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Positive Political Science and the Uses of Political Theory in Post-War France: Raymond Aron in Context

2012; Routledge; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01916599.2012.664338

1873-541X

H. Stuart Jones, Iain Stewart,

Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

Summary This article approaches post-war debates about the relationship between normative political theory and empirical political science from a French perspective. It does so by examining Raymond Aron's commentaries on a series of articles commissioned by him for a special issue of the Revue française de science politique on this theme as well as through an analysis of his wartime dialogue with the neo-Thomist philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Following a consideration of Aron's critique of contemporary approaches to this issue in France, we discuss his own distinctive attempt to draw normative theory and empirical science into the same orbit by tracing the interaction of these two elements in his work from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s. Keywords: Raymond AronJacques MaritainFrench liberal traditionFrench political theoryFrench intellectualsFrench sociology Notes 1On the revival of political theory, especially in Britain, see David Miller, ‘The Resurgence of Political Theory’, Political Studies, 38 (1990), 421–37. 2Peter Laslett, ‘Introduction’, in Philosophy, Politics and Society (Second Series), edited by Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford, 1956), vii; Alfred Cobban, ‘The Decline of Political Theory’, Political Science Quarterly, 68 (1953), 321–37. 3Quoted by Peter Stirk, ‘The Development of Post-War German Social and Political Thought’, this issue, XX[PEQ: PAGE NUMBER REQUIRED]; Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Illinois, 1960). 4Eric Weil, ‘Philosophie politique, théorie politique’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 267–94; Bertrand de Jouvenel, ‘Théorie politique pure’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 364–79; Henri Lefebvre, ‘Marxisme et politique: le marxisme a-t-il une théorie politique?’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 338–63. On Lefebvre's expulsion from the French Communist Party, see, for example, David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914–1960 (London, 1964), 271–72. 5Raymond Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, Revue française de science politique, 12 (1962), 5–26 (6–7). 6The remaining contributions to the special issue were: Isaiah Berlin, ‘La théorie politique existe-t-elle?’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 309–37; Richard Wollheim, ‘Philosophie analytique et pensée politique’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 295–308; Stanley Hoffmann, ‘Théorie et relations internationales’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 413–33; Anthony Downs, ‘Théorie économique et théorie politique’, Revue française de science politique, 11 (1961), 380–412. 7Jeremy Jennings, ‘“Le Retour des Émigrés”? The Study of the History of Political Ideas in Contemporary France’, in The History of Political Thought in National Context, edited by Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk (Cambridge, 2001), 209–10; Pierre Favre, ‘La science politique en France depuis 1945’, International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique, 2 (1981), 95–120 (102). 8Thibaud Boncourt, ‘The Evolution of Political Science in France and Britain: A Comparative Study of Two Political Science Journals’, European Political Science, 6 (2007), 281. 9Raymond Aron, Jean-Louis Missika and Dominique Wolton, Le spectateur engagé: entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique Wolton (Paris, 1981), 27. 10Boncourt, ‘Evolution of Political Science’, 281. 11Marcel Prélot, Histoire des idées politique (Paris, 1959). 12Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 5–26. 13Giles Scott-Smith, ‘The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology, and the 1955 Milan Conference: “Defining the Parameters of Discourse”’, Journal of Contemporary History, 37 (2002), 437–55. 14Aron first wrote at length on Burnham in Raymond Aron, ‘Du pessimisme historique’, La France Libre, 5 (1943), 439–46. As director of Calmann-Lévy's Liberté de l'esprit collection, Aron published French translations of five of Burnham's books between 1947 and 1953, contributing an untitled postface to James Burnham, Contenir ou libérer (Paris, 1953), 275–323. For an account of the French reception of Burnham's work, see Joseph Romano, ‘James Burnham en France: l'import-export de la “révolution managériale” après 1945’, Revue française de science politique, 53 (2003), 257–75. 