Politics and History
Raymond Aron translated and edited by Miriam Bernheim ConantTo have maintained a sense of balance and true independence of spirit during the course of the twentieth century would be a remarkable achievement in any country, but it is all the more impressive for a Frenchman, since the French fancy themselves the great creators of intellectual fashion and philosophical standards. Those who place themselves outside the conventional wisdom in France are regarded not only as intellectually inadequate, but somehow morally suspect as well. Aron was not spared such attacks, and his refusal to join the postwar hysteria of existentialism, structuralism, gauchisme, and other similarly failed visions, led to his exclusion from the “progressive” press. He was considered an anomaly at the Sorbonne (that he was permitted to teach there at all was frequently the object of attack from his critics), and was branded a “fascist” by the Communist Party, fellow-traveling intellectuals, and followers of Jean-Paul Sartre.
However he lacked neither an enormously successful career nor access to millions of readers, his true achievement consisted not so much in overcoming the snobbery of his contemporaries but rather in resisting intellectual temptation.