Raymond Aron - The Opium of the Intellectuals

Books by Raymond Aron Published by Transaction

De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews

In Defense of Decadent Europe

Main Currents in Sociological Thought

Volume 1: Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville, and the Sociologists and the Revolution of 1848

Main Currents in Sociological Thought Volume 2: Durkheim, Pareto, Weber

The Opium of the Intellectuals

Peace & War: A Theory of International Relations

Politics and History

Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology

The Opium of the Intellectuals

Raymond Aron

With a new introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield

Foreword by
Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson

Transaction Publishers

New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

FOREWORD TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION

THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS is the sixth book by Raymond Aron to be published by Transaction Publishers and the fifth in the "Aron series" inaugurated with the republication of In Defense of Decadent Europe in 1996. The series' aim is to make available Aron's principal writings, with new introductions that highlight their continuing relevance and, where appropriate, with additional materials that clarify the intention of the original works.

The publication of the new Transaction edition of The Opium of the Intellectuals is a particularly significant moment for the series. The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) is undoubtedly Aron's most famous workincredibly, however, it has been out-of-print for yearsthough it remains better known than read. Even sympathetic critics too often pigeonhole it as a skeptical assault on political rationalism or as a complacent defense of "the end of ideology." Few commentators have studied it with sufficient care to observe that its skepticism is aimed not at truth, but at the nihilism that propels ideological fanaticism in our age. Aron's "skeptical" assault on the myths of the left, the proletariat, and the revolution, and his philosophical dissection of "the idolatry of history," are at the service of restoring political judgment to its rightful place as the guardian of the human world. In his introduction to the present volume, Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University highlights both Opium's remarkable contribution to clear thinking during the Cold War and its permanent contribution to understanding the intellectual foundations of non-utopian thought and action. This edition also includes a 1956 text by Aron, "Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith," that responds to the critics of the original edition of The Opium of the Intellectuals and illuminates the Aronian understanding of political judgment. This text is Aron's magisterial response to the efforts by Sartre and other French intellectuals to fuse Marxist historicism and existentialist commitment in a way that abandons any concern with political moderation and prudence. In it Aron supplements and explains the intention of The Opium of the Intellectuals, and makes clear that his own conservative-minded liberalism is not rooted in radical skepticism about principles per se but in a legitimate skepticism about "schemes, models and Utopias." As Mansfield makes clear in his introduction, Aron's powerful critique of the fusion of Marx and Nietzsche, of "doctrinairism" and "existentialism," in the thought of his time continues to speak to the irresponsibility and incoherence of "postmodernist" thought in ours.

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION

RAYMOND ARON'S great polemic, The Opium of the Intellectu als, was published in 1955 during the Cold War. It is a leading document in that war, which was fought with words as much as arms. The war with arms was between two superpowers and their allies, but the Cold War of words was fought mainly within the West, and the central battlefield was Paris. The question was whether the West would sustain its will and hence its efforts in arms, or would succumb to the doubt and self-criticism of its intellectuals, many of whom wanted, or behaved as if they wanted, the other side to win.

The most advanced of these intellectuals, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, were Aron's particular targets in this work. Americans owe Raymond Aron a great debt for a courageous deed in publishing it, a deed that was also a stroke of strategy against the enemy in his heartland. For however little courage there may seem to be in the act of writing a book, and however minor the consequences may seem to be of what intellectuals in Paris happen to believe, one should not underestimate the benefits gained when Aron took the field. The good sense of non-philosophers needs to be protected against bad philosophy even when it goes over their heads, for there are many, especially among the young, who will be impressed with such high-sounding doctrines as existentialism and phenomenology, especially when combined with the moral content and fueled by the passionate hatred characteristic of Marxism. Moreover, Aron did not dismiss these doctrines with a superiority of his own; he was as far from wishing to demean philosophy as he was from condescending to the good sense of the people. He carefully weighed the arguments of the intellectuals he opposed. While denouncing the myths of the Left, the revolution, and the proletariat, he furnishes evidence of error and exposes weak nesses of reasoning that amply reveal those ideas to be the myths that he calls them. Of course, he could not entirely discredit or face down those he proved to be enemies of liberty, since the latter were supported by the dominant trends of thought in the West, but he stood up to them. He let others see that they could be opposed, refuted, and then deservedly and successfully mocked.