Abstract
Raymond Aron discovered Max Weber around the same time that he discovered Karl Marx—in the early 1930s, during his sojourn in Germany. These thinkers represented a fraction of the total number of German authors he delved into at the time, including Husserl, Heidegger, and the Southwest School of neo-Kantians (Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband).1 It was in Max Weber’s writings that Aron eventually found the resources and the words to express the relationship between politics and morality.2 Moreover, Aron also found in Weber an exposition of the tension between knowledge (science) and action (politics). There are genuine trade-offs between a profession that demands the absolute pursuit of truth and one that demands the willingness to compromise not only one’s own morals (anathema to the moralist) but even the truth itself (anathema to the scientist). This variance at the root of science and politics is probably why Aron was so fond of “failed” statesmen: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Weber himself All of them partook to some extent in politics or war, and they were incredibly gifted thinkers who reflected on the nature of politics or war.
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Notes
See Raymond Aron, Mémoires: Edition intégrale inédite, Paris, Editions Robert Laffont, 2010 [1983], 102.
See Franciszek Draus, “La philosophie sociale de Raymond Aron,” PhD diss., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1981, 9.
See Raymond Aron, La Sociologie allemande contemporaine, Paris, Quadrige, 2007 [1935], 81. The relevant pages from this work are 82 and 102–110.
See Raymond Aron, Les Etapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 2011 [1967]), 21.
Raymond Aron, “Max Weber and Modem Social Science,” trans. Charles Krance, in Franciszek Draus (ed.), History, Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings of Raymond Aron, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985, 336.
See Ralf Dahrendorf, afterword to Politik als Beruf, by Max Weber, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1992, 85–86, 89, 92–93.
Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 506.
Max Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (eds.), Weber: Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1994], 367.
See Hans Henrik Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology, Hampshire, Ashgate, 2007 [1972], Loc. 7956, 7978, and 1407, Kindle.
See Max Weber, “Deutschland unter den europäischen Weltmächten,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 157.
See Sven Eliaeson, “Constitutional Caesarism: Weber’s politics in their German context,” in Stephen Turner (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Weber, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 134–135
Tracy B. Strong, Politics without Vision, London, University of Chicago Press, 2012, 115
Max Weber, “Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland,” in Johannes Wicnkelmann (ed.), Gesammelte politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 311–320.
See H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, introduction to From Max Weber, by Max Weber, Oxon, Routledge, 2009 [1948], 43.
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2009 [1921], 520–530.
Max Weber, “Between Two Laws,” in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (eds.), Weber: Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1994], 76.
See Paolo Armellini, “Max Weber: scienza e realismo politico,” in Giovanni Dessi and Maria Pia Paternò (eds.), Il realismo politico e la modernità, Rome, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2012 [2005], 71.
See Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1922].
See Aron, “Max Weber et la politique de puissance,” 650; Max Weber, “Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte politische Schriften, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919], 14.
See Max Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” in Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Verlag, 1988 [1919] 609
Carlo Antoni, Dallo storicismo alla sociologia, Firenze, G. C. Sansoni, 1940, 142–143.
The relevant sections of this course for the following discussion on Raymond Polin, Ethique et politique, Paris, Sirey, 1968, are Leçon 1, fls. 3–4, 12, Leçon 6, fls. 5–7, 10–11, 21–24, and Leçon 7, fl. 3.
Regarding the controversy with Maritain, see Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, ed. Rémy Freymond, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1993, 367–378, 405–416.
See also Serge Audier, Machiavel, conflit et liberté, Paris, Editions EHESS, 2005, 73–87.
See Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé. Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique Wolton, Paris, Julliard,1981, 303.
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© 2015 José Colen and Elisabeth Dutartre-Michaut
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Nelson, S., Colen, J. (2015). Statesmanship and Ethics: Aron, Max Weber, and Politics as a Vocation. In: Colen, J., Dutartre-Michaut, E. (eds) The Companion to Raymond Aron. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52243-6_16
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