Abstract
The twentieth-century revival of liberalism in France was long an uncharted territory for French intellectual historians. The reasons for this are complex but no doubt include France’s particularly ambiguous relationship with this political sensibility and the liberal revival as well as the wider emergence of “neoliberalism” with which it is sometimes associated. As a result, this question has only become an object of serious scholarly enquiry in France over the last twelve years or so.1 Alongside the new French scholarship in this field has also emerged a rising interest in the French liberal revival in Britain and the United States, where intellectual history has been more central to the academy than in France.2
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Notes
Within this new body of literature one work in particular stands out for its importance in providing much new material for studying the case of France: Serge Audier, Néo-libéralisme(s). Une archéologie intellectuelle (Paris: Grasset, 2012). From a different perspective inspired by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, see François Denord, Néo-libéralisme version française. Histoire d’une idéologie politique (Paris: Demopolis, 2007).
The marginality of intellectual history in France is explored in Marc Angenot, L’histoire des idées. Problématiques, objets, concepts, méthodes, enjeux, débats (Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2014).
Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” [1969] in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, ed. James Tully (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 65.
Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals Against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s (New York: Berghahn, 2004), 19.
Ibid., 368–369.
Iain Stewart, “France’s Anti-68 Liberal Revival,” in France Since the 1970s: History, Politics and Memory in an Age of Uncertainty, ed. Emile Chabal (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 199–223.
Pierre Grémion, Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris, 1950–1975 (Paris: Fayard, 1995).
Larry Siedentop, “Two Liberal Traditions,” [1979] in French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day, ed. Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 15–35.
Raymond Aron, “Liberté et égalité,” typescript from the recording of a lecture given at the Collège de France on March 28, 1978 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Fonds Raymond Aron), 247–248.
Raymond Aron, “Qu’est-ce que le libéralisme?” [1969], Commentaire 84 (1998): 943–946.
On Aron’s relationship with Halévy see Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron. Un moraliste au temps des idéologies (Paris: Perrin, 2006). For the proceedings of the Lippmann conference, the first international attempt to define “neoliberal” economics, see Serge Audier, Le colloque Lippmann: Aux origines du néo-libéralisme (Paris: Le Bord de l’eau, 2008).
Pierre Manent, “La politique comme science et comme souci,” preface to Raymond Aron, Liberté et égalité. Cours au Collège de France (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2013), 9.
Raymond Aron, Chroniques de guerre. La France libre, 1940–1945 (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). See, for example, “De la liberté politique” (April 1942), 635–648.
This trilogy consists of Raymond Aron, Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), La lutte de classes (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), and Démocratie et totalitarisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). These books were based on lectures given by Aron at the Sorbonne between 1955 and 1958.
Raymond Aron, Essai sur les libertés (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1965).
Raymond Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 295. Aron identifies the other members of this tradition as Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Halévy.
Ibid., 21.
On the conceptual history of “totalitarianism” see Enzo Traverso, Le Totalitarisme. Le XXe siècle en débat (Paris: Seuil, 2001) and Bernard Bruneteau, Le totalitarisme. Origines d’un concept, genèse d’un débat 1930–1942 (Paris: Cerf, 2010).
Jan-Werner Müller, “Fear and Freedom. On Cold War Liberalism”, European Journal of Political Theory 7(1) (2008): 45–64. See also Catherine Audard, Qu’est-ce que le libéralisme? Ethique, politique, société (Paris: Gallimard, 2009).
Aron, Démocratie et totalitarisme. On the question of pluralism with reference to Montesquieu see also Raymond Aron, “Pluralisme et démocratie,” The Tocqueville Review 2(1) (1980): 18.
Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique. Démocratie et révolution (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1997), 135.
Serge Audier, Raymond Aron. La démocratie conflictuelle (Paris: Michalon, 2004).
For Aron’s critique of Hayek see his “La définition libérale de la liberté,” [1961] in Raymond Aron, Les sociétés modernes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006), and his Essai sur les libertés.
Anon, “Editorial,” Contrepoint 1 (1970): 5.
Jean Brun, “La linguistique et la philosophie,” Contrepoint 4 (1971): 30.
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, La pensée 68. Essai sur l’anti-humanisme contemporain (Paris: Gallimard, 1988); François Cusset, French Theory. Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida et Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis (Paris: La Découverte, 2005); Serge Audier, La pensée anti-68. Essai sur les origines d’une restauration intellectuelle (Paris: La Découverte, 2008), 69–71.
