AMA Publications
Every year, the American Maritain Association, in conjunction with the Catholic University of America Press, publishes a volume containing peer-reviewed and curated papers from our yearly meeting.
Our older volumes are available in chapter-by-chapter PDF format. Our most recent volumes are available for purchase. Please consider supporting our work by purchasing one (or more!) of our illuminating texts. Click below on the texts for further information about their contents.
Restoring Ancient Beauty:
The Revival of Thomistic Theology
Edited by James Keating
Until recently it has been commonplace to believe that Vatican II represents a permanent sidelining of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas for theology. The documents of that council, it is said, moved away from the scholastic categories that had informed Catholic theological work since the Reformation, and most particularly since Vatican I. There is some truth to this, of course, since the council fathers preferred biblical formulations in a personalist and pastoral mode over the kinds of concepts one finds in Neo-Thomism. The effect of this shift on theological education is well know. Indeed, so swift was the change that one finds figures as different as Jacques Maritain, Karl Rahner, and Joseph Ratzinger worrying soon after the Council's conclusion that the Angelic Doctor had all but disappeared from Catholic theology….
Facts are Stubborn Things:
Thomistic Perspectives in the Philosophies of Nature and Science
Edited by Matthew K. Minerd
In his The Degrees of Knowledge, Science and Wisdom, Philosophy of Nature, and a number of other texts, the Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain engaged in lively reflection on the light which Thomism can shed on the nature of the sciences, both in their methodologies as well as in the metaphysical presuppositions on which they are based. Such considerations were part of his larger desire to reinvigorate contemporary Catholic philosophical thought, applying the wisdom of the Thomist school to topics of burning contemporary relevance. Some of his positions concerning such matters related to the "philosophy of science" placed him in opposition to other Thomist schools of thought, in particular the so-called "Laval" school of Thomism as well as that emanating from the Dominican River Forest studium in Illinois. Nonetheless, on further reflection, one can see that these various sub-branches of the larger Thomist tree all have much in common as regards their desire to remain rigorously Thomist while being in active dialogue with the methodologies and discoveries of contemporary scientific culture…
In Search of Harmony:
Metaphysics and Politics
Edited by James G. Hanink
Two of Jacques Maritain's enduring classics are Existence and the Existent and The Person and the Common Good. In the first he explores the key themes of his constructive Thomism while engaging broad currents of existentialist thought. In the second he proposes a personalist-communitarian vision that illuminates the common good. Maritain's paired concerns of metaphysics and politics, and their often-surprising connections, set the stage for this new volume. In Search of Harmony: Metaphysics and Politics is comprised of original essays by twenty scholars. Some contributors are well-established, while others bring fresh voices to the perennial philosophy. The authors trace the metaphysical commitments of political thought and highlight the political implications of metaphysical perspectives. Of special note are the essays that examine the roots of our political predicaments and how we might heal our cultural confusions. Still other essays examine the sources of conscience in the context of a secular liberal polity that seems unable to recognize them.
