Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain (born November 18, 1882 in Paris , † April 28, 1973 in Toulouse ) was a French philosopher, a student of Henri Bergson and a leading exponent of Catholic philosophy in the 20th century.

overview

During his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris , Jacques Maritain came into contact with the ideas of Thomas Aquinas , which are the focus of his numerous publications. Under the influence of Léon Bloy , Maritain, who grew up in a Protestant milieu, joined the Catholic Church with his wife Raïssa in 1906 .

In the 1930s he held various guest lectures in the United States . When the Second World War broke out , he decided to stay in North America . He has taught in Toronto , Canada , Princeton University in Princeton , New Jersey , and Columbia University in New York City . After the Second World War he was the French ambassador to the Vatican and participated in the text of the UN Charter of Human Rights . From 1948 to 1960 he taught as a professor emeritus at Princeton University and then returned to France. After the death of his wife Raḯssa at the end of 1960, the widower lived until his death as a member of the French religious order Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles des Foucauld .

The great recognition gained Maritain in the US, is documented in the at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend , Indiana , US existing Jacques Maritain Center . In 1955 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

The Christian thinking of Maritain is believed to have had a great influence on the Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century, since his Integral Humanism (book title from 1935) prepared the dialogue with modernity, which Vatican II made the task of the Church .

Maritain in detail

“Pre-Homistic” phase

Training and beginning

Maritain was born on November 18, 1882 in Paris. As a young man he dealt with socialist ideas and stood on his side against unjustified attacks during the affair of the Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus . In 1901, while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, he met his fellow student Raïssa Oumansoff, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants - both of whom had a lifelong romantic, intellectual and spiritual collaboration. In his vorthomistic phase (1882–1910), Maritain turned away from the liberal-relativistic Protestantism of his family , since he was looking for absolute truth that would give meaning to life and settled in 1906 with Raïssa (1883–1960) - now his wife - and with Léon Marie Admit Bloy to the Catholic Church as a godfather. At first frustrated by the positivist and anti-metaphysical currents at the Sorbonne, where he studied philosophy and natural sciences from 1900 to 1906 , he found a fundamental approach to the absolute in the philosophy of H. Bergson. Because he saw his approach as anti-intellectual, a scholarship in biology was very beneficial to him, which from 1906–1908 in Heidelberg with Hans Driesch gave him the opportunity to let philosophy rest for the time being. This changed suddenly when Maritain began studying the Summa Theologiae in autumn 1910 .

Criticism of Bergson and first works

With the zeal of a neophyte , Maritain aggressively demonstrated the contradictions in Bergson's thinking in 1914 with his first book (“La Philosophie bergsonienne”) by contrasting it with Thomistic philosophy. From then on Maritain tried on the one hand to understand the basic concepts of St. Thomas and classical metaphysics to make fruitful in various areas, so u. a. in the history of philosophy ( “Antimoderne” 1922; “Trois Réformateurs” 1925), in aesthetics ( “Art et Scolastique” 1920; “Frontières de la poésie” 1926), in questions of spirituality ( “De la vie d'oraison” 1925 ; "Primauté du spirituel" 1927). At the same time, Maritain was in intensive exchange with writers, artists and thinkers of various stripes (many correspondence, including with Julien Green 1926–1972, “Réponse à Jean Cocteau” 1926). Maritain's intellectual interest, reinforced by his professorship for the history of modern philosophy from 1914 at the Institut Catholique , initially made him completely absorbed in the universe of ideas. In the judgment of his wife Raïssa, this brought a certain alienation to the world, as his fellow human beings only interested him as “carriers of abstract theories”. During this phase, Maritain was mainly concerned with epistemological problems.

Thomism and Humanism

In Thomism he found not only “a realistic philosophy of the concept”, but also a metaphysics which he vehemently used against modernism and liberalism . His sympathy with the Action Française , forced by his confessor Humbert Clérissac OP , and his statements against “democracy” and the “egalitarian utopia” meant that he was not only counted on the extreme right, but also as a “spokesman for church teaching " saw. That changed significantly after Pius XI banned the restorative-royalist Action Française . 1926. While Maritain defended Rome's position (“ Le sens de la condamnation ” 1927; “ Clairvoyance de Rome ” 1929), he increasingly distanced himself from conservative philosophical and ecclesiastical circles. “ Les Degrés du savoir ” (1932) is regarded as the main epistemological work and at the same time the final stroke of its conceptual phase . In it, Maritain showed how the various types of knowledge from natural science, mathematics, metaphysics and mysticism build on and complement one another.

