--
RECONSIDERATION
Raymond Aron and
the Morality of Prudence
Daniel J. Mahoney
No MAJOR INTELLECTUALFIGUREof the twenti-
eth century displayed better political
judgment than the French political phi-
losopher and sociologist Raymond Aron
(1905-1983). He was right about the es-
sential questions of his time and his judg-
ments were invariably lucid, authorita-
tive and reliable. He never succumbed to
the “totalitarian temptation” or to the
fashionable “postmodern” rejection of
human nature or reason. But as well as
anyone he appreciated the spiritual defi-
cit that makes liberal society particu-
larly vulnerable to political and intellec-
tual assault.
In his 1938 thesis, Introduction to the
Philosophy of History, which provided
the foundation of his subsequent philo-
sophical and political work, Aron argued
against a rationalist progressivism which
either affirmed the necessary unfolding
of the historical process or placed exag-
gerated hopes in the achievements of
positivistic science. In that work, de-
nounced as “desperate or satanic” by
the old French positivist Paul Fauconnet,
DANIEL J. MAHONEY is Professor of Political
Science at Assumption College in Worcester,
Massachussetts.He is the author ofThe Liberal
Political Science of Raymond Aron; De Gaulle:
Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern De-
mocracy; and, most recently, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
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Aron emphasized “the limits of historical
objectivity,” the relativity and plurality
of meanings inherent in any historical
reconstruction of the past. Aron went so
far as to speak of “the dissolution of the
object” that accompanies any effort of
historical reconstruction, a “pathetic”
formulation that he later came to regret.
The Introduction is sometimes seen as an
existentialist work because of its denial
of the possibility of reconstructing the
past exactly as it was or of articulating a
philosophy of human nature sub specie
aeternitatis. There is some truth to this
claim. But in the Introduction Aron in-
sisted that an appreciation of the plural-
ity of human meanings in history did not
necessarily entail a relativistic or nihilis-
tic philosophy.
The Search for a Way Beyond Relativism
In the fourth section of the Introduction,
entitled “History and Truth,” Aron’s tar-
get was no longer the “positivistic”claims
made on behalf of “historical objectiv-
ity” but rather the excessively pessimis-
tic denials of human freedom and philo-
sophical truth made in the name of cul-
tural and historical relativism. Aron did
not deny that the doctrines of historical
or cultural relativism captured something
fundamental about the pluralism of cul-
tures and civilizations. He believed that
the recognition of cultural diversity “be-
243
longed to the spirit of the age”as he later
put it in his Memoirs.
Aron insisted on the need to go “be-
yond relativism,” to overcome the debili-
tating nihilism that haunted a dispirited
Europe. He upheld three foundations of a
tempered rationalism that would allow
those who rejected historical progres-
sivism to avoid the drift into nihilism.
These were, respectively, “the autonomy
of positive and partial truth, the univer-
sality of reflection, and the constitution
by the person of his spiritual nature.”’
Aron appreciated that none of these
affirmations in themselves were sufficient
to refute historical relativism and defini-
tively overcome the nihilist temptation.
But they offered the prospect of recon-
necting choice or decision to the search
for truth. They also supported t h e
sempiternal possibility of philosophy “in
spite of history.”2The latter point is of
decisive importance for Aron. Even in
the Introduction, his most “relativistic”
work, he insisted that “the formal tran-
scendence of historicism” was possible.
Human beings are able t o “submit our-
selves to the rules of truth” and the re-
sults of our investigations “are univer-
sally imperative.” For Aron, reflection
“does not express the imprisoned con-
sciousness’’ but, instead, gives humans
access to genuine ~niversality.~
Part IV of the Introduction is a patient,
even Socratic search for a plausible and
humane alternative to the nihilism that
threatened to engulf the European intel-
lectual world after the discrediting of
liberal rationalism. Aron defended an
exiguous middle path between histori-
cism and a simple return to the univer-
salist claims of perennial philosophy.