Raymond Aron, “Liberté, libérale ou libertaire?” [1969], in Aron, Les sociétés modernes, 698–699. Even in 1968, Aron’s position was more nuanced than is usually realized. His La révolution introuvable (Paris: Fayard, 1968) contains a sophisticated multicausal analysis of the événements which, far from exonerating Gaullism, amounts to a veritable indictment.
Raymond Aron, Mémoires (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2010), 641.
See, for example, Georges Liébert, “En attendant l’apocalypse. Notes sur l’air du temps,” Contrepoint 7–8 (1972): 229.
Yann Coudé du Foresto, “Conversation avec Raymond Aron (4 février 1983),” Pouvoirs 28 (1984): 175.
Raymond Aron, Les désillusions du progrès. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernité (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), xxii.
Ibid., xxiii.
Pierre Grémion, “Regards sur la diplomatie américaine des idées pendant la guerre froide,” Communisme 62–63 (2000): 79–80.
Raymond Aron, Espoir et peur du siècle. Essais non partisans (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1957), 36.
Philippe Raynaud, L’extrême gauche plurielle. Entre démocratie radicale et révolution (Paris: Autrement, 2006), 111–112. See also Philippe Raynaud, “Brève histoire personnelle de l’extrême gauche en France,” Tissage 4 (2006): 20–34.
Notable works by Kostas Papaïoannou include L’idéologie froide (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1967) and De Marx et du marxisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1983).
See Simon Leys, “Images brisées,” Contrepoint 19 (1975).
Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978).
Bernard Cazes, “Vers l’état stationnaire?” Contrepoint 7–8 (1972): 179. Cazes was a disciple of Bertrand de Jouvenel and a senior civil servant who in 1969 wrote the French translation of David Riesman’s Abundance for What?
This term is borrowed from Pierre Hassner and Justin Vaïsse, Washington et le monde. Dilemmes d’une superpuissance (Paris: Autrement, 2003).
On this relationship see Gwendal Châton, “Désaccord parfait. Le Contrepoint libéral dans la configuration intellectuelle des années 1970,” in Les revues et la dynamique des ruptures, ed. Jean Baudouin et François Hourmant (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 131–164.
Pierre Manent, Le regard politique (Paris: Flammarion, 2010), 100.
Raymond Aron, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977).
Raymond Aron, Les élections de mars et la Ve République (Paris: Julliard, 1978).
Raymond Aron, “Le programme commun de la gauche ou le cercle carré,” Le Figaro, February 8, 1973 as reprinted in Commentaire 28–29 (1985): 487–494; “Le Programme commun est-il déraisonnable? Débat entre Pierre Mendès France et Raymond Aron,” L’Express, January 30–February 5, 1978, as reprinted in Raymond Aron, De Giscard à Mitterrand. 1977–1983 (Paris: De Fallois, 2005).
Pierre Rosanvallon, “Sur quelques chemins de traverse de la pensée du politique en France,” Raisons politiques 1 (2001): 51–52.
François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 27–28.
Goulven Boudic, Esprit 1944–1982. Les métamorphoses d’une revue (Paris: Editions de l’IMEC, 2005).
See Raymond Aron, “Pour le Progrès. Après la chute des idoles,” Commentaire 3 (1978): 233–244. The preface of the inaugural issue of Commentaire also made critical reference to the nouveaux philosophes, whom it referred to as “lightweight” and “telegenic young ideas managers.” See Anon, “Commentaire,” Commentaire 1 (1978): 3–7.
René Rémond, Les droites en France (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1992).
See, for example, Raymond Aron, “L’hégémonisme soviétique: An I,” Commentaire 11 (1980): 349–363; Jean-Claude Casanova, “Incertitudes françaises: suite,” Commentaire 14 (1981): 169–176. Aron used the term “socialisme introuvable” in several texts in this period, most notably in his Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente.
Dominique Schnapper, Travailler et aimer (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013), 92.
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Châton, G. (2016). Taking Anti-totalitarianism Seriously: The Emergence of the Aronian Circle in the 1970s. In: Sawyer, S.W., Stewart, I. (eds) In Search of the Liberal Moment. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137581266_2
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