passion, but also moderation and prudence. Modern society, Aron once argued, must be analyzed and appreciated for what it is worth, without unjustified enthusiasm or utter indignation that would affect one’s vision and understanding. If Raymond Aron’s works are of interest to today’s readers, it is because of his belief that one must remain constantly vigilant in order to limit the intensity of political conflict and to preserve and

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nurture the pluralism of ideas, principles, and interests that are essential to freedom in modern society. Notes 1.

I would like to thank Daniel Mahoney, Andrew Sabl, Jeffrey Isaac, Russell Hanson, Steven Gerencser, Richard Boyd, Bryan-Paul Frost, Erin Wroblewski, Tom Hoffman, Sheldon Gellar, Christopher Morris, Judith Lichtenberg, Karol Soltan, and Dina Spechler for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Different versions of the manuscript were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia (2003), the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago (2003), and the University of Maryland’s Committee on Politics, Philosophy, and Public Policy. Finally, I would also like to thank the Earhart Foundation for its generous financial support while composing this essay. 2. For an excellent intellectual portrait of Aron, see Pierre Manent’s essay “Raymond Aron—Political Educator,” in Raymond Aron, In Defense of Political Reason, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 1–23; also, chapter 1 of this volume. Raymond Aron’s memoirs are another key source of information for any interpreter of his works. 3. For a detailed analysis of Aron’s political theory, see Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992); Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron (Paris: Flammarion, 1993); Stephen Launay, La pensée politique de Raymond Aron (Paris: PUF, 1995); Brian Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). A discussion of Aron’s “morality of prudence” can be found in Daniel J. Mahoney, “Raymond Aron and the Morality of Prudence: A Reconsideration,” Modern Age 43 (2001): 243–52. Also worth consulting are the articles on Aron published in Commentaire nos. 28–29 (1985), and European Journal of Political Theory 2 (2003). 4. For more details, see Baverez, Raymond Aron, 496–500. For the English edition, see Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997). 5. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, eds. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 246. 6. Ibid., 247. 7. Ran Halévi, ‘La modération à l’épreuve de l’absolutisme. De l’Ancien Régime à la Révolution française,” Le Débat no. 109 (March-April 2000): 73. 8. I agree with Richard Ruderman that “prudence is not an altogether satisfactory translation of phronesis.” While the latter suggests a certain pragmatic posture toward politics, it also has a qualitative component that, according to Aristotle, allows one to live well. For more details, see Richard S. Ruderman, “Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment,” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 409ff. 9. Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 470. 10. See, for example, Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 38–40. 11. In this regard, Aron’s argument bears some affinities with Hayek’s or Nozick’s explanations for the intellectuals’ general hostility to capitalism. In turn, Schumpeter pointed out that “Industrial and commercial activity is essentially un-heroic in the knight’s sense—no flourishing of swords about it, not much physical prowess, no chance to gallop the armored horse into the enemy, preferably a heretic or heathen—and the ideology that glorifies the idea of fighting for fighting’s sake…withers

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology in the office among all the columns of figures” (Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy [New York: Harper & Row, 1950], 127–28). Chapter 4 of Brian Anderson’s book is entitled “Antinomic Prudence” and offers a nuanced interpretation of Aron’s political moderation (Raymond Aron, 121–68). On this issue, also see Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron, 92, 111–28, 137–46. On this topic, see Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 213–35. Aron, Thinking Politically, 154. See, for example, Aron, “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” in The Opium of the Intellectuals, 346. On this issue, see Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 210–12, and Aron, Memoirs, 214–25. In his essay “The Dawn of Universal History,” Aron wrote: “As for the philosophy of history, whether it derives from Bossuet or Hegel, Marx or Toynbee, it is at best regarded more as a literary than a scientific exercise, fit perhaps for writers but not for respectable thinkers” (Aron, “The Dawn of Universal History,” in The Dawn of Universal History [New York: Basic Books, 2002], 463). Raymond Aron, Politics and History: Selected Essays, ed. Miriam B. Conant (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 61. In this regard, Aron followed in the footsteps of Guicciardini, although he was probably unaware of his affinity with the Florentine historian and friend of Machiavelli. In his Ricordi, Guicciardini wrote that “if you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish…. If you undertake them before the time is right, not only will they fail, but they will often become impossible to accomplish even when the time would have been right (Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972], 61). Aron, Politics and History, 48–49. For two interesting and well-informed perspective on political judgment, see Peter Steinberger, The Concept of Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1–88, 281–304, and Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 1–10, 129–67. Aron, Thinking Politically, 44. Another example was the Vichy regime. While clearly rejecting the regime, Aron refused to think in black-and-white terms when judging the degree of guilt of Marshal Pétain. This was certainly not a case of moral indecision on Aron’s part; as both a Jew and a French citizen, he could have never endorsed a regime that had in fact been imposed by the Nazis. For more details, see Aron, Thinking Politically, 82. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 263. Ibid., 150; for more details on Aron’s method, also see 201, 250. Another interesting text is Aron’s essay, “History and Politics,” originally published in 1949 (an English translation can be found in Aron, Politics and History, 237–48). Aron, Thinking Politically, 248. On this issue, see Aron’s classic two-volume work Main Currents in Sociological Thought. A recent English edition has been published by Transaction Publishers (1998, 1999). See Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 332–34. A more elaborate treatment of this topic can be found in chapter 2 (“Formal Freedoms and Real Freedoms”) of

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30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

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Aron’s An Essay on Freedom (Cleveland, Ill.: The World Publishing Company, 1970), 49–99. Aron, In Defense of Political Reason, 85; also see 83. For an interpretation of this topic, see Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron, 73–90. On Aron’s attitude toward Hayek, see Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron, 87–88, 118–19. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, 2nd enlarged edition, ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1991), 26, emphasis added. For more details on this topic, see Raymond Aron, Le Marxisme de Marx, eds. Jean-Claude Cassanova and Christian Bachelier (Paris: Fallois, 2002). Also see Aron’s analysis of the future of secular religions in Aron, The Dawn of Universal History, 177–202. For a detailed analysis of Aron’s critique of Marx, see Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron, 33–38, 74–80; Mahoney, “Aron, Marx, and Marxism,” European Journal of Political Theory 2 (2002): 415–27; and Anderson, Raymond Aron, 61–87. Aron, Thinking Politically, 41. Aron, Politics and History, 237. Ibid., 162, 164–66; also see 170–71. For an analysis of this issue, see Tony Judt, “Introduction,” in Aron, The Dawn of Universal History, xvii–xx. Aron, Thinking Politically, 51. The classical definition of the “trimmer” was given by Halifax in The Character of a Trimmer: “This innocent word Trimmer signifieth no more than this, That if Men are together in a boat, and one part of the company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much to the contrary; it happeneth there is a third Opinion of those, who conceive it would do as well, if the Boat went even, without endangering the passengers” (Halifax, Complete Works, ed. J. P. Kenyon [London: Penguin, 1969], 50). See Aron, Memoirs, 326–28, and Aron, Thinking Politically, 209. Aron, Memoirs, 327. Aron, Thinking Politically, 215. The phrase is from Aron’s speech on the occasion of his admission to the Institute (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) in 1965 (apud Baverez, Raymond Aron, 338). Also see the following statement of Aron: “My passion for analysis has led me to criticize almost everyone in politics, even including those who, in general terms, think as I do…. Oddly enough, although I write in moderate terms, it frequently happens that I do so in a wounding way or at least in a way considered irritating” (Aron, Thinking Politically, 301). See Aron, Thinking Politically, 257. The same point was made by a friend of Sartre and critic of Aron, Michel Contat, in an article published in Le Monde in 1980: “[Aron] still belongs to the family of the left, and, in a certain sense, this has always been true, even when he joined the opposition, because his arguments are always directed to the left, as though he wanted to remove their blinders” (quoted in Aron, Memoirs, 460). It is not a mere coincidence that Aron was responsible for the revival of interest in Tocqueville in France in the 1950s. For more details, see the chapter on Tocqueville published in Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. I, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 237–302. Aron, Thinking Politically, 101. Pierre Hassner’s words were quoted by Pierre Manent in a recent dialogue with Nicolas Baverez, “Raymond Aron, le dernier philosophe des Lumières,” published

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47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology in Le Figaro (October 17, 2003) on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Aron’s death. Aron, Thinking Politically, 101. Aron, Memoirs, 255. Ibid., 256. The phrase is taken from an article of Aron in which he commented on de Gaulle’s constitutional plans. The expression “absolute and limited” comes from Maurras. Ibid., 258. Ibid. Aron, Thinking Politically, 252. Aron’s reference to Merleau-Ponty can be found in Aron, Memoirs, 215; for his critique of Jeanson’s ambiguous position, see 221. I borrow this phrase from Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Aron, Memoirs, 476. The phrase belongs to Camus and is taken from Albert Camus, The Plague (New York: Modern Library, 1974), 121. For more details, see Aron, Thinking Politically, 262. On this issue, also see Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 53. It is worth pointing out that in this respect Aron’s liberalism was different from Oakeshott’s more conservative stance. Yet they both shared a certain skepticism that made them immune to any forms of political radicalism. Camus, The Plague, 17. Aron, Thinking Politically, 261. See, for example, the following statement of Aron: “As always in the most difficult situations, I try to find a way to avoid the worst—and the worst thing that can happen to a country, as far as I am concerned, is civil war…. I was always obsessed with the need to avoid civil war, and I lived in an era when we were always close to it” (Thinking Politically, 74). I borrow here a phrase from Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism, 35. Ibid., 124. Here is a revealing passage from Aron: “I had decided to be a committed observer. To be at one and the same time the observer of history as it was unfolding, to try to be as objective as possible regarding that history, and to be not totally detached from it—in other words, to be committed. I wanted to combine the dual role of actor and spectator” (Thinking Politically, 257). Ibid., 251. “I have never aspired to angelic purity, otherwise I would have renounced studying political matters” (ibid., 242). The phrase is taken from Aron, Politics and History, 237. Aron, Thinking Politically, 244; also see 33. Ibid., 242. Ibid., 264. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 44. I borrow this phrase from Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism, 124.

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74. I borrow the phrase from Adam Michnik, Letters from Freedom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 326. On this issue, also see Aron, Thinking Politically, 263. 75. See Aron, Thinking Politically, 303. 76. Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflexions, 42. 77. A few words about the trajectory of the concept of moderation are instructive here. Take, for example, the connection between moderation and the so-called “moderantism.” In a polemical article published in Le Conservateur in 1820, the ultra-royalist Marquis Coriolis d’Espinouse condemned the abuse of the word “moderation” and denounced the so-called “modérantisme” of those who feared the presence and consequences of strong passions in politics. In Coriolis’s view, moderation was an ill-defined and ambiguous concept that lent itself to misinterpretations that, he argued, reflected the moral confusion and decay of society at large (Coriolis d’Espinouse, “Si ce qu’on nomme aujourd’hui modération est la modération,” Le Conservateur VI [1820], 558–63). For an excellent overview of the historical meanings of moderation, see Georges Benrekassa “Modération, Modéré, Modérantisme,” in Handburch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe im Frankreich, eds. Rolf Reichardt and Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink (München: Oldenbourg, 1996), 125–59. 78. Aron, Politics and History, 259. 79. Nicolas Baverez and Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron, le dernier philosophe des Lumières,” published in Le Figaro, October 17, 2003. 80. Aron, Thinking Politically, 253. 81. Ibid., 346. 82. The creation of the Raymond Aron Center of Political Research at the prestigious École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris illustrates the enduring influence of Aron’s works. This institution has been at the center of the “new French thought” in the 1980s. Among the best-known representatives of this trend are Pierre Manent, Alain Besançon, Pierre Rosanvallon, and Marcel Gauchet. 83. On the issue of the antinomies of the political sphere, see Anderson, Raymond Aron, 139, 170–72. 84. Aron, Thinking Politically, 33.