Pierre Manent eloquently captures the
character of this middle way:
Aron’s thesis gives too much weight to
historicism-to theidea that man is essen-
tially a historic being who fashions him-
self and determines himself within his-
tory-to admit as classical philosophy did
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a theory of man’s nature and condition sub
specie uetemitutis; on the other hand, it
retains too much of the traditional con-
ception of philosophy-as the elabora-
tion of universal articulations of human
esperience--io succumb io iiie seduction
of either relativism or of the historic total-
ity, Hegelian or Mar~ist.~
The Introduction’s critique of all doc-
trines of historical “totality” foreshad-
ows Aron’s later frontal assault on the
Marxist “Vulgate.” But in his post-World
War 11 writings, Aron emphasized the
structural plurality of history and action
and the real, if limited role of accident
and choice in historical becoming (an
approach he called “probabilistic deter-
minism”) rather than the relativity inher-
ent in historical reconstruction. Aron’s
later “philosophy of history” is less skep-
tical than the Introduction and provides a
positive account of the nature of choice
and thestructure of reality. There is also
a significant evolution in Aron’s thought
after 1945 regarding what one might call
the principled foundations of human
choice.
Without denying the historicity of
moral and political choice, Aron increas-
ingly appealed to “human nature” as a
standard of judgment. He came to see
existentialism and Hegelio-Marxist his-
toricism as the two extremes t o be
avoided. In a series of works that in-
cluded The Opium of the Intellectuals
(1955) and essays such as Fanaticism,
Prudence, and Faith (1956), the “Intro-
duction” t o Max Weber’s Savant et
Politique (1959), and “Science and Con-
sciousness of Society” (1960), Aron
sketched a morality of prudence that
aims to guide reasonable choice. This
turn to principle and prudence is far
more successful in overcoming nihilism
and grounding and orienting political
choice than Aron’s earlier tentative ef-
forts in the fourth section of thefntroduc-
tion. His challenges to historical relativ-
ism, sociologism, and decisionism were
Summer 2001
more radical and persuasive, his tone
markedly less pathetic or desperate. In
the latter works, he articulated an under-
standing of the historical character of
political judgment that was not depen-
dent upon a historicist philosophy.
It is crucial to emphasize, however,
that Aron’s later turn to a morality of
prudence is prepared by the spiritual or
existential rejection of nihilism-by the
will to overcome nihilism-that informed
the final pages of the Introduction. The
Introduction inaugurated a search-a
spiritual and intellectual adventure-to
overcome fatalism and despair. An essay
such as Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith
displayed the culmination of the mature
Aron’s search for a morality of judgment
that has freed itself from nihilist and
decisionist temptations. Before turning
to Aron’s mature articulation of the prob-
lem, I would like to convey a sense of his
first noble if inadequate effort to free
himself from the relativist quagmire.
What precisely are the strengths and
limits of the solutions limned in the 1938
thesis? In the Introduction,Aron expressed
his distaste for the “philosophy of his-
torical relativism” that emerged trium-
phant in European, particularly German,
intellectual circles after World War I. He
tied the intellectual crisis-the assault
on science and reason-to a political
crisis in which liberal democracy had
increasingly lost its prestige. Aron saw in
the new “pessimistic” and irrationalist
currents (which drew on the thought of
Nietzsche and Spengler among others) a
mirror image of the fatalism that charac-
terized philosophies of historical
progress. Both “optimistic” and “pessi-
mistic” philosophies of history denied a
salutary place for the partial but genuine
insights of science, the moral and politi-
cal choices of acting men, and the philo-
sophical reflection that allows human
beings togain critical distance from their
historical situation or cultural milieu.
Aron’s initial inclination was to recog-
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nize the obvious truth in historical rela-
tivism-human beings have no direct
access to a transcendent, transhistorical
realm; human thought is indeed shaped
by particular cultural matrices; values
need t o be embodied in particular tradi-
tions or societies if they are to avoid
being merely formal and hence power-
less to affect the destinies of men. What
is clear is that despite his efforts, Aron
was initially unable to extricate himself
from a relativist philosophy because he
too readily accepted the “indisputable”
character of the relativistic account of
the diversity of societies, customs, and
morals. H e wished t o overcome the nihil-
istic implications of historical or socio-
logical relativism without fundamentally
challenging its dogmatic presupposi-
tions. He defended the autonomy of philo-
sophic reflection and the spiritual search
for truth while conceding their essen-
tially historical character.
