Raymond Aron

Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian, and journalist, widely regarded as one of the country's leading 20th-century thinkers. He is most famous for his 1955 work *The Opium of the Intellectuals*, whose title flips Karl Marx’s description of religion as the people’s opium; Aron instead contended that Marxism served as the opium for post-war French intellectuals. In that book, he criticized French thinkers for what he saw as their relentless condemnation of capitalism and democracy while simultaneously justifying the actions of communist regimes in the East. Critic Roger Kimball called *Opium* “a seminal book of the twentieth century.” Aron also had a well-known, often contentious, lifelong friendship with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The saying “Better be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron” became a common phrase among French intellectuals.

Often seen as a moderate political voice, Aron attracted followers on both the left and right, though he once said he was personally “more of a left-wing Aronian than a right-wing one.” He wrote extensively across many subjects. Historian James R. Garland noted that despite being little known in America, Aron was arguably the preeminent figure of French intellectualism for much of the twentieth century.

Born in Paris on 14 March 1905 to Gustave Aron, a secular Jewish lawyer, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure, where he met Sartre, who became both a friend and a lifelong intellectual rival. A rational humanist, Aron led those who rejected existentialism. He placed first in the philosophy agrégation in 1928, the same year Sartre failed. In 1930, he earned a doctorate in the philosophy of history from the University of Paris.

He had just begun teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse when World War II broke out; he joined the French Air Force. After France’s defeat, he fled to London to join the Free French forces, editing the newspaper *France Libre*. After the war, he 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, then teaching at the Sorbonne.

A lifelong journalist, Aron became a prominent columnist for *Le Figaro* in 1947, a role he held for thirty years before moving to *L’Express*, where he wrote a political column until 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 co-founded *Commentaire*, a quarterly journal of ideas and debate, with Jean-Claude Casanova as its founding director. He died of a heart attack in Paris on 17 October 1983.

While in Berlin, Aron witnessed the Nazis’ rise and developed a deep aversion to all totalitarian systems. In 1938, he took part in the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris. By the 1950s, he had become sharply critical of the Austrian School, calling their fixation on private property an “inverted Marxism.” He consistently promoted an “immoderately moderate” liberalism that accepted a mixed economy as the standard model for the era.

Aron wrote books on Karl Marx and Carl von Clausewitz. In *Peace and War*, he developed a theory of international relations, arguing that Max Weber’s idea of the state holding a monopoly on legitimate physical force does not hold between states. In the 1950s, he predicted that despite nuclear weapons, nations would still need conventional forces, made necessary by what he termed a “nuclear taboo.”

His honors include Officier of the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945, Commander of the Ordre des Palmes académiques, and the German Medal Pour le Mérite.

A prolific writer, he produced several thousand editorials, hundreds of academic articles, essays, and comments, along with about forty books. Among his works are *La Sociologie allemande contemporaine* (1935, translated as *German Sociology*), *Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire* (1938, translated as *Introduction to the Philosophy of History*), *Essai sur la théorie de l’histoire dans l’Allemagne contemporaine* (1938), *L’Homme contre les tyrans* (1944), *De l’armistice à l’insurrection nationale* (1945), *L’Âge des empires et l’Avenir de la France* (1945), *Le Grand Schisme* (1948), *Les Guerres en Chaîne* (1951, translated as *The Century of Total War*), *La Coexistence pacifique* (1953, under the pseudonym François Houtisse with Boris Souvarine), *L’Opium des intellectuels* (1955, translated as *The Opium of the Intellectuals*), *Polémiques* (1955), *La Tragédie algérienne* (1957), and *Espoir et peur du siècle* (1957).