14 An Introduction to Raymond Aron: The Political Teachings of the Memoirs Bryan-Paul Frost How is one to begin to approach the writings of Raymond Aron?1 For the individual who is interested in a particular aspect or theme in Aron’s corpus, the answer is fairly straightforward: Simply find the relevant articles and/or books, supplemented perhaps by a general understanding of the circumstances surrounding Aron’s writing and publication of them. But for the individual who wishes to confront Aron’s thought as a whole—who wishes to know the way in which he reasoned and the conclusions he drew—then the task facing the wouldbe student is both daunting and discouraging. In the first place, there is the sheer size of his corpus: Aron wrote tens of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of newspaper and magazine editorials.2 To read his entire oeuvre would seem to require the lifetime it took Aron to compose it. In the second place, there is the vast number of subjects on which Aron wrote. Philosophy, political science, sociology, economics, international relations, nuclear weapons, contemporary ideologies, ethics, history (both ancient and modern), education…—it would seem that the only subject in the liberal arts that Aron did not write about was literature and poetry (although he was, of course, well-read and knowledgeable in these areas as well!). To master all of the fields in which Aron was conversant would seem to require a mind as capacious as his own. And finally, in the third place, there is the tumultuous century during which Aron lived. To put it mildly, he was fated to live in “interesting times.” Born into a secularized Jewish, bourgeois family, Aron lived through World War I as a child and watched his father lose much of his fortune during the Great Depression; Aron taught in Germany during the early 1930s, saw and accurately assessed the meaning of the rise of Hitler and Nazism, and fled to London when France fell in the summer of 1940; and after the war, Aron became an influential editorialist, 285

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writer, and later university professor, and he was always in the very thick of the heated debates surrounding the historic choices facing France, in particular, and Europe, in general, in respect to such issues as communism, NATO, German rearmament, the Common Market, Gaullism, Algerian independence, and the events of May 1968. In short, one would already have to be well versed in the history of the twentieth century before one could realistically even begin to delve into Aron’s corpus. Given the magnitude of the tasks facing the would-be student of Aron, one could hardly be blamed for throwing one’s hands up in despair and abandoning the venture altogether. Fortunately, there is an entry into Aron’s corpus that, in many ways, begins to remedy the three aforementioned difficulties—namely, his Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection.3 Published during the last year of his life, the Memoirs weaves together a summary and appraisal of his major works as well as a critical reflection on the major events of the twentieth century. Of course, the Memoirs is no substitute for Aron’s fully developed analysis on any particular subject in his books and essays, and some of the references or allusions he makes to historical events and personages might be unfamiliar to many readers. But these remarks notwithstanding, it is my contention that the Memoirs is the single best and perhaps most natural introduction to Aron’s thought as a whole.4 In other words, to understand the unique character or manner of Aron’s political reasoning, we must begin with the account he gave of himself at the end of his life. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to begin to articulate just such an account of Aron’s political reasoning by examining some of the most significant issues discussed in the Memoirs. First, we will examine the overall character and style of the Memoirs in an effort to discern the way in which Aron approached and treated the subjects he discussed. Second, we will try and locate the underlying reasons for what is arguably Aron’s most impressive and lasting achievement: his steadfast rejection of communism and totalitarianism, and his genuine appreciation of the strengths (and weaknesses) of liberal democracy. We will then turn, third, to discuss what Aron saw as the proper role of the public intellectual in a liberal democratic society as well as what dangers or temptations intellectuals faced when they entered into the political fray. Fourth, we will articulate Aron’s understanding of the purpose of higher education and the role of a professor, especially in light of the events of May 1968. And finally, fifth, we will examine Aron’s thoughts on friendship and genuine human greatness. As the concluding chapter in a collection of essays honoring Aron’s legacy, it seems fitting to direct this article primarily (but not exclusively) to the next generation of Aron scholars in the hopes that they too may profit from his principled decency, moderation, and analytical clarity. Although Aron did not live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of a new international system, and although Aron might not have predicted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and global terrorism, certainly his brand of political reasoning will be needed as much in this century as it was in the last.

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The Character and Style of the Memoirs The student who comes to the Memoirs expecting to be entertained by an account of Aron’s personal life will be disappointed in short order. Except for the introductory chapter, where he speaks about his relationship with his family, and in particular his elder brother Adrien, the book is almost conspicuous in its lack of references to his domestic life: Indeed, the first reference we have to the future “companion” of his life, his wife Suzanne (née Gauchon), takes but a single short paragraph, within which they meet and are married; by contrast, the discussion about Suzanne’s friend Simone Weil that follows takes up considerably more space (51–3/78–80). The most that we receive about Aron’s domestic life are very brief—although sometimes very poignant—remarks, as for example when he states that one of the reasons he wanted to return to the Sorbonne in 1955 was the lingering sorrow over the birth of a mongoloid daughter and the death of another of sudden leukemia, all within the same year (229/335). But it is not just Aron’s family life that is kept largely in the background; Aron is also remarkably reticent about any aspect of his private life in general, and consequently the book contains very little that one might broadly or loosely categorize as highly sentimental, emotional, or even deeply personal at all. But perhaps this should not be so surprising, especially if we recall the subtitle of the book: Fifty Years of Political Reflection. This is a book whose purpose is to recount the character and development of Aron’s thought from the 1930s through the 1980s. But we can go further on this point: As a book that recounts what Aron concluded on any particular issue or subject, the lack of sentimentality might also be the first key to explain how Aron approached each particular topic—and that when he did, why he was usually correct in his analysis. It is hard to imagine a more passionate and divisive controversy that gripped postwar France than the Algerian war and the question of Algerian independence. Aron wrote two major pamphlets on this subject, La Tragédie algérienne (1957) and L’Algérie et la République (1958), both of which argued that it was in France’s long-term interest to quit the war and grant Algeria sovereignty.5 In this respect, Aron’s position was exactly the same as every other “respectable” or “progressive” leftwing intellectual of the day—but it was the reasons Aron marshaled to support this position that set him apart from other intellectuals as well as from much of the French public as a whole. To integrate Algeria fully and equitably into the French nation would require giving Algerians representation in the National Assembly proportional to their population, and this, in turn, would inevitably require the French to increase their taxes in order to reduce the vast differences in the standard of living between the two countries. If the French were unwilling to make such political and economic concessions, then the only reasonable alternative to full and complete integration was Algerian independence (as France no longer had the stomach or the means for imperial domination as they had in the past). It mattered little whether there really was

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such a thing as a genuine Algerian state or people—what mattered was that they wanted to create a state now. The French had to admit that their two countries had different cultures, religions, races, demographic growth rates, and levels of prosperity, and that they therefore could not belong to one and the same political community and be governed by one and the same set of “social laws.” The sooner this was realized, the sooner disengagement could begin, and Aron called for what he termed “the heroism of abandonment” (a heroism Gaullists would later claim as their own once France finally quit Algeria in 1962, although many of them vilified Aron when he made this same suggestion some five years earlier) (254–56, 261–63/365–66, 378–79, 385–86). Virtually absent from the two pamphlets was any appeal to “ideological” or “moral” arguments, for instance, that colonialism was inherently unjust or that the French had an ethical obligation to quit the country or that the army’s use of torture was reprehensible. Although Aron himself was against the use of torture (“I wouldn’t have taught anyone a thing by proclaiming that I was against torture. I’ve never met anyone who was in favor of torture”) as well as “against colonization for reasons of principle, or for moral reasons, if you prefer,” he studiously avoided such arguments in his two pamphlets. As he later revealed in an interview, the point of his pamphlets was “not to persuade the anticolonialists, but those who were colonialists”; and the only way to convince this latter group of individuals was not through a “moral condemnation of colonization” but rather through a demonstration that it was actually in France’s long-term national interest to leave Algeria and grant it independence.6 Given the arguments that Aron used (and did not use) in favor of decolonization, it comes as little surprise that these two pamphlets confirmed his reputation as a “heartless calculator and ice-cold thinker” (252/376). But is this charge at all accurate or fair? The reason that caused Aron to speak out on the subject of Algeria in the first place—and indeed, that moved him after the war to play such a prominent part in French political life through his journalism and other writings—was his passionate commitment to his country, a country he claims throughout the Memoirs to love and that he would never leave (cf. 133/191). But it is precisely that passionate commitment that forced Aron to reason and write in such a dispassionate manner, for only in this way would France’s long-term interests be served. This idea is perhaps best summarized by Pierre Manent in an interview he gave on the twentieth anniversary of Aron’s death. Aron began, first of all, by carefully informing himself about all the aspects of a problem in its reality and complexity in order to arrive at a political judgement. The secret of that simple procedure belongs to a very rare combination of civic passion and impartial judgement. It is very easy to be passionate, or on the other hand to be “impartial” in the manner of a certain sort of political science. Everyone can do this. In contrast, it is something else to attain impartiality while one is motivated in his inquiry by civic passion. That is something more difficult. I believe that Aron embodied this very rare equilibrium between passion and the constant concern for

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impartiality. He may have made mistakes, but it is almost impossible to catch him succumbing to an unjust passion. I will say it as simply and directly as I feel it: he was the most naturally just man I ever knew.7

In sum, Aron’s political reasoning sequesters the passions so that analysis is clear and impartial. Passion certainly fuels the desire to inquire but it does not intrude on the conclusions of that inquiry. Indeed, when passion does intrude, as Aron admitted it sometimes did during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, his emotions got the better of his reasoning and his political analysis suffered accordingly (246–47/357–59).8 The Rejection of Communism Perhaps Aron’s single, most enduring legacy was his steadfast rejection of communism; his clear sighted understanding of the true character of the Soviet Union; and his ongoing support of the Atlantic alliance and France’s role therein. These were hardly popular views during the Cold War, and Aron certainly paid a price for expressing them: He was routinely censured and vilified by leftist intellectuals, some of whom (Jean-Paul Sartre most notable among them) rarely bothered even to read what he wrote or wildly distorted what he actually said and did.9 Although Aron gave as good as he got, he never treated his opponents with contempt or condescension—indeed, he showed them a respect they rarely granted him, carefully reading their books and articles, and often publishing detailed rebuttals.10 Nonetheless, Aron only achieved the notoriety he deserved near the very end of his life, in large part due to the enormous success of the Memoirs itself as well as to the extended series of interviews he gave to JeanLouis Missika and Dominique Wolton (later published as Le Spectateur engagé). Suddenly, Aronian reason and liberalism began to take center stage in France (a trend that shows no sign of diminishing given the number of scholars throughout Europe, America, and elsewhere who are actively exploring his thought). In hindsight, it is somewhat difficult for us to see how so many otherwise gifted individuals could have ignored, excused, or been so blind to the enormity of the crimes committed in the name of communism and the communist bloc; consequently, it is that much more important to understand how and why Aron was able to resist the temptations of the Left when so many other intellectuals were utterly duped. Let us begin with François Furet’s simple but accurate remark that “the oldest, the most constant, [and] the most powerful” of all those passions that spawned communism (and fascism) was “hatred of the bourgeoisie.” Furet continues: [This hatred] can be found throughout the nineteenth century before reaching its apogee in our time when the bourgeoisie, under its various names, would provide a scapegoat for all the calamities of the world for both Lenin and Hitler. The bourgeoisie incarnated capitalism, the forerunner (for Lenin) of Fascism and imperialism and (for Hitler) of Communism, which were the origins, respectively, of all

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they detested. Sufficiently abstract to contain many symbols, sufficiently concrete to offer a convenient object of hatred, the bourgeoisie furnished both Bolshevism and Fascism with their negative pole, along with a supporting complement of older traditions and sentiments.11

Aron’s family did belong to the French bourgeoisie, and his evaluation of this patrimony is highly instructive. In a conversation with one of his former teachers, the French philosopher Alain, Aron recounted the following incident: For most of my life, after my studies, I did not possess any capital [and] I lived on my salary. By chance, in a conversation with Alain, I alluded to the contrast between an old-style bourgeois childhood and my current condition, that of a bourgeois without reserves…. I confessed to him that I derived satisfaction from this, or rather, more accurately, that I felt unburdended. I would not have to worry about money [and] I would spend what I earned like a wage-earner, but not without profiting from the intellectual capital accumulated in the course of my studies. Alain answered that I had been fortunate first of all to benefit from the security provided by a well-to-do family, [and] then by receiving only the inheritance that everyone receives from his father and mother: an inheritance of being, not possessions. Perhaps I would never have the “fear of want” which constantly troubles those who have experienced real poverty; at the same time, I would not be obsessed by what the Americans call keeping up with the Jones. (9–10/15–16)

In other words, Aron displayed a healthy appreciation for both the strengths and weaknesses of his bourgeois upbringing: On the one hand, he greatly profited from the educational opportunities afforded him by the situation of his parents, without at all becoming arrogant of his situation or despising or ultimately rejecting his patrimony; and on the other hand, he did not become bitter or resentful in losing these advantages later in life, and his newfound situation certainly did not dull his ambition to distinguish himself in his chosen profession (see, e.g., 10–11, 25, 114, 178/17, 37, 165, 248). Aron’s comportment stands in stark contrast to someone like Sartre, who, having enjoyed all the advantages of an elite education at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, seemed to categorize everyone who represented or advocated something with which he disagreed—whether it be the rich, powerful, and privileged, the Right, or those who supported the Munich agreement—as nothing more than salauds (23, 55, 104, 449, 451/35, 81, 148, 712, 715). Such words are not part of Aron’s lexicon. He did not share the destructive hatred—whether born of familiarity or contempt or both—that characterized communism. Now it must be admitted that Aron was in agreement with what he called “the ‘true’ left” on “one important point”: He too “despised above all those who believed themselves to be of another essence” (34/48). But this contempt did not lead him to issue blanket condemnations; for in the paragraph immediately preceding the one just quoted (34/48), he matter-of-factly states that those in power were no different—no better, no worse on average—than other “ordinary mortals.” Aron may have despised those who thought they were intrinsically superior to others,

