Maritain and America
Edited by Christopher Cullen, S.J. and Joseph Allan Clair
Book Overview
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.
The book begins with a consideration of the sources for the American founding—English common law, Protestant Christianity, Lockean natural rights theory—and then proceeds to examine the American political order from the perspective of various philosophers in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. These scholars are concerned with, among other things, the relationship of natural law and natural rights, understandings of the common good, and achieving unity in a pluralist society. One set of essays discusses America's unique settlements between faith and reason and between church and state. Another set explores the philosophy of personalism, one of the most notable projects that Thomists, such as Maritain, have undertaken in order to provide a metaphysical understanding of the human person that can both provide a foundation for natural rights and yet be open to a transcendent order of goodness. Other scholars take up the task of developing a theory of tolerance (in the context of a pluralist society) that is grounded in a common quest for wisdom and truth. The final section applies Thomistic ethics in the context of contemporary American society.
Maritain and America makes a valuable contribution to the quest for a true and integral humanism that can help sustain the American experiment in modern, liberal democracy.
To assist our continued work most fully, purchase directly from our distributor
Contents
Joseph Allan Clair, “Introduction”
Robert P. Kraynak, Catholicism and the Declaration of Independence: An American Dilemma About Natural Rights”
Henk E.S. Woldring, “Social Cohesion of a Pluralist Civil Society: A Challenge to Maritain's Political Philosophy”
John G. Trapani, Jr., “Resolving the Tension Between Tolerance and Truth: Jacques Maritain on the Moral Extremes of Relativism and Fanaticism”
John A. Cuddeback, “Yves R. Simon and Aquinas on Willing The Common Good”
Francis Slade, “John Stuart Mill's Deontological Hedonism”
Matthew S. Pugh, “Maritain and the Problem of Christian Philosophy”
Ralph C. Nelson, “A Controversy Reconsidered”
Timothy Valentine, S.J. “A Good Shepherd? Thomas Aquinas on the Names of God in the Summa Theologiae (ST I, q. 13, aa. 1-7)”
Martin Andic, “Connaturality”
Teresa I. Reed, “Time and the Human Person”
Alice Ramos, “Transcending Bodily Existence and Vulnerability”
Eric O. Springsted, “Beyond The Personal: Weil's Critique of Maritain”
John F. Morris, “The Person in America”
James G. Hanink, “Maritain, Connaturality, and the American Family”
William M. Joensen, “The ‘Normal’ Pursuit of Eudaimonia, and the Potential Obstacle Posed by Genetic Manipulation”
Index
Contributors