Aron did not take seriously enough
the possibility that the diversity of ethoi
was compatible with an intelligible uni-
versal hierarchy of value^.^ He had the
good sense never simply to conflate eth-
ics and ethos. But neither did he suffi-
ciently appreciate that their interaction,
or mutual dependence, was not evidence
of the mere historicity or relativity of
value. As Aurel Kolnai argues, it is par-
ticular and culturally distinctive extra-
moral customs, traditions and practices,
that is, the variety of ethoi, that allow
universal principles to take hold in the
human world. Aron’s Kantian concep-
tion of morality made it difficult for him
t o integrate a formal or universal moral-
ity with the lived cultural manifestations
of that morality. Aron certainly feared
the consequences of sociological reduc-
tionism. But he tookfor granted the truth
of a sociological account of human diver-
sity, at least as the starting point for
confronting the problem of historical or
cultural relativism. In the “Epilogue” of
his Memoirs, published shortly before
245
his death in 1983, he admits as much.
If given an opportunity to return t o the
theme of the final section of the Introduc-
tion, he would, he suggested, “make a
sharper distinction between social vai-
11es and mora! virtues, [ h e ] woliid
strengthen the foundation of scientific
truth and universalism.’”j The mature
Aron did not believe that arecognition of
cultural diversity implied moral relativ-
ism. Historicists were wrong to insist
that “good and evil are revised from one
society to another.” In his Memoirs, Aron
emphatically denies this claim. “Honesty,
frankness, generosity, gentleness, and
friendship do not change signs from one
century to the next, from one continent
to another, or by crossing borders.”’ But
at the end of his life, Aron admitted that
he had not adequately come to terms
with the theoretical challenge of histori-
cism. He suggests that if he had the op-
portunity he would subject historicism
to a more radical, thoroughgoing philo-
sophical critique.
Despite his considerable concessions
to historicism in the Introduction, Aron
strongly rejected a Durkheim-inspired
sociologism in which “society was put in
the place of God” as the source of au-
thoritative judgment andvalue. Aron thus
refused to combine what he called “lim-
itless relativity” with the “reduction of
values t o a reality more natural than
spiritual.”* This unbeliever saw some-
thing idolatrous in the dogmatic socio-
logical denial of transcendence. Aron
faced this conundrum: He desperately
wanted to affirm the libertyof man against
historical, sociological, and cultural
determinisms, but he believed that choice
was inescapably historical in character.
In the Introduction, Aron expressed dis-
satisfaction with an understanding of hu-
man beings in terms of historical pro-
gressivism, cultural relativism, and pure
indetermination. He wished to restore
reasonable choice to its place of dignity
in a philosophy of man, grounding deci-
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sion in philosophical and political reflec-
tion rather than in arbitrary decision. He
ultimately failed in that effort but not
without pointing the way toward a more
satisfactory understanding of human
choice.
Aron’s failure, therefore, is a partial
one. It paved the way for his later, more
adequate articulation of a morality of
prudence. In thelnh-oduction,one already
sees elements of Aron’s lifelong critique
of “literary politics.” He insists on the
concrete character of political choice
and the inadequacy of abstract rational-
ism and moralism. The choice for or
against a particular regime or civilization
may be in some ultimate sense an “exis-
tential” one, but that choice is only rea-
sonable if it is grounded in a concrete
examination of political institutions and
political economy. Aron rejected the idea
that the choice between liberal society
and its revolutionary alternative could
be decided on the basis of an abstract
preference for equality, social justice, or
a planned society. By the time he wrote
the Introduction, Aron was fully cogni-
zant of the fact that the reasonable stu-
dent of politics must adopt the perspec-
tive of the citizen and the statesman. In
this sense, the emphasis on the concrete
or historical account of historical choice
is not an endorsement of historical rela-
tivism. Rather, it is a salutaryreminder of
the nature and preconditions of political
responsibility.