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but he was free from that seething, pervasive enmity that so infected Sartre’s soul (cf. 326–31/486–90). Complimenting and reflecting Aron’s accurate appraisal of his bourgeois inheritance was his sober understanding of what politics and society could realistically achieve. Although Aron was influenced by the quasi-pacifist, antiauthoritarianism of Alain (29–32/41–45), and although he considered himself temperamentally on the Left early in his intellectual development (even joining the socialist party SFIO in the mid-1920s [33–34/48]), he soon observed a “gap” between “philosophy and my feelings”: “ignorance of society as it is, as it can be, and as it cannot be. Most of my contemporaries have not filled, have not even tried to fill, this gap” (15/22). For his contemporaries, politics remained a bitter struggle between truth and falsehood, liberty and oppression, progress and stagnation (cf. 89–90/129). Aron demurred: “Politics is never a conflict between good and evil, but always a choice between the preferable and the detestable.”12 By accepting politics as the realm of the possible—of the better and worse—Aron immunized himself against totalizing explanations, millenarian hopes, and apocalyptic visions, and he was therefore better able to appreciate the middling but solid rights and freedoms secured by western democracies and to see through the outrageous propaganda and lies of the Soviet Union and their apologists. In addition, Aron avoided the all-too-easy temptation to dehumanize his opponents by personifying them as the incarnation of evil (which by implication, of course, meant that the writer was the incarnation of everything good). As he once wrote, “[I]t is not everyday that a Dreyfus Affair comes along justifying the invocation of truth against error” (100/144).13 It was perhaps this sense of fair-play and proportion—to treat one’s opponents with respect and to take as seriously as one could their arguments—that led Aron to be one of the few critics (or adherents!) of communism who actually read, studied, taught, and wrote about Marx and Marxism. And he read Marx fairly, engaging in serious dialogue with him and not in an effort to dismiss or vilify him. Marx was a sort of lifelong companion, even if Aron became more critical of him as the years progressed (40–41/54–55). It should go without saying that Aron was familiar with more than just Marx. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Aron was conversant in the broad history of Western philosophical, political, and social thought, from Thucydides to Machiavelli, Tocqueville to Weber.14 And he held these thinkers in great esteem. Reading Kant for one year, for example, “cured me once and for all of vanity (at least in the deep sense)”; he thought that “nothing can replace, even for those who are not committed to philosophical labors, the deciphering of a difficult text”; and he judged a book according to “the mental tension each one of them required” (14, 26/21–22, 38). In short, Aron rightly saw himself as a student of the great thinkers of the past, and not their equal (465–67/731–33). But it was not just the great thinkers of the past that he judged superior to himself; he also had a remarkable appreciation of his own abilities as compared to

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a select few of his contemporaries—an appreciation all the more remarkable considering the fact that Aron was judged by his teachers and peers to be one of the most promising and gifted thinkers of his generation.15 Early on in the Memoirs, Aron states that Alexandre Kojève, Eric Weil, and Alexandre Koyré were “three superior minds whom I admired and against whom I did not dare measure myself” (65/94). And he returns to this same theme in the Epilogue, as if to remind the reader of his own self-worth as compared to those of his contemporaries who truly deserved to be placed in the “first rank” (465–67/731–33). It is perhaps this recognition of genuine intellectual superiority, both of the past and the present, coupled with the admission that he was not among such thinkers, that prevented Aron from being blinded by the sundry intellectual fashions of the day, and enabled him to withstand the solitude and insults that were regularly hurled at him. Understanding what genuine philosophical study and genius entailed made him unwilling to sacrifice mental rigor and honesty to whatever “ism” happened to reign supreme. Each of the above characteristics (his accurate evaluation of the bourgeoisie, politics, and philosophical superiority) goes a long way in explaining how and why Aron was able to resist and correctly analyze the true nature of communism. One final, indispensable point, however, must be added. If there can be called a distinctive Aronian mode of analysis, it would certainly revolve around the question Aron asked himself each time he began to decipher a political event: What would you do in the government’s place (30, 39–40, 46, 53, 85, 91–98/43, 53, 70–71, 79–80, 124–25, 131–41)? Aron was inspired to make this question the focal point of his analysis during a meeting he had in 1932 with Joseph Paganon, an undersecretary in the French Foreign Ministry. After listening to Aron speak about his experiences and worries over political events in Germany, Paganon turned to him and posed this simple question: “But you, who have spoken so well about Germany and the dangers appearing on the horizon, what would you do if you were in [the prime minister’s] place?” Aron continues: I do not remember my answer; I am sure that it was embarrassed unless I kept silent. What should I have said? This lesson from a diplomat to a future commentator bore fruit. Fifteen years later, at Combat, I one day asked Albert Ollivier, who had criticized the government in an editorial: “what would you do in its place?” He answered, more or less: “That’s not my business. It has to find what to do; I have to criticize.” As often as possible, I have tried to carry out my role as a commentator in an entirely different spirit, to suggest to governments what they should or could do. (42/59)

It is one thing to criticize political practice; it is quite another to analyze those practices and thereafter to suggest realistic courses of action before the event has played itself out. That Aron is aware of the great difficulty of doing the latter is attested to in his generous comments concerning Walter Lippmann’s editorials on postwar American policy in Germany.

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Walter Lippmann rejected a policy based upon the hypothesis of two Germanies, the one Soviet, the other Western, and he asserted, with an incredible assurance, that the Germans would never accept the division of their country in two. The reader of Walter Lippmann’s articles of the spring of 1949 thirty years later offer a lesson in prudence to those who accept the thankless task of reacting to events and immediately discerning the meaning of them, before their consequences become apparent. (184/254)

What was the source of Lippmann’s “persistent misinterpretation” of postwar German policy, a misinterpretation that Aron claims could have been corrected by a simple visit to the country? “The reason seems simple to me: Lippmann refused to see events and men because neither the one nor the other agreed with his global conception of History, with his thesis of the primacy of the nation over ideology.” Aron is quick to add, however, his own particular misinterpretation: “Similarly, we who recognized the strength of the ideological bond in communism made a comparable mistake, but in the opposite direction: we were late to perceive the Sino-Soviet split or we underestimated its significance” (255). Aron’s criticism and self-criticism underscore the great lengths that must be taken to remove all of one’s ideological blinders in order to see “events and men” as they truly are; and one indispensable aid in helping to achieve this objectivity is to think through a situation from the perspective of someone in power—that is, from a political perspective. Perhaps this helps to explain why Aron is so interested throughout the Memoirs in how his editorials measure up now that events have played themselves out: When was his analysis obfuscated by ideology or passion, and when was it properly impartial and clear?16 Overall, Aron proved to be a remarkably prescient commentator, and this is one reason why his journalism, which one might imagine has lost its import or interest, remains a focal point for those studying Aron and the Memoirs: It offers an unparalleled example of how to reason politically. Let us rephrase the preceding comments in following way: Aronian prudence stands poles apart from Sartrean moralism. The rise of Hitler and the Nazis marked a milestone in Aron’s education: He now “understood and accepted politics as such, irreducible to morality; I would no longer seek, in my words or signature, to demonstrate my fine feelings. To think about politics is to think about the actors, hence to analyze their decisions, their ends, their means, their mental universe.” One not only had to think about one’s “intentions” but perhaps more importantly about the “consequences” of one’s choices (53, 96/79–80, 136). It was not that Aron believed morality played no role in politics; instead, rigid Kantian-inspired standards, when applied to politics, distorted the political realm and the choices real actors had to make in the face of an uncertain future with less than perfect information. When set against the absolute standards of Kant, genuine political prudence might look more like moral waffling or despicable compromise (at least at first glance); but Sartre’s tendency to take extreme positions as well as to demonize his opponents reveals the danger of

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just such a moralistic approach to politics. It also helps to explain why so many persons continue to maintain that despite his political misjudgments, Sartre had only the best or purest of intentions in mind (67, 89–90, 141, 215–20, 449–52, 456/98, 129, 198, 313–19, 712–16, 720). In sum, the Memoirs reveals how Aron’s moderation and sobriety—displayed in so many different ways across so many different areas—protected him from indulging in extreme but fundamentally puerile and dishonorable commitments (49, 53, 107/75, 79–80, 151). Aron demonstrates how and why such a temperament must be cultivated at all times when political passions run high, when condemnation is the currency of discourse, and when hopes far exceed reasonable expectations for improvement. It was this political prudence, in part, that helped to secure Aron from the intoxicating but poisonous allure of communism. The Role of the Intellectual in Liberal Democracy In his eulogy of Aron, Allan Bloom observed that, “In America, Raymond Aron was frequently called the French Walter Lippmann. Although the comparison is in fact ludicrous, it was meant to convey reverence for a unique kind of man necessary to democracy but almost impossible in it; one who both educates public opinion and is truly wise and learned. This was the ideal Aron approached…. He was a trustworthy companion in judging the events of the modern world.”17 To say the least, Aron was exceedingly conscious of his role as a public intellectual, or perhaps more precisely, as a French public intellectual. “Whether one likes or dislikes it, welcomes or deplores it, the fact remains that the ‘clerks’ of Paris still play a role in the world and radiate an influence out of proportion to the place that France occupies on the map. The resonance of the voice of France in spite of her weakened position is to be explained by cultural and historical peculiarities.”18 Because of the inordinate amount of influence Parisian intellectuals exercised, we must consider how Aron conceived his role. Aron discusses the role(s) of an intellectual early on in the Memoirs by reciting the opening paragraph of a 1937 article on the problems of the French economy (an article written after, and in response to, the 1936 victory of Léon Blum’s Popular Front). After acknowledging that intellectuals can “legitimately” intervene in political struggles, Aron notes that that intervention usually takes one of two forms: as defenders of “sacred values” or as adherents to a political party. Although both “attitudes seem legitimate,” in actual practice no one was adhering to their stated position. Those promoting “sacred values” more often acted like partisans, conflating the preservation of values with the policies of a particular party, while those supporting a political party were acting like propagandists, “fan[ning] the passions” of their supporters rather than “purifying them.” In both cases, however, Aron noted that no one seemed to have any genuine knowledge about the economic, political, or diplomatic issues they

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were discussing. Thus, the first task of an intellectual, regardless of the role he adopted, was to inform himself of the complexities of the issues involved.19 To say nothing of intellectuals themselves, too often the “man on the street” mistook someone’s fame in a particular intellectual discipline as a license to comment authoritatively on any event whatsoever. Thereafter, an intellectual clearly needed to distinguish between his role as an independent observer or as a thoughtful spokesperson for a political party (100–101/144). During Aron’s long career, he partook of both roles. As a member of the RPF, Aron presented a number of speeches to party members and the public at large. What is remarkable about these writings is that they do not always sound strictly Gaullist themes, often to the consternation of General de Gaulle, André Malraux, and others. But Aron’s understanding of his role as a party intellectual was more capacious than the party faithful: He was attempting to articulate the fullest understanding of their core beliefs as well as the most thoughtful or proper policy implications of those beliefs (164–73/226–37, 286). More frequently, however, Aron was a political observer who was not affiliated with any political party (although he clearly favored certain parties over others). Here, Aron attempted to enlighten French public opinion as a whole—to show France where its true interests lie—as he did during the Algerian crisis, even if his ultimate position happened to place him in the camp of the Left (cf. 157–58/217–18). Aron knew all too well the disastrous consequences that could occur when intellectuals confused “ideological passions” with “national interest,” a vice to which French intellectuals were sadly prone and that was on full display during the numerous international crises preceding the Second World War (93–99/133–43). Of course, every public intellectual has to be attentive to the unique characteristics of the people he hopes to advise, and Aron was more alert than most to the genuine weaknesses of the French: their incessant divisiveness, which rendered the country weak and unstable. France had few friends but many enemies, and the most vociferous of the latter were its own citizens. The French needed to become cognizant of the solid achievements of various French governments, in particular, and of liberal democracy, in general, and Aron sought to remind his country of them. Freedom under law, juridical equality, economic prosperity, representative government with free elections, and of course, the freedom to criticize the state—all these were being accomplished here and now in Western Europe, and they were not to be ignored or depreciated simply because the Soviets and their apologists proclaimed that in some sunny but as yet undertermined future epoch they would surpass the West and embody genuine (rather than so-called “bourgeois” or “capitalist”) rights and freedoms. Even the Fourth Republic, which Aron thought was far too weak, made some notable contributions in the immediate postwar period (contributions that the Fifth Republic might not have initiated, or at least would have initiated much more slowly and reluctantly), for example, ending the Indochina conflict, building the future European Union, joining the NATO alliance, and beginning the Bonn republic and

