Title: The Burden of Responsibility
Subtitle: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century
First published: 1998
Description: Leon Blum, Albert Camus, and Raymond Aron might seem an unlikely combination. Blum was a fin-de-siecle aesthete who became the spiritual and political leader of the French non-Communist Left in the first half of this century. Camus, best known to millions of readers worldwide for his novels The Stranger and The Plague, was a wartime Resistance figure who played a prominent part in post-1945 intellectual life in France before dying tragically young in a car crash in 1960.

Aron, a contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre in the brilliant intellectual generation of interwar France, was a political theorist, journalist, and critic of Communism who made a major contribution to the recent revival of liberal thought in contemporary France.

In The Burden of Responsibility Tony Judt offers a distinctive and original reinterpretation of the writings and public role of these three men, arguing that they have much in common. Despite the great differences in their backgrounds, their interests, and their views, all three were men of integrity who took seriously their responsibility as public intellectuals.
Subjects: Ethics, Contributions in ethics, Intellectuals, Intellectual life, Political aspects, Political activity, History, Engagement, Lon Blum, Politiek, Activité politique, Intellectuels, Histoire, Aspect politique, Morale, Intellectuelen, Vie intellectuelle, France, intellectual life, Intellectuals, france, New York Times reviewed
Places: France
People: Léon Blum (1872-1950), Albert Camus (1913-1960), Raymond Aron (1905-1983)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: DC33.7 .J83 1998