In the Introduction,however, responsi-
bility is still understood in Weberian
terms, in the light of the famous anti-
nomy between “the ethics of responsibil-
ity” and “the ethics of conviction” put
forward by MaxWeberin the 1918Munich
lecture on Politics as Q Vocation.Weber’s
choice for responsibility (and for moder-
ate politics) was presented by him as an
ungrounded decision, an existential
choice.Thesamecan besaid about Aron’s
stated preference for the “politics of com-
promise” over the “politics of reason.”
Summer 2001
The politician of compromise, “such as
Max Weber, or Main,” seeks to preserve
certain goals such as peace, liberty, and
national greatness in ever changing cir-
cumstances. “He is like the pilot who
would navigate without knowing the
past”; he is guided by no permanent prin-
ciples or conception of human nature.
He endlessly confronts the dialectic of
“means and ends, of reality and values”
and tries to find his way.gHis moderation
has no natural or reasonable supports
even if it appears more sensible than the
claims of the politician of Reason to be a
“confidantof Providence” or of History.’O
Aron’s antimony of compromise and His-
torical Reason is an obvious modifica-
tion of Weber’s formulation of the two
political moralities. It is afflicted with the
same difficulties. Aron would later criti-
cize Weber for “the extreme and some-
what radical form” that he gave to the
antimony between responsibility and
conviction.”
By the 1950s,Aron arrived at the con-
clusion that Weber’s formulation of the
two moral codes undermined the search
for a morality of prudence and gave un-
due encouragement to “false realists”
and “false idealists.” Aron still agreed
with Weber that “the eternal problem of
justifying the means by the end has no
theoretical solution.”’*Thisdid not mean,
however, that the dialectic of means and
ends can guide human choice without
any reference to principles rooted in an
understanding of the nature of men and
societies. Weber’s antinomy, which
aimed to give support to political mod-
eration and responsibility, ended up un-
dermining them, precisely because it
understood responsibility as an un-
grounded preference. The mature Aron
self-consciously broke with Weber’s
decisionismwhile continuing to be deeply
indebted to his political sociology. Yet
Aron’s own antinomy of compromise and
reason in the Introduction partakes of the
same decisionist assumptions as Weber’s
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philosophy. It thus fails to transcend a
relativistic philosophy, the stated pur-
pose of Aron’s endeavor.
The failure of Aron’s effort becomes
particularly clear in the section on “His-
torical Man: The Decision.” This section
culminates in the remarkable claim that
acting man can “overcome the relativity
of history by the absolute of d e ~ i s i o n . ” ’ ~
Aron explicitlyrejected a “pathetic mode
of philosophy” and refused to take “the
anguish of a disordered era as an eternal
datum.”I4Yet in the final pages of the
Introduction he identified decisionism as
the appropriate antidote to relativism!
He provided no explanation of how a
completed and arbitrary decision can in
any way negate or overcome the relativ-
ity of history. The Introduction, we have
suggested, takes the first step in the ef-
fort to overcome nihilism. Yet in the end,
Aron arrived at a spiritual and intellec-
tual cul de sac. Another way had to be
found to vindicate the possibility of rea-
sonable choice.
-Towards a Morality of Prudence
Aron’s post-1945 political writings are
indebted to the central theoretical in-
sights of the Introduction: there is no
global determinism of the future or in-
exorable unfolding of history; man is free
to determine his destiny within sharply
defined limits; political choice demands
a painstaking empirical comparison of
the “social wholes” available within mo-
dernity; reflection on the unresolvable
dialectic of ends and means defines the
political condition of man. But in a series
of works published between 1955 and
1960, Aron put forward notions of equity
and political prudence that overcame
the residual decisionism of the Introduc-
tion. In this period, Aron also went out of
his way to distance his own thought from
the “Nietzscheannihilism”implicit in Max
Weber’s thought. In Aron’s view, Weber
had conflated often sound phenomeno-
logical analyses of the human condition
24 7
with a “humanly unthinkable philoso-
phy.”I5Thisphilosophy transformed “the
antinomy of ethics and politics and the
diversity of cultures” into proof of the
inexpiable “war of the gods.”