Commitment to democracy and humanism

It is not only in Maritain's works from 1933 that it can be seen that his third creative phase was under the primacy of freedom. From a philosophical point of view , Maritain first turned his attention to ontology , ie he intensively examined the order of existence that he had neglected until then (“ Sept leçons sur l'être ” 1934; “ De Bergson à Thomas d'Aquin ” 1944). In addition, he personally sought a more independent position in relation to the Catholic hierarchy “as a Christian and less as an apologetic philosopher”. In doing so, he did not hesitate to stand up for the politically left spectrum. He supported the development of the liberal Catholic magazine "Sept" and, as a freelancer, the left-wing weekly newspaper "Vendredi", which was created in 1935 and boasted of uniting the most famous figures on the left.

In addition, he consistently turned to practical philosophy and dealt with questions of ethics (" Science et Sagesse " 1935; " Saint Thomas et leprobleme du mal " 1942) as well as the fundamentals of politics. His studies now shaped a clear commitment to democracy and already culminated in 1936 in “ Humanisme intégral ”, the great work of his second phase. In it, Maritain presented a social order whose basic humanistic values ​​correspond to the spirit of the Gospel, but at the same time managed without any denominational ties between parties. Further works to protect democratic freedom and to avoid dictatorships followed (“ Les Droits de l'homme et la loi naturelle ” 1942; “ Christianisme et démocratie ” 1943; “ Principes d'une politique humaniste ” 1944), not least around to define the rights of the person in a generally binding manner based on natural law and to be able to protect their inviolable dignity through a theocentric humanism.

Since the mid-twenties Maritain has been invited to lectures across Europe, in 1933 to the first guest lectures in Toronto and Chicago . After his work as a visiting professor in the USA steadily increased, he moved (not least because of the chaos of war) to New York in 1940, from where he supported the fight against the Nazi regime with more than one hundred articles and radio addresses .

Personalism

Maritain's last creative phase (1947–1973), ignored by many Maritain critics, was characterized by the development of a coherent personalism. Although Maritain had taken over the post of ambassador to the Holy See in Rome at the insistence of Charles de Gaulle in 1945–1948 , he used every free minute to explore the various forms of knowledge of his previous phase - which, in Maritain's opinion, constituted the intuition of being or existence for the philosopher (" Sept leçons sur l'être " 1934), knowledge through natural mysticism (" Quatre essais sur l'esprit " 1939) and insight into the moral order prior to moral decisions (" De Bergson à Thomas d'Aquin " 1944) - to develop further and to bring them together in a comprehensive system. In addition, he also supported initiatives for understanding between Christians and Jews in the conference of Seelisberg and in the Friborg conference .

So far, only forms of knowledge seemed useful to him (although he knew about others) that belong to the essence level and can be assigned to the various degrees of abstraction as conceptual knowledge. By now distinguishing between different kinds of connatural insights in human knowledge, he was also able to integrate into his epistemology the forms of knowledge that take place on the plane of existence. Maritain thus achieved a metaphysical foundation of the person (“ Court traité ” 1947; “ Raison et raisons ” 1947), which was no longer just a suppositum , a carrier of intellect and will . By defining subsistence no longer as a passive status of independence, but as an active and autonomous exercise of the act of existence, Maritain was able to describe the person as a new subsisting dimension, who knows about himself ( self-inwardness ) and has himself at his disposal ( self-affinity ). For a spiritually gifted subject, Selbstand means that it is not exhausted in mental operations, but rather resembles a never-ending source that flows out in acts of knowledge and love. That is why Maritain coined the term “ spiritual over-existence ” to describe the center of the person, which is ultimately geared towards inexhaustible interpersonal exchange. In this context it should be discussed how Maritain's relationship to French existentialism is. He dealt intensively with Sartre and his atheism ( La signification de l'athéisme contemporain , 1949), but also with Kierkegaard and Heidegger , but declared their contributions to Thomas as wrong.

Participation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

After 1945 he was given an important task: he was to take over the leadership of the delegation that represented France at the UNESCO meetings in Mexico City , where a draft for a globally applicable catalog of human rights had to be drawn up . In the discussions, Maritain was able to fall back on his philosophically founded catalog of 26 human rights (" Les Droits de l'homme et la loi naturelle ", 1942) and thus present a precise and comprehensive definition of the actual personal rights. His influence on the deliberations in Mexico was ultimately expressed in the fact that 22 of the 26 rights he proposed were found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which the United Nations adopted on December 10, 1948. As early as the spring of 1948, Maritain asked to be released from the diplomatic service and returned from Rome to the USA, his adopted home.

