Maritain, Jacques

Maritain, Jacques (1882–1973). French neo-Thomist philosopher. After he and his wife Raïssa became Roman Catholics in 1906, he devoted most of his life to studying and writing about the works of St Thomas Aquinas and their application to life, society, art, and politics. His achievements include his elucidation of the different forms of knowledge (The Degrees of Knowledge, 1932; Eng. 1937), outlining a new form of Christian humanism (True Humanism, 1936; Eng. 1938) and developing a philosophy of art (Art and Scholasticism, 1920; Eng. 1923). He also helped to foster interest in Christian democracy. Shortly before he died, he exemplified that simplicity which he believed to be at the heart of a good life by becoming a Little Brother (see DE FOUCAULD) in Toulouse.

Maritain argued that confusion has arisen because ‘knowledge’ and ‘empirical knowledge’ have been regarded as synonyms: empirical knowledge is one way of knowing amongst many others (including perhaps mysticism); consequently, there is a hierarchy of ways of knowing, each of which arises from, and opens up, a different perspective on what is real. Human beings, as ensouled essences, depend constantly on the creative work of God for their existence, with the ‘gap’ between humans and God to be closed by grace: ‘Grace, while leaving us infinitely distant from pure Act [i.e. God] in the order of being, is still, in the order of spiritual operation and relation to its object, a formal participation in the Divine Nature.’ This is ‘knowledge by connaturality’, and can only be attained by the very act of knowing in this mode.