In the context of European integration, the great French Christian philosopher Jacques Maritain and his influence on the European project in the mid-20th century are mentioned very rarely. This paper seeks to shed some light on his somehow hidden role in this context, especially given the central role of freedom of conscience within the personalist philosophical heritage to which Maritain belonged and the political philosophy he shaped, which had a key impact on the European project and its basic (...) documents. Freedom of conscience is seen here as the cornerstone of all human freedoms despite all the risks and complications that this entails. In all conflicts between the State and the conscience, it is necessary and desirable to always go in favour of the conscience or at least to lean towards political solutions that respect or at least do not despise the conscience of the person. Whenever we face seemingly unsolvable problems in such conflicts, dialogue and negotiation should always be chosen instead of violence and imposition. (shrink)

In this book, distinguished theologian and political scientist James V. Schall explores Maritain's political philosophy, demonstrating that Maritain understood society, state, and government in the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, of natural law and human rights and duties. Schall pays particular attention to the ways in which evil appears in political forms, and how this evil can be dealt with morally.

The author presents and compares Maritain’s and Aquinas’s accounts of our discovery (1) of being as existing; and (2) of being as being (ens inquantum ens or the subject of metaphysics). He finds that especially in his final discussion of how one discovers being as being, Maritain’s account suffers greatly from the absence of any appeal to Aquinas’s negative judgment of separation and also from the omission of reference to the role of judgments of existence in one’s discovery (...) of a premetaphysical notion of being. Wippel finds no evidence in Aquinas’s texts for Maritain’s defense of an intuition of being or of existence. (shrink)

I examine Jacques Maritain's definition of art and what it contributes to debates on definitions of art in contemporary aesthetics. Of particular concern are the so-called ‘fine arts’. I make three claims; first, that Maritain's definition of art is superior to other traditional and contemporary theories in avoiding their pitfalls and accommodating key data to be met by definitions of art, such as the existence of avant-garde art. Second, I claim that in accommodating avant-garde art, in particular ‘conceptual (...) art’, Maritain's definition of art refutes the Wittgensteinian argument that art is an ‘open concept’ which cannot be defined. My final, resulting claim is that Maritain's definition deserves to be the pre-eminent definition of art today. This article consists of four sections. Section one provides some context of definitions of art and the data and conditions that have to be met by a viable definition. Section two provides the foundation and first pillar of Maritain's definition of art, what I identify as a cumulative ‘descriptive’ definition. Section three provides the second pillar of Maritain's definition of art, applicable specifically to the fine arts. Section four applies Maritain's full descriptive definition to the problem of conceptual art. (shrink)

I examine Jacques Maritain's views on the relationship between art and ethics or what is today called the ‘ethical criticism of art’, and examine what Maritain's thought can contribute to debates in contemporary aesthetics and wider society. In part I of the article, I approach Maritain's attempted reconciliation of artistic freedom and the demands of morality in three steps, first recalling Maritain's definition of art, second looking at Maritain's analysis of the extra-artistic concerns of the (...) artist, and third offering a critique of Maritain's views on why art is valued by the community and what justifiable moral claims of the community upon the artist might be—particularly regarding the method of production of artworks. Comparing Maritain's theories to those of contemporary writers in part II, I argue that Maritain's ethics of art can be used to complement Jacques Rancière's notions of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ and ‘artistic regimes’, and that, in the terminology of the ethical criticism of art, Maritain affirms a position which is a composite of ‘moderate moralism’ and ‘ethicism’—a position which is both explanatorily powerful in ascertaining how and why we recognise and value art, and flexible in accommodating changing artistic forms and practices. (shrink)

Jacques Maritain is widely recognized as one of the foremost Catholic philosophers of modern times. He wrote groundbreaking works in all branches of philosophy. For a period of about 10 years, beginning in 1933, he discussed matters relating to war and ethics. Writing initially about Gandhi, whose strategy of non-violence he sought to incorporate within a Christian conception of political action, Maritain proceeded to comment more specifically on the religious aspects of armed force in “On Holy War,” an (...) essay about the civil war then ongoing in Spain. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Maritain penned a series of essays that sought to explain why the Anglo–French declarations of war were warranted on Christian just war principles. While the secondary literature on Maritain’s thought is extensive, thus far there has been little systematic exploration of his writings on war. In what follows I seek to remedy this lacuna, by examining how he conceptualized just war in the three phases outlined above. (shrink)

