[lit-ideas] A Political Thought
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:23:31 +0900
<Just posted on BestoftheBlogs>
The December edition of Harpers contains a review of Raymond Aron's
Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the
Twentieth Century. The review is by Mark Lilla. The following
paragraphs on page 92 leap out at me.
> Responsibility was the key term in Aron's political lexicon. What
> disturbed him about the popular example set by Sartre was that it
> romanticized a posture of commitment and bred contempt for those who
> actuallyhave to exercise power and make decisions. For Aron, placing
> oneself imaginatively in the position of those in power was the sine
> qua non of responsibiliity. "For a half-century," he noted in his
> memories, "I have restricted my own criticisms by posing this
> question-'what would I do in their place?'" Answering that question
> demands not only a change in perspective, one very difficult for
> intellectuals who treat every issue as if it were as unambiguous as
> the Dreyfus case. It also requires mastery of the material that the
> statesman himself must master, whether that is diplomatic istory,
> strategy, basic economics, law, and the rest. In Sartre's fantasy
> world, it was the intellectual's independence from such compromising
> data that gave him the moral perspective needed to pass judgment on
> history; in Aron's world, which is ours, those who pronounce on
> politics in democratic societies are obliged to do their homework."
Would that it were true....would that it were true....Is there a
statesman in the house?
John L. McCreery
International Vice Chair, Democrats Abroad
Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx
>>Life isn't fair. Democracy should be. <<
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
