The Center for Critical Democratic Studies is hosting a two-day conference on May 5-6 titled, Democracy and the Political: Raymond Aron Beyond the Hexagon. Aron – the sociologist and Cold War liberal – is most well known for being a critic of the post-War French Marxist intellectual scene of the 1950s, and the leading French intellectual to oppose the May 1968 student protest movements. Resisting the totalitarian temptations of his day, Aron has been memorialized as both a model of political moderation and one of the greatest French liberal thinkers of the Cold War Era.
Reducing Aron’s massive oeuvre to a story of French liberal triumphalism, however, led an older generation of scholarship to marginalize others aspects of his work that fell outside this narrative. Many of these subjects – neoliberal economics, democracy, modernization theory, military strategy and global order – are now of significant interest to a new generation of historians, political theorists and philosophers far removed from polemics that marked the Cold War.
Raymond Aron Beyond the Hexagon aims to showcase the cutting edge work of a younger generation of scholars. The event will consist of five panels discussions: Reconsidering Aron’s Thinking on IR Theory; Aron, Intellectual History and Political Context; Raymond Aron and the United States; Aron, Democracy and Post-War Germany; Aron, Liberalism and Democracy
Speakers include: Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer (IRSEM), Aline-Florence Manent (University College London), Danilo Scholz (EHESS), Grey Anderson (Sciences Po), Or Rosenboim (University of Cambridge), Hugo Drochon (University of Cambridge), Gwendal Châton (Université Angers), Giulio De Ligio (EHESS), Iain Stewart (UCL) and Joël Mouric (Lycée de l'Iroise Brest).