Raymond Aron

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French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist (1905–1983)

title: "Raymond Aron" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1905-births", "1983-deaths", "20th-century-french-philosophers", "academic-staff-of-the-collège-de-france", "academic-staff-of-the-university-of-toulouse", "burials-at-montparnasse-cemetery", "continental-philosophers", "critics-of-marxism", "école-normale-supérieure-(paris)-alumni", "fellows-of-the-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences", "french-agnostics", "french-air-force-personnel-of-world-war-ii", "french-anti-communists", "french-columnists", "french-humanists", "french-male-writers", "french-political-philosophers", "french-political-scientists", "french-section-of-the-workers'-international-politicians", "french-secular-jews", "french-sociologists", "french-historians", "hudson-institute", "international-members-of-the-american-philosophical-society", "jewish-anti-communists", "jewish-philosophers", "jewish-sociologists", "lycée-condorcet-alumni", "lycée-hoche-alumni", "members-of-the-royal-academy-of-science,-letters-and-fine-arts-of-belgium", "philosophers-of-war", "rally-of-the-french-people-politicians", "rationalists", "recipients-of-the-pour-le-mérite-(civil-class)", "scholars-of-marxism", "sciences-po-alumni", "utopian-studies-scholars", "writers-from-paris"] description: "French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist (1905–1983)" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist (1905–1983) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox philosopher"]

FieldValue
regionWestern philosophy
era20th-century philosophy
imageRaymond Aron Studio Harcourt 1956 (4x5 cropped).png
caption1956 portrait
nameRaymond Aron
birth_nameRaymond Claude Ferdinand Aron
birth_date
birth_placeParis, France
death_date
death_placeParis, France
resting_placeMontparnasse Cemetery, Paris
educationÉcole Normale Supérieure
University of Paris (Dr ès l, 1938)
school_traditionContinental philosophy
French liberalism
main_interestsPolitical philosophy
notable_ideasMarxism as the opium of intellectuals
institutionsENA
Sciences Po
University of Paris
Collège de France
EHESS
doctoral_studentsClaude Lefort
partySFIO (1920s)
RPF (1947–1953)
::

| region = Western philosophy | era = 20th-century philosophy | image = Raymond Aron Studio Harcourt 1956 (4x5 cropped).png | caption = 1956 portrait | name = Raymond Aron | birth_name = Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron | birth_date = | birth_place = Paris, France | death_date = | death_place = Paris, France | resting_place = Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris | education = École Normale Supérieure University of Paris (Dr ès l, 1938) | school_tradition = Continental philosophy French liberalism | main_interests = Political philosophy | notable_ideas = Marxism as the opium of intellectuals | institutions = ENA Sciences Po University of Paris Collège de France EHESS | doctoral_students = Claude Lefort | party = SFIO (1920s) RPF (1947–1953) Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; ; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century.

Aron is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people; he argues that Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals in post-war France. In the book, Aron chastised French intellectuals for what he described as their harsh criticism of capitalism and democracy and their simultaneous defense of the actions of the communist governments of the East. 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."

Life and career

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.

Political commitment

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.

Political thought

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."

