Series:

Collected Works of Jacques Maritain

4 total works

Cover of Untrammeled Approaches

Untrammeled Approaches

by Jacques Maritain

Published 22 April 1997
The essays in this volume, prepared for publication in the year before Maritain's death, deal with truth, philosophy at the time of Vatican II, divine aseity, evolution and animal instinct, moral philosophy, existential epistemology, the Church, and more.

Cover of Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on Independence, Revised Edition
The three books in this volume were written in France in the early 1930's. Maritain accepts the responsibility of a Christian philosopher by addressing the problems of civil and world war. He discusses issues such as the relationship between freedom and religion, the opposition of democracy to any form of totalitarianism, the relationship between spirituality and temporality, and how Christian civilization in opposition to communism and capitalism.

Cover of Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism

Published in 1913 as La Philosophie Bergsonienne, this incisive critique of the thought of Henri Bergson was Jacques Maritain's (1882-1973) first book. In it he shows himself already to have an authoritative grasp of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and an uncanny ability to demonstrate its relevance to alternative philosophical systems such as that of Henri Bergson. Volume 1 in the series The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, this edition faithfully reproduces the 1955 translation published by the Philosophical Library.

It would be difficult to overestimate Bergson's role in extricating French philosophy from the deadening materialism that dominated the Sorbonne. It was that cultural milieu that brought Maritain and his wife Raissa to the brink of suicide. They drew back for two major reasons. First were the lectures of Henri Bergson at the College de France, in which the Maritains found a defense of metaphysics, of the transcendent beyond the material, within which they could find meaning in life. The second reason was their conversion to Catholicism, a move they and many of their contemporaries made after being introduced to Bergson's work.

Soon after his conversion, Jacques Maritain immersed himself in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and was struck by the comparative weaknesses of Bergson. This book is Maritain's relentless criticism of the philosophy of the man whose lectures had meant so much to him. Its ferocity marks it as a young man's book, written in part to exorcize the defects of Bergson's philosophy as they were understood by one now schooled in Thomism. Twenty-five years later, Maritain, while not retracting his criticisms, regretted their intemperance and, as a result, moderated his assessment of Bergson in a long preface to the second edition. In it, we find a philosopher who mastered his craft and a critic of rare perception and refinement.

Cover of Degrees of Knowledge

Degrees of Knowledge

by Jacques Maritain

Published 15 January 1995
Distinguer pour unir, ou Les degres du savoir was first published in 1932 by Jacques Maritain. In this new translation of The Degrees of Knowledge, Ralph McInerny attempts a more careful expression of Maritain's original masterpiece than previous translations. Maritain proposes a hierarchy of the forms of knowledge by discussing the degrees of rational and suprarational understanding. Nine appendices, some longer than the chapters of the book, advance Maritain's thought, often by taking on criticism of earlier editions of the work. Rightly called Maritain's cardinal work, The Degrees of Knowledge is a magnificent and sagacious achievement. Jacques Maritain's masterpiece proposes a hierarchy of forms of knowledge that culminate in mystical experience and wisdom, which is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Maritain argues that the intellectual life is meant to be complemented by the spiritual life and should culminate in sanctity.