Raymond Aron’s engagement with Weber: Recovery or retreat?

Abstract

This article traces the arc of Aron’s interpretation of Weber from his dynamic political reading of Weber’s sociology to his deflationary criticism, a criticism that robs Weber’s sociology, in particularly his political sociology, of the very force that led Aron to embrace it in the first place. At the outset I trace Aron’s stylized dynamic political reading of Max Weber’s historical sociology, political sociology, and sociologically informed political ethics, a reading in which Weber’s interpretive notion of meaningful action and his notion of counterfactual judgment in providing explanation become central to Weber’s political sociology. I show how for Aron Weber’s historical sociology in general and his political sociology in particular serve to provide a model for how sociology can clarify for political actors the existential political choices they may face in making decisions. But I also argue that when Aron subsequently turns to a criticism of Weber in the name of cleansing his theory of political extremity, he undermines all the dynamic elements in Weber’s political sociology so central to his original interpretation. The upshot of this move is that he comes up with a concept of political sociology that is static, structurally rigid, and curiously time-bound. Thus precisely the moderation and restraint for which Aron is so frequently praised become fundamental weaknesses when we examine his revision of Weber’s political sociology and its meaning for a sociologically informed political judgment.