L’historien de la philosophie Frédéric Worms distingue plusieurs « moments » dans la philosophie en France au XXe siècle. Le « moment de l’existence » en fait partie. Nous l’approfondissons en retraçant le débat philosophique entre Jacques Maritain et Jean-Paul Sartre au sujet de la nature humaine. Les deux philosophes sont les représentants majeurs de l’humanisme intégral et de l’existentialisme athée. Nos recherches élargissent ce débat en fournissant le contexte philosophique plus large avec la prise en compte du règne de la technique, de l’essor de la phénoménologie et de la menace totalitaire. Au fond du « moment de l’existence » nous retrouvons une interrogation existentielle sur la nature humaine face à sa relativisation technique, philosophique et politique. Nous plaçons la philosophie de Jacques Maritain au centre de nos recherches. Pour nous, on ne saurait pas approfondir le « moment de l’existence » sans l’examen de la contribution philosophique majeure de ce penseur chrétien. Ainsi, nos recherches remplissent un vide dans l’histoire de la philosophie du XXe siècle. / The French historian of philosophy Frédéric Worms distinguishes several “moments” in the French philosophy of the 20th century. The “moment de l’existence” is one of them. We try to give a deeper account of this moment through the representation of the philosophical debate between Jacques Maritain and Jean-Paul Sartre about human nature. The two philosophers are the major exponents of integral humanism and atheistic existentialism. Our research widens the debate introducing further elements of the philosophical context like the appreciation of the reign of the technology, the ascent of phenomenology and the totalitarian threat. At the deepest of the “moment de l’existence” we find an existential quest for human nature in spite of its technological, philosophical and political relativisation. We place the philosophy of Jacques Maritain in the centre of our research. In our opinion it seems quite impossible to gain a deeper understanding of the “moment de l’existence” without a look at the major philosophical contribution of this Christian thinker. Thus, our research fills a gap in the history of 20th century philosophy.

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.

In Jacques Maritain's text The Education of Man (1962) a Christian perspective affirming the individual's free will is presented. This study examines the validity of Maritain's argument and speculates upon some consequences for public schooling. The conclusions of the study are as follows: First. Maritain's exposition of the existence of absolute free will is unconvincing as it is not successfully reconciled with his religious world view. Second. if Maritain's views may be assumed to complement the religous educational and institutional objectives of Alberta's Catholic schools, the potential for conflict between these views and the 'secular' (i.e. the common goals, contents and processes of all public and separte schools) objectives of Catholic schools exists. / vi, 81 leaves ; 28 cm.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Bibliographic references (p. 269-282)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The problem of this dissertation is two-fold: (1) A study of the ethical theories of Jacques Maritain, Walter Terence Stace, and Paul Ramsey, and (2) an attempt to classify moral theories in the light of three basic types of relation between man, moral standards, and reality. The analysis, comparison, and critical study of the three representative moral theorists are correlated with a view to illustrating the kinds of issues involved in the reduction of the moral standards to three foci, as a novel and useful classification. Hence, the field of moral theory has been divided into three foci designated as Imposed Ethics, represented by Maritain, Immanent Ethics, represented by Stace, and Imparted Ethics, represented by Ramsey. It is believed that when properly defined most, if not all, ethical ideals will fall within one of these three classifications or a combination of them. [TRUNCATED]

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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Most research into Bergson's influence to date has failed to take enough account of the philosopher's interest in the spiritual of meta-physical dimension of life. In seeking to interpret Bergson's thought many have focused upon 'la durée réelle' or 'l'élan vital' as the key concepts in his whole philosophy. If, instead, one were to begin with Bergson's main continuing preoccupation at first inchoate and only later more fully developed with spiritual activity in life, then the whole philosophy hangs together as a tapestry of one harmonious piece. Not only can it be clearly seen why Bergson opposes Kant and the positivists so vehemently, but it can also be understood why he eventually set his sights upon The two sources of morality and religion. In the eyes of many critics this work, far from completing a natural progression of thought, stands outside the main body of work as something ill-fitting and almost cavalier. This thesis attempts to redress the balance by demonstrating how the spiritual and religious interpretation of life is central to Bergson's thought. Having established this, I have assumed it likely that a lively Catholic interest in Bergson is something quite logical and natural. This proved to be the case. After all, the Catholics in France stood to gain or lose most by the introduction in intellectural circles of a new philosophical 'spiritualism'. They would obviously themselves have a vested interest in the discrediting of materialist and positivist philosophies. However, scholars have not seen the connection between Bergson and Christian thought very clearly and no detailed research into this particular field has been undertaken. I have consequently attempted to review both the general field of Catholic reactions in a largely chronological way and also the detailed ways in which Bergson's thought had on impact upon Catholic writers. My main conclusion from this research is that Bergson's work lent itself to adaptation and alteration to something more orthodox in Catholic terms. However it was some time before it was viewed in a favourable enough light for anything like this to be attempted. Much prejudice and misinterpretation surrounded Bergson for some years. Eventually, however, his theories made deep inroads into the mainstream of Catholic thought. His theories of perception and intuition, of movement and change, of static and dynamic religion, helped bring about a significant change in the development of twentieth century religious thought.