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reconciliation with Germany (166, 257/228–29, 381). Indeed, Aron’s efforts at unity and inclusiveness can be traced all the way back to his analysis of Vichy: He did not agree that all of the partisans of Vichy were necessarily traitors, and therefore he did not approve of de Gaulle’s intransigent claim that he and he alone bore the mantle of French legitimacy. Marshal Pétain’s decision to seek an armistice with Germany “saved several million Frenchmen from prisoner of war camps” and “the unoccupied zone improved the condition of half the French.” To classify people as either patriots or traitors would more than likely increase the bloodletting of the postwar purges and make it more difficult to speedily effect national reconciliation and renewal (116, 121, 123–26, 132–33, 135; cf. 145–46/166–67, 175, 179–82, 188, 193, 204–5; cf. 202–3). What emerges from this discussion is that France’s acute fragility placed a special burden upon responsible political commentators: While never being an apologist for the existing regime and its policies (cf. 254/377–78), Aron fostered a discourse of harmony, honorable compromise, and reasonable expectations. Whether other intellectuals were aware of it or not, the use of inflammatory, one-sided rhetoric risked the real possibility of plunging France into what Aron considered the absolute worst of all political evils, namely civil war.20 Although France was fortunate to have never experienced a civil war comparable to Spain’s, no less than three times during Aron’s maturity did the specter of civil discord threaten the country: from the fall of France in 1940 until its liberation in 1944; from de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958 until Algerian independence in 1962; and during the student revolts and upheavals of May 1968. Of course, there were occasions when taking an “extreme” position was the only “moderate” and “conciliatory” stance he could adopt (e.g., his implacable opposition to totalitarianism), but only because his opponent’s position would inevitably destroy France’s liberal, democratic institutions and culture. Thus, there is a strong Hobbesian element in Aron’s concerns as a commentator and in his thinking as a whole—but a Hobbesianism that does not degenerate into mere cynicism. But one must not go too far in this direction. His concern to avoid civil war is as much Aristotelian as it is Hobbesian in that he is just as interested in promoting civic amity as he is in avoiding civil unrest. It would therefore be more accurate to describe Aron’s frame of mind as a French political commentator in the following terms: On the one hand, because Aron was acutely aware of the depths to which France could sink, he could not afford the comforting illusion of dismissing the fear of civil war as so far remote from contemporary politics as to be well-nigh impossible; but on the other hand, he was also aware of what the country had and could continue to achieve as a (relatively) unified whole firmly within the Atlantic alliance, and he sought to remind readers of these economic, political, and spiritual accomplishments. At all events, Aron’s self-understanding of the role of the intellectual is as far removed from the “literary” or “poetic” approach to politics as one can imagine and as close as one can get to the unadorned truth (both good and ill) of twentieth-century French

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political reality. Certainly political commentators in other nations might not need to focus as acutely as Aron did on the possibility of civil discord; neither, however, should such commentators ever assume that the recourse to a rhetoric that demonizes the opponent, castigates his policies, and sees no possibility of compromise is without short- and long-term consequences. Education and the Educator in the Light of May 1968 Despite Aron’s notoriety as a journalist, he was also a highly influential university professor—perhaps “the greatest professor in the French university” by the time of his death.21 Indeed, as important as his journalism was, he never ranked it higher than his philosophic activity: “[P]hilosophy was worth more than journalism.” Besides, Aron admitted that he did not have the temperament to become a full-time journalist, lacking as he did “the taste for the new” (177–78/248–49), and he speculated that his scholarly books might have been different and even a bit better if he had not been a journalist for so many years.22 As an educator at France’s most elite and prestigious universities (the Sorbonne, École Practique des Haute Études, and the Collège de France), Aron could easily be regarded as the very embodiment of the status quo—as the mandarin par excellence—and he was certainly the target of those who advocated radical change in France’s highly centralized and competitive educational system. That Aron rallied to the defense of this system when it was threatened by protests and strikes in May 1968 might not seem so surprising; that Aron was a long-time critic of this system certainly is. Let us first attempt to distill some of Aron’s general criticisms of France’s educational institutions; thereafter, we can discern why he came to the defense of those institutions.23 Not surprisingly, some of the very first comparisons that Aron makes in the Memoirs concern the education he received as a youth. The core of Aron’s education centered on the “traditional humanities,” with mathematics, history, and civic instruction playing very little part; today, he notes, mathematics has dethroned “Latin and rhetoric” and reigns supreme—the very “touchstone” in determining who will become France’s “future elite.” Aron does not necessarily bemoan this fact: Both the language “of symbols and of words” are necessary tools in the modern world. What he laments, instead, is that the educational system has moved from one extreme to another. Similar sentiments underlie his thoughts concerning the inclusion of contemporary politics or history in the classroom. While he admits that “we learned nothing or almost nothing about the world in which we lived” while he was in school, he muses whether such “isolation” does not have more advantages than disadvantages. “A teacher ought to provide an example of detachment; he represents an arbiter, a witness; he judges according to the truth. As soon as he discusses politics, he has difficulty in raising himself, even when he attempts to do so, to that serenity he demonstrates with ease when he translates or interprets Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic wars” (20; cf. 332/30–31; cf. 497). Neither nostalgic nor radical,

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Aron endorses the integration of traditional studies with modern necessities in order to shape a more complete or well-rounded student; the world in which that student lives, while it cannot be ignored, should not become the exclusive or primary focus of instruction. A very different spirit pervades his discussion of what he calls “the inhumanity of the strictly university hierarchy,” which he witnessed while teaching at Le Havre in 1933. Those who had failed to receive the highly competitive agrégation (which is essentially a high-level and highly coveted teaching diploma) “suffered from their permanently inferior status”: They were forever denied the career advantages (remunerative, social, and otherwise) that came to the agrégés, even when they did the same work and might be more capable at doing it (56/82). Aron readily admitted that the agrégation was neither better nor worse than other methods of selection, and that those who deserved it generally earned it (25/37). Nonetheless, such a rigid system hardly corresponded to the meritocracy the university aspired to be: Success or failure on a single test should not determine the entirety of one’s future prospects. Aron’s comments here are much more pointed than those mentioned in the previous paragraph, especially when we recall that Aron himself received first prize in the 1928 agrégation. Indeed, more than thirty years later, when Aron began to put some of these thoughts into a series of editorials for Le Figaro, he suddenly found himself to be “enemy no. 1 of the Société des agrégés” (56/82). In short, Aron’s thoughts on education and the educator cannot be reduced to easily defined categories. He was never an apologist for a system that so directly benefited him. When Aron returned to the “old Sorbonne” in 1955 to begin his career as a professor, he was struck by five things. First, there was the “dinginess of the building and the institution. The chairs, in the tiny offices next to the lecture halls, could have come from the flea market. The rooms were gray, dirty, sad.” Second, Aron deplored the “concentration of power” and lack of accountability of many professors. Professors who so wished could exercise an “excessive and sometimes stifling” degree of influence over the choice and direction of a student’s research, and the power they exercised (if they so did) was literally unchecked by any other person or agency. In respect to their own teaching and research, professors only had to follow their own “conscience,” and while Aron admits there were some very fine professors, courses, and research agendas, he makes perfectly clear that this was not always the case. Third, by granting all students who earned a baccalauréat the right to enter the university system, the French government was wasting vast resources on what Aron called “pseudo-students,” namely those “who achieve no degree and derive little profit from their hesitant effort.” Unless some sort of selective admissions policy was adopted, the number of students entering the university would strain the system to the breaking point. Related to this problem, fourth, was the enormous distance between the professor and the students in his courses: While the professor would be personally familiar with the students who were writing dissertations under his supervision,

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the others were more or less left to “fend for themselves,” without any sort of supervision or guidance or “precise goal.” And finally, fifth, Aron sharpened his attack on the agrégation. The emphasis placed on this diploma over all others has created a “heterogeneous teaching body, with duties and rewards determined not by present merit, but by examinations or competitions taken before entering the career” (230–35, 242–43, 314/336–43, 352–54, 421).24 The situation at the Sorbonne deteriorated rapidly from the time Aron arrived until his departure in 1967, when it seemed as though the institution had reached the “end of its tether”: It simply could no longer accommodate the large increase in the number of students attending the university. Moreover, students who successfully completed their programs of studies suddenly found that their degrees no longer secured them employment in their chosen profession: Even agrégés were feeling increased competition and a scarcity of jobs (234/341–42). Given Aron’s thoroughgoing criticisms of higher education, he would seem to be the last person to rush to its defense during the tumultuous upheavals of May 1968, as he himself indicated (313–14/471). And yet, this is not as surprising as it might appear. Aron did not hold that illusory belief in the transformative and purifying power of so-called revolutionary violence. Even if the events of May 1968 were relatively benign by twentieth-century standards (only two people actually died, and both were accidental [325/484]), Aron was rightly worried about the extremes to which violence could lead and the unintended outcomes it could produce (315–16/472–73). Furthermore, the student protestors were a heterogeneous group with no clear-cut, realizable program for reform; and as for those who did have some sort of reform program in mind, their solutions would have likely destroyed the last vestiges of the university. Most of these proposals centered on “democratizing” the university, which inevitably meant giving the students a larger voice in everything from the hiring of professors to the overseeing of examinations (320–26/478–86). Although Aron did not dismiss these ideas out of hand, in the highly politicized climate of 1968, the inevitable result would have been the appointment and promotion of professors based solely on their political beliefs. Academic diplomas would then indeed become worthless (327–28/487–88). If reforms were going to be made, they had to be accomplished during a time when France as a whole was functioning such that calm deliberation could prevail (316–17/474–75). But this was perhaps the greatest irony, and saddest part, of May 1968—that it revealed how truly fragile the French republic still was. How might needed repairs be made to the educational system if the republican edifice that housed it could nearly be brought down by a group of stone-throwing youths? It should be emphasized that while Aron did not agree with what the student demonstrators were doing and advocating, he did sympathize with their plight: limited career opportunities, a new and disorienting environment, distant professors, little comradeship (320–21/478–79). The same cannot be said for the

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adults who supported (and even went beyond) the students, and Aron levels some of his sharpest criticisms at these individuals—especially his university colleagues. His criticisms go far beyond the fact that many adults enjoyed and admired what the students were doing (as long as their property was not damaged and there was not too much chaos and disorder [322/479–80]). Suddenly, professors who did not even know the names of their students were participating in sit-ins, denouncing the centralization of power, and clamoring for greater student involvement. If one of the causes or symptoms of student unrest in the 1960s was a general “weakening of adult authority,” certainly many Parisian intellectuals (for a time) helped to weaken it even further. But the university absolutely requires for its existence a voluntary respect and discipline on the part of the students towards the authority of their professors; if this is compromised, so too is the very character of education (317, 321–24/474, 478–82). In a final bit of irony, Aron became the advocate of a system he had always wanted to reform—but precisely because that system, and all that was worth preserving, was being threatened with destruction. On Friendship, Humanity, and Genuine Greatness At the beginning of this essay, we claimed that Aron revealed very little about his private life in the Memoirs. Strictly speaking, this is not completely true. There is a single exception to Aron’s overall reticence concerning his personal or private life: his on-going discussion of his relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. It is arguable that no other figure—not even General de Gaulle himself—looms as large as Sartre in the Memoirs as a whole; for while there may be more references to de Gaulle than to Sartre, it is often against the latter figure that Aron measures himself, both intellectually and personally. For someone whose philosophy was so unlike his own, and for someone who so unjustly mocked, dismissed, and even misrepresented him in conversation and in print, Aron’s judgment of Sartre’s character and oeuvre is remarkably lenient—indeed, one might say far too lenient. Why this fascination with an individual who in many ways symbolized everything that Aron struggled against?25 Let us begin by noting a certain ambiguity in Aron’s estimation of Sartre. Although Sartre occupies a prominent position in the early chapters of the Memoirs, especially those concerning his years at the École Normale Supérieure, Aron does not include him among the “three superior minds whom I admired and against whom I did not dare measure myself”: Alexandre Kojève, Eric Weil, and Alexandre Koyré (65/94). By the end of the book, however, Sartre replaces Koyré as one of the “three men whose superiority I could not conceal from myself” (465/731). It would seem that as Aron works through his Memoirs, Sartre’s image looms larger and larger, so much so that by the end of the book he has eclipsed Koyré’s early influence. It is hard to imagine that Aron was unaware of this change (cf. 67/98). One is therefore tempted to speculate that Aron, on completing the book, was still uncertain in his own mind of Sartre’s genuine

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merits as a thinker—as if he wanted to acknowledge and to deny Sartre’s genius at one and the same time. In what did Sartre’s “superiority” consist? It certainly did not consist in his concrete political analyses or decisions. Immediately following the aforementioned appraisal in the book’s Epilogue, Aron adds that Sartre, “above all in politics, made generous use of his right to be wrong” (465/731). For example, while Sartre might have been aware of the Soviet Gulag, he certainly did not bring attention to it and even tried to minimize and excuse its existence: “Whatever the nature of present-day Soviet society, the USSR is situated, grosso modo, in the balance of power, on the side of those who are struggling against forms of exploitation familiar to us…. The colonies are the labor camps of the democracies” (245–6/355). When pressed by people like Albert Camus to admit or deny categorically that the Soviet Union was the “fulfillment of the revolutionary project,” Sartre tried to find sanctuary in fundamentally evasive answers. Sartre wanted to be both “close to” and “critical of the Stalinist movement”—close to its ultimate, so-called humanitarian end but critical of its means—for in his mind only the Soviets followed a genuinely revolutionary path that would lead (someday) to the emancipation of the oppressed (221–22/320–21). Sartre was aided in holding this ultimately untenable position by his own existential philosophy, a philosophy that seemingly prevented him from being cornered or trapped by political positions that he previously took. By combining “the identifiable choice of character and the freedom of conversion in his own way,” Sartre could pride “himself on beginning anew, at every moment, as though he refused to be a prisoner of his own past, as though he were denying responsibility for his acts or his writings once they were completed” (24, 329, 452/36, 488–89, 715). In a phrase, “Sartre prided himself on having no sense of guilt” (455/719). But regardless of whether Sartre felt any pangs of guilt or remorse for the positions he advocated, Aron sadly but accurately specified what was so “catastrophic” about his politics: “[W]hat he will one day be reproached for is having used his dialectical virtuosity and generous feelings to justify the unjustifiable. For having, if you like, expended treasures of ingeniousness in order to try to prove that one could not be against Stalin and that one had, at least, to be close to him” (457/721). The question therefore remains as to why Aron held Sartre is such high esteem despite his deeply troubling political commitments. Aron offers two general reasons. In the first place, he admired Sartre’s bold “confidence” both in himself and his genius (16, 23/23, 35). Sartre had a certain daring that allowed him to take risks and make mistakes; Aron tended to “play it safe,” afraid lest he make a fool out of himself in the process (465–66/731–32). Second, there was Sartre’s extraordinary “creativity” and “fertility” of mind. From philosophy to literature, Sartre’s “imagination and capacity for construction in the world of ideas dazzled me (and dazzles me still).” Whereas Aron looked with dread upon a blank piece of paper, Sartre wrote with “ease” and produced an unusu-

