Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Philosophie--Rouen, 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 271-279.

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Stanislas Fumet (1896-1983) est un intellectuel catholique dont le rôle, crucial dans des domaines multiples et variés, est méconnu. Éditeur dans la prestigieuse collection du « Roseau d’Or », fondateur de la revue chrétienne Temps Présent, résistant, gaulliste, homme de radio sur France Culture : toutes ces facettes de Fumet ne l’ont pas conduit à être une figure intellectuelle engagée de premier plan. Plus que par une absence de notoriété, cette réalité s’explique largement par la fonction de service, « ancillaire » selon les termes de son filleul Pierre Manent, que Fumet a occupée auprès d’une génération intellectuelle marquée en premier lieu par la figure de Jacques Maritain. Serviteur de celle-ci, Fumet est aussi progressivement devenu au fil des années l’un de ses derniers représentants, assumant un « magistère spirituel dans le temporel » (Jean-Marie Lustiger) durant des années de mutation profonde de celui-ci. / Stanislas Fumet (1896-1983) was a Catholic intelllectual whose crucial role in many and varied domains is unrecognized. An editor of the prestigious series "Roseau d’Or", founder of the Christian journal Temps Présent, member of the Resistance, Gaullist, broadcaster for the radio station France Culture : none of these facets led to Fumet being in the foregroud of politically committed intellectuals. More than by an absence of fame, this reality can be explained by the supporting (or "ancillary" to use his godson Pierre Manent’s term) role that Fumet played to an intellectual generation marked by Jacques Maritain. Initially this generation’s servant, Fumet gradually became one of its last representatives, taking on a "spiritual magisterium in the temporal" (Jean-Marie Lustiger).

Thesis advisor: Lisa S. Cahill / This dissertation makes a case for renewed attention to the notion of collective agency and responsibility in Christian ethics. The overarching argument is that the kinds of moral claims we frequently make on social groups cannot be adequately reduced to individual or structural terms, and that a rightly construed sense of collective agency can help fill this conceptual gap. This view is in keeping with important elements of Christian reflection on the nature of social interaction and social life, and the main goal of the dissertation is the development of a model for understanding some groups as collective moral agents. After a survey of treatments of the problem of collective agency and responsibility in the Bible and Christian theology in the introduction, the dissertation turns to the work of two major figures in twentieth century Christian ethics, Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr, to provide the central elements of this view of collective agency. Namely, these figures supply contrasting but mutually correcting accounts of individual intersubjectivity, structural non-reducibility, and collective intentionality in social groups. Perspectives from the social sciences and from analytic philosophy help clarify the issues at hand and adjudicate the differences between Maritain and Niebuhr. The dissertation ends with a theological synthesis of the forgoing discussion, proposing a view of the potential for collective moral agency that takes account of the capacity for both friendship and coercion in human intersubjectivity, for both community and conflict in social organization, and for both intentional creativity and impersonal functionality in the interaction of individual and structural elements of social life. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: S.J., David Hollenbach / This dissertation explores the possible contribution of the Catholic tradition to the current debate in the field of international studies regarding the appropriate role of state sovereignty in global governance. The dissertation addresses the issue from the perspective of ideas, and is divided into three parts. First, it describes how the modern sovereign states system emerged as a result of prior revolutions in ideas about justice and political authority thereby drawing on the work of Daniel Philpott. It then examines the writings of three twentieth-century Catholic writers who treated the issue of sovereignty as part of their reflections on international affairs: Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray. Finally, the dissertation correlates the work of Sturzo, Maritain, and Murray with a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. It argues not only that there are significant similarities between Sturzo, Maritain, and Murray and cosmopolitan theory, but also that the Catholic tradition can complement cosmopolitanism in a helpful manner. Thus the dissertation suggests a way forward for the Catholic tradition with respect to the issue of state sovereignty and global governance, and it provides a challenge to the Catholic community regarding this matter. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

