Aron Introduction

Raymond Aron was a philosopher and a journalist. He wrote seminal works on the philosophy of history, on Clausewitz, on war and peace. He composed several trenchant columns a week, mostly for *Le Figaro* but also for an extraordinary range of other publications, philosophical, historical or topical in scope. And he maintained that pace with astonishing brilliance for nearly fifty years.

Raymond Aron was my friend. And he was also my teacher. Few intellectuals have had a deeper impact on my thinking; none a greater one. Lest I burden his memory with my

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critics, let me add that he was on occasion less than
satisfied with his student.

I met Raymond Aron in Paris in the fifties. It was in
his apartment along the Seine, I a graduate student and he
already a famous intellectual. At the time I was editing a
publication called *Confluence*, a journal of limited circula-
tion which I had launched in naive ignorance of the mecha-
nics of publishing a small magazine, not to mention its
financial vagaries. It was to be a medium through which
European and American intellectuals could debate a series of
issues of mutual interest. Aron seemed surprised at my
youth; I was intimidated by his fame and somewhat sceptical
manner. It was my initiation to Aron's characteristic
mixture of intellectual rigor and emotional support. Though
he had much better outlets, Aron not only wrote for
*Confluence* but was also a great help in inducing other
well-known French authors to do so.

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Until his death some thirty years later, that first meeting set the tone of our relationship. I genuinely admired Raymond Aron; in turn, he gave me every indication of his regard, even of his affection, though in these memoirs he feels compelled - quite properly - to make clear that he was never one to surrender his judgment to the friendship of a Secretary of State.

In the Epilogue of these memoirs, Aron speculates about whether he was considered cold. Those who knew him had no such doubts. They realized that he was a man of passion, deeply committed to liberty, to Western culture, and to democratic ideals.

Aron was French and he was Jewish. He witnessed the decline and rebirth of his country and the persecution and survival of his race. He lived through the confusion of prewar Europe; through exile in London during the war and

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all the tumults of internecine struggles, decolonization and
internal debate of postwar Europe.

Through all this turbulence Raymond Aron maintained his
sense of proportion and above all his sense of direction.
Like the rock against which the waves hurl themselves, on
the surface the very cause of their turmoil, in historical
perspective Aron becomes the figure to illustrate their
transitoriness. What a record of steadfastness the writings
of Aron represent in opposition to the conventional wisdom
of his day! By the time the second World War broke out he
had already witnessed the fatuousness of a policy that
sought to protect the small countries of Eastern Europe by a
defensive strategy in the West. He warned against the
failure to resist - in the name of peace and negotiation -
the German reoccupation of the Rhineland, which gave Nazi
Germany a glaucis behind which it effected the overthrow of
the existing European order. Aron understood that the

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British guarantee of Poland amounted as well to a guarantee
of the Soviet borders since the German armies could not
reach the Soviet Union without first crossing Poland. And
he saw clearly that, therefore, paradoxically and unjustly,
negotiations with Moscow would be rendered more difficult by
Britain's decision at last to abandon appeasement.

In London during the war Aron supported the Free
French. Throughout the postwar period, he was a staunch
supporter of European unity, American friendship and
Franco-German reconciliation. In the travails of France, he
usually took the unpopular position. He was an early advo-
cate of Algerian independence, recognizing that the "liberal"
solution of greater autonomy would never satisfy on a conti-
nent where all colonies were on the road to independence.

Aron's friendship for America was deep if far from
uncritical. Indeed, side by side with his defense of
Atlantic partnership, persisted a masterful - occasionally

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scathing - critique of the policies by which this partner-
ship was being implemented, including those of the author of
this preface. On Vietnam he deplored the extent to which
America had staked its prestige even as he understood the
struggle to extricate herself with honor.

Through the decades, Aron never wavered in his commit-
ment to the cause of freedom. He never joined the Marxism
in vogue with such contemporaries as Sartre and
Merleu-Ponty, or the fashionable anti-Americanism of
Malraux. He walked alone for the greater part of his life,
only to be vindicated at the end by the turn of French
intellectuals away from Marxism - though perhaps too late to
give him the formal recognition of intellectual leadership
which was his due.

Documenting Aron's intellectual life might easily
overwhelm even the most devoted biographer, for how could
anyone distill the passion, the honesty and the dedication

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behind such a stupendous output. Fortunately for posterity,
Aron undertook the task himself at the end of his life.

