In search of limits: Raymond Aron on ‘secular religion’ and communism

Abstract

Beginning in the 1940s, Raymond Aron used the concept of ‘secular religion’ to condemn communism. This article traces the history of ‘secular religion’ within his writings. Aron’s earliest critique of communism, in his doctoral thesis of 1938, entitled Introduction to the Philosophy of History , was philosophically powerful yet did not rely on ‘secular religion.’ The concept first emerged in his wartime writings; it then became central in his famous book The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955). The ambiguities of the concept of ‘secular religion’ are discussed in this article. On the whole, the idea of ‘secular religion’ appears to be a weak spot within the corpus of a thinker who was usually very precise in defining his concepts. The article suggests that Aron is a case study in the failure of many Cold War intellectuals to wrestle productively with the concept of religion.