This study is concerned with the spiritual impetus and the lived dimension of the philosophy of the French Thomist Jacques Maritain in light of John Caputo's Heideggerian critique of Thomist metaphysics. In Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, Caputo argues that the thought of Thomas Aquinas, probably the most important and most representative figure of orthodox Catholic thinking, is a paradigmatic case of what Martin Heidegger calls 'ontotheology'. This is the dominating tendency of Western philosophy and theology to view Being not as a mystery, but metaphysically as a mere collection of things which are simply present- external to the human being and the value of which is use. For Aquinas, according to Caputo, God is the highest 'being' that creates other 'beings', and it is in virtue of this relationship that human beings, allegedly made in God's image, view the world simply as a collection of things to be manipulated. The first question constituting this study's point of departure, then, is: if Aquinas is indeed an exemplar of ontotheological thinking, is the same true of Jacques Maritain, perhaps the twentieth century's most influential follower and interpreter of Thomas Aquinas? Yet in the same work Caputo also proclaims that what has been said is not the whole truth about Aquinas, and the argument that his thought is an instance of ontotheology is in fact what Caputo sets out to respond to-for the sake of recovering an Aquinas who was not a 'cold rationalist', but a spiritually gifted contemplative, a Catholic saint. Caputo makes the case that we can, by employing a method of 'retrieval' or 'deconstruction'-inspired by Heidegger and Jacques Derrida-find that which is hidden or left 'unthought' in Aquinas but which nevertheless determines his entire philosophical and religious life. This, Caputo argues, is a pre-metaphysical, mystical tendency directed towards the mystery of being, which overcomes metaphysics and escapes ontotheology. Here I apply this Heideggerian critique and retrieval to Maritain, and I argue that while there is in Maritain the same 'ontotheological' tendency to view reality as a collection of things and God as paradigmatic maker of things-the prima causa so richly expressed in Thomistic doctrines of the 'transcendentals' and participative being-there is in him a deep pre-metaphysical, mystical tendency which is, in fact, far more explicit than in Aquinas. In the first part of the study, I compare the philosophical doctrines and projects of Maritain and his first teacher and guide, Henri Bergson, and then of Heidegger in relation to Maritain. I also give a sketch of Maritain's religious and intellectual development, identifying the key religious and artistic figures involved: the novelist Léon Bloy and the painter Georges Rouault. In light of the philosophical analyses and what can be gleaned from Maritain's biographical notes, his correspondence, and the biographical insights provided by those close to him, I argue that we can see in Maritain the same concern for the question of the meaning of being in relation to human life that we find in Heidegger, and that, like Heidegger, this concern underlies his philosophical thought and serves as the impetus for something beyond philosophy. I show that from his Bergsonian beginnings to his later days as a Little Brother of Jesus, Maritain has a profound sense of the pre-conceptual and intuitive kinds of knowledge that we find in existentialist thinkers such as Heidegger, and also artists and mystics. I posit that while Maritain claims what he calls the 'intuition of being' is the most primordial experience human beings can have of ultimate reality, there is, in fact, an experience, or aspiration to have such an experience, which is even more basic, with greater implications for overcoming metaphysics and ontotheology: mystical communion with ultimate reality. The aspiration for such communion is, I claim, the 'unthought' in Maritain that must be sought out for the purpose of retrieving a Maritain who goes beyond metaphysics. Mapping out the main branches of Maritain's thinking about being in terms of the classical doctrine of the 'transcendentals' and corresponding instances of connatural knowledge, the second part of the study is devoted to finding where, in Maritain's thought, a retrieval might be possible. Examining Maritain's conceptions of the connatural experience-knowledge of the moral good and mystical experience, I conclude that we cannot discover any overcoming of metaphysics and ontotheology in either when they are taken on their own terms. For underlying both conceptions, I claim, is Maritain's 'master concept' of the 'act of existence', or esse, the metaphysical principle which makes it possible for the human being to take hold of their own existence and participate in the moral and divine life. The distinction between esse and the essence of beings (essentia) and a stress on the former, as Caputo argues with regard to Aquinas, in fact only supports Heidegger's thesis on the ontotheological character of Thomist thought. For a stress on esse, the principle by which God creates and sustains things in existence is only the outcome of a preoccupation with conceiving God primarily as the 'maker' of things. And what of esse when it comes to mystical