Laure Assayag

This article seeks to explore the relevance of compromise in Raymond Aron’s essays. The concept of compromise has never been subjected to critical scrutiny in his works. The paper offers a new interpretation of R. Aron’s democratic theory by arguing that “the sense of compromise”, mainly set out in Democracy and Totalitarianism, is a foundational and pivotal concept to highlight the specifics of his liberal thought and his understanding of democratic pluralism. It aims to provide a critical analysis, presenting a focused exploration of three types of compromise, broken down into three areas (the political-pluralist compromise; the economic compromise; the foreign policy compromise). In each of these cases, key qualities and limitations of compromise solutions for deadlocked controversies are outlined. The article argues that, for R. Aron, economic compromise is the easiest to achieve. The paper further discusses possible criteria that can help to discriminate moral from immoral compromises. It concludes that “the sense of compromise” is inseparable from any serious attempt to think afresh R. Aron’s democratic theory.

This article proposes to retrace the path of trust that Paul Ricœur has drawn across his works. If the concept of trust is never themed as such, nevertheless it unfolds in subtle ways in fields as diverse as ethics, morality, politics, and religion. We will argue that trust is a solid but fragile foundation for Ricœur’s recognition theory. Rooted in man’s structural disproportion, trust is a perpetual tension between the finitude of existence and the infinitude of mutual recognition, between the ability and fallibility of the human being -it is thus a continuous search, always disappointing but always renewed, of a mediation between the self and the other, the hope of happiness and the reality of evil. The analysis of various forms of trust, including interpersonal and institutional forms, will then be coupled with a study of trust in practical terms, based on Ricœur’s approach to healthcare relationships, or the perception of foreigners.