Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection

"Aron is seen as one of the great French liberal thinkers and, in that sense, could not be more different from de Gaulle, because no one would ever describe de Gaulle as liberal. Aron is this sceptical, highly cerebral, liberal philosopher. But his memoirs, almost despite himself, are a kind of endless meditation on de Gaulle because Aron’s memoirs are about Aron in the century, and because Aron was not only a philosopher but also a very engaged intellectual. What he famously said about himself was that, ‘my problem in life is that I was an anti-Gaullist when I should be a Gaullist, and a Gaullist when I should’ve been an anti-Gaullist.’ And that’s typical of Aron’s rather skeptical, slightly self-deprecating style. In 1940, as a young Jewish intellectual, he was at the École Normale Supérieure, the exact contemporary of, and very close to, Jean Paul-Sartre. They were the two luminaries of their year, although Aron always felt that Sartre had a genius that he lacked. But Aron went to London in 1940 because he had this implacable lucidity about what would happen in France, he saw what was going to happen. There were many French people in London during the war who were quite anti-Gaullist, unconvinced by this figure. Aron was sceptical without being hostile and that scepticism emerged in an article he wrote in 1943, “The Shadow of Bonaparte.” He was obviously totally opposed to the Vichy regime, but wasn’t sure that what de Gaulle might become was any better. But then, in the late 1940s and 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, Aron, almost uniquely among French intellectuals, opposed the hold that communism had on French intellectual life. He wrote a famous book called the Opium of the Intellectuals – that is to say communism. At that point, he actually rallies to de Gaulle, when de Gaulle is trying to come back to power. Afterwards a lot of people feel that period in de Gaulle’s life was problematic, because he was flirting with some extreme right ideas, out of anti-communism. Hence why Aron said, ‘I was Gaullist when I shouldn’t have been Gaullist.’ In 1958, Aron reluctantly supports de Gaulle’s return to power, because he thinks the Fourth Republic can’t deal with Algeria. And Aron is unique among French intellectuals of the right in coming early to the view that Algeria should be independent, and he did this just out of logic. He approached the world through a sort of implacable logic, and the logic of the situation was that Algeria was costing France too much. It wasn’t that he was sentimentally attracted to the idea of the nationalism of the FLN [Algeria’s National Liberation Front], but the logic pointed to independence. So when de Gaulle comes back to power and doesn’t move very fast towards Algerian independence, Aron becomes very disappointed in him. After Algeria does become independent, Aron becomes very disillusioned by de Gaulle’s anti-Americanism, because Aron is an Atlanticist liberal. Aron is very much part of that world. He had extensive contacts in Harvard and Kissinger was a friend. He had a big foot in the States and was very hostile to what he saw as de Gaulle’s anti-Americanism, his taking France out of NATO and continuously attacking the Atlantic alliance. He is also deeply shocked when, in 1967, de Gaulle effectively takes the side of the Arab states over Israel in the six-day war. Aron wrote a famous pamphlet denouncing de Gaulle because he felt the language de Gaulle was using against Israel was verging on anti-Semitic. He didn’t go as far as to say de Gaulle was anti-Semitic, but that the language he used had made anti-Semitism possible again. Aron knew very well that in London, during the war, de Gaulle had many Jewish people around him, and there is no evidence of de Gaulle being anti-Semitic. Finally, in 1968, Aron is absolutely traumatized by the events of that year and, for once, this supposedly highly cerebral intellectual machine responds very emotionally. He is horrified by what he sees as the nihilism of the student revolution. He famously called 1968 a psychodrama; he thought it was just an explosion of narcissistic, nihilistic youth. So now he’s not exactly back in the camp of de Gaulle, but he’s supporting the regime. I chose this book because Aron’s ideas of France are always in dialogue with de Gaulle’s idea of France. And because de Gaulle had enormous respect for him."