Eduardo Frei Montalva, co-founder of the Christian Democratic Party and President of Chile, represented for Jacques Maritain, French neo-Thomist philosopher, an example of prophetic leadership in contemporary times. According to Maritain, modem democracy could not survive without a profound spiritual revolution of political leadership--the "prophetic factor" of democracy--which he observed in Frei as a public official, senator, and ultimately the Presient of the Republic of Chile (1964-1970). Under his famed "Revolution in Liberty," Frei endeavored to meld socio-economic reforms (...) with an effort to build a more participatory democratic culture in his native land. Guided by Maritain's political philosophy, Frei's initiatives set into motion the possibility of a "third way" of politics in the Southern hemisphere. In the end, this revolution ended in political disappointment due to economic stagnation, social disruption, political infighting, and the impractical idealism of Christian democracy itself. (shrink)

This paper traces some changes in Catholic political theory eventually taken up and extended during World War II by Jacques Maritain, who became the foremost philosophical exponent of the idea of "human rights" on the postwar scene. I show that the invention of the idea of the "dignity of the human person" as embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights occurred not in biblical or other longstanding traditions, but instead in very recent and contingent history. In conclusion, I (...) speculate on what the restoration of Maritain's route to human rights to its proper contexts might suggest about the cultural meaning the idea had in postwar Continental Europe, which became its homeland. (shrink)

La intuición es un tipo de conocimiento que consiste en captar de modo inmediato la esencia de las cosas y comprenderlas de forma directa sin llevar a cabo un proceso discursivo. Algunas filosofías rechazan este modo de conocer por ser falible, otros la enmarcan dentro de los fenómenos extrasensoriales e incluso paranormales. En este trabajo se considera la intuición en Jacques Maritain, no en su aspecto de fenómeno sobrenatural, sino como una vía de aprehensión de la realidad adquirida por (...) métodos ordinarios de conocimiento que nos revelan aspectos a los que no podemos llegar de otra forma. (shrink)

THIS ARTICLE IS OCCASIONED BY THE RECENT APPEARANCE of three books focused on the life and thought of Jacques Maritain : Jude P. Dougherty, Jacques Maritain, An Intellectual Profile; John P. Hittinger, Liberty, Wisdom, and Grace, Thomism and Democratic Political Theory; and Ralph McInerny, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain. It is at the same time an attempt to reassess the work of arguably the most influential and important Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century. The Jacques (...) Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame is producing a 21-volume edition of his works in English. There are now a growing number both of national and international associations for the study of his thought. The unavoidable subtext is a reassessment of Catholic thought in general and some consideration of its future prospects. (shrink)

In his earlier essay in aesthetics--after lengthily disposing of a number of Aristotelian-Thomist distinctions between the speculative order and the practical order, between the "useful" arts and the "fine" arts, and so on--M. Maritain, in the most interesting passages of Art and Scholasticism, concerned himself with this astonishing "growth of self-consciousness" in the modern artist. And what chiefly occupied him was the thought that, in submitting to the idea of making art out of the idea of art, the artist (...) might become so fascinated with technique and so estranged from the existential world of nature and the universe of man that he should forget that, unlike God, he cannot create ex nihilo. He wanted, then, to confront him with the futility of claiming any kind of aseity for his art, for pure art, he said, "involves nothing, the subject being completely whittled away. I call that a sin of idealism in relation to the matter of art: pushed to the extreme, a perfect building, with nothing to build." The idea of making poetry out of the idea of poetry or painting out of the idea of painting can, in other words, never yield anything but sterility, since the kind of "metaphysical vastness" that characterizes greatness in the arts has always been a result of vital transactions between the creative Self and the universes of Being. And for the poet or the painter to seek to allay the kind of "eucharistic passion" that arises at the very center of the artistic process is for him to run the risk of suicide, since it is for him to isolate his art from everything that is not "its own peculiar rules of operation." There is one long and wonderful sentence in which the lesson is summed up, as M. Maritain says that he would remind modern art that. (shrink)

