Jacques Maritain

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Jacques Maritain
Kolbe’s Greatest Books Volume 94

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) was a French Protestant convert to Catholicism and a leading Thomist of the twentieth century having  special influence in the area of politics and education drawing on metaphysics, philosophical psychology and Christian ethics. Maritain rightly understood that political theory begins with philosophical psychology. In the area of psychology, he was an advocate of “Integral Humanism”.  Secular forms of humanism were insufficient because they did not deal with the spiritual dimensions of the human person.

Maritain was both a Thomist and an Aristotelian. In short, he was a sincere and prolific lover of truth obtained through philosophy and theology, faith and reason.

He wrote: “The philosophy of Aristotle, as revived and enriched by St. Thomas and his school, may rightly be called the Christian philosophy, both because the church is never weary of putting it forward as the only true philosophy and because it harmonizes perfectly with the truths of faith…. This agreement between a philosophic system founded by a pagan and the dogmas of revelation is no doubt an external sign, an extra-philosophic guarantee of its truth” and a surety for the soundness of his writings.