Faces of moderation: Raymond Aron as committed observer

Abstract

Raymond Aron's books stand out as an example of lucid political judgment in an age of extremes in which many intellectuals shunned moderation and were attracted to various forms of irresponsible metaphysics and political radicalism. By drawing on a representative selection from Aron's writings covering more than three decades of his life, this paper concentrates on the "committed observer" (spectateur engage) as Aron's response to irresponsible metaphysics. I also comment on Aron's views on the role, virtues, limits, and possibility of moderation in political life. Although Aron brilliantly played the role of the "committed observer", he never gave a clear theoretical statement on this issue. Therefore one has to reconstruct the intellectual portrait of the committed observer piece by piece by using scattered insights from Aron's own books in which he described his own political engagement in contrast with the engagement of people like Sartre, Althusser, and Merleau-Ponty.