Weber’s sociological “rca!rsm,” in ef-
fect, cloaked a covert metaphysics, “a
philosophy of discord” that refused “to
differentiate between vitalistic values and
reasonable accomplishment; its hypoth-
eses include the total irrationability of
choices between political parties or
among thevarious images of the world in
conflict, and the moral and spiritual
equivalence of various attitudes-those
of the sage and of the madman, of the
fanatic and of the moderate.” Admirably,
Weber wished to validate free human
decision against the claims of determin-
istic ideologies and the imperatives of an
increasingly dominant and soul-numb-
ing bureaucratic rationality. “But he did
not ask himself if a decision could be
made for no particular reason.”
Aron came to reject the idea that abso-
lutely free or indeterminate choice was
compatible with either human dignity or
political responsibility. He continued to
hold, with Weber and in agreement with
the Introduction’s emphasis on “the lim-
its of historical objectivity,” that human
choices are not “demonstrable.” Every
choice is a choice among more or less
reasonable alternatives-and even rea-
sonable ones are defined by a certain
imprecision or uncertainty. In agreement
with Weber, Aron admits that “science is
limited, the future is unforeseeable and
short term values arecontradictory.”But
the proper response to the limits of ob-
jectivity or to the undeniable tension
among conflicting human values is not
groundless or “demonic choice.” Equity,
fair or balanced judgment, is thevirtue of
the philosopher or statesman who accepts
the limits of human reason but refuses t o
yield to the pathos of irrational choice.I6
In his 1956essay Fanaticism,Prudence,
and Faith (written in response to critics
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of The Opium of the Intellectuals) Aron
clarifies the grounds of his opposition to
ideological fanaticism. This lucid and
penetrating rejoinder was written during
the heyday of gauchiste indulgence to-
ward coniiiiunist totalitarianism. Merleau-
Ponty had defended the “authenticity” of
the Stalinist show trials inHumanism and
Terror (1948), and Sartre habitually de-
nounced anti-communists as “dogs,”
while the Christian socialists at Esprit
could not get themselves to condemn
regimes that persecuted Christians as
state policy. In this context, Aron was
derided as a mere skeptic by secular and
Christian critics alike. It was suggested
that his reasoned assault on “the idolatry
of history” in The Opium of the Intellectu-
als was a cover for nihilism and at the
service of an unjust capitalist status quo.
In Fanaticism, Prudence, andFaithAron
takes on the critics. He makes clear that
his opposition to fanaticism is rooted
less in skepticism than in a forthright
defense of principle and prudence. He
argues that the ultimate source of the
“progressivist”indulgence towards com-
munist totalitarianism, an indulgence
displayed in the works of renowned “phi-
losophers” such a s Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (for a time) and Jean-Paul Sartre
(for decades on end), is nothing less than
a nihilistic denial of a sempiternal human
nature and permanent principles of vir-
tue o r wisdom that guide and limit
thought and action. In their philosophi-
cal work proper, Sartre and Merleau-
Ponty “belong[ed] to the tradition of
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and the re-
volt against Hegelianism.”” They made
“the individual and his destiny” the cen-
terpiece of their reflection.I8
As “existentialists”they defended free
or indeterminate choice and “rule[d] out
a moral law which would govern inten-
tion.”lgBereft of principles except for the
strikingly formal and contentless impera-
tives of authenticity and reciprocity, they
combine what Aron called, following Leo
Summer 2001
Strauss, “the two faulty extremes,” doc-
trinairism and existentialism.20 In t h e
manner of doctrinaire revolutionaries,
these Marxist existentialists affirmed “the
unique truth of the classless society.”21
They glorified communist revolution and
“ignored the historical diversities, the
slow creations, the unforeseeable acci-
dents” that give shape to living political
communities. At the same time, “these
descendants of Kierkegaard” affirmed
the primacy of individual consciousness
and rejected the idea of a “total and
complete human practice.”22Aron
tellingly observed that “in certain re-
spects Marx and Nietzsche are ‘opposite
extremes’ but by many paths their de-
scendants come together.”23
Both existentialists, the partisans of
“authentic” choice, and doctrinaire his-
toricists, the believers in the “necessary
development of history,” rejected the
limits established by both human nature
and the complexities inherent in collec-
tive life.24Historicists and existentialists
alike are inspired by “confidence in the
power of the human They ignored
natural limits and t h e “wisdom of
Montesquieu,”26the fact that particular
social and political traditions have aform
of their own and are not easily subordi-
nated t o the requirements of “a univer-
sal and homogenous state.”
In Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,
Aron lucidly shows how existentialists
and fellow-travelling Christians end up
affirming “‘asingle truth’ in an area where
the truth cannot be ~ingle.”~’ The exis-
tentialists, in particular, begin with a
“philosophy of extreme individualism
and quasi-nihilism’’that denies “any per-
manence to human nature.”28They end
up incoherently oscillating between “law-
less voluntarism and a doctrinairism
based on Aron argued that the
only way out of this dead end is through
a clear affirmation of “authentic faith” by
which he means foundational “prin-
ciples” that provide guidance for thought
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and action.30Aron’s skepticism was di-
rected at “schemes, models, and uto-
pias” and not at the principles that sus-
tain reasonable action and sensible re-
f o r m ~ . Because
~’ existentialists and pro-
gressivist Christians have rejected thevery
idea of human nature and the moral law,
they turn to “class or a historical dialectic
t o provide them with c o n ~ i c t i o n . ” ~ ~
Aron returned to a classical recogni-
tion that affirms that common sense or
ordinary experience provides the neces-
sary starting point for both human ac-
tion and theoretical reflection. Without
first principles that guide and limit our
action within and orient our reflection
about the world, neither thought nor
reasonable action is possible. The hu-
man world becomes merely incoherent
and the diversity of human works loses
its intelligibility. A “faith” in the perma-
nence of human nature is then the indis-
pensable “reasonable” precondition of
thought and action. As a consequence,
Aron defends prudence, what Burke
called “the god of this lower world,”
against the inhuman oscillation between
voluntarism and doctrinairism charac-
teristic of those who smugly renounce
first principles.
In Fanaticism, Aron located the ulti-
mate origin of revolutionary fanaticism
in the nihilistic denial of those first prin-
ciples that make possible a prudent navi-
gation of the human world. The reli-
giously agnostic Aron even provided a
lucid defense and articulation of the clas-
sicalchristian understanding of the need
to avoid both quietist acceptance of
worldly injustice and a messianic dis-
dain for the imperfection of the world.
He expressed disappointment (at the
height of communism’s intellectual pres-
tige) that many progressive-minded
Christians indulged regimes that perse-
cuted believers and denied fundamental
human liberties. Aron’s formulation of
the wisdom of a distinctively Christian
civic moderation merits citation. A true
249
Christian citizen “would never have the
sense of having done enough for human
justice, and yet h e would feel that the
results of this tireless effort were negli-
gible and must appear as such in com-
parison with the oniy thing really at stake.
He would be neither resigned to human
misery nor forgetful of sin.”33
Aron was not a religious believer in
any conventional sense but he was care-
ful to leave room for transcendent prin-
ciples that were not reducible to t h e
human will. He opposed radical
immanentism on rational moral grounds.
He recognized the permanent imperfec-
tion of the human soul and the contradic-
tions that constituted social life, truths
that revealed religion affirms. But this
non-utopian thinker was no mere con-
servative. He persuasively argued that a
rejection of ideological myths was t h e
essential precondition for pursuing rea-
sonable reforms and prudent action.
In the middle section of the essay en-
titled “From Criticism to Reasonable Ac-
tion,”Aron went some way in delineating
his conception of political judgment.
