Abstract

Because Raymond Arond advocated "a science for the politician and action based on science," this dissertation explores not only the logical coherence of Aron's science of politics but its practical significance for statecraft as well. In exploring the relation between theory and practice in Aron's political thought, our study proceeds along two interrelated paths of inquiry. ;The first explores the principal features of Aron's philosophical outlook as articulated in his early writings on the foundations of historical knowledge. There was, we will argue, a dialectical impulse at the root of his thought that compelled Aron to unite two very different strands of philosophical discourse--the neo-Kantianism of Max Weber and the lebensphilosophie of Wilhelm Dilthey. The second plots the course of this synthesis as it descends from epistemology to methodology, from methodology to theory, and from theory to what may loosely be referred to as "policy analysis" or "commentary." ;These levels of analysis are of such importance to our presentation of Aron's political science that we have devoted an entire chapter to each. Consequently, our first chapter is devoted to Aron's epistemology, the second to his methodology, and the third to his theory of international relations. Our third chapter, an extensive analysis of Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, may be regarded as the culmination of the first two chapters and an introduction to the fourth, which is devoted to an of military strategy and foreign policy. The fifth and final chapter is reserved for a critical examination of Aron's thought as a whole