In this intellectual biography, at once modest and
moving, Aron steers the reader through the spiritual odyssey
of his life using extracts from his own most significant
articles and books as guideposts. One meets not only the
author but also the extraordinary group of men and women he
encountered on the way. The memoirs are profound, yet easy
to read; they reveal a warm, caring personality whose
commitment to the principles of freedom provided the impetus
for his extraordinary labors.

For a man like myself, involved for many years in the
mundane tasks of diplomacy, Aron's book is not always
comfortable reading. Clearly, his judgment of my efforts as
a statesman is less admiring than mine of his contributions
to Western thought.

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This is as it should be. The philosopher deals with
truth; the statesman addresses contingencies. The thinker
has a duty to define what is right; the policymaker must
deal with what is attainable. The professor focuses on
ultimate goals; the diplomat knows that his is a meandering
path on which there are few ultimate solutions and whatever
"solutions" there are, more often than not turn into a
threshold for a new set of problems.

DeGaulle, as so often, summed up the dilemma in a
letter cited by Aron: "It happens that I am sometimes not
convinced by what you write and I know that from the outset
you have rarely approved what I do. However, please believe
that I admire the way in which your mind attempts to encom-
pass the great flood that is carrying all of us toward an
apparently measureless and, in any event, unprecedented
fate."

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I last saw Aron in the summer of 1982. An obscure bank official from a small town in the South of France wrote to him that it was his dream to bring Aron and me to Draguignan for a dialogue. Aron took up this unusual request with his usual dedication. He had by then become quite frail. My wife, Nancy, urged me not to delay accepting because she feared that he soon would not have the strength to go through with it.

So we went to Draguignan in June 1982. The organizers and a group of French citizens first took Aron and me to an American military cemetery at the edge of town as a symbol of their ties to America. The mayor of the town had refused to make a public building available, whether in protest against Aron or me I no longer remember. But a large tent had been erected and Aron questioned me before an audience of several thousand. He did so with a fierce tenderness,

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being both demanding and confident that I would withstand
his rigorous cross examination.

In the final years he had taken to kissing me whenever
we met or parted, a sign, I felt, that he thought every
meeting might be our last. A few months after Draguignan,
Aron died, on the steps of a courthouse where he had gone to
testify for a friend unjustly accused of collaborating with
the Nazis.

It was an honor to have been his contemporary.

Aron Introduction

February 15, 1989

Final Draft

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Through all this turbulence Raymond Aron maintained his
sense of proportion and above all his sense of direction.
Like the rock against which the waves hurl themselves, on
the surface the very cause of their turmoil, in historical
perspective Aron becomes the figure to illustrate their
transitoriness. What a record of steadfastness the writings
of Aron represent in opposition to the conventional wisdom
of his day! By the time the second World War broke out he
had already witnessed the fatuousness of a policy that
sought to protect the small countries of Eastern Europe by a
defensive strategy in the West. He warned against the
failure to resist - in the name of peace and negotiation -
the German reoccupation of the Rhineland, which gave Nazi
Germany a glacis behind which it effected the overthrow of
the existing European order. Aron understood that the

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In London during the war Aron supported the Free French. Throughout the postwar period, he was a staunch supporter of European unity, American friendship and Franco-German reconciliation. In the travails of France, he usually took the unpopular position. He was an early advocate of Algerian independence, recognizing that the "liberal" solution of greater autonomy would never satisfy on a continent where all colonies were on the road to independence.

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ASSOCIATES N.Y.

Aron Introduction

February 13, 1989

Draft #1

Raymond Aron was a philosopher and a journalist. He wrote seminal works on the philosophy of history, on Clausewitz on war and peace. He composed several trenchant columns a week, mostly for *Le Figaro* but also for an extraordinary range of other publications, philosophical, historical, and topical. And he maintained that pace with astonishing brilliance for nearly fifty years.

none a greater one. Beat I burden his memory with my
new intellectual have had a deeper impact on my thinking;
Raymond Aron was my friend. And he was also my teacher.
sustaining brilliance for nearly fifty years.

historical and topical. And he maintained that pace with
extraordinary range of other publications, philosophical,
quantitative, and in some cases,
Aron introduced a new way of thinking.

Draft #1
February 13, 1988

Aron Introduction

FEB 13 '88 10:57 KIERINGER R2200133E N.Y.

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