Raymond Aron died 40 years ago. He belongs to a generation of thinkers sometimes referred to as Cold War liberals. While being one of liberal democracy's greatest friends in the 20th century, he never ignored the important task of engaging with its most radical critics (from Marx to Schmitt), that is, of taking them seriously. This allowed him, before most, and more than most, to foresee at the beginning of the 30's the threat posed by political nihilism. Acknowledging the weakness of our situation, and its roots in the modern understanding of science, law and action, he understood the need for a deep reform of our regime's self-understanding if it was to survive the shocks of total wars and totalitarian revolutions. In an age of great and increasing uncertainty surrounding liberal democracy and its future,  Aron offers enduring lessons for our time, which I will try to outline, concerning the moral and political conditions of freedom.

Alexis Carré is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. His research deals with war and liberal democracy. He was awarded the Raymond Aron Prize for research for his dissertation carried out at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) on “War and Law: The refounding of Liberalism against the Conservative Revolution in Leo Strauss and Raymond Aron.”