American Maritain Association Publications (Complete List)
	Click the title for more information and for a color image of the book. Conference-Seminar on Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge Edited by R. J. Henle, S.J., Marion Cordes, and Jeanne Vatterott, 1981 Printed by the Christian Board of Publication, St. Louis, Missouri (out of print). Jacques Maritain: The Man and His Metaphysics Edited by John F.X. Knasas, 1988 ISBN 0-268-01205-9 (out of print) Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J. Adler Edited by Michael D. Torre, 1989, Second Printing, 1990 ISBN 0-268-00978-3 Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press From Twilight to Dawn: The Cultural Vision of Jacques Maritain Edited by Peter A. Redpath, 1990 ISBN 0-268-00979-1 Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press The Future of Thomism Edited by Deal W. Hudson and Dennis W. Moran, 1992 ISBN 0-268-00986-4 Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press Jacques Maritain and the Jews Edited by Robert Royal, 1994 ISBN 0-268-01193-1 Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good Edited by Curtis L. Hancock and Anthony O. Simon, 1995 ISBN 0-268-00991-0 Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press Postmodernism and Christian Philosophy Edited by Roman T. Ciapolo, 1997 ISBN 0-8132-0881-5 Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press The Common Things: Essays on Thomism and Education Edited by Daniel McInerny, 1999 ISBN 0-9669226-0-3 Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press The Failure of Modernism: The Cartesian Legacy and Contemporary Pluralism Edited by Brendan Sweetman, 1999 ISBN 0-9669226-1-1 Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press Beauty Art, and the Polis Edited by Alice Ramos, 2000 ISBN 0-9669226-2-X Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain's Man and State Edited by Timothy Fuller and John P. Hittinger, 2001 ISBN 0-9669226-3-8 Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century Edited by Alice Ramos, and Marie I. George, 2002 ISBN 0-9669226-5-4 Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing Edited by Douglas A. Ollivant, 2002 Introduction by George Anastaplo ISBN 0-9669-226-4-6 *Distributed by The Catholic University of America Press
	The purpose of the Conference-Seminar was not simply to present a symposium of independent papers on Maritain. Rather, it was to develop an integrated presentation of his major ideas with critical comment and projected developments through a serious discussion by Presenters, Discussants, and participants. Each Presenter undertook to provide an authentic presentation of Maritain's own thought. The Discussants tested the accuracy of the presentation, raised problems and questions, and directed the discussion toward evaluating Maritain's present and future contributions to culture. Since the purpose was to hold a true "seminar," a concentrated study, each participant was asked to reread and restudy Maritain's Degrees of Knowledge before coming to the Seminar. The Seminar was held at Saint Louis University on May 9-10, 1980, with some 125 registrants in attendance. It was cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy, the Metropolitan College and the McDonnell Professorship of Saint Louis University and the University of Notre Dame's Jacques Maritain Center.
	The spirit and animation of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain is celebrated in this collection of essays, the first in a series to be published by the American Maritain Association as a continuing project. Jacques Maritain: The Man and His Metaphysics recognizes the legacy of Maritain's vision, i.e., the engagement of the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas with the 20th century. By publication of this volume, the American Maritain Association continues to not only offer the insights of the renowned thinker but to make the Association more widely known as a fellowship that welcomes and engenders the Thomistic vocation. Articles by noted biographers comprise the first section and offer readers a glimpse of the forces that led Maritain with his wife Raissa to devote their lives to Thomism. The second part features an assessment of Maritain's study Existence and the Existent, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary of publication in 1987. The essays here are grouped thematically to correspond with the chapters of that famous work, and contemporary philosophers critically discuss their main points or creatively utilize their doctrines to address other issues. Finally, the appendix is a collection of inspiring addresses given by the Presidents of the American and Canadian Maritain societies.
	Nineteen hundred eighty-eight marked three anniversaries: the 55th year since the French publication of Freedom in the Modern World; the 30th year since the appearance of the first volume of The Idea of Freedom; and the 20th year since work was completed for the posthumous publication of Freedom of Choice. The year also marked the 50th anniversary of their authors' first joint meeting, at a symposium held at the University of Notre Dame. It is most fitting, then, that the American Maritain Association should have returned to that university to celebrate and assess their achievement, then and now. This book is the result of that gathering.
	Over fifty years ago, Jacques Maritain, one of the foremost intellectuals of the twentieth 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 of the decline of Western Culture to be based upon a distorted and disintegrated understanding of human nature. In a now-famous work, The Twilight of civilization, Maritain argued for a reformation in Western education which would incorporate principles necessary for the survival and flourishing of Western democracies. In October, 1989, members of the American Maritain Association met in San Francisco to discuss the cultural vision of Jacques Maritain as displayed in The Twilight of Civilization. The contents of From Twilight to Dawn: The Cultural Vision of Jacques Maritain edited by Peter A. Redpath express the important ideas that developed at this meeting.
	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.
	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. Here Maritain's thought on Jews and Judaism are examined from historical, philosophical, and theological perspectives. Part I provides an historical analysis of the development and consequences of Maritain's thought regarding the Jews. Spurred by the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and its virulent anti-Semitism, he became an eloquent spokesman for the rights of Jews, the mystery of Israel, and the spiritual kinship between Jews and Christians. The essays in Part II focus on Maritain's personal relationships with such figures as Leon Bloy, Charles Peguy, and Henri Bergson, among others. Here his reflections on the Dreyfus Affair, Action Francaise, and the French Resistance are highlighted, with particular attention given to his work on behalf of Jews during World War II and the Second Vatican Council. The selections included in Part III show how Maritain's thought developed and how it may be extended and applied to the Christian -Jewish dialogue of today.