Political judgment is necessarily histori-
cal-it begins with the hic et nunc, with
the actual choices confronting citizens
and statesmen. Accordingly,in an almost
Aristotelian manner, Aron began by ac-
cepting the objectives suggested by citi-
zens themselves. In the twentieth cen-
tury, we are speaking of citizens who
partake of a decidedly modern civiliza-
tion. “No nations or party” in the modern
world can afford to reject industrial civi-
lization that is the sine qua Ron of both
improved living standards for the people
and enhanced national and military
power.34This commonly accepted objec-
tive can serve as a criterion to judge
polities and policies.
The proponents of socialist revolu-
tion, however, refused the comparative
analysis of regimes and dogmatically in-
sisted on the superiority of “socialism”
to “capitalism.” Writing in 1956, Aron
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suggested that what was needed in the
place of such ideological posturing was
reasonable, comparative “consideration
of the regimes in which nations have to
live.”35Such comparative analysis, to
which Aron dedicated much of his socio-
logical work, shows that the modern
objectives of growth, efficiency, and eq-
uitable distribution of goods are in no
fundamental sense incompatible with lib-
eral freedoms. “Real freedom,” as the
Marxists put it, did not demand “the s u p
pression of parliaments, parties or the
free discussion of ideas.”36
By disdaining empirical analysis in the
name of revolutionary myths, the intel-
lectual Left indulged “the tyranny of a
single party which elevates a pseudo-
rationalist superstition into an official
ide~logy.”~’ Aron called this betrayal of
enlightenment principles “the shame of
the intellectuals of the Left.”%He argued
that the exposure of ideological myths is
the first sobering step on the road to the
recovery of authentic political judgment.
The “verbalequivalences”or word games
that define Marxist-Leninist ideology
(“power of the party = power of the pro-
letariat = abolition of private ownership
= abolition of classes = human libera-
t i ~ n ”had
) ~ fatal
~ consequences for those
subjected to them. For progressive think-
ers in the West, they served to muddle
thinking and blocked the way toward a
clear-sighted analysis of modern society.
Aron, the comparative student of mod-
ern regimes, accepted the multiple ob-
jectives of modern civilization as legiti-
mate and hence as the starting point of
sociological and political analysis. He
believed that the tensions or “antino-
mies” (a term that Aron adopted from the
technical philosophy of Kant) between
growth and social equity, between politi-
cal cohesion and individual liberty, and
between civic equality and social stratifi-
cation, could be reasonably accommo-
dated through equitable analysis and
sensible public policy. But these modern
Summer 2001
social conflicts reflected a sempiternal
political problem: The task of any decent
and cohesive political community “was
to reconcile the participation of all men
in the community with the diversity of
Modern societies were doomed
to a certain degree of hypocrisy because
the nature of social lifedoes not allow the
simple realization of their egalitarian and
libertarian principles. But a recognition
of this fact need not lead to despair o r
cynicism. Once the student of politics
has rejected revolutionary myths, these
same realities counsel moderation and
encourage a prudent pursuit of modern
societies’ stated objectives and human-
ity’s natural aspiration to justice and
humane institutions.
Aron’s conception of political judg-
ment should not be confused with mere
empiricism. Facts certainly must be taken
into account by the thoughtful observer
or actor. Aron had little tolerance for the
postmodern denial of a rationally acces-
sible human world. In The Elusive Revolu-
tion, his feisty dissection of the “revolu-
tionary psychodrama” of May 1968,Aron
trenchantly criticized the postmodern
deconstruction of the common-sense
view of social reality. He attacked the
fashionable philosophical “scorn for
facts” and reminded his readers of the
“obvious”: “every society is subject to
the constraints of fact.”41But the judg-
ment of the equitable observer is needed
to weigh and to balance competingclaims
in light of social constraints and the pos-
sibilities and limits of human nature.
Aron’s is an antinomian prudence that
refused to allow a partial logic or value,
such as equality, efficiency, individual
liberty, or national greatness, each of
which is legitimatewithin its ownsphere,
to efface other legitimate facts or values.