The notion of a properly functioning human nature as a moral standard is a tenet of Western culture and is at the core Western humanism, Christian moral teaching, and natural law theory. Although these traditions recognize that the virtue of justice is exercised by giving one’s neighbor his due, they did not explore a person’s legitimate claims to goods in a modern theory of human rights. Enlightenment thinkers, as materialists and atheists, theorized that human rights are not related to God (...) or human nature but are privileges granted by government. Jacques Maritain developed theories of natural law and human rights. Maritain’s theory of human rights, employing a Thomistic methodology and founded on God and nature, is applicable to contemporary disputes, such as claims to a right to “same-sex” marriage. (shrink)

As moral standards, natural law and the notion of properly functioning human nature have persisted in Western cultures from the dawn of civilization. Medieval Christians developed it in their theologies. However, Enlightenment criticism of medieval thought undermined the credibility of natural law and its authority for modern man. Jacques Maritain developed a rational foundation for natural law and sought to provide objectivity to natural law precepts. His theory also reestablishes the divine authority of natural law for a world without (...) faith. Maritain locates the primary disclosure of natural law in the conscience’s moral reflection in a controversial act of pre-conceptual or non-conceptual knowledge called connatural knowledge. (shrink)

This paper is in three parts. In the first part, I consider Maritain’s definition of freedom. He differentiates between two types of freedom: freedom of choice, which he also calls freedom from necessity, and freedom of autonomy or terminal freedom, also called freedom from constraint. The second part considers the three types of political philosophy of freedom identified by Maritain. They may respectively be called liberal individualism, statesponsored collectivism, and communal and personalist philosophy. The third political philosophy, communal (...) and personalist, is advocated by Maritain. In the third part of this paper, I raise concerns about losses of freedom that have become more evident in the last few years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I reflect upon how Maritain’s philosophy of freedom may apply in our contemporary situation. (shrink)

Il sense comune nella storia della filosofia -- Il contenuto del senso comune in Jacques Maritain -- Maritain vs le dottrine che rifiutano il senso comune -- Senso comune e filosofia -- Appendice I. Senso comune e fede nella Rivelazione -- Appendice II. Sulla conoscenza dell'essere. L'"esistenzialismo di" J. Maritain.

WITHIN the last half century, the relations between the Catholic Church and liberal politics have shifted significantly. To say the least, no one is surprised today to read of Catholic socialists, liberation theologies, or Christian Democratic parties of Catholic inspiration in Europe and Latin America. Many factors contributed to this change, but few would deny a central role to the work of the French philosopher, Jacques Maritain.

DICTIONARY OF SPANISH VERBS WITH THEIR ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS AND MODELS OF CONJUGATION/DICCIONARIO CON LOS VERBOS EN ESPAÑOL, SU TRADUCCIÓN AL INGLÉS Y CONJUGACIONES.

Philosophy has not an easy time after the Second Vatican Council. As a response to this situation, the late Pope John Paul Ⅱ wrote the encyclical "Fides et ratio" and appealed to the Catholics the need for a sound philosophy. One of the philosophers he recommended in his encyclical is the French philosopher Jacques Maritain. Maritain was a prominent figure in philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. He died in 1973. After a period of relative silence (...) after his death, his works rekindled the interest of scholars' especially Catholic philosophers. The establishment of numerous associations, academic conferences, the publication of books, papers and review dedicated to the study of his works are the witnesses to this revival of interest. There are several reasons for this return. The depth and the range of Maritain's thought, his reflection on the human person, the state and the common good, his defense for the freedom and dignity of human being, his commitment to the Catholic faith, his claim on the balance of sense perception, rational cognition, wisdom, faith and mystical thinking in human knowledge are sources of inspiration for thinkers in a world of relativism, skepticism and distrust of reason. But the most important one is that he is able to reflect on the traditional thinking of Christianity and out of his own critical thinking addresses problems of today's world. Many Catholic thinkers are helped by Maritain to have a deeper insight of their own thought from his confidence in the truth and his bold realism. (shrink)

Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge has rightly been recognized as one of the milestones of the 20th century Thomistic renaissance, but what is virtually unknown is that after The Degrees of Knowledge his thought underwent a profound transformation which could have a significant impact on the future of Thomism.