Late work

At Princeton, he accepted the chair of moral philosophy set up especially for him as professor emeritus and continued to work on aspects of existentialism and personalism. This initially included explanations on the concept of freedom, the intuitive insight into moral norms and the growth of being resulting from moral action (" La loi naturelle " 1950; " Neuf leçons sur la philosophie morale " 1951; " Approches de Dieu " 1953).

With these foundations he was able to present a dynamic model of the soul in his main work of this phase in 1953, L'Intuition créatrice dans l'art et dans la poésie , based on a detailed examination of what happens in the artist from the triggering inspiration to the finished work of art. In it he integrated all aspects of connatural knowledge, inner-psychological processes, creative-personal independence and ontological power of being.

Later, Maritain also went on to the theological investigation of the person of Jesus and his two natures ( De la grâce et de l'humanité de Jésus , 1967). The Princeton chair gave Maritain enough space for international lectures, v. a. in the emerging countries of Latin America, for congresses as well as for a number of other very different publications ( Pour une philosophie de l'éducation , 1953; Le Péché de l'Ange , 1956; Pour une philosophie de l'histoire , 1957; Liturgie et contemplation , 1959; La Philosophie morale , 1960). With the death of his sister-in-law Véra (1959), who had looked after the household since 1907, as well as the death of his wife (1960), Maritain got into a serious crisis. He settled in Toulouse in March 1961, where he found a new spiritual home with the Petits Frères de Jésus founded by Charles de Foucauld until his death and actually only wanted to prepare for death undisturbed.

Contrary to expectations, he began to publish again. His wife's personal notes ( Journal de Raïssa , 1962) were followed by his own memoirs ( Carnet de notes , 1964). In the following years he supplemented many of his works and thoughts with a wealth of other articles and lectures ( Approches sans entraves , 1973 posthumously). He also presented a summary of his thoughts by contrasting them critically with changes in culture, church and politics ( Le Paysan de la Garonne , 1966). Against this background, Maritain's last creative phase can hardly be described as a relapse into the right-wing camp, but rather as an independent striving for a coherent personalistic approach. He earned official recognition for this and a. by founding the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame University in Indiana (USA) in 1958, the Cercle d'études Jacques et Raïssa Maritain in Kolbsheim (France) in 1962, the Institut International Jacques Maritain in Rome in 1964 and the award of the “Grand Prix ​​de Littérature ”in June 1961 and the“ Grand Prix National des Lettres ”1963 by the Académie Française .

On December 8, 1965, at the end of Vatican II, he and Jean Guitton took from his long-time friend Pope Paul VI. , with whom he had met almost weekly during his time as Vatican ambassador in Rome, received the message to the world of the humanities . His work had a great influence on the basic attitudes of the Council Pope. Maritain also provided a draft for the Credo of the People of God from 1968, which his longtime friend Charles Journet sent to the Pope unchanged - without prior agreement. In the draft he found the appropriate expression of the sensus fidelium (the believers' sense of faith) and largely based the draft on the binding creed. After Maritain's official entry into the Novitiate of the Little Brothers on October 1, 1970, Perpetual Profession followed just one year later , in whose community the “Pilgrim of the Absolute” he died in 1973.

Maritains "living Thomism"

Maritain represented a “living Thomism”, which “sympathizes with the intellectual efforts of the modern age without bias and like St. Thomas thinks about current problems ”. For him, Thomism was "still as active today as it was in the Middle Ages, eager to conquer and the only one able - provided that the integrity of its principles is preserved - to respond to current difficulties". That is why Maritain's much-quoted “ Woe to me if I don't drive Thomas! “Maritain presented his understanding of Thomism in detail in“ Le Docteur angélique ”(1930, 22-25), where he theses a. a. indicates that there is "a Thomistic philosophy but no Neothomism ". For Thomism “claims to use reason to distinguish between right and wrong. He does not want to destroy modern thinking, but purify it and integrate everything that has been discovered to be true since Thomas. ”In this way,“ Thomism is wisdom ”, because its principles and structure“ are based solely on experience and reason ”. . Thus he is "independent of the basic conditions of faith", but open to its suggestions. A few years earlier he wrote that Thomism “is not the philosophy of an individual or a system among others, but rather the constantly evolving philosophy of humanity. As a philosophy of being, it trusts reason with more boldness than any other philosophy, but is in dialogue with them and takes up their contributions. "

With this view, Maritain differentiated itself from many (neo) Thomists who were more interested in an inward systematization of Thomism. According to their understanding, the Philosophia perennis corresponded to a closed system, since this was the only way to guarantee timeless validity against the changes in modernity and its principle of historicity, which seemed to relativize everything. Maritain's creative approach was somewhat in contrast to this, since it assumed the texts of Thomas, but not in the sense of the research that a philosophy historian does. Rather, current issues and problems should be viewed in the light of the thought and principles of Aquinas. This is “the apostle of modernity; our task, however, is to use the valuable tools of wisdom, the means of thinking with which he has equipped us for the new materials and problems. ”- Maritain's understanding of Thomism is consistently characterized by great creativity, so that Étienne Gilson , despite its different Thomas interpretation, speaks of “gifted charismatic insights”. "There was probably no question, no matter where it was asked, that Maritain did not understand and to which he gave no answer."