	This book is "conscious of working toward greater things to come . . . ." —Michael Novak 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. Understanding how a human life should be lived first requires knowing what a human life is. This appreciation for experience over theory and induction over deduction equips a genuine natural law philosophy not only to examine individual moral life but also the relationship of that individual life to social and political authority. This latter relationship requires an investigation of the nature of the common good, an important subject for ethical inquiry since it is in the name of the common good that many injustices have been perpetrated, a fact that many natural lawyers in the past have not always foreseen. Aware of the limitations in many traditional attempts to develop a natural law morality, the contributors to Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good seek remedies and prescriptions that will commission a natural law ethics for a new age.
	The contributors to this volume 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. Enriched and invigorated by the insights of St. Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, and others, the articles offer a provocative vision of the way in which a world bearing the imprint of modernity can nevertheless avoid succumbing to the false alternative proposed by postmodernism.
	Concerned with the trendy, technocratic, and at times sophisticated 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 Maritian, 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, and 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. . The essays uphold an account of man’s intellectual and affective capacities which understands these capacities as naturally ordered to truth. The essays approach the task in different but complementary ways: in critiques of contemporary theories of education, in speculative accounts of knowledge and learning, in applications of theory to specific institutional setting, and in discussions of the political contexts governing modern education. In this rich variety of ways, the essays in The Common Things not only point the way back to the crossroads Maritain spoke of fifty years ago; they go on to indicate something of the landscape along the road not taken by contemporary education.
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	This book brings together a distinguished group of philosophers and theologians to critique several aspects of modernism. 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, Etienne Gilson, and Yves Simon. The essays address such issues in the contemporary discussion of modernism as the foundation and assumptions of Cartesianism; the defense of realism; the American political tradition, including key themes of individual rights versus the common good; pluralism, liberalism, and secularism; the problems of skepticism; and social construct theory.
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	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. In the tradition in which the contributors of this volume reflect, beauty manifests itself in the order of the universe, an order that provides human reason with a window onto the transcendent. For Aristotle and Aquinas the natural order grounds both art and morality, and yet it is this very order which has been called into question by modern science and philosophy. Instead of pointing us to a suprahuman order, the beautiful then points to the order of human freedom and creativity. Reflection on the beautiful since the modern philosopher Immanuel Kant has thus often taken a subjectivistic turn. Because of the importance of beauty and art in human existence, in man's education and life as a moral and political being, an alternative should be sought to any reduction of the beautiful to a purely subjective experience or cultural construct. The Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition, in dialogue with modern and contemporary conceptions of the beautiful, provides us with just that alternative, and thus the essays herein represent a decisive step in the "journey for Thomistic aesthetics."
	Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), sought to provide a reassessment of the liberal state, uniting Thomistic and Aristotelian traditions with the human rights thrust of modern political philosophy. Maritain's political philosophy shows a remarkable resilience and relevance to the issues of the day, offering a deeper philosophical foundation and more flexible set of tools for analysis than currently provided. 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.
	At the end of the nineteenth century some intellectuals argued that scientific progress would eventually cause the demise of religion. Is 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 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. In consonance with the thought of Pope John Paul II, it is the contention of the scholars whose essays make up this volume that a faith which imbues research and teaching will effect a transformation in themselves, in their students, and eventually in society. Hence, a faith that is fully received, thought out and lived, will penetrate culture; and there is no doubt that present-day culture stands in need of transformation. In fact, the encyclical Fides et Ratio, from which a number of the essays draw inspiration, attributes the secularization of the West in great part to the separation of faith from culture. Now in the twenty-first century, as always, human beings, a have a profound need for meaning and transcendence, a need which scholarly reflection such as that found in this volume can help to satisfy.
	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. In stark contrast to modernity's dubious and fragmented opinions and belief systems, Maritain--in works like The Degrees of Knowledge and Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry--proposed a theory of knowledge that permits real, if limited, knowledge of substances, wholes. Some contributors use these works as a springboard from which to examine aspects or applications of knowledge that Maritain left unexplored. Others challenge or question aspects of Maritain's analysis seeking to improve upon his work. Still others compare Maritain with other contemporary philosophers, most notably Etienne Gilson, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Pope John Paul II. Maritain's work on human knowledge and the implicit critique of modernity contained within provide an alternative for those seeking to engage the various deficiencies of the "culture of death." These essays demonstrate the continuing relevance--and timeliness--of Maritain's thought.
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	Man And The State Jacques Maritain “Of time-transcending value, this book is probably the most succinct and clearest statement of Thomistic political theory available to the English-language reader. Written during his exile from war-torn Europe, Man and the State is the fruit of Maritain’s considerable learning as well as his reflections on his positive American experience and on the failure of regimes he closely encountered on the Continent.” —Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America “The lectures that were the basis for Man and the State were delivered at the University of Chicago at a time when Maritain was still in the first enthusiasm of his participation in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He devotes particular attention to the concept of rights, since, historically, rights theories were fashioned to supplant the natural law theory to which Maritain as a Thomist gives his allegiance. Maritain provides an ingenious and profound theory as to how natural law and natural rights can be complementary. For this reason alone it remains a fundamental contribution to political philosophy, but it is filled with other gems as well. Was Maritain too optimistic in his appraisal of modernity? Or have we unjustly lost the optimism that was his? Man and the State is an invitation to rethink the way we pose the basic questions of political philosophy.” —Ralph McInerny, Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame
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