The Things That Matter:
Essays Inspired by the Later of Work of Jacques Maritain
Edited by Heidi Geibel
In the final year of his long life, eminent Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain prepared a final book for publication: a collection of previously unpublished writings entitled Approaches san entraves, later translated into English as Untrammeled Approaches. That collection, both in its conversational yet reverent tone and in its weighty topics – faith, love, truth, beauty – gives the reader the sense that she is receiving from a great teacher and friend the most important nuggets of wisdom for the next generation. Throughout the book, Maritain shares with his readers, from his heart as well as his intellect, regarding the things that really matter; that book – and those things – are the primary inspiration for the present volume…
Engaging the Times:
The Witness of Thomism
Edited by Joshua Schulz
The essays in this volume commemorate the 70th anniversary of Jacques Maritain's Pour la Justice, in which the French Thomist and future drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grappled with the moral, political, and religious challenges facing Europe in the aftermath of World War II. During this time Maritain reflected on humanism, Christian philosophy, the relation between freedom, religion and politics, and increasingly, on education…
The Wisdom of Youth:
Essays Inspired by the Early Work of Jacques and Raissa Maritain
Edited by Travis Dumsday
Both Jacques and Raïssa Maritain produced large and diverse bodies of writing, and their creative lives spanned decades and encompassed the most turbulent periods of the twentieth century. Scholarly engagement with their work continues to reap new insights, and that includes engagement with the writings produced in the earlier portions of their respective careers. Those earlier portions were themselves remarkably productive, and issued not only in important writings but also in profoundly influential professional and personal relationships nurtured and developed with a truly diverse array of scholars, clergy, and artists, including such figures as Henri Bergson, Leon Bloy, Ernest Psichari, and Georges Rouault. This new anthology of essays manages both to interact with the biographies and writings of the Maritains themselves (and to a degree their close early associates) and also to contribute to novel Thomistic reflection on themes from their early careers, among them war, suffering, politics, art, intuition, and foundational issues in moral theology. The essays are historically informed yet address perennial issues of vital significance for the life of the Church and the broader culture…
A Piercing Light:
Beauty, Faith, and Human Transcendence
Edited by James Jacobs
The meeting of Jacques Maritain and the avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau in the summer of 1925 produced two significant results: Cocteau returned to his Catholic faith, and it led the poet and the philosopher to exchange letters reflecting on the relationship between art and faith. While Cocteau proclaimed that the spiritual nature of art orders man to God, Maritain tempers his new friend’s enthusiasm in asserting, “Between the world of poetry and that of sainthood there exists an analogical relation. . . . All errors come from the fact that people misread this analogy: some swell the similarity, mixing poetry and mysticism; others weaken it, making poetry out to be a craft, a mechanical art.” The essays in this volume further this discussion by examining how the practice of both art and faith necessarily order man to transcendent fulfillment, yet do so in very different ways…
Redeeming Philosophy:
From Metaphysics to Aesthetics
Edited by John Conley, SJ
Inspired by the Thomism of Jacques Maritain, this collection of essays explores how philosophy can redeem contemporary society from some of its defects and how contemporary philosophy itself can be redeemed through a revival of philosophical realism. In metaphysics, such a real- ism emphasizes the primacy of contemplation, especially the contemplation of being itself, in a society overwhelmed by activism. In theology, it helps the Church to focus on the fleshly reality of the body, the human nature of Christ, and the sacraments. In history, it sketches the possible sources of hope in a society struggling with a despairing culture of death. In aesthetics, it explores how art permits the unspeakable to become poetic word and the unseeable to become visible icon. In the social order, this realism indicates possible paths for the reform of education, gender relations, economic relations, and international organizations devoted to peace…
Human Nature, Contemplation, and the Political Order: Essays Inspired by Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics
Edited by Peter Karl Koritansky
In his 1940 publication, Scholasticism and Politics, Jacques Maritain asserts
that “the modern world has sought good things in bad ways; it has thus compromised the search for authentic human values, which men must save now by an intellectual grasp of a profounder truth, by a substantial recasting of humanism.: In the essays that follow, Maritain explores the cultural and philosophical dimensions of this claim and sketches an outline for addressing what he famously calls the “crisis of modern times.” The answer is a new humanism that appropriates the important insights of modern thought, but which is also grounded in the classical tradition that reaches its full philosophical development in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It is a humanism that acknowledges the dignity of both man's body and his soul, and which does not close his soul off to the transcendent.
