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Jacques Maritain (November 18, 1882 - April 28, 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher who had one of the great minds of the 20th century. He was a convert to Catholicism and the author of more than 60 books. He is responsible for reviving St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times. Pope Paul VI, a long time friend and mentor of Maritain, presented his ?Message to Men of Thought and of Science? at the close of Vatican II to Maritain.
Maritain was born in Paris, the son of Paul Maritain who was a lawyer and his wife Geneviève Favre, the daughter of Jules Favre and was reared in a liberal Protestant milieu. He was sent to the school, Lycée Henri IV. Later, he attended the Sorbonne, studying the natural sciences; chemistry, biology and physics. Falling under the spell of his teachers, he was convinced that only science alone could solve the problems of humanity.
At the Sorbonne, he met Raïssa Oumansoff a Russian Jewish émigré. They married in l904. Furthermore, she was his intellectual partner who participated with his search for truth.
Soon, he became disenchanted with scientism at the Sorbonne for it could not address the larger existential issues of life. At the urging of Charles Peguy, Jacques and Raïssa attended the lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France. Along with his deconstructionism of scientism, Bergson liberated in them “the sense of the absolute”. Then, through and under the influence of Léon Bloy, they converted to the Roman Catholic faith in l906.
The Maritains then moved to Heidelberg in the fall of l907, where Jacques studied biology under Hans Driesch. Hans Driesch’s theory of neo-vitalism attracted Jacques because of its affinity with Henri Bergson. During this time, a fortunate accident took place. Raïssa fell ill and during her convalescence, their Aristotle. Still later to further his intellectual development, he read the neo-scholastics.
Beginning in l912, Maritain taught at the Collège Stanislas and later moved to the Institut Catholique de Paris. For the l916-1917 academic year, he taught at the Petit Séminaire de Versailles. In l933, he gave his first lectures in North America in Toronto at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. He also taught at Columbia University; at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago; at the University of Notre Dame, and at Princeton University.
From l945 to l948, he was the French ambassador to the Vatican. Afterwards, he returned to Princeton University where he achieved the “Elysian status” (as he puts it) as a professor emeritus in l956.
From l961, Maritain lived with the Aristotle, as revived and enriched by St. Thomas and his school, may rightly be called the Christian philosophy, both because the church is never weary of putting it forward as the only true philosophy and because it harmonizes perfectly with the truths of faith, nevertheless it is not proposed here for the reader's acceptance because it is Christian, but because it is demonstrably true. This agreement between a philosophic system founded by a pagan and the dogmas of revelation is no doubt an external sign, an extra-philosophic guarantee of its truth; but from its own rational evidence, that it derives its authority as a philosophy".
His papers are held by the University of Notre Dame which established The Jacques Maritain Center in 1957. The purpose of the center is to encourage study and research of Maritain?s thought and expand upon them. It is also absorbed in translating and editing his writings.
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