"Raymond Aron and the End of Europe"

"Aron’s wisdom was, if you’ll pardon the expression, phenomenological. He cared about things and actions more than he did about ideological labels. I’ll give you an example. A key theme in much of his work--and one that I’ll return to before the end of this talk--is that until very late in the 20th century, people were judging events according to 19th-century conceptions. Particularly intellectuals, who had an understanding of socialism that time had already shown to be largely mythological. “In theory,” Aron wrote, “a revolution is defined as a liberation. Yet the revolutions of the 20th century seem, if not revolutions of enslavement, at the very least revolutions of authority.”

Christopher Caldwell, "Raymond Aron and the End of Europe", American Enterprise Institute