The Anthem Companion to Raymond Aron

Book excerpt: Raymond Aron is an exceptional figure among twentieth-century sociological and political thinkers. The book focuses on the sociological work of this author of the century, who analyzed his age both in its grand-scale political and socio-economic traits and in the complex social ramifications of its day-to-day life. Aron experts from a total of seven countries examine Aron’s sociology in detail starting with his road from philosophy to sociology not least under the impression of the Great Depression and its aftermath, especially the rise of National Socialism in Germany. His epistemological studies on the limits of objective knowledge in history and the social sciences in which he moves away from Durkheim's approach and instead adopts Max Weber's sociology of understanding are analysed. This acknowledgment of the limits of knowledge laid the foundations for Aron’s liberalism and humanism. His sociology of industrial society as an economy of economic growth in its market economy and planned economy versions, its social stratification, his criticism of the Marxist concept of social class, the structure of the ruling elites and the pluralistic and one-party, totalitarian political regimes are presented, as is Aron's analysis of the dialectic of modern society between the idea of equality and the authority structures in the state and the economic process. This is accompanied by Aron's lifelong criticism of those intellectuals above all in the pluralist and liberal democracies who hope that a messianic ideology will abolish all social contradictions. Aron’s sociology of international relations in the age of industrial society and globalization, which for Aron brought about the dawn of universal history, complete the overview of Raymond Aron's sociological work.