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ally capacious body of work (16, 22–23, 67, 450, 456–57/23, 34–35, 98, 713, 720–21). What is so striking about these comments is that they are merely formal qualities. In other words, Aron is willing to admire the self-confident creator and abstract from that which he creates.26 But can this distinction be maintained—is there not an intimate if not indissoluble link between Sartre’s politics and his philosophy, or between the creative “genius” and that which he creates? Even if one restricted Aron’s praise to Sartre’s strictly literary works (works that Aron claimed he was not competent to judge), one could still wonder if there was a connection between the message(s) in the plays and novels, and his political activity. Surely Aron must have pondered this question—as the person who introduced the French, in general, and Sartre, in particular, to German sociological and philosophic thought, he must have been aware that similar questions were being asked about Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt: Were their philosophies and Nazism logically connected? Could not the same be asked of Sartre’s oeuvre and his Stalinism? Tony Judt offers perhaps the best answer as to why Aron continued to admire Sartre’s originality even while he doubted its veracity. He [Aron] lacked—or thought he lacked—the spark of creative, risk-taking originality that would have freed him to write his great book. He was well aware that Sartre’s philosophical output was a failure (typically, he did not feel competent to judge his fiction and drama); but it was a grand failure. Aron’s own writing was, in his eyes, on the whole a success. But it was a partial success, and he envied Sartre the grandeur of his capacities and his ambitions.27

One sees the truth of Judt’s remark echoed in what became a sort of euphemism among leftist intellectuals at the time: It was better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron. In this final ruse of Reason, Sartre seems to have the last word, if only because the ultimate goals or ends he espoused were supposedly so much purer or more noble than Aron’s seemingly prosaic appreciation of Western liberal democracy. Even if Aron had seen the truth of the Soviet Union more clearly and much earlier than others, he still could be censured for the much larger fault of refusing to believe in and blaze the trail toward humanity’s dream of a harmonious, classless society. This “unreasonable preference,” as Aron called it, makes a glorious virtue out of Sartrean vice, and Aron is rightly indignant about the dishonor it brings to all those who grasped the truth about the Soviet Union, some many years before him (456–57/720–21). At the end of the day, one is tempted to say that there is something peculiarly French about Aron’s respectful estimation of Sartre, a lingering belief that genuine philosophers must be creative and original and daring, even if they are ultimately in error. In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, Aron retained that all-too-French admiration for “literary politics,” even as he steadfastly criticized it and refused to practice it.28

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Notes 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The author would like to thank Blaine Arnold, Nathan McCune, and especially Daniel J. Mahoney for reading and making suggestions to an earlier version of this essay. The most complete bibliography of Aron’s writings is Perrine Simon, Raymond Aron: bibliographie (Paris: Julliard, 1986). See also Robert Colquhoun, Raymond Aron, 2 vols. (London: SAGE Publications, 1986), which also contains a very fine index of the copious secondary literature on Aron. It should be noted that neither of these works contain references to Aron’s voluminous number of editorials in such publications as Combat (1946–47), Le Figaro (1947–77), and L’Express (1977–83). Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990). This is an abridged translation of Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983), recently reissued with a new preface by Tzvetan Todorov (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2003). All page references in the text will be to the English edition followed by the original French edition; where there is only a single page reference, it will be to the French edition. In general, I have used Holoch’s translation, although I have sometimes altered it to make it more strictly literal. Unless otherwise indicated, all emphasized words are contained in the original. The only other book that can claim such status in Aron’s corpus as a whole is his Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, trans. George J. Irwin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), which was first published in 1938 and served as his doctoral thesis. As Aron later said of this book: “[M]y postwar works constitute a logical, if not necessary, continuation of the basic question raised in the Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire” (“Introduction,” Politics and History: Selected Essays by Raymond Aron, ed. and trans. Miriam Bernheim Conant [New York: The Free Press, 1978], xix). This “basic question” was: What are the characteristics and limitations of valid historical knowledge? As this chapter will demonstrate, the answer to this question was of more than scholarly interest to Aron, but rather it animated his entire adult life; for the issues raised in the Introduction concerned the dialectical relationship of history and politics—of how individuals, hoping to understand themselves through understanding the past, could nevertheless live and act and justify their decisions in the world (Memoirs, 85/124–25). But despite the centrality of the Introduction to all of his writings, the book itself is, as Aron himself admitted, a difficult treatise to wade through (79, 82/115–16, 118); consequently, it might not be the most fruitful or friendly path into his thought as a whole. Selections of these pamphlets have been translated and published in The Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the Twentieth Century, trans. Barbara Bray, ed. Yair Reiner, intro. Tony Judt (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 423–60. See especially 432, 437, 438–40, 451–53, 456–57, as well as 408, 410, 416. Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, trans. James and Marie McIntosh, intro. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 160–62, 176, (originally published as Le Spectateur engagé [Paris: Julliard, 1981], recently reissued by Éditions de Fallois [Paris: 2004]). It should be noted that although Aron disagreed with the war, he never demonized his opponents nor advocated desertion from the army. Genuine French patriots could be found on both sides of the issue, and no side had a “monopoly of patriotism.” Even if Aron felt the war was wrong-headed and unjust, the political

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community, for better or worse, had decided to prosecute it, and this meant that all citizens had an obligation to abide by the will of the majority. Aron acknowledged that there might be times when refusing to serve in the army is the right thing to do—but those times are few and far between. “In order to break one’s oath [to the country], one must have irresistible reasons.” Algeria was not one of those times. To encourage young Frenchmen to desert, as a number of intellectuals did (the socalled “121,” among whom was Jean-Paul Sartre), was both morally irresponsible and politically dangerous, as it risked an even greater calamity, namely civil war (Mémoires, 389–91). 7. Pierre Manent and Nicolas Baverez, “Raymond Aron: Political Liberalism, Civic Passion, and Impartial Judgement,” Society 41 (March/April 2004): 17. 8. Given Aron’s judicious and even-handed analysis of an event as divisive as the Algerian War, it is not surprising to see him display the same thoughtfulness when discussing the closest thing to America’s equivalent, namely the Vietnam War. On the one hand, Aron questioned whether the cost of defending the South Vietnamese regime would ever be worth its value over the long run as a strategic or symbolic asset (390/619); on the other hand, he clearly understood Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s predicament once they came to office in 1969. “If President Nixon wants both to withdraw from Vietnam and not to concede political victory to the enemy (a Vietcong government in Saigon), he will have difficulty in finding a replacement government for the South.” Unless the North considered the United States as resolute as it was in prosecuting the war, the alternative facing the United States was “defeat or prolonged war” (393/623) And yet, given the fact that the North did eventually attack and overthrow the South in 1975, Aron was not at all convinced in hindsight that it would have been better to bring the war to an abrupt end in 1969 rather than prolong it until 1973. “After the fact, perhaps Kissinger would recognize that it would have been preferable for the United States to cut its losses in this fatal adventure in 1969 rather than in 1973. The four extra years aggravated disorder and dissension within the Republic. The end result would finally have been less negative. I am not so sure…. The Paris agreements [1973] did not definitively save the Republic of the South, but they implied its existence, which North Vietnam thus recognized for the first time” (395/625). At all events, when asked why he did not advise the Americans simply to quit Vietnam as he had the French Algeria, he observed that the two situations were not the same. While the French wanted to maintain a colony in Algeria, the United States wanted to leave Vietnam and guarantee the independence of its government (394–95/624). 9. It should be noted that Aron also paid some price for his views from the Right as well. As his support for the United States, Gaullism, and NATO was not unconditional or uncritical, he was sometimes accused of betraying the very causes in which he believed. Notwithstanding his brief inclusion after the war in André Malraux’s Ministry of Information as well as his participation in the Gaullist political party the RPF, Aron was never a partisan thinker or actor in any traditional sense, and he maintained his independence throughout his journalistic and intellectual career (see generally 160–79/219–49). Thus, General de Gaulle expressed an important truth about Aron when he admitted, after Aron had written an article in 1959 entitled “Adieu au gaullisme,” that “He has never been a Gaullist” (170/234). Aron managed to support de Gaulle without endorsing all of his policies or succumbing to his princely mystique—that is, without becoming a Gaullist pure and simple. 10. See, for example, D’une Sainte Famille à l’autre: Essais sur les marxismes imaginaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) and History and the Dialectic of Violence, trans. Barry Cooper (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), originally published as Histoire

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11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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et dialectique de la violence (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), the former being a critique of Louis Althusser, the latter of Sartre. Neither responded to Aron in any detail, although Sartre accused him in an interview of “ravaging his [Sartre’s] thought for the sole purpose of better refuting it.” Aron replied: “That is probably a reproach that no critic addressed to me” (Memoirs, 593; see, more generally, 578–93). Aron’s most famous work of criticism, The Opium of the Intellectuals, trans. Terence Kilmartin, intro. Harvey C. Mansfield, foreword Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), originally published as L’Opium des Intellectuels (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1955), is remarkably free of polemics, at least if one understands by this term vituperative, ad hominem attacks. François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 4. Aron, Thinking Politically, 242. See also Memoirs, 215–16/313. Of course, these two aspects are related to, and can feed upon, one another: The ideological fanatic foretells of a coming age of bliss, and those who question the veracity of his prophecy are necessarily political heretics, hardly worthy of the existence they lead; and those whose existence has little or no intrinsic worth can casually be swept aside as society marches inexorably forward toward a harmonious and prosperous future. It should be mentioned that Aron’s broad training in the liberal arts goes a long way in explaining why he was such a consummate journalist and editorialist. Remarking on the profession, Aron laments: “In journalist schools today, students learn expertise, techniques, and tricks of the trade that anyone can learn in a few months on the job. On the other hand, these schools do not teach what is essential: the history and culture of peoples, the theory and practice of Leninism and Stalinism, the functioning of the American constitution. If the reading of a newspaper is the morning prayer of modern man (according to Hegel), then the journalist finds himself invested with a weltgeschichtlich task, but at a lower level. He must fit the event into the international system and at the same time explain its meaning and significance” (247). Aron’s modesty and appreciation of the talents of others was part of his character from his earliest days as a student at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). “My first impression of the ENS, I confess at the risk of appearing foolish, was wonder. Even today, if I were asked why, I would answer with complete sincerity and naïveté: I have never met so many intelligent men assembled in such a small space.” Aron’s comportment stands in sharp contrast to Sartre, who was also considered as one of the leading lights of that same, remarkable generation. Consider the following admission as reported by Aron: “I envied the confidence he [Sartre] had in himself. A memory comes back to me of a conversation on the boulevard Saint-Germain, not far from the Ministry of War. He confessed, without vanity, without hypocrisy, his idea of himself, his genius. To rise to the level of Hegel? Of course, the ascension would neither be too arduous nor too long. Beyond that, it would perhaps be necessary to struggle” (20, 23/31, 35). Without a doubt, Sartre achieved an exceptional notoriety; it is not at all clear that he will be remembered in the way that he had hoped (cf. 721–23). For more substantial samplings of Aron’s journalism than the Memoirs has to offer, see Chroniques de Guerre: La France Libre, 1940–1945, ed. Christian Bachelier (Paris: Gallimard, 1990) and Les Articles du Figaro, 3 vols. (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1990–1997). Allan Bloom, “Raymond Aron: The Last of the Liberals,” in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 258n2. In between the ellipses, Bloom adds the following: “The difference between the two men is most