Aquinas and Maritain on Evil:
Mystery and Metaphysics
Edited by James G. Hanink
While creatively drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain made the problem of evil a life-long philosophical inquiry. Indeed, Maritain tells us in his God and the Permission of Evil (1966) that "If philosophers lived up to their calling in the new age into which we have entered, the crucial work for them would be to renew the theory of evil… By examining it more profoundly." Exploring the problem of evil, indeed, its profound mystery, comes near the heart of the Christian philosopher’s vocation to seek a fuller understanding of the faith. To join in that endeavor, is to struggle within a constricting web of near paradoxes. That struggle will soon enough put us in mind of Job. With Job we will come to reflect on God’s providence and the folly of conventional "wisdom." The contributors to this volume offer reflections that probe the experience of both good and evil and try to understand something of their nature. In doing so they search out the origin of the evil that we ourselves bring about and from which we all suffer…
Love and Friendship:
Maritain and the Tradition
Edited by Montague Brown
Love and friendship are at the heart of human and divine life. Without reference to them, it is impossible to explain the human being. Yet these terms are irreducibly ambiguous, with multiple meanings for our lives—from particular human relationships, to political communities, to one's relationship with God. This volume presents a broad collection of essays on love and friendship. It draws on the rich tradition handed down from Greek philosophers and the Holy Scriptures, illumined by the wisdom of the medieval theologians, and reflected upon by Jacques Maritain, his students, and other contemporary Catholic intellectuals…
Distinctions of Being:
Philosophical Approaches to Reality
Edited by Nikolaj Zunic
What is reality? What are the diverse ways of being? Can God be known from nature? These and other quintessentially metaphysical questions are addressed in the newest volume from the American Maritain Association, Distinctions of Being. Metaphysics—as conceived by Aristotle, extended by Thomas Aquinas, and given modern expression by prominent philosophers such as Jacques Maritain—deals principally with the question of being, the basis of reality. This work considers the necessary distinctions at the heart of metaphysics, the distinctions between nature and spirit; the world and God; and the different forms of knowing in science, philosophy, and being…
Reading the Cosmos:
Nature, Science, and Wisdom
Edited by Giuseppe Butera
Reading the Cosmos continues and extends Jacques Maritain's spirited defense of natural philosophy as indispensable for an adequate account of the natural world. Drawing inspiration from such seminal works as Philosophy of Nature and Science and Wisdom, the essays in this volume span a wide range of issues of perennial interest to theologians, philosophers, and scientists: from the philosophy of science to the limits of scientific enquiry; from the laws of nature to natural law; from animal intelligence to intelligent design. Taken together, they constitute an engaging argument for the intelligibility of the natural world and the human intellect's ability to discern transcendent realities through its reading of the cosmos…
The Renewal of Civilization:
Essays in Honor of Jacques Maritain
Edited by Gavin T. Colvert
One of the twentieth century's leading Catholic philosophers, Jacques Maritain uniquely wove together religious belief with the various cultural, intellectual, and political concerns of his time. Toward the end of his life, the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope): The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (1965) appeared and provided a blueprint for a new engagement between the Church and modernity. The challenge issued by this document was breathtaking in its scope and purpose. The Church, while "scrutinizing the signs of the times" and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, must "respond to the perennial questions which men ask about the present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other”…
The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher:
From Maritain to John Paul II
Edited by John P. Hittinger
How can Catholic philosophers confront the challenging intellectual questions of the twenty-first-century world? Among these questions are the relationship of philosophy to the spiritual renewal of the Church, the interplay of faith and reason, the role of metaphysics in philosophy, contemporary challenges to the family, the status of women, and the ways modern medicine can actually challenge as well as serve the dignity of the human person…
The Human Person and a Culture of Freedom
Edited by Peter A. Pagan Aguiar and Terese Auer
Introduction by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I
Twenty-first-century society faces profound challenges, and the future seems anything but secure. The rapid advance of technology has far outpaced mankind's moral and religious development. There is greater material wealth now than in past centuries, yet poverty remains an international problem. Wars persist and global peace seems increasingly unattainable as terrorism and civil strife become more prevalent. Numerous forms of entertainment made possible by modern industrialization and technology divert attention away from the things that really matter and invert the objective hierarchy of values. Underlying all these threats to the foundations of civilization one can find one or another theoretical conception of man and human freedom…
Maritain and America
Edited by Christopher Cullen, S.J. and Joseph Allan Clair
Jacques Maritain was one of the leading French and Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century. He was particularly fond of America and its political experiment in liberal democracy. He taught at four American universities and came to know the young republic first hand. Maritain and America explores the engagement of his thought with the American political experiment in representative democracy and the culture of liberal individualism that it has fostered…
Truth Matters:
Essays in Honor of Jacques Maritain
Edited by John G. Trapani, Jr.
