On Raymond Aron’s Political Ethic Thought

Raymond Aron comes from a Jewish-French family of middle class, which was no longer prosperous when he was born. He is a classmate of Jean-Paul Sartre, a famous French philosopher. Aron, as "an intervening onlooker", becomes one of the theorists in the20th century who insist an ideology of technocracy. Probably, due to the deficiency of his special works on ethics, Aron’s political ethics has not aroused much concern among shcolars. In fact, after living through all kinds of hardships during two World Wars and a long period of Cold War and witnessing the stirring years in French history, Raymond Aron constructed his own style of political ethics by critically inheriting the thoughts of Alan, Montesquieu, Comte, Weber, Marx, Hayek and Constant.Aron’s political ethics can be divided into two parts:national political ethics and international political ethics. The former part includes Aron’s view on liberty, equality and democracy; the latter part includes Aron’s view on international political ethics and "just-war theory". From Aron’s point, for the individual citizen, freedom is eternal pursuit in their hearts; for the whole society, equality is an ideal state although it is difficult to realize; and for a political country, democracy is the best form of state affairs management. In Aron’s view, Freedom, equality are final goals and democracy is the guarantee of freedom and equality realization. However, democracy alone is far from enough to realize freedom and equality, a peaceful and stable international environment is indispensable. Therefore, International political ethics as a continuation of the national political ethics, becomes a necessary part of his political ethic thought. As for internatinal politics, Aron emphasizes that ethic is based on responsibility and that politics regards caution as a virtue. In international community, a full-scale war in nuclear age can be avoided as long as leaders in every country understand their responsibility and follow the principle of "prudence". While a world war can not possibly take place, regional wars can not be avoided and eternal peace is impossible. Because of the judgement above, Aron definitely encourages "just-war theory". He believes that a government can use military forces in an appropriate way, on condition that no civilian is killed and the war is based on justice and good reasons.In short, the core of Aron’s political philosophy is to defend political rationality. His political ethic thought obviously aims at clarifying the possibility and boundary of political choices. He believes that, freedom and equality are ideal goals to pursue; democracy and peace are basic guarantees of realizing the goals. Although a perfect political system of liberty, equality and democracy has not yet been realized, it is essential to take it as "an ideal". Meanwhile, Aron hopes that under the guidance of faith and responsibility, those social elites who fulfill "political missions" in their political life can make practical, reasonable and just political choices under the interaction of "ethic judgment" and "social conditions".