Democracy and Totalitarianism
Raymond AronThe nineteen lectures which go to make this book were given at the Sorbonne during the academic year 1957-8. I must therefore repeat the warning which I gave in the preface to Dix-huit leçons sur la societé industrielle.
This course of lectures, which represents a period in my research and which was meant to be useful to students, although it suggests a method, outlines conceptual notions, puts forward facts and ideas, bears the inevitable traces of the lecture room and of improvisation. The lectures have not been edited; the style is therefore that of the spoken word, with the unavoidable flaws that later correction cannot eliminate.
The reader should not forget the date on which these lectures were given if he would find the right interpretation for them, especially for the eleventh, "The corruption of the French system", and for the last, the nineteenth, which was delivered during the second half of May, after the events of 13 May and before General de Gaulle came to power. The result is, naturally enough, that the reflections on the French regime, that is to say on the Fourth Republic, are no longer of contemporary interest. They are retrospective in character just as are those on the Weimar republic. Yet they have not lost all their significance. They may possibly even have gained in historical scope what they have lost on the political or journalistic plane.