15Raymond Aron, ‘Réflexions sur le “pacifisme intégral”’ (first published in 1933), in Mémoires (Paris, 1983), 57. 16Aron first wrote on the ‘The End of the Ideological Age?’ in the final chapter of Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London, 1957). His main subsequent works on this theme are Raymond Aron, Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society (London, 1967); Raymond Aron, La lutte de classes. Nouvelles leçons sur les sociétés industrielles (Paris, 1964); Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism (London, 1968); Raymond Aron, ‘The End of Ideology and the Renaissance of Ideas’, in The Industrial Society: Three Essays on Ideology and Development (London, 1967), 92–183. 17For a discussion of Aron's influence on Furet see François Furet, ‘La rencontre d'une idée et d'une vie’, Commentaire, 8 (1985), 52–54. 18For his École nationale d'administration lectures in 1952, see Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique: démocratie et révolution (Paris, 1997). For the International Institute, see Raymond Aron, ‘Fondation de l'Institut International de Philosophie Politique’, Dialectica, 7 (1953), 276–77. 19See the important article by Richard Gowan, ‘Raymond Aron, the History of Ideas and the Idea of France’, European Journal of Political Theory, 2 (2003), 383–99. 20Maritain taught at Princeton and Columbia during the Second World War, and returned to Princeton in 1948; Aron gave numerous high-profile lectures at Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard and elsewhere, on which see Raymond Aron, Mémoires (Paris, 1983), 354. 21Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton, 2001), 57–62, 71–72. See also Trine M. Kjeldahl, ‘Defence of a Concept: Raymond Aron and Totalitarianism’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2 (2001), 121–42. 22Raymond Aron, ‘Jacques Maritain et la querelle du machiavélisme’, La France Libre, 6 (1943), 151–57. Translated and reprinted as Raymond Aron, ‘French Thought in Exile: Jacques Maritain and the Quarrel over Machiavellianism’, in In Defense of Political Reason: Essays by Raymond Aron, edited by Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, MD, 1994), 53–63. 23Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law (London, 1944), 5. 24Jacques Maritain, ‘The Concept of Sovereignty’, American Political Science Review, 44 (1950), 353. 25Ghita Ionescu, ‘Raymond Aron: A Modern Classicist’, in Contemporary Political Philosophers, edited by Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue (New York, 1975), 201–08; Ghita Ionescu, ‘Reading Notes, Autumn 1983’, Government and Opposition, 19 (1984), 111–12. 28Raymond Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity (London, 1961), 224. First published in France as Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire (Paris, 1938). 26Aron himself insisted that this book was fundamental to his work, and this assertion is vindicated. For his work in international relations, see Bryan-Paul Frost, ‘Resurrecting a Neglected Theorist: The Philosophical Foundations of Raymond Aron's Theory of International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), 143–66. 27Quoted in Gaston Fessard, La philosophie historique de Raymond Aron (Paris, 1980), 43. On the thesis defence and Aron's anti-positivism, see Fessard, La philosophie historique de Aron, 36–47. See also Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron: un moraliste au temps des idéologies (Paris, 1992), 127–54. 29Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 12. 30Jouvenel, ‘Théorie politique pure’, 364–79. 31Downs, ‘Théorie économique et théorie politique’, 380–412. 32Lefebvre, ‘Marxisme et politique’, 338–63. 33Jacques Maritain, ‘The End of Machiavellianism’, Review of Politics, 4 (1942), 1–33; Aron, ‘Maritain et la querelle du machiavélisme’, 151–57. 34Maritain, ‘End of Machiavellianism’, 11. 35Maritain, ‘End of Machiavellianism’, 33 36Maritain, ‘End of Machiavellianism’, 28–29. 37On this point see also Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (London, 1966), 88–93, 279–85. 38Stanley Hoffmann, ‘Théorie et relations internationales’, 413–33. 