Raymond Aron

Critic Roger Kimball suggests that Opium is "a seminal book of the twentieth century". Aron is also known for his lifelong friendship, sometimes fractious, with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The saying "Better be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron" became popular among French intellectuals. Considered by many as a voice of moderation in politics, Aron had many disciples on both the political left and right; he remarked that he personally was "more of a left-wing Aronian than a right-wing one". Aron wrote extensively on a wide range of other topics. Citing the breadth and quality of Aron's writings, historian James R. Garland suggests, "Though he may be little known in America, Raymond Aron arguably stood as the preeminent example of French intellectualism for much of the twentieth century."

Raymond Aron studied at École Normale Supérieure, Sciences Po and University of Paris. Training under Hippolyte Rigault, Charles Salomon and Édouard Le Roy is recorded. Jean-Jacques Salomon, Pierre Hassner and Nicolas Herpin are recorded as having studied under Raymond Aron. The recorded working language is French and German. The field of work recorded is international relations. Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Max Weber are recorded as an influence. Residence is recorded at France. Employment is recorded with Collège de France, Sciences Po and Le Figaro. Positions recorded include president and director. Distinctions recorded are Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts order, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ambassadors' Prize and Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt.

• Region — Western philosophy • Era — 20th-century philosophy • Name — Raymond Aron • Birth Name — Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron • Born — 14 March 1905 • Birthplace — Paris, France • Died — 17 October 1983 • Place of death — Paris, France • Resting Place — Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris • Education — École Normale Supérieure University of Paris (Dr ès l, 1938) • Thesis Title — Essai sur la théorie de l'histoire dans l'Allemagne contemporaine: la philosophie critique de l'histoire • Thesis Url — https: www.sudoc.fr/010419608 • Thesis Year — 1938 • School Tradition — Continental philosophy French liberalism • Main Interests — Political philosophy • Notable Ideas — Marxism as the opium of intellectuals • Workplaces — ENA Sciences Po University of Paris Collège de France EHESS • Doctoral Students — Neagu Djuvara Jon Elster Nicolas Herpin Claude Lefort Alain Touraine • Notable Students — Pierre Bourdieu

Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron was born on 14 March 1905 in Paris, the son of Gustave Aron, a secular Jewish lawyer. Aron studied at the École Normale Supérieure, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre, who became his friend and later his lifelong intellectual opponent. He was a rational humanist, and a leader among those who did not embrace existentialism. Aron took first place in the agrégation of philosophy in 1928, the year Sartre failed the same exam. In 1930, he received a doctorate in the philosophy of history from the University of Paris. He had been teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse for only a few weeks when World War II began; he joined the Armée de l'Air. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, editing the newspaper, France Libre (Free France). When the war ended, Aron returned to Paris to teach sociology at the École Nationale d'Administration and Sciences Po. From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the University of Paris, and after 1970 at the Collège de France and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). In 1953, he befriended the young American philosopher Allan Bloom, who was teaching at the Sorbonne. A lifelong journalist, Aron in 1947 became an influential columnist for Le Figaro, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L'Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960 and an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1966. In 1978 he founded Commentaire, a quarterly journal of ideas and debate, together with Jean-Claude Casanova who was the venture's founding director. Aron died of a heart attack in Paris on 17 October 1983.

People Aron's Jewish identity was shaped by his confrontation with Nazi antisemitism. He openly identified as Jewish, but was careful to analyze Nazism dispassionately so that he would not be perceived as motivated by personal bias. In Berlin, Aron witnessed the rise to power of the Nazi Party and developed an aversion to all totalitarian systems. In 1938, he participated in the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris. By the 1950s, he had grown very critical of the Austrian School and described their obsession with private property as an "inverted Marxism". Aron always promoted an "immoderately moderate" form of liberalism which accepted a mixed economy as the normal economic model of the age.

Aron is the author of books on Karl Marx and on Carl von Clausewitz. In Peace and War, he set out a theory of international relations. He argues that Max Weber's claim that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force does not apply to the relationship between states. In the field of international relations in the 1950s, Aron hypothesized that despite the advent of nuclear weapons, nations would still require conventional military forces. The usefulness of such forces would be made necessary by what he called a "nuclear taboo."

A prolific author, he "wrote several thousand editorials and several hundred academic articles, essays, and comments, as well as about forty books", which include: •; Translated to English as •; * * * * * •; • (under the pseudonym François Houtisse, with Boris Souvarine) •; The Opium of the Intellectuals, London: Secker & Warburg, 1957 * * • (partially translated in) * * •; * * •; •; The Great Debate, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965 • Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle, Paris: Gallimard, 1963; Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967 • La Lutte des classes, Paris: Gallimard, 1964 • Essai sur les libertés, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1965 • Démocratie et totalitarisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1965; Democracy and totalitarianism, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968 • Trois essais sur l'âge industriel, Paris: Plon, 1966; The Industrial Society. Three Essays on Ideology and Development, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967 • Les Étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris: Gallimard, 1967; Main Currents in Sociological Thought, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965 • De Gaulle, Israël et les Juifs, Paris: Plon, 1968; De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews, Praeger, 1969 • La Révolution introuvable. Réflexions sur les événements de mai, Paris: Fayard, 1968 • Les Désillusions du progrès, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1969; Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society, Pall Mall Press, 1968 • D'une sainte famille à l'autre. Essai sur le marxisme imaginaire, Paris: Gallimard, 1969 • De la condition historique du sociologue, Paris: Gallimard, 1971 • Études politiques, Paris: Gallimard, 1972 • République impériale. Les États-unis dans le monde (1945–1972), Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1973; The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945–1973, Little Brown & Company 1974 • Histoire et dialectique de la violence, Paris: Gallimard, 1973; History and the Dialectic of Violence: Analysis of Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979 • Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, Paris: Gallimard, 1976; Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, London: Routledge, 1983 • Plaidoyer pour l'Europe décadente, Paris: Laffont, 1977; In Defense of Decadent Europe, South Bend IN: Regnery, 1977 • with Andre Glucksman and Benny Levy. "Sartre's Errors: A Discussion". Telos 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press • Le Spectateur engagé, Paris: Julliard, 1981 (interviews) • Mémoires, Paris: Julliard, 1983 • Les dernières années du siècle, Paris: Julliard, 1984 • Ueber Deutschland und den Nationalsozialismus. Fruehe politische Schriften 1930–1939, Joachim Stark, ed. and pref., Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1993 • Le Marxisme de Marx, Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2002 • De Giscard à Mitterrand: 1977–1983 (editorials from L'Express), with preface by Jean-Claude Casanova, Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2005 *

• Raymond Aron, spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Raymond Aron. (Duration: 160 mins.), DVD, Éditions Montparnasse, 2005

Raymond Aron worked in international relations. Recorded positions include president and director. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, German Academy for Language and Literature, Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Comité des intellectuels pour l'Europe des libertés and American Philosophical Society. He worked at France.