ABSTRACT
Nicolas Baverez has produced a full-length, thoroughly researched biography of Raymond Aron. It is a conventional biography tracing Aron’s life from birth, or, rather, from prenatal family history, to death, with concluding reflections on its significance. Baverez also provides much more information on Aron’s family history, including the interesting fact that he was related to Durkheim, both of them coming from what were originally Alsatian Jewish families. Baverez covers the voluminous writings more briefly with a much more complete filling in of the context of Aron’s relation to critics both before and after their commentaries on his work. Aron’s major sociological subject was the distinctiveness of “industrial society,” which, like so many others, he saw as marking a break with the past. Aron would have had little to learn from the postmodernists for whom historical and cultural relativism is the ultimate wisdom.