Drawing upon the richness and breadth of Jacques Maritain's thought, the contributors to this volume engage readers with philosophical essays about the search for truth in human life and civic engagement. The essays examine a broad range of topics, from those that are more properly theoretical, such as God, science, natural law, practical reason, education, and democracy, to those that are more practical, such as capital punishment, eugenics, friendship, love, and art. In each essay, the author implicitly challenges the claims of relativism and postmodernism, specifically the idea that there is no "real" truth and that what matters is merely the perspective of one's own frame of reference. The essays argue instead that theoretical truth-claims have practical consequences, that truth matters to those who are affected by it…
Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing
Edited by Douglas A. Ollivant
Introduction by George Anastaplo
Drawing on the writings of Jacques Maritain—and by extension those of Thomas Aquinas—the essays in this volume examine the effects of theories of knowledge on individuals, culture, and entire schools of philosophical thought. The contributors challenge contemporary epistemologies, which are largely based on writings of Descartes, Locke, and Kant. They critique these theories internally and demonstrate their incompatibility with other goods, such as liberty, human dignity, and access to the transcendent…
Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century
Edited by Alice Ramos and Marie I. George
While some intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century argued that scientific progress would eventually cause the demise of religion, it is evident that this has not been the case and that contemporary science is in fact not necessarily inimical to a religious worldview. So, a fruitful dialogue between science and religion has become a reality. But there is also a more fundamental question that arises, which is not simply the relationship of the sciences or of other disciplines to religion, but rather whether faith can and should have an impact on teaching and research…
Reassessing the Liberal State:
Reading Maritain's Man and the State
Edited by Timothy Fuller and John P. Hittinger
This collection of essays revisits Jacques Maritain's book, Man and the State—the University of Chicago Walgreen lectures of 1949—and critically engages its greatest themes and arguments: the character of the modern state and its relation to the body politic, the state's functions and claims, the basis of authority, the foundation of human rights and natural law, structural pluralism, Church and State relations, national sovereignty, and the prospects for world government. The contributors address whether Maritain has successfully accomplished his project of engaging modernity from the perspective of a 20th century disciple of Thomas Aquinas; whether his reformulations and revisions of the modern state are philosophically sound and prudent; and whether his developments of Aristotle and Aquinas are faithful to the sources…
Beauty, Art, and the Polis
Edited by Alice Ramos
Introduction by Ralph McInerny
The essays in this volume, indebted in great part to Jacques Maritain and to other Neo-Thomists, represent a contribution to an understanding of beauty and the arts within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. As such they constitute a different voice in present-day discussions on beauty and aesthetics, a voice which nonetheless shares with many of its contemporaries concern over questions such as the relationship between beauty and morality, public funding of the arts and their educational role, objective and universal standards of what is beautiful…
The Failure of Modernism:
The Cartesian Legacy and Contemporary Pluralism
Edited by Brendan Sweetman
This book brings together a distinguished group of philosophers and theologians to critique several aspects of modernism. Modernism in philosophy is characterized by skepticism and anti-realism in epistemology, and by relativism in ethics and politics. The contributors are influenced by the philosophical tradition inspired by, but not exclusively based upon, the thought of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and carried on by such contemporary thinkers as Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and Yves Simon…
The Common Things:
Essays on Thomism and Education
Edited by Daniel McInerny
Concerned with the trendy, technocratic, and at times sophistical character of contemporary education at all levels, both public and private, the authors of this collection seek to reinvigorate a Thomistic approach to education appropriate to the problems of our day. With its main inspiration taken from the work of Jacques Maritain, especially his 1943 Education at the Crossroads, the volume presents a trenchant critique of the "privacies" of contemporary education, with its emphasis upon the conventional and useful. At the same time, the essays present the outlines of the proper alternative, an education which helps students draw out from themselves the desire for truths which transcend the contingencies of culture and utility. Such an education seeks to guide students to "the common things" available to all human beings…
