The life of Jacques Maritain
Who was Jacques Maritain?
The life of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) is a testimony of an unique attempt to answer the questions of our times with the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Although he has influenced many popes, encyclicals, intellectuals and politicians, his legacy is somewhat forgotten. Many contemporary Catholics vaguely remember his name but do not really know who Maritain was and what he means for the Catholic Church. His life and his writings however are of great importance and are an inspiration for all those who are interested in personalism.
Thomistic personalism
Personalism is a philosophical movement from the 19th and 20th centuries that puts the person at the centre of philosophical reflection. Not the idea, history or class struggle but the human person should be the object of philosophical reflection. Here, the person is understood as a relational being who blossoms in the relationship to the other. From this conviction, personalism responds to movements such as rationalism, capitalism, materialism, individualism, communism and fascism in which the person is subordinated to capital, the state or the collective. These ideologies reduce the human person to a means rather than an end in itself. The way the person is defined by personalists differs. French personalist Jacques Maritain said: 'there are a dozen personalist doctrines, which at times have nothing more in common than the word person.' Maritain sought to combine the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas with personalism and developed a Thomistic personalism. Maritain stated that it was ‘Our desire to make clear the personalism rooted in the doctrine of St. Thomas.’[1]
Maritain therefore dedicated his whole life to study the works of Thomas Aquinas and applied them to the twentieth century. Jacques Maritain however was not born into a Catholic family but into a French protestant family and left the Christian faith when he started studying chemistry, biology and physics at the Sorbonne in 1901. At the Sorbonne he met his future wife, the Russian Jewish Raïssa Oumançoff, with whom he made a romantic agreement to commit suicide if they would not find the deeper meaning which transcended the material dimension of life within a year.
Through the lectures of Henry Bergson, meetings with Charles Péguy and Leon Bloy they discovered the meaning of intuition, the spirit and ultimately the Catholic faith. Maritain was received into the Church in 1906 and studied the works of St. Thomas Aquinas extensively who he would consider to be his philosophical and theological guide for the rest of his life.
Three stages in Maritain’s intellectual life
Before receiving the title of ‘the greatest living Catholic philosopher’, Maritain went through different intellectual stages. His intellectual life can be roughly divided into three stages, according to the Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce. [2] Maritains first stage was the ‘antimodern period’. Maritain started his intellectual development within a reactionary cultural Christian environment in France and opposed modernity. He wrote against modernity in his book Antimoderne (1922) in which he opposed rationalistic thought and the spirit of the French Revolution. Maritain used Thomistic thought to critize modernity.[3]
The second stage of his intellectual life is the biggest and can be seen as a shift towards modernity. In this stage, Maritain used neothomism to approach modernity and synthesize Thomistic and modern thought. De Noce wrote about this stage: ‘this was also the time when Maritain’s prevalent interest was political, or better theological-political’ Del Noce wrote.[4] The final stage of Maritain’s intellectual life is a sceptical stage, written down in the book The Peasant of the Garonne. Maritain grew more sceptical of the possibility to approach modernity.
Two extremes
Maritain left his first stage through a papal condemnation in 1926. This made him leave the reactionary movement Action Française which was led by Charles Maurras. After this condemnation Maritain realized that the intellectual and political implications of Catholicism always avoided two extremes. At the one hand was modernity, which should be approached critically as he explained from his early works such as Antimodern (1922) to his final works such as The Peasant of the Garonne (1968). At the other hand was the dream of returning to a medieval Christian respublica christiana in which state and church were closely linked.
The modern time however required a different approach and throughout his life Maritain honestly engaged with the question how to implement Catholic ideas in a modern context. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor wrote the following about this insight: ‘He began to see the recovery of Christian civilization in new terms, not as a return to Christendom, that is, to a single society that was homogeneous and integrally Christian, but recovery confined to one area. Rather, he sought unity of Christian culture on a global scale, but in the form of a dispersed network of Christian lay institutions and centers of intellectual and spiritual life.’
He recovered Christian civilization through a reinterpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas and applied his teachings to the fields of theology, philosophy, politics, education and anthropology in books such as Christian Humanism (1942), The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1943), Christianity and Democracy (1944), The Person and the Common Good (1947), Man and The State (1951) and The education of Man (1961).
UDHR
Besides his intellectual work, Maritain worked as the French ambassador to the Holy See from 1945 to 1948 and indirectly contributed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the preparatory commission of UNESCO.
When speaking about Maritain’s political philosophy, he is often associated with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is much confusion about the amount of influence he had on the UDHR. However Maritain has indirectly contributed to the Declaration, his role was particularly marginal by participating in the preparatory commission of UNESCO. He participated with a chapter and a preface to UNESCO’s 1947 report on the practical justifications of human rights principles, which was compiled in tandem with the drafting of the Universal Declaration. His influence on the UDHR must not be sought in its direct writing of the Declaration but in its preparatory intellectual work in the development of personalism and the undergirding human rights in natural law. He developed his personalistic theory in many books which were read by popes such as John XXIII. It is fair to say that these works helped the Church to embrace personalism and incorporate them into official church doctrine.
Pacem in Terris
Furthermore he influenced Pope Paul VI who had translated the work of Maritain Three Reformers from French into Italian and considered himself a ‘disciple of Maritain’.
Maritain’s thoughts on pluralism, subsidiarity, freedom of religion and the human person are present in many encyclicals such as Pacem in Terris (1963) and Popolorum Progressio (1967) and in conciliar documents of the Second Vatican Council. Besides, he influenced the Christian Democratic Parties in Europe and South America who applied his political philosophy in creation of Christian Democracy.
Holiness
After his wife Raïssa died in 1960, Maritain lived with the Little Brothers of Jesus in Toulouse in France from 1961 to his death in 1973. Pope Paul VI offered him to become a cardinal but he refused and became a Little Brother himself in 1970 besides being an oblate for the Order of Saint Benedict. In 2011 the cause for canonization for both Jacques and Raïssa Maritain was introduced but since then the news around the canonization process has remained silent. Both of them lived a holy life and a holy marriage. Both of them are examples of a way of holiness for the Church, it is therefore noteworthy to give attention to Jacques Maritain and Raïssa Maritain and reflect what great value their lives have for today.
[1] Del Noce, Augusto, ‘’The Lesson of Maritain’’ in: Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainnes, 31, 2015, pp. 73-73.
[2] Idem, p. 73.
[3] Idem.
[4] Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, 1947.