Honours

Works

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

Other media

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

References

Sources

  • Anderson, Brian C., Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998
  • Colquhoun, Robert. Raymond Aron. Volume I: The Philosopher in History 1905–1955. Volume II: The Sociologist in Society 1955–1983. London: Sage, 1986.
  • Craiutu, Aurelian, "Raymond Aron and the tradition of political moderation in France", French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Davis, Reed M. A Politics of Understanding: The International Thought of Raymond Aron. Baton Rouge LA.:Louisiana State University Press, 2009
  • Forneris, Elias, "Raymond Aron's War: A 'History of the Present' (1940–1944)", The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville 43, no.2 (2022): 7-38. doi:10.3138/ttr.43.2.7
  • Forneris, Elias, "Raymond Aron's Sociology of Collaborators (1940–1944)", International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (2024): 1-23.
  • Gagliano, Giuseppe La nuova sinistra Americana e il movimento del maggio francese nelle interpretazioni di Raymon Aron e Herbert Marcuse. Uniservice, 2011
  • Launay, Stephen, La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995
  • Mahoney, Daniel and Bryan-Paul Frost (eds.), Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of Raymond Aron, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 2006
  • Molina, Jerónimo, Raymond Aron, realista político. Del maquiavelismo a la crítica de las religiones seculares, Madrid: Sequitur, 2013
  • Stark, Joachim, Das unvollendete Abenteuer. Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik im Werk Raymond Arons, Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 1986
  • Stark, Joachim, Raymond Aron (1905–1983), in Dirk Kaesler, Klassiker der Soziologie, Vol. II: Von Talcott Parsons bis Anthony Giddens, Munich: Beck, 5th ed., 2007, 105–129
  • Bavaj, Riccardo, Ideologierausch und Realitaetsblindheit. Raymond Arons Kritik am Intellektuellen franzoesischen Typs, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 5 (2008), No. 2, 332–338,
  • Oppermann, Matthias, Raymond Aron und Deutschland. Die Verteidigung der Freiheit und das Problem des Totalitarismus, Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag 2008.
  • Oppermann, Matthias (Ed.), Im Kampf gegen die modernen Tyranneien. Ein Raymond-Aron-Brevier, Zurich: NZZ Libro 2011.
  • Stark, Joachim, "Das unvollendete Abenteuer. Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik im Werk Raymond Arons", Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 1986
  • Stark, Joachim, "Raymond Aron (1905–1983)", in Dirk Kaesler, Klassiker der Soziologie, Vol. II: Von Talcott Parsons bis Anthony Giddens, Munich: Beck, 5th ed., 2007, 105–129
  • Stewart, Iain, Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

References

  1. (8 December 1983). "Raymond Aron (1905–1983)". The New York Review of Books.
  2. Aron, Raymond. (2 September 1983). "Raymond Aron". L'Express.
  3. "Raymond Aron and Europe".
  4. Kimball, Roger (2001). "[https://newcriterion.com/issues/2001/5/raymond-aron-the-power-of-ideas Aron & the power of ideas]". ''New Criterion'', May 2001.
  5. ''Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection'', Raymond Aron (1990).
  6. (1 May 2018). "May '68: What Legacy?". The Paris Review.
  7. (2012). "French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day". Cambridge University Press.
  8. (2016). "In Search of the Liberal Moment: Democracy, Anti-totalitarianism, and Intellectual Politics in France Since 1950". Palgrave Macmillan US.
  9. Garland, James R. "Raymond Aron and the Intellectuals: Arguments Supportive of Libertarianism." ''[[Journal of Libertarian Studies]]'', Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall 2007).
  10. Anderson, Brian C.. (1997). "Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political". Rowman & Littlefield.
  11. Aron (1994) ''In Defense of Political Reason'', p. 170.
  12. Carruth, Gorton (1993) ''The Encyclopedia of World Facts and Dates'', p. [[iarchive:encyclopediaofwo00carr. 932]].
  13. Mazgaj, Paul. (2020-11-11). "Raymond Aron, the United States, and the Early Cold War, 1945–1953". The International History Review.
  14. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  15. "APS Member History".
  16. François Quinton. (10 April 2008). "Entretien avec Jean-Claude Casanova (1) : La création de la revue".
  17. (2012). "French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day". Cambridge University Press.
  18. (2016). "In Search of the Liberal Moment: Democracy, Anti-totalitarianism, and Intellectual Politics in France Since 1950". Palgrave Macmillan US.
  19. "Res militaris - Antony Dabila - Raymond Aron: Peace & War (review)".
  20. "Introduction".
  21. Henrik Østergaard Breitenbauch, "Aron, Raymond" in Christopher John Murray (ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought'', Routledge (2013), pp. 18–19.
  22. House, Floyd N.. (1939). "Review of Introduction a la philosophie de l'histoire: essai sur les limites de l'objectivite historique.". American Journal of Sociology.

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