Raymond Aron was strongly influenced by the writings of Max Weber during two periods of his life and in two different manners. The first occurred in the early 1930s when Aron was working in Germany and wrote German Sociology. While he discussed a number of German sociologists, he focused a major portion of that book on Weber's sociology. The section on Weber not only revealed Aron as a competent interpreter of Weber's difficult sociology but also showed that Aron had learned much from Weber about regarding sociology as an interpretive science. The second period occurred in the 1950s and 1960s and is not quite as defined and delineated as Aron's earlier encounter with Weber's thought. In this second period, Aron concentrated mostly on Weber's politics. While Weber's political thinking influenced Aron's own general thinking about politics, it was specifically manifested in the way in which Aron approached the conjoined issues of “power politics” (Machtpolitik) and nationalism. Weber's influence and Aron's response to it are most fully articulated in the paper that Aron delivered at Heidelberg. This was the famous conference which was held in 1964 in honor of the centennial of Weber's birth. The focus of this chapter is primarily on that paper and is devoted to the ways in which Aron appropriated Weber's thinking about nationalism and modified Weber's approach to Machtpolitik and nationalism. While Aron devoted large parts of his paper to Weber's 1895 Inaugural Lecture at Freiburg, he also examined writings from throughout Weber's life. Given that Weber modified some of his thinking over time, Aron's approach might not have been the most accurate. Nonetheless, Aron offered a clear and mostly accurate account of Weber's main thoughts about nationalism and Machtpolitik.

Aron and Weber

Raymond Aron was a French scholar who was trained as a philosopher, and Max Weber was a German thinker who was educated as a jurist. Yet, they both came to be regarded as the preeminent sociologists of their time. In his biography of Aron, Robert Colquhoun quoted Ralf Dahrendorf who maintained that Raymond Aron was comparable to Max Weber and added that Aron himself regarded Weber as “the sociologist” (Colquhoun 1986a, 1). Indeed, one can argue that Aron not only revered Weber as a sociologist, but he learned from Weber's sociology.

This concluding chapter has three parts: the first part is a very brief summary of the previous chapters with the intention of stressing their themes and their points of similarity. The second is a sketch regarding Aron's views on liberty. They have mostly been ignored and this second part should not be regarded as much more than a brief sketch of one of Aron's most important notions. The third is a final observation about Raymond Aron's role as a political philosopher and a social thinker. While he regarded himself as a sociologist, he was not interested very much in empirical sociology as he was in trying to learn how and why societies function in the ways that they do. Hence, he was more like Max Weber than an American sociologist. And, like Weber, he has more to tell us today than many empirical sociologists. That is not to dismiss what they do; it is just a matter of my own interests and how they align with those of Weber and Aron.

Shared Themes

As editors, Joachim Stark and I have tried to make this a true “companion” to Raymond Aron's thinking, and we have done so by attempting to cover as many aspects of his work as possible. In doing so, we found that there was some overlap and some shared themes. This was to be expected because Aron did not appear to believe that there are clear-cut boundaries between sociology, politics and philosophy. Because all of them were focused on human interactions, he regarded the differences among these disciplines as mostly artificial and more a matter of emphasis. In his Introduction as well as in the first chapter, Stark emphasized the sociological aspects of Aron's thinking, but as he noted, politics was never separate from sociology in Aron's thinking. In my chapter, I focused on Aron's relation to Max Weber, and while Aron's early work was on Weberian sociology, it was Weber's political thought that made a lasting impression on Aron's own thinking. The chapters by Scott B. Nelson and by Leslie Marsh and Nathan Cockram considered Aron's dialogue with Marx and Aron's critique of Marxist influence. Nelson and Stark focused on Aron's conception of the industrial society and how social, economic and political factors influence modern life.

Introduction

In the Introduction to this volume it was asserted that Troeltsch was not just a theologian but also a philosopher and a political observer. In fact, he held professorships in two disciplines— first in theology and then in philosophy. In the early 1900s Troeltsch published a number of writings on two aspects of philosophy— the theory of knowledge and ethics. Later in the decade and into the next, he published on another part of philosophy, namely, the philosophy of law. He also wrote several works in the area of the history of philosophy, concentrating primarily on certain members of the rationalist school, like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Nicolas Malebranche, and on the English moralists, like John Locke and David Hume. But, Troeltsch's most extensive work was in the area of the philosophy of history, and his second massive book was devoted to this topic: Der Historismus und seine Probleme. If, as Austin Harrington has correctly observed, “Troeltsch has been a neglected figure in sociology” (2004: 479), then Troeltsch has been an even more neglected figure in philosophy. This chapter cannot cover Troeltsch's contributions to the various aspects of philosophy, but it can draw much- needed attention to his work in one important area— the philosophy of history. And, it will do so by concentrating on Der Historismus und seine Probleme. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section offers a brief history of historicism; the second provides a lengthy examination of Historismus; the third is a discussion of Troeltsch's five lectures that he was to give in England; and the fourth is a survey of some the most important reviews of Troeltsch's books on historicism.

A Brief History of Historicism

“Historicism” is a term that is often difficult to define and that is often easy to criticize. This is not the place to catalogue the complaints against the concept, but it is the place in which to attempt to provide a definition. Historicism can be roughly defined as the belief that there is no grand abstract theory of historical occurrences but that “history” is seen differently by different cultures and ages. Or, as Troeltsch provisionally defines it in Historismus, “the fundamental historicizing of our knowing and thinking.”

