Raymond Aron
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Raymond Aron (March 14, 1905 — October 17, 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist and political scientist. He was known for his skepticism of French leftist ideology.
Son of a Jewish lawyer, Aron studied at the École Normale Supérieure where he met Jean-Paul Sartre (who became his friend and lifelong intellectual opponent). He was laureate of the Agrégation of philosophy (before Sartre). In 1930, he received a doctorate on the philosophy of history from the École Normale Supérieure. and studied at the . In 1939, when World War II began, he was teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse; he left the University and joined the air force. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, and (1940-1944) edited their newspaper, France Libre (Free France).
At the close of the war, he returned to Paris to teach sociology at the École Nationale d'Administration and at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (also known as "Sciences Po"), maintaining that the Vichy government and Marshal Pétain had chosen the lesser of two evils in collaborating with the Nazis during World War II.. From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the Sorbonne, and after 1970 at the Collège de France.
A lifelong journalist, Aron in 1947 became an influential columnist for Le Figaro, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L'Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death.
Infused as he was with a liberal disposition, Aron's views on multiple citizenship and dual nationality were pessimistic. In his 1974 article, "Is Multinational Citizenship Possible?" he clearly considered it an anachronism, totally incommensurate with the logic of the sovereign-state system. Aron argued that multiple citizenship could not break the indelible link between the individual citizen and his nation-state. Citizenship, according to Aron, was a special relation between the individual and the state; citizenship defined the state's rule within a specific territory, and in turn the state determined who its citizens were and what rights and obligations bound citizens to the state.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9811/elshtain.html
- http://www.quotemeonit.com/aronr.html
- http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/may01/opium.htm
- Raymond Aron, an Atlantist prosecutor in France (Voltaire Network)
- When the CIA financed European Intellectuals (Aron role in the Congress for Cultural Freedom) (Voltaire Network)
- Profile page for Raymond Aron on the Find-A-Grave web site