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18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology instructive. Lippmann was almost always wrong on the greatest issues (i.e., Hitler and Stalin). His instinct was unsure. He was a snob. His judgments of men were too often off the mark. (He despised Truman.) He was ashamed of being Jewish. And his learning was superficial and not motivated by a real love of knowledge; it was for the sake of his journalism. He always thought power more important than knowledge. Aron had the contrary qualities. While Lippmann merely acted out an edifying role, Aron was the real thing.” Aron, Opium of the Intellectuals, xi. This is what Aron meant, in part, by looking at an issue politically: Too often leftist intellectuals “prefer ideology, that is, a rather literary image of a desirable society, rather than to study the functioning of a given economy, of a liberal economy, of a parliamentary system, and so forth.” Nevertheless, while knowledge of the facts was clearly essential, this did not capture the deepest meaning of Aron’s understanding of thinking politically: One still had to ask the question, “What would I do if I were in the place of the ministers?” (Aron, Thinking Politically, 154–55). Ibid., 37, 60–61, 69–70, 73–74, 80–83, 90. According to François Furet, “La rencontre d’une idée et d’une vie,” in Raymond Aron 1905–1983: Textes, études, et témoignages (Paris: Julliard, 1985), 52 (a compilation of articles published in the Aron-inspired French journal Commentaire nos. 28–29 [February 1985]). Aron, Thinking Politically, 254–57. Given the vast differences between the French and American educational systems, I have attempted to concentrate in this section on those of Aron’s criticisms that would tend to be relevant to both countries. It should go without saying, therefore, that Aron’s actual criticisms of the French system are more thoroughgoing and nuanced than can be presented here. Aron’s most detailed discussion of French education, in general, and of May 1968, in particular, can be found in The Elusive Revolution: Anatomy of a Student Revolt, trans. Gordon Clough (New York: Praeger, 1969), originally published as La révolution introuvable: Réflexions sur la Révolution de Mai (Paris: Fayard, 1968). It is worth noting that Aron compares American and British universities and students much more favorably than the French in all five of these areas of criticisms. While many will undoubtedly find Aron overly lenient in his appraisal of Sartre, it is important to keep in mind at least one source of that lenient appraisal: Aron was a gentleman, and gentlemen do not criticize harshly those of their friends (or former friends) who have passed away and cannot defend themselves from or respond to their accusers. Future generations would have ample opportunity to evaluate both men (whether for good or ill), but Aron would not disparage his boyhood friend. Thus, there is a sense of common decency or old-fashioned humanity that explains the respectful way Sartre is treated in the Memoirs; and this sense of decency should always be borne in mind as it helps to explain why Aron rarely traded insults with others but attempted to keep his disagreements civil and scholarly. This should not be taken to mean that Aron did not criticize Sartre in the Memoirs; but his criticisms, for the most part, repeat criticisms that he had made while both men were alive, and Aron more than a few times says that his remarks, at the time, were perhaps too severe. At all events, given the calumnies to which Aron was subjected, he shows a remarkable and admirable amount of restraint in his reflections. For those seeking a more spirited and unvarnished appraisal of Sartre’s moral and intellectual corruption, see Aron’s 1976 essay, “Alexander Solzhenitsyn and European ‘Leftism’,” in In Defense of Political Reason: Essays by Raymond Aron, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), 115–24.

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26. Of course, the other striking feature about the remarks is that Aron denies he has these very qualities. For an author of more than forty books, and for someone who braved the ire of “progressive” thinkers to write the truth about communism and the Soviet Union, it is hard to see how Aron lacked either self-confidence or fecundity of mind. 27. Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 172, emphasis in the original. 28. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848, eds. J. P. Mayer and A. P. Kerr, trans. George Lawrence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1987), 67.

About the Authors Fred Baumann is the Harry M. Clor Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. He has previously written about Sartre in Fraternity and Politics: Choosing One’s Brothers (1998). Barry Cooper taught at several universities in eastern Canada before coming to the University of Calgary in 1981. His teaching and research has tried to bring the insights of Western political philosophers to bear on contemporary issues in public policy. Cooper has published twenty-five books and nearly 150 articles and papers that reflect the dual focus of his work, the most recent being New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism (2004). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, and the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. Aurelian Craiutu is assistant professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (2003) and Le Centre introuvable (2006) and the editor of Guizot’s History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (2002). Craiutu also serves as associate editor of the European Journal of Political Theory. He is currently working on a book on political moderation and is translating and editing a volume of Tocqueville’s writings (with Jeremy Jennings) that will be published by Cambridge University Press. Michael Curtis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is the author or editor of twenty-five books, eight of which have been published by Transaction. His most recent book is Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (2003). Bryan-Paul Frost is the James A. and Kaye L. Crocker Endowed Professor of Political Science as well as adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is editor and co-translator (with Robert Howse) of Alexandre Kojève’s Outline of a Phenomenology of Right (2000) as well as contributor and coeditor (with Jeffrey Sikkenga) of History 309

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of American Political Thought (2003). He is currently working on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and civic education and completing a manuscript on Kojève’s political philosophy as a whole. Carlos Gaspar is professor of international relations at the Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa and senior researcher at the Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais. He is coeditor of Relações Internacionais and lecturer at the Instituto de Defesa Nacional and the Instituto de Estudos Superiores Militares. He is a contributor to Anne-Marie Le Gloannec and Alexandre Smolar, eds., Entre Kant et Kosovo: Études offertes à Pierre Hassner (2002). He has published extensively on post-authoritarian transitions and alliance theory and is currently preparing a book on great power politics in the post-Cold War. He was an adviser to the first three elected presidents of the Portuguese Republic. Liah Greenfeld is professor of political science at Boston University. She is the author of The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (2001), Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (1992), and Different Worlds: A Study in the Sociology of Taste, Choice, and Success in Art (1989) as well as essays in scholarly journals and general publications. She is also the coeditor of Center: Ideas and Institutions (1988). In the past several years her research has concentrated on the phenomenon of nationalism and its implications in modern politics, society, and economics. She is currently working on two projects: a continuing study of the intelligentsia, national consciousness, and political change in contemporary Russia, and the nature of culture. Stanley Hoffmann is the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University and was chairman of Harvard’s Center for European Studies from its creation in 1969 to 1995. His work deals with French political and intellectual history, international relations, European integration, and American foreign policy. Raised and educated in France, he was a disciple of Raymond Aron. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, and chairman and editorial director of Transaction Publishers. Among his works are Behemoth: Main Currents in the History and Theory of Political Sociology (1999), Tributes: Personal Reflections on a Century of Social Research (2003), Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power (5th edition, 2001), and Beyond Empire and Revolution (1982). Stephen Launay is maître de conférences at l’Université de Marne-la-Vallée outside of Paris. He is the author of La pensée politique de Raymond Aron (1995) and La guerre sans la guerre: Essai sur une querelle occidentale (2003).

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He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Zenon (Philosophie, science et politique). Claude Lefort is one of France and Europe’s leading political philosophers of the anti-totalitarian Left. A student of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, his dissertation on Machiavelli (published in 1972 as Le travail de l’oeuvre Machiavel) was supervised by Aron. His numerous books include Un homme en trop: Réflexions sur L’Archipel du Goulag (1976), The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (1986), and Writing: The Political Test (2000). Daniel J. Mahoney is professor of political science at Assumption College and the author of The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron (1992), De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern Democracy (1996, reissued by Transaction in 2000), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology (2001), and Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity (2005). He is also the book review editor of Society. In 1999, he was awarded the Prix Aron. Pierre Manent teaches political philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He was Aron’s assistant at the Collège de France and helped found the Aron-inspired quarterly Commentaire in 1978. His books include Naissances de la politique moderne (1977), Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy (1996), An Intellectual History of Liberalism (1994), and The City of Man (1998). His most recent books are A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State (2006) and La raison des nations: Réflexions sur la démocratie en Europe (2006). Miguel Morgado teaches history of political thought and political science at the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon, Portugal. He is the editor of the Portuguese translation of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (2006), coauthor of Histórias e Fragmentos da Arte Empresarial (2006), and has written several articles on subjects such as Montesquieu, Hannah Arendt, Rousseau, and Locke.

Index Abetz, Otto, 154 Action Française, 245 Adolphus, Gustavus, 87 Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier), 12, 48, 165, 228, 290, 291 Alexander I, Tsar, 94, 96 Algeria, 1, 261, 266, 270, 271, 286, 295, 296 Alibert, Raphaël, 152–53 Althusser, Louis, 1, 16, 72n, 305n Anderson, Brian C., 2, 7n, 102n, 279n, 280n, 281n, 283n Anschluss, 181, 197 Anselm (Saint), 68n d’Appollonia, Ariane Chebel, 174n Aragon, Louis, 50, 148 Arendt, Hannah, 114, 119, 123n, 149, 172n Aristotle, 49, 267, 279n, 296 Aron, Adrien, 287 Aron, Raymond: on Algeria, 268–69, 287–89, 303n–4n; analysis of German socialism and National Socialism, 162–64; on Bonapartism (Caesarism), 168–70, 244; career during World War II, 147–50, 244–45; changes in the international system after World War II, 180–85; character of his historical relativism, 196–201; character of the Memoirs, 287–89; and Clausewitz’s dualistic understanding of war, 97– 101; as committed observer, 272–76; comparison between Great Britain and the United States, 245–53, 255–56; conception of sociology, 125–27, 141; continuing interest in, 2–3, 5, 8n; criticisms of de Tocqueville, 115–21; criticisms of international law, 211–25; critique of Sartre’s (and Merleau-Ponty’s) communism, 51–55; differences with de Tocqueville’s works, 112–15; early relationship with Sartre, 313

47–50; his eclecticism, 112–15; on education and education reform, 297–300, 305n, 306n; on Europe’s decadence, 229–30; on Europe’s lack of virtù, 232–39; evaluation of Sartre, 300–302; on freedom, 266–67; on the French armistice, 150–52, 157–58, 296; on French intellectual traitors during World War II, 166–67; as a French patriot, 28, 120–21, 141n, 273, 288–89; and the German experience, 11–12, 149; on industrial society, 25–26, 116–18, 196; influence of historical relativism on his theory of international relations, 201–8; international colloquia on, 3; interpretation of Marx and Marxism, 33–46, 268; Jewishness of, 28; late influence of de Tocqueville on, 105–6; on (Marx’s) atheism, 42–4; on May 1968, 269–70, 299–300; and Melvin Lasky, 253–55; on military strategy and war, 21–24; moderation of, 29, 262–70, 277–79; on modern Machiavellianism and the romanticism of violence, 159–62, 171–72; on modern tyrannies, 165– 66; on the Munich accords (1938), 269; new collections of his work, 3–4; no “Aronian” school of thought, 7, 149, 277–78; on nuclear weapons and Clausewitz, 75, 78, 98, 101–2; on the Nuremberg trial, 215–17; on pacifism, 164–65, 171; and the persecution of the Jews, 152, 155–56, 170; philosophy of history, 17–21; as political educator, 27–30; political isolation of, 270–72; political outlook of, 264–66; and political reason, 5–7, 8n, 79, 238–39, 265–66, 289, 292–94, 306n; and possible attitude to the current global war on terrorism, 253; and preserving civilization, 227–29; and

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the problem of defining aggression, 218–21; and his proposed strategy for the Cold War era, 185–90; reasons for writing Clausewitz, 75–76; rejection of communism, 289–94; relationship between war and revolution, 176–80; reputation of, 1–2, 243–44; review of Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reasons, 60–66; role of the intellectual in liberal democracy, 294–97; and Sartre on May 1968, 58–60; similarities between his life and Clausewitz’s, 77–79; similarities with de Tocqueville’s sociology, 107–110; stages of his career, 12–16; and de Tocqueville’s attitudes toward French politics, 110–12; on transnational society, 212–14, 223; on the United Nations, 217–18, 221–24; unity of his thought, 17–21, 106; on the Vichy regime, 152–59; vulgar versus moderate Machiavellianism, 230–32; on war and democracy, 167–68; on the weaknesses of Sartre’s political judgements, 55–58, 301–2; and Weber, 12–13, 105, 106–7 Aron, Raymond, works by: L’Algérie et la République, 287; Les Articles du Figaro, 192n, 193n, 305; The Century of Total War (Les Guerres en chaîne), 21, 175, 190n, 191n, 192n, 193n; Chroniques de guerre: La France libre (including De l’armistice à l’insurrection nationale, L’Homme contre les tyrans, and L’Age des empires et l’Avenir de la France), 4, 14, 147–74, 175, 191n, 192n, 209n, 244, 305n; Clausewitz: Philosopher of War (Penser la guerre, Clausewitz), 16, 20, 21–24, 75–104, 173n, 202, 210n, 261; “Clausewitz’s Conceptual System,” 98, 99, 100, 104n; “The Columnist as Teacher and Historian,” 172n; Critique de la raison historique, 49; Dawn of Universal History, 195, 209n, 280n, 281n, 303n; Democracy and Totalitarianism, 15, 25, 26, 121n, 122n, 123n, 173n; Les Dernières Années du siècle, 209n; Dimensions de la conscience historique, 20, 209n; Eighteen Lectures on Industrial