Values that are legitimate in themselves
risk becoming tyrannical when they are
not balanced against other competing
goods.
If the mature Aron rejected postmod-
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ernism, he certainly no longer believed
that relativism could be overcome
through “the absolute of decision.” Pure
indetermination leads us nowhere. At its
worst it creates a dangerous vacuum
ready to be filled by fanaticisms of vari-
ous stripes. Aron argued that while no
philosophy can provide “formulas” for
solving problems, a philosophy “which
refers to the ideal of virtue or wisdom ...
offers an ‘inspiration, a light’ which are
different from those offered by a philoso-
phy which places the accent on freedom,
choice, i n v e n t i ~ n .Yet
”~~ Aron recognized
that the first principles of thought and
action must be supplemented by “the
wisdom of Montesquieu,” the careful
comparative analysis of regimes and com-
peting social objectives, as well as by a
forthright effort to prevent one value or
logic from obscuring the legitimate plural-
ism of human objectives.
Aron’s morality of prudence accom-
modates cultural diversity because it
makes sense of the human character of
that diversity. The theorist guided by
Aronian principles is able to weigh and
t o balance seemingly incommensurable
goods precisely because he recognizes
those goods as goods, rather than as
ungrounded values. In Fanaticism, Pru-
dence, andFaith, Aron demonstrated that
radical skepticism or relativism provides
no defense against political storms. It is
natural and necessary for human beings
to appeal to principle-and “secular re-
ligions” will readily fill the place prop-
erlyreserved for “authentic faith.”Indem-
onstrating this point, Aron vindicates na-
ture against history in both its progressiv-
ist and its relativistic modes, without de-
nying the essentially “historical” or con-
crete character of political choice. Aron’s
remarkable political judgment, his lucid-
ity about totalitarianism and his moral
realism in addressing the dialectics of
modern civilization,were inseparable from
a theoretical appreciation of the ultimate
dependence of liberty upon truth.
251
1. Introduction to the Philosophy o f History, trans.
George J. Irwin (New York, 196l), 305. 2. Ibid., 318.
3. Ibid., 300. 4. Pierre Manent, “Raymond Aron-
Political Educator,” in Daniel J. Mahoney, ed., In
Defense of Political Reason (Lanham, Md., 1994), 9.
5. On this point see Aurel Kolnai’s remarkable
essay “MoralConsensus,” in F. Dunlop and B. Klug,
eds., Ethics, Value, and Reality: Selected Papers of
Aurel Kolnai (London, 1977), 144-164, esp. 157-159.
6. Memoirs: F i b Years o fPolitical Reflection, trans.
George Holoch (Turnbull, Conn., 1990), 474-475.7.
Ibid., 473.8. Introduction to the Philosophy ofHistory,
297.9. Ibid., 328.10. Ibid. 11. See Aron’s 1964 essay
“Max Weber and Power Politics,” in In Defense o f
Political Reason, 44. 12. Ibid., 45.13. Introduction to
the Philosophy ofHistory, 334.14. Ibid., 333,334.15.
The quotations in this paragraph and the next are
drawn from “Max Weber and Modern Social Sci-
252
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ence,” in History, Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings o f
Raymond Aron, ed. Franciszek Draus (Chicago,
1985), 372-373. 16. On the latter point see “Science
and Consciousness of Society,”in History, Truth and
Liberty, 199-226, esp. 215-221. 17. See “Appen-
dix: Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith’’ in The Opium
o f the Intellectuals, with a new lntroduction by
Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., and a foreword by
Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson (New
Brunswick, 2001), 325. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 327. 20.
Ibid., 328. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 328-329. 24.
Ibid., 333-334.25.Ibid., 334.26. Ibid., 333.27. Ibid.,
334. 28. Ibid., 350. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 351.
32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 347-348. 34. Ibid., 340. 35. Ibid,
341. 36. Ibid., 343. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40.
Ibid., 346.41. Translated by G. Clough (New York,
1969), 110-111. 42. Fanaticism, Prudence, and
Faith, 326.
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