Raymond Aron: A Critical Retrospective and Prospective

Abstract

Rationale for the Symposium Few intellectuals and political analysts have dominated their times more than Raymond Aron. His death in fall 1983 elicited press notice from around the globe. Aron's writings, covering over 50 years of ceaseless productivity, reached every corner of the world. He was truly a scholar and teacher of global proportions. Often at odds with his contemporaries in Europe, he was perhaps more appreciated, if not always fully understood, by his English-speaking peers in the United States and England than by his French and European colleagues. Yet he was too formidable to be ignored or dismissed by his adversaries and too original and iconoclastic to be cast as the representative of any one school of politics or political analysis. Aron's death, coming shortly on the heels of the publication of his best-selling memoirs,1 prompted the Editors of International Studies Quarterly to attempt an evaluation of his contribution to the study and understanding of international relations. This project has several related aims. First of all it seeks to identify some of the principal elements of Aron's work and approach to international politics that merit attention and preservation. Second, the Editors sought to present a critical retrospective rather than a eulogy, which, while well-meaning, would have had little lasting value. It seemed important to determine, at least in a preliminary way, what of Aron's work is likely to stand the test of time. It was also felt that Aron, given his dedication to dialectical discourse, would have also preferred a probing retrospective that looked critically and skeptically at his writing. Three respected scholars in international relations, known to colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, consented to contribute evaluations. A close reading of the articles by Pierre Hassner, Stanley Hoffmann, and Urs Luterbacher reveals that they do not have the same views about Aron's contribution to the study of politics. Indeed, Professor Luterbacher, while conceding the importance of Aron's earlier philosophical writings, advances the intriguing case that Aron and his contemporaries slowed the development in France of a scientific social science along the model of the physical sciences. The differences expressed in the following retrospective suggest the third aim of the project, namely, to stir debate about key conceptual and methodological problems in international relations that have not been fully resolved. Aron strove throughout his Author's note: As the guest editor of this Aron retrospective, I should like to take this opportunity to thank Professors P. Terrence Hopmann and Robert Kudrle for their unfailing aid and encouragement. Professor Hopmann translated Pierre Hassner's article and was ever diligent and sensitive in capturing the meaning of illusive phrases and in pursuing fugitive citations. Professor Kudrle's persistence and gentle suasion were indispensable in seeing the project to completion.