BOOKS
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ism without claiming to have answered such questions as are raised
in the Weberian corpus , without sitting on the "shoulders of a giant."
Aron's modesty was as genuine as his ability to see the problem and
to do so even if no answers were immediately forthcoming . For it is
the essence of rationality, of his rationality at least , to see that prob–
lems of our time need the best efforts of rational people - even if ra–
tionality should lose out.
In reviewing Aron's essays, one is repeatedly confronted with
the European conscience wrestling with problems of democratic
liberalism . But it seems to me that Aron did so with an arsenal of
ideas that was only half-full . Tocqueville and Weber are pitted
against Marx and Lenin. In some strange way, however, it was the
Anglo-American tradition , of which Aron was acutely aware (more
in practical than in theoretical terms), that supported the answer to
totalitarian regimes and systems . Aron's "West" had two com–
ponents : the continental and the constitutional . The former he knew
best; the latter applied his teachings best. On this anomaly Aron's
work comes to rest . His great strength, and unique contribution,
was to understand the striving for democracy, without resorting to
theories that do little to promote it. In this , Aron was the true child
of the French Enlightenment and the perfect critic of a German
Romanticism that promised more of the spirit of freedom than it
provided.
IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ
ISRAELI DILEMMAS
THE SIEGE: THE SAGA OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM. By Conor Cruise
O'Brien. Simon and Schuster. $12.95.
CONFLICTS AND CONTRADICTIONS. By Meron Benvenisti. Villard Books.
$15.95.
What will the fate of Israel be? Is the State of the Jews
condemned to a permanent situation of political isolation and
military siege? Is Zionism-the national movement that brought
Israel into existence - a phenomenon so different from other
historical phenomena that it makes the State of the Jews as unique in
contemporary international society as the Jews have been among the
