The Frustrated Commentator: An Evaluation of the Work of Raymond Aron

Abstract

Hoffmann's article in this volume is a good example). In this context it would, therefore, be inappropriate in order to provide the reader with a more balanced view, to launch a major attack against Aron and to enumerate all of the weaknesses and problematic aspects of his work. In some sense, such post mortem polemicism would be fruitless since Aron himself would not be able to answer. What I will attempt to do here is something much more detached and analytical, namely to try to understand the significance of Aron's work by placing it in the context of the evolution of French intellectual thinking about the social sciences. This should allow me to raise some fundamental questions about that particular development and to get to a more balanced and distant view of Aron's thinking. Aron's evaluations of the achievements of others (his famous Paix et guerre entre les nations can be characterized among other things as a vast review of the international relations literature at the end of the 1 950s) illustrates what constitutes in my view the main feature of Aron's work. He is first and foremost an accomplished essayist and commentator-a frustrated commentator never completely satisfied with the writings he was reviewing nor his own. This particular key to Aron's work is provided by the author himself at the beginning of his essay on Clausewitz: 'Interpretation in its widest sense, on any topic, dreams or Das Kapital, has become one of the favored themes of French philosophers in recent years' (Aron, 1976: 17).1 Indeed, as Aron mentions, this specific trait characterizes large segments of French philosophy and social science since World War II. In fact, it is often difficult during that period to disentangle philosophy and social science in France (Aron's work is again a good example of this aspect of French intellectual life). As a result, the scientific study of social phenomena remained marginal even in economics. In particular, international political analysis was largely dominated by diplomatic historians and area specialists. Even the kind of traditional theorizing about international relations 'a la Morgenthau or Wolfers did not have its equivalent in France. Aron's work constitutes an exception whose merit is to have revealed the Anglo-Saxon literature in that domain to the French. I believe that this was only possible because Aron had previously established strong credentials as a philosopher and commentator of German sociological thinking and was therefore able to function as the critical interpreter of American conceptions about international politics. However, in this function, he was not really able to generate widespread interest for the works of