Jacques Maritain

Born Nov. 18, 1882, in Paris; died Apr. 29, 1973, in Toulouse. French philosopher. Representative of neo-Thomism.

Maritain was educated at the Henry IV Lycee and at the Sorbonne. He was a student of H. Bergson. In 1906 he converted to Catholicism. He was a professor at the Catholic Institute in Paris (from 1914), the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto (from 1933), Princeton University (1941-42), and Columbia University (1941-44). In 1945-48 he served as French ambassador to the Vatican. In 1948-53 he was a professor and after 1953 professor emeritus at Princeton University.

Maritain considered the entire development of the philosophy of the modern period to be a decline and degeneration of philosophic thought. In his view the work of Luther, Descartes, and Rousseau represented the triumph of subjectivism and arbitrariness in the spheres of faith, thought, and feeling, which led to moral and social chaos. Maritain believed that chaos could be overcome by returning to medieval “clarity” and suprapersonal objectivity. Opposing the intuitivism of Bergson, Maritain sought to reconcile “grace and nature, faith and reason, theology and philosophy” (De Bergson a Thomas d’Aquin, Paris, 1947, p. 133). According to Maritain, science has its own object—the created world—but “above” this natural world there exists a higher, supernatural world.

In New York, Maritain initiated a series of publications dealing with problems of “political philosophy” (Civilization), which included works criticizing modern capitalism and bourgeois democracy from positions of “Christian democracy” and “humanism,” but refuting the socialist transformation of society. Maritain is also known for his works in art and pedagogy.