ABSTRACT
Intelligent surveys of sociological theory are rare; the thought of surveyors changes with the winds of intellectual and political fashion. Surveying sociological thought (not to be confused with the thought of sociologists) is a tricky business. Raymond Aron was very much a man of his time, and this time was conceived as broadly as concrete, historical, human time may be conceived—in terms of a civilization. Deeply committed to modern Western society, he constantly kept it in its entirety within his field of vision, sensitive to the forces that endangered it and dedicated to the self-imposed task of protecting it from these dangers. This chapter gives a sociological critique of Raymond Aron's (re)construction of sociological thought, beginning with its definition. To read sociology as conceived by Durkheim and Weber, to think sociologically in the way they thought, one must transcend one's time.
