Jacques Maritain

False Notions of the Common Good

Human dignity can only be truly defended by embracing the primacy of the common good. Continue Reading »

23 Apr 2020

Reckoning with Modernity

In the late summer of 1977, I made my way to New Haven, Connecticut, not yet twenty-two years old and afire to study theology at Yale Divinity School. At that innocent dawn of my theological life, I was surprised to discover that not everybody at YDS shared my passion for theology. People had other . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2015

Selma and Humane Democracy

by Andrew T. Walker

Over the weekend, President Obama and other national leaders traveled to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Selma. The events of that day in particular, and of the Civil Rights movement in general, remind us of an important truth: Religion and politics do go together—a democratic version of the latter cannot be sustained without the former. Continue Reading »

10 Mar 2015

Maritain’s America

by Thomas Albert Howard

Since its founding, the United States has elicited much curiosity and commentary from European intellectuals. Oscillating between paternal interest and fraternal rivalry, Europe’s ambitious scribes have braved the Atlantic, written sprawling books, instructed us in manners and morals, and . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2007

Maritain’s True Humanism

by Richard Francis Crane

In the course of his long life, French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) adopted a series of different political positions while remaining consistent in his philosophical theology. What is one to do with an intellectual whose political engagement ranged from an early flirtation with the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 2005

The Persistence of the Catholic Moment

by Richard John Neuhaus

In 1987, while I was still a Lutheran, I published a book titled The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World. There I argued that the Catholic Church is the leading and indispensable community in advancing the Christian movement in world history. In evangelization, in . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 2003

Human Dignity, Human Rights

by Michael Novak

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 97 (November 1999): 39-42. Fifty years ago, a tangle of intellectual and diplomatic puzzles blocked the world from agreeing on a universal code of human rights. In the years 1945-1948 the world was emerging only slowly from the devastation of the war that had burned . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Nov 1999

The Achievement of Jacques Maritain

by Michael Novak

Although the twentieth century was often proclaimed by the church to be the “Age of the Laity,” it remains true that most Catholic discourse is still taken up with the words of popes, bishops, priests, and sisters. Nonetheless, as in the nineteenth century so in the twentieth, a number of lay . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 1990