Raymond Aron avant Raymond Aron (1923-1933)

Raymond Aron before Raymond Aron (1923-1933), Jean-François Sirinelli. How does one get born to oneself ? From brilliant student at the lycee Condorcet in the autumn of 1922 to French reader at the University of Cologne ten years later, Raymond Aron got his first political education as an intellectual while accumulating degrees at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Superieure. Nothing exceptional. His school records and early writings show a « vaguely socialist » and « passionately pacifist» young man, a quasi-disciple of the philosopher Alain, at unison with his generation. He already had learned how to be himself and would soon refuse the dominant ideas. Raymond Aron was mature enough to become Raymond Aron on contemplating the Germany of Adolf Hitler and Max Weber. In the historic turbulence of the 1930s, a great intellectual emerged, the original « committed spectator».