A great French political theorist and journalist, [Raymond] Aron [1905–1983] wrote for the Paris newspaper Le Figaro (1947-77) and the weekly newsmagazine L'Express (1977-83), taught at the Sorbonne and other universities, and authored more than forty thoughtful books on a wide variety of political subjects. His most famous book is probably The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955), in which he lambasted French Marxism. Of all the great French thinkers of the twentieth century (Aron was a schoolmate of Sartre), Aron was the only one who, according to The New Republic, "never lost his head." Dubbed "the last of the liberals" by Allan Bloom, Aron was a fierce anti-Communist and defender of liberal democracy, and was greatly troubled by what [Leo] Strauss terms the 'crisis of the West.' (from Straussian.net)

"Raymond Aron...was a French philosopher and sociologist and political commentator. He is known for his skepticism of French leftist ideology.

Son of a Jewish lawyer, in 1930, Aron received a doctorate in the philosophy of history from the École Normale Supérieure. In 1939, when World War II began, he was teaching social philosophy in at the University of Toulouse; he left the University and joined the air force. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces and, from 1940-1944, edited their newspaper France Libre (Free France). At the close of the war, he returned to Paris to teach sociology at the École Nationale d'Administration, maintaining that the Vichy government and Marshal Petain had chosen the lesser of two evils by collaborating with the Nazis during WWII. From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the Sorbonne, and after 1970 at the Collège de France. A lifelong journalist, he became a influential columinst for Le Figaro in 1947, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L'Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death." (from Wikipedia.com)