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'Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron' (March 14, 1905 — October 17, 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist and political scientist, well known to the broad public for his skeptical analyses of the post-war vogue in France for ideologies that took their inspiration from the Marxism and Communist tradition.

Contents

Background

See also

Works

Other media

Bibliography

External links

Background

Aron, the son to a Jewish lawyer, studied at the École Normale Supérieure where he met Jean-Paul Sartre (who became his friend and lifelong intellectual opponent). He took Ist place in the Agrégation of philosophy in 1928, the year Sartre was failed in the same exam. In 1930, he received a doctorate on the philosophy of history from the École Normale Supérieure. In 1939, when World War II began, he was teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse; he left the University and joined the air force. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, and (1940-1944) edited their newspaper, ''France Libre'' (Free France).
At the close of the war, he returned to Paris to teach sociology at the École Nationale d'Administration and at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (also known as "''Sciences Po''"), maintaining that the government of Vichy France and Marshal Pétain had chosen the lesser of two evils in collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the Sorbonne, and after 1970 at the Collège de France.
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.
Infused as he was with a liberal disposition, Aron's views on multiple citizenship and dual nationality were pessimistic. In his 1974 article, "Is Multinational Citizenship Possible?" he clearly considered it an anachronism, totally incommensurate with the logic of the sovereign-state system. Aron argued that multiple citizenship could not break the indelible link between the individual citizen and his nation-state. Citizenship, according to Aron, was a special relation between the individual and the state; citizenship defined the state's rule within a specific territory, and in turn the state determined who its citizens were and what rights and obligations bound citizens to the state.

See also

★ Liberalism

★ Contributions to liberal theory

Works

★ ''La Sociologie allemande contemporaine'', Paris: Alcan, 1935; ''German Sociology'', London: Heinemann, 1957

★ ''Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire. Essai sur les limites de l'objectivité historique'', Paris: Gallimard, 1938; ''Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity'', London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1948

★ ''Essai sur la théorie de l'histoire dans l'Allemagne contemporaine. La philosophie critique de l'histoire'', Paris: Vrin, 1938

★ ''L'Homme contre les tyrans'', New York, Editions de la Maison française, 1944

★ ''De l'armistice à l'insurrection nationale'', Paris: Gallimard, 1945

★ ''L'Âge des empires et l'Avenir de la France'', Paris: Défense de la France, 1945

★ ''Le Grand Schisme'', Paris: Gallimard, 1948

★ ''Les Guerres en chaîne'', Paris: Gallimard, 1951

★ ''La Coexistence pacifique. Essai d'analyse'', Paris: Editions Monde nouveau, 1953 (under the pseudonym François Houtisse, with Boris Souvarine)

★ ''L'Opium des intellectuels'', Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1955; ''The Opium of the Intellectuals'', London: Secker & Warburg, 1957

★ ''Polémiques'', Paris: Gallimard, 1955

★ ''La Tragédie algérienne'', Paris: Plon, 1957

★ ''Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans'', Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1957

★ ''L'Algérie et la République'', Paris: Plon, 1958

★ ''La Société industrielle et la Guerre'', suivi d'un ''Tableau de la diplomatie mondiale en 1958'', Paris: Plon, 1959

★ ''Immuable et changeante. De la IVe à la Ve République'', Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1959

★ ''Dimensions de la conscience historique'', Paris: Plon, 1961

★ ''Paix et guerre entre les nations'', Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1962; ''Peace and War'', London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966

★ ''Le Grand Débat. Initiation à la stratégie atomique'', Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1963

★ ''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'', 1965

★ ''Trois essais sur l'âge industriel'', Paris: Plon, 1966

★ ''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

★ ''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, 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

★ ''Le Spectateur engagé'', Paris: Julliard, 1981 (interviews)

★ ''Mémoires'', Paris: Julliard, 1983

★ ''Les dernières années du siècle'', Paris: Julliard, 1984

★ ''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

Bibliography

★ Launay, Stephen, ''La Pensée politique de Raymond Aron'', Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995

★ Anderson, Brian C., ''Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political'', Rowman & Littlefield, 1998

★ Mahoney, Daniel and Brian Prost (eds.), ''Political Reason in the Age of Ideology: Essays in Honor of Raymond Aron'', New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 2006

External links

★ http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/may01/opium.htm

★ Raymond Aron, an Atlantist prosecutor in France (Voltaire Network)

★ When the CIA financed European Intellectuals (Aron role in the Congress for Cultural Freedom) (Voltaire Network)

★ Profile page for Raymond Aron on the Find-A-Grave web site