Raymond Aron - Ensaio sobre as Liberdades

Aron, one of the most important European thinkers of the 20th century, addresses the endless theme of freedoms in a masterful essay.

"Marx's capital error, we said, was to believe, or to say that he believed, that only a radical revolution would allow the worker to be liberated, in the double sense of raising the standard of living and participating in collective life. The other capital error, not of Marx but of the Marxists, was to draw a false consequence from a just criticism. Personal freedoms or subjective (political) rights, to which Tocqueville passionately clung, are not enough to confer a feeling of freedom, and even less so an effective freedom to forge their own destiny for those who live miserably on a never-guaranteed wage. This criticism is just, but the consequence—formal freedoms are a luxury of the privileged—is false."

This essay is the result of three lectures given at the University of California in April 1963, at the invitation of the Jefferson Lectures Committee. The theme in question, the problem of freedom, has always been central to Aron's work, and, in his own words, it is an "eternal and inexhaustible" theme.

The first lecture analyzes the issue by relating two authors who seemingly have few points of contact, Marx and Tocqueville. The second lecture addresses a crucial question, formal freedom and real freedom, as well as their application in various regimes. The third lecture, finally, deals with freedom and its articulation with a technical society, an issue that has gained renewed importance in our times.