39Maritain believed that the political philosophy of Machiavelli had produced ‘a profound split, an incurable division between politics and morality, and consequently an illusory but deadly antinomy between [...] idealism (wrongly confused with ethics) and [...] realism (wrongly confused with politics)’. See Maritain, ‘End of Machiavellianism’, 5. 40Brian C. Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Lanham, MD, 1997), 138. 41Raymond Aron, ‘États démocratiques et États totalitaires’, in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie (Paris, 2005), 57–106 (70). 42For the debate following Aron's presentation, see Aron, ‘États démocratiques’, in Penser la liberté, 90–106. 43Aron, ‘French Thought in Exile’, in In Defense of Political Reason, 62. 44Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 24. 45Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 26. 46On this point see especially Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 15–26. 47Aron, who was criticised for slipping between political science and sociology, considered that the distinction between the two disciplines had no meaning ‘beyond the barriers between academic departments’. See Aron, Mémoires, 352. 48Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 4. 50Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 13. 49Allan Bloom, ‘Raymond Aron: The Last of the Liberals’, in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York, 1990), 258. 51This point has been especially emphasised by Aron's American commentators. See for example Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron: A Critical Introduction (Lanham, MD, 1992), 125; Anderson, Aron: Recovery of the Political, 30–34. For Aron's explicit reflection on this issue, which cautiously affirms—against the mainstream of French philosophical opinion of the time—the continuing possibility of grounding political philosophy in an atheistic conception of human nature, see Raymond Aron, ‘Y a-t-il une nature humaine?’, Recherches et débats du centre catholique des intellectuels français, 8 (1950), 15–33. On the rejection of humanism by French intellectuals from the 1920s to the 1960s see the excellent book by Stefanos Geroulanos, An Atheism that is not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (Stanford, CA, 2010). 52The brief discussion that follows draws on Anderson, Aron: Recovery of the Political, 30–34. 53Aron, Philosophy of History, 341. 54Aron, Mémoires, 86. 55There are parallels between the value pluralism of Aron and Isaiah Berlin. For a comparison on this point see Anderson, Aron: Recovery of the Political, 185–88. 56Aron, Philosophy of History, 341. 57Aron criticised Berlin for failing to adequately distinguish between political theory and political philosophy. See Aron, ‘A propos de la théorie politique’, 5. 58Mahoney, Liberal Political Science of Aron; Anderson, Aron: Recovery of the Political; Reed Davis, ‘The Phenomenology of Raymond Aron’, European Journal of Political Theory, 2 (2003), 401–02. 60Annan, ‘The Curious Strength of Positivism’, 21. 59Noel Annan, ‘The Curious Strength of Positivism in English Political Thought’, in C. J. Singer and others, Hobhouse Memorial Lectures 1951–1960 (London, 1962). 61For economy see Aron, Eighteen Lectures. For social stratification see Aron, La lutte de classes. For political regime see Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism. 62Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 2 vols (Harmondsworth, 1968), I, 258. 63Aron, Eighteen Lectures, 24. 64On Marx as a sociologist see Aron, Main Currents, I, 111–82. On Durkheim see Aron, Main Currents, II, 21–108. 65See Aron, Eighteen Lectures, 31–57. 66On this point see also Aron, Main Currents, I, 54–57, 81. For Comte's interpretation of Montesquieu see Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols (Paris, 1830–1842), IV, 243. For Durkheim on Montesquieu see Émile Durkheim, Montesquieu et Rousseau: précurseurs de la sociologie (Paris, 1953), 25–113. 67Aron, Main Currents, I, 57. 68Aron, Mémoires, 351–52. 69Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 11. 70Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 12. 72Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 244–45. 71Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 47–50. 73Cited by Aron, Main Currents, I, 200. 74Aron, Opium of the Intellectuals, 137–38; Aron, The Industrial Society: Three Essays, 92–138; Aron, Peace and War, 600, 666. See also Frost, ‘Resurrecting a Neglected Theorist’, 161 note 94. 75Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, 24, 26.