Postmodernism and Christian Philosophy
Edited by Roman T. Ciapalo
The contributors to Postmodernism and Christian Philosophy bring a wealth of philosophical insights and methodological approaches to bear on a common concern, namely, the possibility and extent of a fruitful dialogue between Christian philosophy and postmodern thought. They tackle the timely question of how realism ought to respond to the threat to what Gilson called "the Western Creed" posed by modernity's heir apparent…
Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good
Edited by Curtis L. Hancock and Anthony O. Simon
Inspired by the recovery of natural law and virtue ethics in recent ethical discourse, certain members of the American Maritain Association have written essays to stimulate this recovery further. Their efforts are assembled in this volume, Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good. Writing under the influence of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon, they herein examine the requirements of a satisfactory natural law and virtue ethics, broadly understood as a moral philosophy giving primacy to character-formation and to the development of individual and social habits necessary to perfect human life. The ethics herein envisioned is one that must first be grounded in a sound philosophy of the human person…
Jacques Maritain and the Jews
Edited by Robert Royal
Jacques Maritain, one of the most prominent twentieth-century Catholic philosophers and social theorists, played a crucial role in the development of modern Catholic teaching about the people of Israel. Today relations between Christians and Jews have reached an historically unprecedented cordiality and the seventeen essays in this volume reveal the process by which Maritain's thought and work contributed to this development. Jacques Maritain and the Jews is a thorough survey of the influence Maritain exerted on various persons inside and outside the Catholic Church, as well as the influences of the Jewish question on Maritain himself…
The Future of Thomism
Edited by Deal W. Hudson and Dennis W. Moran
The essays in this collection voice the contemporary concerns of those who respect the perennial philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. As with the admirers of St Thomas through the centuries since his death, the contributors exhibit varied and even opposing interpretations of his philosophical thought. The discussions range from various considerations of Thomism in regard to philosophical realism, as well as aspects of Thomistic metaphysics and ethics, to an exploration of what the future may hold for the philosophy designated as Thomism. All contributors agree that the philosophy of St Thomas offers the basis for a unique philosophical outlook that is a needed influence on the turmoil of modern and postmodern philosophical thinking…
From Twilight to Dawn:
The Cultural Vision of Jacques Maritain
Edited by Peter A. Redpath
Over 50 years ago, Jacques Maritain, described by some as one of the foremost intellectuals of the 20th century, addressed the issue of the roots of the decline of Western culture. Confronted by the moral monstrosity of Nazi Germany and the weakness of vision in Western democracies, Maritain assessed the problem to be based upon a distorted and disintegrated understanding of human nature. In his work, The Twilight of Civilization, he argued for a reformation in Western education which would incorporate principles necessary for the survival and flourishing of Western democracies…
Freedom in the Modern World:
Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer Adler
Edited by Michael D. Torre
These essays examine the full range of human freedom—both freedom of choice and political freedom. Much of the discussion centres on The Idea of Freedom by Adler and the volume concludes with two essays in metaphysics…
Jacques Maritain:
The Man and His Metaphysics
Edited by John F. X. Knasas
The spirit and animation of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain is celebrated in this collection of essays. It recognizes the legacy of Maritain's vision, i.e., the engagement of the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas with the 20th century…
Conference-Seminar on Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge
Edited by R. J. Henle, S.J., Marion Cordes, Jeanne Vatterott
Our very first publication, this volume includes a number of texts reflecting on various epistemological matters, inspired by the broad scope of Maritain’s The Degrees of Knowledge….