Understanding Maritain

An accessible translation of the biography of noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain and his wife Raïssa

A study of Emmanuel Mounier, founder of Personalism, and Jacques Maritian, significant contributor to revival of Catholic thought and Thomism, and two generations of French Catholic intellectuals, this book examines the gulf between nineteenth century Catholic tradition and the twentieth-century European events. Amato's brilliant 1975 study of Mounier and Maritain's attempts to find a Catholic understanding of a world marked by total war, genocide, totalitarianism, mass society and the loss of faith in democracy shows us how much we still need to comprehend that period if we are to undeerstand our new century as Catholics and Christians.

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The engaging and inquiring mind of French philosopher Jacques Maritain reflected on subjects as varied as art and ethics, theology and psychology, and history and metaphysics. Maritain's work on the theoretical groundings of politics arose from his diverse studies. 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 morally dealt with. Schall's study will be of great importance to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, and theology.

At eighty-five, Jacques Maritain, the most distinguished Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century, has written what he offers as his last book, and it turns out to be a shocker. The peasant, as Maritain calls himself in the title, is a man who calls a spade a spade; and a storm of controversy descended immediately on the book's publication in France, as both Right and Left reeled from the force of Maritain's criticism.The Peasant of the Garonne is a sharp attack on the new philosophy, hoping to cool off the fever for change that Maritain believes is imperiling the church's traditional spirituality and even the substance of doctrine. There is sardonic humor in his treatment of Teilhardians, phenomenologists, existentialists, new-style biblical critics, and clerical Freudians, but Maritain is deeply serious in warning that their capitulation to fashioniable trends represents a kind of kneeling before the world.

In this contemporary classic, one of the great Catholic philosophers illuminates the methods by which humanity comes to know their God.

From his rebellious youth through his yearning for sainthood as one of the 20th century’s leading Christian philosophers, the quest for liberation defines Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). Throughout the 20th century, Maritain rejected the egocentric isolation rampant throughout liberal society, as well as totalitarian collectivism. Maritain promoted the human person, open by way of nature and grace to integral liberation and redemption through authentic community. This book argues that Maritain contributes to our understanding in the 21st century of the myriad, yet coalescing, movements seeking to address global economic sustainability, the fostering of human rights and participatory democracy. Through a series of papers published over the course of more than 20 years, from the tail-end of the 20th century through the first decades of the 21st century, Maritain’s social and political thought engages contemporary thinkers and movements with penetrating insight.

Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation provides a basic introduction to, and an extensive examination of, Maritain's philosophy of art and beauty