Ernst Troeltsch: Life and Work

The name Ernst Troeltsch is remembered mostly in two contexts: first as an important Protestant theologian, and second as a close colleague of Max Weber. There is much to support this view, but Troeltsch was much more than just a theologian and a colleague of Weber. He was also a sociologist, philosopher, and culture critic. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to indicate Troeltsch's importance as a theologian, a sociologist, a philosopher, and a critic of culture. I begin by providing a brief sketch of Troeltsch's life and work and conclude with an overview of recent editions of his work and of final comments.

Ernst Troeltsch was born on February 17, 1865, just outside Augsburg, Germany. His father was a physician, and his mother was a housewife. Troeltsch remembers that when he was a young boy his parents’ house was filled with medical books and instruments and he was encouraged to investigate natural phenomena as well as historical issues (1925b: 3– 4). He was educated first in Augsburg and then at the University at Erlangen. There he listened to lectures by Gustav Claß and learned about the importance of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose writings influenced Troeltsch's philosophical and theological thinking throughout his life. At the age of 20, Troeltsch transferred to Berlin where he studied under Julius Kaftan. But as much as he appreciated Kaftan's theology, he was far more impressed with Heinrich von Treitschke's politics (Drescher 1993: 18). In 1886, Troeltsch transferred to Göttingen. Not only did he want a town smaller than Berlin but also Albrecht Ritschl was there. From Ritschl, Troeltsch learned the importance of historical understanding of religion, and although he continued to respect Ritschl, he never really regarded himself as one of Ritschl's disciples. Troeltsch finished his education and began teaching at Göttingen, but he was to remain there only a short time. In 1892, he was called to Bonn as an “Extraordinarius” professor, and he distinguished himself so much that he was called to Heidelberg the following year. He stayed at Heidelberg from 1894 until 1915, and it was during this time that he published his major writings on Protestantism and the sociology of religion. It was also a period when he wrote on more philosophical topics and was involved in Baden politics.

Introduction

Max Weber published the first installment of the “Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” in 1904 and by then he was 40 years old. While it was primarily this work that made Weber famous, he was already a well- known and well- respected figure. It was neither because of his work on modern capitalism nor on his writings on the importance of rationalism; rather, it was because of his work on agrarian history. He began the last decade of the nineteenth century as a jurist, but he ended it as one of the leading authorities on Germany's agrarian history (Aldenhoff- Hübinger, 2008: 1– 2). While Weber was interested in agricultural history, he was more concerned with what was referred to as the “agrarian crisis” (Riesebrodt, 1984a: 15). This topic may seem to be of limited interest, but it should not be regarded as such. Instead, Weber's work on the agrarian crisis is important for several reasons: first, it was during this period that Germany was undergoing considerable economic, political and social changes. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Germany was undergoing a massive transformation in the agricultural regions. The introduction of machinery and other improvements in farming meant that the need for agrarian workers was being fundamentally altered. Many people left the land and many others were replaced by seasonal workers. The old patriarchal society was being supplanted by a modern industrial economy. In addition, Germany was moving from being a major exporter of grain to a major importer – North America and Russia were undercutting the German prices, prompting a further rethinking of Germany's role in the world. While many people were well aware of these changes, Weber was one of the most acute observers of them (Tribe, 1989c: 85). Second, Weber was one of the best of the best political minds so he was well positioned to formulate political and social solutions to Germany's problems. Third, while the agrarian crisis affected Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, many of its causes can be attributed to the tendency of human beings to act in certain ways; thus, Weber's account of the agrarian crisis and his various solutions to it are not only of historical interest. As with much of Weber's work, his writings on the agrarian crisis continue to have current relevance.

Any list of the most important sociologists is bound to include Ferdinand Tönnies. This is because he was so instrumental in developing sociology as a separate and important discipline in Germany and because his influence on sociology has been virtually worldwide. The fact that he did not hold a faculty position in sociology is irrelevant, not the least because sociology as an academic discipline had not yet been established in Germany. That it did happen around 1920 is due in large measure to Tönnies's growing reputation and increasing influence.

Tönnies's reputation rests primarily on his now famous distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. As will become clearer toward the end of this introduction, these two concepts are neither easy to comprehend nor to translate. Briefly, Gemeinschaft is the traditional, rural, organic community whereas Gesellschaft pertains more to the modern, urban, individualistic society. Tönnies's conceptual opposition has become one of the enduring contributions to sociology; people have tended to pay less attention to Tönnies because they erroneously believe that this was his only contribution. Unfortunately, this mistaken impression is not held just by laypeople; even some important sociologists have held this belief. For one important example: in 1957 Charles Loomis published his translation of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. In his foreword to this edition Pitirim A. Sorokin insisted that “Like many an eminent thinker Ferdinand Tönnies was a man of one central idea” (Tönnies 1988 [1957], vii). In 2001 Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis published a new translation of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. This volume appeared in the illustrious series Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought and Harris and Hollis, like Charles Loomis before them, believed that it was an “acknowledged classic” and that it legitimately belonged in the sociological-political canon (Tönnies 2001, xxix; 1988, xii). Both Loomis's and Harris and Hollis's opinions about Tönnies continue to be borne out, but Sorokin's claim has lost some currency. One goal of this volume is to demonstrate how important and relevant Tönnies's distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft remains, but a second goal is to show that Tönnies's importance is not just based on that “one central idea,” but that he had much of importance to say on a variety of topics, including many aspects of sociology and social theory.