PERIODICALS

"cannibal" who turned on his mentors (notably Hegel); and the de- scendant of a long line of rabbis who was, Himmelfarb contends, an anti-Semite. ("What is the worldly religion of the Jew?" Marx asked in 1844. "Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money.") The rise of the "new Marx," Himmelfarb concludes, is part of an intellectually dishonest effort to dissociate contemporary Marxism "not only from the Marxism that has become an instrument of tyr- anny, but also from the Marxist histories that have been so conspic- uously belied by history."

" and the History of the Raymond Aron: Twentieth Centurv" bv Pierre Hassner. in < " International Studies Quarterly (~ar. The Ethics of 1985), Butterworth Scientific Ltd, West- bury House, P.O. Box 63, Guildford GU2 Responsibility 5BH, England; "Raymond Aron" by Ed- ward Shils, in The American Scholar (Spring 1985), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washing- ton, D.C. 20009. Rarely do those who interpret history become historical figures them- selves. Edward Gibbon was one. Max Weber, Charles Darwin and John Maynard Keynes have been others. Raymond Aron (1905-83) appears to be another. Although he died two years ago, the encomiums are still rolling in. The author of some 40 books ranging from Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1961), to The Century of Total (1954), to Clausewitz (1976), this historian- philosopher-journalist fits clearly into no modern category. At the time of his death, says Shils, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, Aron was "the most esteemed writer in the world on modern society and con- temporary international politics." Born in , Aron graduated in 1930 at the top of his class from the Ecole Normale Supkrieure, a year ahead of Jean-Paul Sartre. He taught history and philosophy in German and French universities during the 1930s, then served during World War 11. From 1947 until his death, he was a columnist for the French daily Le Figaro (1947-77) and the weekly L'Express (1977-83), as well as professor of sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris (1955-68). A socialist before World War 11, Aron broke ranks with the French Left in 1955, when he published The Opium of the Intellectuals. In it he criticized Sartre and other Marxists for their unquestioning support of the Soviet Union. Aron's other targets included French colonialism in Algeria, the chauvinism of Charles de Gaulle, and the French student revolt of 1968. Hassner, who teaches at the University of Paris, explains that Aron always tried to distinguish between alterable and inevitable trends in world affairs, persistently scrutinizing historical ironies. In War and In- dustrial Society (1958), for instance, he argued that new military tech- nology has made more terrible but, at the same time, has made

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RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

total war less likely, and actual wars more limited. "Peace is impossi- ble, war is unlikely," he once said. In human affairs, Shils says, Aron stressed "the ethics of responsibility" over the "ethics of conscience," characterized by "a readiness to accept disagreeable truths." He wrote about the Common Market, Soviet totalitarianism, the thought of Nietzsche and Lenin. Hassner believes that a quotation from the 17th-century mathemati- cian Blaise Pascal best sums up Aron: "Greatness is not displayed by standing at one extremity, but rather by touching both ends at once and filling all the space between."

"Critical Thinking and Obedience to Au- uestio&g thority" by John Sabini and Maury Sil- ver, in National Forum (Winter 1985), The Obedience Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Box 16000, La. State Univ., Baton Rouge, La. 70893. In 1974, social psychologist Stanley Milgram published a disturbing book called Obedience to Authority. He described a series of laboratory experiments in which ordinary Americans were convinced to "torture" subjects with electric shocks. Sabini and Silver, both psychologists, argue that instead of simply bemoaning such human weakness, educators should seek to correct it. In Milgram's 1962 experiment, conducted at Yale University, indi- vidual volunteers were asked to "teach" another "volunteer" (actually an actor). The "pupil" was strapped into a chair, with electrodes at- tached to his arm, and instructed by the "experimenter" to repeat a list of paired words. The experimenter told the "teacher" to administer an electric shock when the student erred. The (fake) generator had 30 switches, from 15 to 450 volts. With each error, the experimenter in- creased the voltage, until the pupil complained, shrieked, and, eventu- ally, seemed to lapse into unconsciousness. Sixty-five percent of the volunteers obediently administered shocks up to the 450-volt mark. Why did they go along with Milgram's plan? Not because they could not tell right from wrong, argue Sabini and Silver. Rather, so- cial circumstances made it uncomfortable for them to act morally and halt the "lesson." Entrapment-the gradual increases in the shock treatments and thus the volunteers' commitment to the process-clouded clear-cut choices. Embarrassment in the presence of an authority figure led the volun- teers to fear abandoning their "duty." ("You have no choice," some were told, "you must go on.") Even among those who refused to con- tinue the experiment, none simply got up and left; they passively re- sisted until the experimenter gave up. The volunteers were also paralyzed by their belief that "only evil peo- ple do evil things and that evil announces itself." Others were reassured by the experimenter's promise that he would assume responsibility for anything that happened.

The Wilson Quarterly/Autumn 1985