experience? Mystical experience, Maritain says, is that of which metaphysical wisdom 'awakens a desire' even while it is unable to attain it, such that the testimony of it, such as that provided by St. John of the Cross, 'no philosophical commentary will ever efface'. Yet here, too, esse only serves to make an unbridgeable ontological and cognitive divide between God as viewed in terms of His causal transcendence and as an intentional object of consciousness, as presence- something or someone external to oneself. This is so even as one is, in virtue of the connatural experience-knowledge of love, united with Him in 'one spirit', as Maritain says, following St. John of the Cross. Given this, I seek a retrieval of Maritain elsewhere, in the richest and most original areas of his thought: the connatural experience-knowledge of the artist and the relationship between the artist and the mystic. For Maritain, true artists and mystics are not concerned with reducing reality to manageable chunks but with expressing the mystery of reality, and, as I demonstrate in the final two chapters, it is when the vocations of the Catholic artist and the Catholic mystic converge in Maritain's reflections-in the cases of Léon Bloy, St. John of the Cross, and Maritain's wife Raïssa-that we are able to retrieve a Maritain that, while very much remaining a Catholic philosopher, is also a mystic. I claim that it is when his thought is situated in its wider existential and religious context that Maritain as both thinker and contemplative escapes the charge of ontotheology because there exists in him a primordial and utterly determining mystical aspiration to experience a communion in love with ultimate reality, best expressed in terms of poetic and mystical language, rather than the metaphysical language of Thomist philosophy. Essential in demonstrating this are events in Maritain's life as well as people-artists and mystics-who reveal the mystery of Being to him. Toward the end of the study, I claim that this immanent mysticism in Maritain-which, unlike that of Caputo's retrieved Aquinas-balances apophatic and cataphatic elements and, as such, is complex and profound enough to render the categories of contemporary debate on the nature of mysticism and mystical experience in need of revision.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / According to Catholic social doctrine, there are two principles which serve as foundational pillars of social thought and action: the dignity of human being and the primacy of the common good. Each human person has unique and endless worth in the eye of God, since “God created each human person in His image, in the image of God he created humankind, male and female. He created them” (Genesis, 1: 27). God creates all things and wanted them to participate in His glory and happiness (well-being). Thus, by their nature, all human beings want to be happy. To reach happiness is “something final and self-sufficient and the end of our actions” (NE 1097b20), but we should not forget that by nature man is a part of the greater order. How can one defend both the dignity of the human person and the primacy of the common good? To defend the dignity of human person the first question must be answered what is meant a human person, since the ways in which we understand ourselves as persons have direct effects on the ways in which we organize ourselves collectively in the political communities. To answer what is a human person we will understand how Maritain makes the distinction between individual and person, and what it is that constitutes a human person. It leads to understand the whole human being, soul and body, is a person. Man is as a part of the greater order. According to Aristotle and followed by Aquinas, every creature is only a part of the whole perfection of the universe, just as one instrument in an orchestra is a part of the whole perfection of the harmony. “Society is a whole composed of persons is to say that society is a whole composed of wholes” (Evans and Ward, The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, p. 85). Because the relationship between the common good and the dignity of the human person is the relationship of our dignity of finality and our dignity of nature. We distinguish between the human acts and the acts of human being in order to understand the notion of Aquinas’s the human act. Then, we will understand why Maritain defends natural law as an antidote for a secular society and present crisis of pluralist society. According to Maritain, the deepest result of the crisis from the modern to the present time is man’s natural community in the natural law and his innate ordination to the transcendent as the source of ultimate value have been casted into doubt. Thus, the only appropriate way to reconcile the common good and my good is to turn God into my private good as a kind of a good infinitely shareable, as if there were commensurability between my finite and infinite goodness. To make this reconciliation into the present age, “you must love your neighbor as, like yourselves,” ordered to a common good. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

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