Sartre’s errors became more loved than Aron’s correct lucidity

Evidence

One famous remark has come to be associated with Aron and Sartre, although it was not spoken by either one of them. In 1976, during an interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy, Aron opined that leftist intellectuals hated him not because he had pointed out the true nature of Communism, but because he had never shared their belief in it in the first place. Lévy replied, ‘What do you think? Is it better, in that case, to be Sartre or Aron? Sartre the mistaken victor, or Aron defeated but correct?’ Aron gave no clear answer. But the question was remembered, and converted into a simple and sentimental maxim: that it is better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 842

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the reader’s broader interest in how intellectual reputation and moral authority diverge from predictive accuracy — echoes themes in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada about decisive validation. — connects to: The French academic epistemology of Kant left Sartre, Beauvoir, and Aron dissatisfied — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 15
• CANDY: The ‘wrong with Sartre than right with Aron’ maxim is a compact, shareable tidbit about intellectual hero-worship.