Philosopher · Contemporary
Jacques Maritain
1882–1973 · Thomist personalism; Integral Humanism
Convert (1906, under Léon Bloy); French ambassador to the Holy See 1945–48; died a Little Brother of Jesus.
The leading lay Thomist of the twentieth century, who after conversion with his wife Raïssa applied St. Thomas to epistemology (“The Degrees of Knowledge”), art, and above all politics: “Integral Humanism” and “Man and the State” argued for a personalist, pluralist democracy rooted in natural law, and he helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paul VI called him his teacher, and his “The Peasant of the Garonne” (1966) rebuked post-conciliar excesses.
Why he matters: Shaped Christian Democracy, the Church's embrace of human rights and the concept of the common good as personalist; a bridge between strict Thomism and the modern world.
Where to be careful
His political theology (a “new Christendom” with a secular state) was criticized by Charles De Koninck and Thomists for weakening the primacy of the common good and the Church's claim on the state; his later disgust with “kneeling before the world” showed his own second thoughts about the uses made of him.
School of Thomism · Existential Thomism
Gilson and Maritain: Thomas's deepest insight is the act of existing (esse), which distinguishes him from Aristotle and every essentialism; philosophy is to be done historically and in Thomas's own texts, not the commentators'.
Others in this strand: Étienne Gilson, Ven. Fulton J. Sheen
Reading
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Integral HumanismJacques Maritain · His program for a new Christendom.
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The Degrees of KnowledgeJacques Maritain · His masterpiece on science, metaphysics and mystical knowing.
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The Peasant of the GaronneJacques Maritain · The old Thomist on the post-conciliar Church.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.