Society, 15, 25, 121n, 122n, 123n; “Élie Halévy,” 121n; The Elusive Revolution (La révolution introuvable), 4, 15, 112, 240n, 306n; Espoir et peur du siècle, 202, 210n; Essais sur la condition juive contemporaine, 46n; An Essay on Freedom (Essai sur les libertés), 15, 24, 122n, 123n, 261, 280n–81n; “États démocratiques et États totalitaires,” 173n; Études politiques, 172n–73n, 193n; “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” 262, 264, 267, 280n; “The Fifth Republic,” 174n; France: The New Republic, 174n; De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews, 256n; “Le Général de Gaulle,” 174n; German Sociology, 49; De Giscard à Mitterrand, 1977–1983, 4, 7n; Le Grande Schisme, 175, 191n, 192n, 193n; The Great Debate, 21; “History and Politics,” 262, 280n; History and the Dialectic of Violence, 60–66, 70n, 71n, 72n, 73n, 122n, 304n–5n; History, Truth, Liberty, 30n, 173n; “Ideas on the Wing,” 256n, 257n; The Imperial Republic, 75, 114, 250, 251, 257n; In Defense of Decadent Europe, 42, 46n, 230, 240n, 241n, 248, 257n; In Defense of Political Reason, 45n, 174n, 279n, 281n, 306n; The Industrial Society, 174n; “Interview with the editors of L’Express,” 257n; Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire), 13, 17, 20, 22, 49, 106–7, 121n, 122n, 123n, 171, 172n, 196, 201, 206, 209n, 210n, 303n; “Letter to Roger Caillois,” 172n; “The Liberal Definition of Liberty: Tocqueville and Marx,” 40; La lutte de classes, 15, 25, 121n, 122n, 123n; Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, 173n, 209n, 240n; Main Currents in Sociological Thought (Les étapes de la pensée sociologique), 15, 45n, 121n, 122n, 123n, 125–43, 255, 257n, 261, 280n, 281n; Marxism and the Existentialists (D’une sainte famille à l’autre), 16, 70n, 72n, 121n, 122n, 304n; Le Marxisme de Marx, 33–46, 281n; Memoirs (Mémoires), 2, 5, 7n, 8n,

Index 45, 68n, 69n, 71n, 73n, 75, 77, 102n, 103n, 123n, 148, 152, 172n, 173n, 174n, 190, 192n, 195, 208n, 209n, 240n, 241n, 262, 279n, 280n, 281n, 282n, 285–307; “Nations and Ideologies,” 249, 257n; The Opium of the Intellectuals, 2, 4, 14, 34, 51–52, 54, 60, 63, 70n, 71n, 105, 111, 122n, 208, 261, 262, 263, 264, 280n, 305n, 306n; “Of Passions and Polemics,” 257n; Peace and War, 21, 76, 122n, 198, 202, 203, 206, 210n, 211–25, 240n, 241n, 246, 247, 256n, 261; Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 3, 7n; La philosophie critique de l’histoire, 121n, 122n, 209n; Polémiques, 4, 173n; Politics and History, 45n, 174n, 208n, 209n, 210n, 280n, 281n, 282n, 283n, 303n; Progress and Disillusion (Les désillusions du progrès), 123n, 241n; “Reason, Passion, and Power in the Thought of Clausewitz,” 87, 94, 96, 101, 102n; “La révolution nationale en Allemagne,” 173n; “Sartre’s Marxism,” 257n; “Le socialisme et la guerre,” 191n; “Sociologie de l’action,” 209n; Thinking Politically (also The Committed Observer or Le Spectateur engagé), 2, 5, 7n, 49, 58, 59, 68n, 69n, 70n, 71n, 73n, 172n, 240n, 241n, 262, 279n, 280n, 281n, 282n, 283n, 289, 303n, 305n, 306n; “Three Forms of Historical Intelligibility,” 262, 264; La Tragédie algérienne, 287 Aron, Suzanne (née Gauchon), 287 Austria, 181 Bachelier, Christian, 33, 210n Ball, George, 251 Bassford, Christopher, 104n Baudelaire, Charles, 167 Baverez, Nicolas, 4, 7n, 172n, 277, 279n, 281n, 283n, 304n de Beauvoir, Simone, 1, 54, 68, 71n–72n, 73n Beiner, Ronald, 280n Bell, Daniel, 115, 254 Benda, Julien, 167 Benrekassa, Georges, 283n Bergson, Henri, 18, 20

315

Berkowitz, Bruce, 102n Berlin, Isaiah, 113, 254, 267 Bernanos, Georges, 148 Bernstein, Edward, 40 Besançon, Alain, 172n, 283n Bigo, Père Pierre, 37 Bloch, Marc, 130, 132, 142n, 143n, 210n Bloom, Allan, 8n, 48, 64, 69n, 294, 305n Blum, Léon, 49, 151, 237, 245, 294 Boissel, Jean, 154 Bolsheviks (Bolshevism), 39, 41, 54, 160, 177, 179, 290 Bonaparte, Louis, 169 Bonaparte, Napoleon (Bonapartism), 21–22, 77–78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 101, 112, 118, 169–70, 191n, 215, 244, 262; Napoleonic wars, 24, 94–96. See also von Clausewitz, Karl Boris, Georges, 244 Borodino, 94, 95, 96 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 262, 280n Bouglé, Célistin, 13 Boulanger, General Georges, 169, 244 Bouthillier, Yves, 153 von Boyen, Hermann, 85 Bracken, Brendan, 148 Brandes, George, 141n von Brandt, General, 80 Brest-Litovsk talks (1918), 193n Brezhnev, Leonid, 61, 268 Brinon, François, 158 Brodie, Bernard, 103n Bruno, Giordano, 243 Brunschvicg, Léon, 12, 13, 48, 68n, 149, 239, 245 Burnham, James, 168, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 189, 191n, 192n, 193n Büsch, Otto, 103n Caillois, Roger, 172n Campi, Alessandro, 210n Camus, Albert, 50, 56, 62, 69n, 70n, 272, 273, 282n, 301 capitalism, 4, 25, 26, 36–39, 40, 41, 50, 51, 53, 60, 63, 116, 140, 161, 163, 168, 178, 179, 263, 266, 268, 289 Carlyle, Thomas, 248 Carr, E. H., 178, 182, 191n, 192n Casanova, Jean-Claude, 33, 45, 174n Cassin, René, 244

316

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology

Castro, Fidel, 71n Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron, 3, 172n, 283n Chamberlain, Neville, 187 Char, René, 192n Chardonne, Jacques, 166 Chernobyl, 190 Chevalier, Jacques, 153 Chiaramonte, Nicola, 148 China, 184, 188, 189, 191n, 193n, 293 Christianity (Catholicism), 28–29, 130, 140, 153, 155, 163, 164, 170, 275 Churchill, Winston, 147 Cicero, 27 Clark, Colin, 25 von Clausewitz, Karl, 16, 21–24, 75– 104, 114, 203, 204, 246, 250; and the 1812 French campaign, 94–96; battle at Jena, 77, 80, 81, 82, 85; genesis of his theory of war, 89–91; incorporation of the Napoleonic revolution in military affairs into his theory, 92–96; influence of Kant and Hegel on, 80–83; influence of Montesquieu on 83–84; phenomenological method of, 79–80; and the two types of war, 76–77; understanding of the Napoleonic revolution in military affairs, 76, 77–78, 85–89, 101 Coats, Wendel J., 103n, 104n Cohen, Hermann, 80 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 16 Cold War, 1, 2, 3, 5, 51, 75, 101–2, 126, 127, 175–93, 202, 229, 251, 289 Collaboration, 154 Colquhoun, Robert, 303n Combat, 6, 14, 292, 303n Commentaire, 3, 121n, 123n, 148 Commentary, 246 communism (communists, communist parties), 2, 3, 5, 14–15, 25–26, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 50, 51, 53–54, 55, 60, 119, 141n, 150, 151, 156, 160, 163, 176, 177, 178, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191n, 198, 217, 218, 222, 223, 224, 231, 247, 248, 252, 256, 266, 270, 271, 272, 286, 289–90, 307n. See also Marx, Karl, socialism, totalitarianism Comte, Auguste, 15, 18, 108, 110, 115–16, 128

Congress for Cultural Freedom, 127 Constant, Benjamin, 109, 201, 262 Contat, Michel, 281n Cooper, Barry, 103n Cordier, Daniel, 172n Craig, Gordon A., 103n van Creveld, Martin, 98, 104n Curtis, Michael, 173n, 244 Czechoslovakia, 181, 219 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 250, 257n Darlan, Admiral François, 153, 158 Darnard, Joseph, 157 Darwin, Charles, 131 Déat, Marcel, 153, 156, 157 democracy, 3, 15, 17, 26, 27, 30, 40, 50, 51, 68, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 126, 140, 142n, 149, 153, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 217, 223, 227, 236, 238, 239, 245, 249, 251, 252, 253, 256, 266, 267, 276, 278, 286, 291, 302. See also liberalism Dennis, Lawrence, 191n Derriennic, Jean-Pierre, 210n Descartes, René, 47, 57, 68, 130, 153, 196, 262 Devin, Guillaume, 210n Dilthey, William, 12, 49, 62, 64, 114, 197 Doriot, Jacques, 154, 156 Draus, Franciszek, 173n Dreyfus affair, 244, 291 Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre, 166 Dühring, Eugen, 63 Durkheim, Émile, 12, 15, 106, 126, 129, 131–41, 142n, 143n, 245. See also sociology Egypt, 219 Einstein, Albert, 142n Eisner, Kurt, 140 Eluard, Paul, 148 Encounter, 247, 248, 250, 253, 254 Engels, Friedrich, 39, 63 Enlightenment, 11, 28, 250, 252 Ethiopia, 215, 220 Erasmus, 27

Index d’Espinouse, Marquis Coriolis, 283n European Journal of Sociology, 250 European Union (Common Market, European Economic Community), 60, 69n, 141n, 204, 286, 295 existentialism, 50, 51, 57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 256, 263, 301 L’Express, 4, 16, 148, 303n Fabre-Luce, Alfred, 166 von Fallersleben, August Heinrich, 103n Fanon, Frantz, 63, 72n fascism, 3, 5, 61, 66, 155, 160, 165, 169–70, 171, 177, 191n, 231, 244, 271, 289–90. See also National Socialism Fauçonnet, Paul, 13, 197 The Federalist, 201 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 190n Fessard, Father Gaston, 18, 28, 43 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 103n Fifth Republic, 58, 112, 170, 269, 270, 271, 295, 299 Le Figaro, 3, 14, 148, 175, 272, 282n, 298, 303n Finland, 216, 219 Flaubert, Gustave, 47 Flood, Christopher, 172n Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 23 Foucault, Michel, 197, 271 Fourth Republic, 50, 295 Fox, William, 182, 185, 192n Frankel, Charles, 250 Frederick the Great, 78, 85, 86, 87, 89 Free French Forces (Free France), 14, 49, 50, 112, 147, 150, 157, 244 French Resistance, 50, 152, 157, 158, 159, 175 French Revolution, 87, 88, 101, 109, 111, 112, 118, 169, 170, 181, 262 Freymond, Rémy, 173n Friedman, Milton, 266 Furet, François, 5, 8n, 289, 305n, 306n Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 65 Gaddis, John Lewis, 192n Gallie, W. B., 79, 102n, 103n Gasset, Ortega y, 227, 228, 240n Gat, Azar, 103n Gauchet, Marcel, 283n de Gaulle, General Charles, 14, 16, 50,

317

58, 77, 112, 121, 147, 148, 149, 150, 157, 159, 169, 170, 172, 172n, 244, 245, 250, 269, 270–71, 278, 282n, 295, 296, 300, 304n General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 69n Germany, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21, 22, 47, 49, 75, 84, 105, 121, 141n, 149, 150–72, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191n, 192n, 193n, 195, 215, 216, 217, 224, 244, 247, 248, 250, 254, 285, 286, 292–93, 295–96, 302 Gershoy, Leo, 57, 71n Gide, André, 167 von Gneisenau, Neidhardt, 85, 101 Goebbels, Joseph, 162, 166 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 81 Great Britain (England), 3, 14, 77, 105, 109, 111, 113, 114, 120, 130, 141n, 147, 148, 150, 154, 157, 162, 165, 171, 179, 182, 185, 219, 220, 230, 243–50, 253–56 Great Depression, 285 Greenfeld, Liah, 142n Grenada Crisis, 255 Guicciardini, Francesco, 280n, 283n Guizot, François, 229, 240n Habeck, Mary, 191n Halévi, Ran, 262, 279n Halévy, Élie, 34, 105, 164, 177, 191n Halifax, George Savile, Marquis of, 281n Hamilton, Alexander, 126 Hamon, Leo, 244 Handel, Michael I., 101, 104n Hart, Liddell, 204 Haslam, Jonathan, 191n Hassner, Pierre, 174n, 190, 193n, 210n, 270, 281n Haushoffer, General Karl, 192n Havel, Vaclav, 35, 45n von Hayek, Friedrich, 119, 267, 279n, 281n Hazlitt, William, 249, 254 Hegel, Georg W. F., 18, 36, 54, 80, 81–83, 84, 103n, 162, 165, 214, 216, 264, 280n, 305 Heidegger, Martin, 11, 17, 49, 64, 72n, 302 Helvétius, Claude, 247

318

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology

Hepp, Robert, 102n Hericlitus, 177 Herzog, Emile, 244 Hiroshima, 24, 184 Hitler, Adolph, 69n, 77, 82, 120, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 180, 184, 186, 188, 192n, 215, 216, 219, 228, 238, 269, 285, 289, 293, 306n Ho Chi Minh, 252 Hobbes, Thomas, 219, 224, 225, 229, 265, 296 Hobson, J. A., 251 Hoffmann, Stanley, 148, 172n, 250, 251 Holocaust, 152, 180, 215 Horowitz, Irving Louis, 173n Hugo, Victor, 47 Hume, David, 125 Hungary, 217, 223 Huntington, Samuel, 209n Huntziger, General Charles, 153 Hussein, Saddam, 208, 253 Husserl, Edmund, 49, 79 Huxley, Julian, 148

