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Beginning in 1930… I felt, almost physically, the approach of historical storms. ‘History is again on the move’, in the words of Arnold Toynbee. 1 am still marked by this experience, which inclined me towards an active pessimism Once and for all, I ceased to believe that history automatically obeys the dictates of reason or the desires of men of good will. I lost faith and held on, not without effort, to hope. I discovered the enemy that 1 as well do not tire of pursuing, totalitarianism, an enemy no less insidious than Malthusianism. In any form of fanaticism, even one inspired by idealism, 1 suspect a new incarnation of the monster.
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References
1 ‘On the historical condition of the sociologist’, reprinted in a collection of Aron’s essays, History and Politics, M. B. Conant (ed.), New York, Free Press, 1978, p. 65.
2 For a full discussion of Aron’s work, together with a justification for preferring his achieved substantive work to his abstract and formal philosophy of history, see my forthcoming Longmans intellectual biography.
3 The three books are Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967, La Lutte de Classes, Paris, Gallimard, 1964 and Democracy and Totalitarianism, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968. There is a notably fine appreciation of the latter by G. Ionescu in Minogue, K. and de Crespigny, A. (eds), Contemporary Political Philosophers, London, Methuen, 1976.Google Scholar
4 Democracy and Totalitarianism, op. cit., p. 63.
5 For a useful exchange on this matter, see the debate between Aron, and Gellner, Ernest, Government and Opposition, Vol. 14, no. 1, Winter 1979, pp. 37–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, op. cit., p. 83.
7 La Lutte de Classes, op cit., p. 187 (my translation).
8 Ibid., p. 227 (my translation).
9 Democracy and Totalitarianism, op cit., p. 91.
10 Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, op cit., p. 202.
11 Essay on Freedom, New York, Harper & Row, 1970, p. 71.
12 ‘On the proper use of ideologies’, in Culture and Its Creators, Ben‐David, J. and Clark, T. N. (eds), Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
13 Imperial Republic, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974.
14 Ibid., conclusion.
15 Leviathan, part 1, ch. 13, cited by Aron in ‘La guerre est une caméléon’, Contrepoint, N. 15, 1974.
16 L’Esprit des Lois, part 1, ch. 3, cited by Aron in Peace and War, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966, p. vii.
17 ‘Reason, Passion and Power in the Thought of Clausewitz’, Social Research, Vol. 39, 1972, pp. 607–8.
18 The Century of Total War, Derek Verschoyle, London, 1954, part 1.
19 Peace and War, op. cit., p. 91.
20 Imperial Republic op. cit., ch. 3 and part 2.
21 He addressed this theme many times, most notably in Peace and War and in Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente, Paris, Laffont, 1977, ch. 6.
22 Imperial Republic, op. cit., ch. 3 and part 2.
23 Imperial Republic, op. cit., pp. 108–9.
24 ‘De l’impérialisme américaine à la hegemonisme soviétique’, Commentaire, No. 5, Spring 1979.
25 Clausewitz, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, ch. 15.
26 Ibid., p. 412.
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