Koestler, Arthur, 52, 56, 272 Kohn, Hans, 192n Kojève, Alexandre, 60, 69n, 103n, 271, 292, 300 Kolakowski, Leszek, 69n Kolko, Gabriel, 251 Korea (North and South, Korean War), 51, 55, 184, 186, 189, 217, 219 Koyré, Alexandre, 292, 300

Jacobins, 118, 119, 171 Japan, 178, 182, 184, 185, 190, 229 Jardin, André, 123n Jaspers, Karl, 172n Jeanson, Francis, 50, 56, 62, 272, 282n Johnson, Lyndon, 250, 251 de Jouvenel, Bertrand, 110, 206 Judt, Tony, 3, 7n, 281n, 282n, 302, 307n

Labarthe, André, 147, 148 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, 48, 66, 69n Lamberti, Jean-Claude, 122n–123n Laski, Harold, 148 Lasky, Melvin, 247, 253–55, 257n Launay, Stephen, 209n, 210n, 279n Laval, Pierre, 153, 154, 156, 158 League of Nations, 178, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 222 Lebanon, 217 Lebow, Richard Ned, 103n, 104n Lenin, Vladimir, 23, 40, 41, 42, 71n, 177, 186, 251, 289 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 64 Lévy, Bernard-Henri, 7n liberalism (liberal), 3, 4, 25, 34, 39, 45n, 110, 120, 121, 162, 163, 164, 175, 176, 179, 183, 184, 185, 227, 236, 238, 239, 245, 247, 248, 251, 253, 255, 256, 266, 267, 277, 278, 282n. See also democracy Lippmann, Walter, 149, 254, 292–93, 294, 306n Louis XIV, 84, 262 Luchaire, Jean, 154 Ludendorff, Erich, 23 Luther, Martin, 25 Luxemburg, Rosa, 40

Kahn, Herman, 254 Kant, Immanuel, 50, 68n, 80–81, 83, 84, 85, 153, 165, 243, 266, 291, 293 Kegan, John, 104n Kellogg-Briand Pact, 214, 220, 222 Kennan, George, 187, 192n Kennedy, John F., 251 Khrushchev, Nikita, 61 Kierkegaard, Soren, 54 Kiesewetter, J. S., 80 Kirk, Russell, 251 Kissinger, Henry, 251, 254, 278, 304n

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 22, 84, 149–50, 159, 160, 164, 198, 206, 228, 230–37, 240n, 241n, 280n, 291 Magdoff, Harry, 251 Mahoney, Daniel J., 69n, 195, 208n–9n, 210n, 240n, 279n, 280n, 281n Malraux, André, 2, 150, 164, 270, 295, 304n Manent, Pierre, 5, 7n, 122n, 238, 241n, 279n, 281n, 283n, 288, 304n Mantout, Etienne, 278 Maritain, Jacques, 171, 231

India, 245 Iraq, 253 Israel, 3, 28, 245 Italy, 178, 181, 215, 220

Index Marrou, Henri-Irénée, 13, 28, 209n Marshall Plan, 187, 245, 251 Marx, Karl (Marxism), 3, 15, 18, 22, 25, 33–46, 52, 53–54, 56, 60, 61, 62, 105–6, 108, 110, 112, 116, 119, 125, 126, 127, 134, 150, 163, 198, 248, 261, 263, 264, 268, 280n, 291; works by: Capital, 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 62, 63, 64, 112, 268; The Class Struggles in France, 39; The Communist Manifesto, 35, 36, 37, 38; A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 35; The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 39–40, 108; “Introduction to the Critique of the Philosophy of Right of Hegel,” 36; “Theses on Feuerback,” 142n. See also communism, socialism, totalitarianism Mauriac, François, 1, 4 Maurras, Charles, 152, 156, 157, 158, 282n Mauss, Marcel, 224, 245 May 1968, 1, 4, 7n, 15–16, 58–60, 64, 111–12, 228, 261, 269–70, 271, 296, 306n Mayr, Ernst, 142n McNamara, Robert, 251 Mendes-France, Pierre, 244 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1, 14–15, 20, 52–55, 64, 70n, 71n, 262, 271, 272, 282n Mesure, Sylvie, 209n Michnik, Adam, 283n Middle East, 253 Mill, John Stuart, 113, 114, 119, 120 Miscamble, Wilson, 193n Missika, Jean-Louis, 2, 262, 289 Mitterrand, François, 4 Der Monat, 254 Le Monde, 3, 35, 281n Mongolia, 184 Montaigne, Michel, 262 Montesquieu, 15, 22, 26, 27, 34, 45n, 47, 83–84, 85, 105, 107, 108, 109, 116, 125, 126, 171, 230, 240n, 246 de Montherlant, Henry, 166, 167 Morgenstern, Oskar, 206 Morgenthau, Hans, 205 Munich accords (1938), 181, 186, 269, 290 Mussolini, Benito, 155, 161, 220

319

National Socialism (Nazis), 11, 50, 119, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170, 172, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 191n, 192n, 215, 216, 222, 231, 245, 280n, 285, 293, 302. See also fascism Neumann, Sigmund, 191n, 192n New Deal, 178 Niethammer, Friedrich Immanuel, 82 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 28, 29, 60, 164, 197 nihilism, 57, 231 Nixon, Richard, 251, 304n Nizan, Paul, 12, 48, 50, 68n North Africa, 151, 153, 157 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 286, 295, 304n La Nouvelle Revue française, 148 Novalis (Friedrich Leopold, Baron von Hardenberg), 80 Nozick, Robert, 279n Nuremburg trial, 215, 216, 217 Oakeshott, Michael, 267, 273, 281n, 282n Ollivier, Albert, 6, 292 Orwell, George, 148, 189, 191n Overy, Richard, 191n Paganon, Joseph, 6, 292 Paret, Peter, 80, 83, 84, 102n, 103n, 104n Pareto, Vilfredo, 15, 110, 149, 160, 163, 190n Parkinson, Roger, 104n Parti Populaire Française, 154 Partisan Review, 247 Pascal, Blaise, 47, 196, 262 Pearl Harbor, 184, 186, 187 Pétain, Marshal, 14, 147, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 245, 280n, 296 Peyrouton, Marcel, 153 Plato, 71n Poland, 178, 216, 223 Polanyi, Michael, 142n Popper, Karl, 142n, 267 Popular Front, 49, 151, 245, 294 Portugal, 178 Preuves, 148 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 207, 208

320

Political Reason in the Age of Ideology

Proust, Marcel, 167 Rand, Ayn, 266 Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire, 50 Rassemblement du Peuple Français, 112, 295, 304n Rauschning, Hermann, 191n Raymond Aron et la liberté politique, 8n, 210n Reagan, Ronald, 255 Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 13 Reynaud, Paul, 153 Rhee, Syngman, 51, 55 von Ribbentrop, Joachim, 154 Ricardo, David, 38 Rickert, Heinrich, 18, 197 Ritter, Gerhard, 103n Robespierre, Maximilien, 262 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 187, 204, 222 Roquentin, Antoine, 60 Rosanvallon, Pierre, 35, 45n, 283n Rothenberg, Gunther E., 104n Rothfels, H., 104n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 47, 125, 171, 214, 262 Ruderman, Richard, 279n Rumsfeld, Donald, 96 Russian Revolution, 12, 177, 179, 181, 186 Saint-Simonism, 25, 26 Sartre and Camus, 69n, 70n Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 2, 12, 14, 16, 20, 33, 47–73, 106–7, 114, 149, 255–56, 262, 264, 269, 270, 271, 272, 277, 281n, 289, 290, 291, 293–94, 300–302, 304n, 305n, 306n; his break with Aron, 50–51; works by: Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le néant), 2, 20, 47, 49, 53–54, 56, 57, 60, 63, 64, 67; The Communists and Peace, 50, 54, 55, 70n, 72n; The Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique), 2, 16, 33, 55, 56, 58, 60–66, 67, 71n, 72n; Existentialism and Humanism, 69n; Existentialism is a Humanism, 49; The Flies, 50; Nausea, 2; No Exit, 50, 57; Portrait of the Anti-Semite, 72n; Preface to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, 63, 72n

von Scharnhorst, General Gerhard, 84, 85, 101 Schiller, Friedrich, 71n, 81 Schlegel, 80 Schlesinger, Arthur, 251 Schlieffen Plan, 23 Schmitt, Carl, 177, 180, 191n, 302 Schumpeter, Joseph, 37, 38, 182, 192n, 279n–280n Schwartz, Karl, 103n Schweller, Randall, 192n Second Empire, 112, 119 Second Republic, 112 Shanahan, W., 103n Shils, Edward, 141n–142n Simmel, Georges, 18, 197 Simon, Perrine, 303n Simon, Walter M., 103n Sloan, Elinor C., 102n socialism (socialists, socialist parties), 3, 37, 40, 41, 45, 51, 120, 127, 141n, 147, 153, 160, 162, 163, 168, 176, 177, 178, 245, 248, 249, 268, 291. See also communism, Marx, Karl, totalitarianism Société des Amis de Raymond Aron, 3 sociology, 125–43, 255; and charisma, 140; and culture, 132–35; and disenchantment, 140–41; Durkheim’s conception of, 131–41; and emergent phenomenon, 131–34, 136; and human distinctiveness, 130–31; subject-matter of, 128–30; Weber’s conception of, 135–41 Socrates, 48, 69, 130, 131 Soderini, Piero, 234 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 2, 42, 46n, 248, 306n Sorel, Georges, 161, 246 Soviet Union, 3, 14, 41, 50, 51, 55, 101, 157, 163, 168, 170, 175–90, 191n, 192n, 216, 217, 218, 222, 223, 224, 229, 234, 235, 246, 247, 248, 249, 253, 261, 271, 272, 289, 291, 293, 295, 301, 302, 307n Soviet-German pact (1939), 150 Spain, 248 Spencer, Ambrose, 126 Spengler, Oswald, 162, 198, 209n Stalin, Josef, 3, 41, 50, 52, 60, 61, 63, 64, 163, 184, 186, 188, 189, 219, 222, 228, 301, 306n

Index

321

Steinberger, Peter, 280n Steiner, George, 56, 69n Sternhell, Zeev, 173n Strauss, Leo, 70n–71n, 78, 102n, 198–99, 209n, 240n Suez Canal crisis (1956), 219, 289 Swain, Richard M., 77, 102n Sweden, 248

United Nations, 187, 189, 211, 212, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225n, 255 United States (America), 3, 7, 14, 21, 35, 41, 50, 51, 53, 55, 75, 101, 107, 111, 113, 114, 127, 141n, 157, 177, 178, 179, 181–90, 191n, 204, 208, 209n, 222, 229, 234, 235, 236, 238, 243–56, 261, 271, 289, 290, 304n

Third Republic, 112, 119, 150, 152, 153, 155, 169, 171 Third World, 218, 229, 251 Thirty Years War, 87 Thucydides, 19–20, 24, 61, 114, 291 Tiech, Ludwig, 80 Tilford, Earl H., Jr., 102n Times Literary Supplement, 255 Tito, Josip, 188 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 2, 7n, 15, 26, 34, 45n, 105–23, 125, 184, 246, 251, 252, 254, 262, 267, 270, 279n, 281n, 291, 302, 307n Toennies, Ferdinand, 137 Tolstoy, Leo, 94, 113 totalitarianism, 2, 4, 25, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 50, 59, 107, 110, 115, 119, 120, 126, 142n, 149, 153, 155, 156, 159–61, 162–64, 167, 168, 171, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191n, 215, 239, 245, 247, 248, 254, 267, 271, 286, 296. See also communism, Marx, Karl, socialism Tournoux, J. R., 244, 256n Toynbee, Arnold, 280n Trachtenberg, Marc, 192n–193n Trotsky, Leon, 177, 193n Truman, Harry S., 187, 192n, 306n Turkey, 178 twentieth century, characteristics of, 11, 175–76

Valéry, Paul, 167, 197, 198, 206 Vichy regime, 49, 112, 147–74, 245, 280n, 296 Vietnam (North and South, Vietnam War), 101, 184, 250–53, 295, 304n Waltz, Kenneth, 205 Walzer, Michael, 263, 279n Weber, Max, 12–13, 15, 18, 22, 28, 34, 49, 57, 69n, 105, 106–7, 110, 114, 120, 123n, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131–32, 135–41, 143n, 197, 210n, 228, 240n, 241n, 250, 273, 291. See also sociology Weil, Eric, 292, 300 Weil, Simone, 287 Wells, H. G., 148 Weygand, Marshal Maxime, 153 Windsor, Philip, 104n Wolton, Dominique, 2, 262, 289 World War I, 12, 23, 25, 114, 120, 151, 152, 153, 165, 167, 177, 178, 179, 181, 186, 211, 212, 222, 247, 285 World War II, 5, 13–14, 17, 25, 77, 120–21, 141n, 147–74, 175, 176, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 195, 198, 214, 215, 222, 238, 239, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 295 Yugoslavia, 188 Zedong, Mao, 23, 58, 59, 61, 63