With this, Gilson refers to the phenomenon that Maritain's writings dealt with almost all areas of the humanities: In addition to the various disciplines of philosophy such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, the history of philosophy, anthropology and ethics, he dealt with, among other things. a. with questions of art, politics, education, spirituality, theology. If a Thomist in the 20th century succeeded in bringing Thomism and its principles into discussion beyond philosophically interested circles, then it is understandable that Pope John Paul II decided to join Maritain “alongside the masters of ancient philosophy put". Because Maritain has successfully resisted typical neo-scholastic cataloging efforts and answered or advanced many open questions of Thomism in creative independence. So u. a. an epistemology based on connatural insights; an ontology that takes both the order of essence and the order of existence into account; an analogous concept of the person based on the categories of freedom and love; A dynamic model of the soul that not only takes on the knowledge of modern psychology, but also integrates the requirements and consequences of ethical action in a modern anthropology.

His coherent personalism enabled the late Maritain to see the modern principle of historicity not as a factor in the relativization of timeless truths, but as an expression of human freedom and responsibility. Man is created for knowledge and action in freedom and love and can contribute to the humanization of the world as well as to its deification with the help of grace - entirely in the sense of an integral humanism. This interaction with the world and its creatures influences the course of history on the one hand, but it must also be measured against timeless principles that decide whether the interplay of freedoms that forms the basis of history is an increasing or decreasing humanization of man and its world (growth or reduction of being). Gilson's verdict: "Maritain is the only Thomist of our day whose thinking has proven to be high-ranking, bold, creative and able to deal with the most pressing problems."

At the moment (2020) there is no Text Maritains in German in the book trade, despite his praise by Joseph Ratzinger . Even Pope Francis praised him in 2016 again as a deep thinker with French Guitton , Blondel and non-Catholics Levinas . Maritain largely identified the Christian heritage with the values ​​of democracy: "... then one would hardly expect that the democratic conviction can endure in a non-Christian environment." It is not only this position that makes his reception difficult today. Heinz Hürten's review of the influence on political thinking in Germany highlights his negative assessment of the Catholic (Center Party) or Christian political parties (CDU), which did not go down well in the 1950s. The very powerful personalism in the triad with subsidiarity and solidarity in Germany was more likely to be justified with Max Scheler and Romano Guardini , also with Martin Buber . The term can be traced back to Emmanuel Mounier . Maritain's contributions to the declaration of human rights remained largely unknown in Germany, as the social rights declared in 1948 were suspected by many to have been too great a concession to the left. Even Maritain himself in no way identified with the declaration of 1948, since the word God does not appear in it. In their place he wanted to have an ultimately Christian moral charter .

Works

In the original

• La philosophie bergsonienne , 1914 (1948)
• Eléments de philosophie , 2 vols, Paris 1920/23
• Art et scolastique , 1920
• Théonas ou les entretiens d'un sage et de deux philosophes sur diverses matières inégalement actuelles , Paris, Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1921
• Antimoderne , Paris, Édition de la Revue des Jeunes, 1922
• Réflexions sur l'intelligence et sur sa vie propre , Paris, Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1924.
• Trois réformateurs: Luther , Descartes , Rousseau , avec six portraits , Paris [Plon], 1925
• Réponse to Jean Cocteau , 1926
• Une opinion on Charles Maurras et le devoir des catholiques , Paris [Plon], 1926
• Primauté du spirituel , 1927
• Pourquoi Rome a parlé (coll.), Paris, Spes, 1927
• Quelques pages sur Léon Bloy , Paris 1927
• Clairvoyance de Rome (coll.), Paris, Spes, 1929
• Le docteur angélique , Paris, Paul Hartmann, 1929
• Religion et culture , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1930 (1946; 1968 again with Du régime (1933))
• Le thomisme et la civilization , 1932
• Distinguer pour unir ou Les degrés du savoir , Paris 1932
• Le songe de Descartes, Suivi de quelques essais , Paris 1932
• De la philosophie chrétienne , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1933
• Du régime temporel et de la liberté , Paris, DDB, 1933
• Sept leçons sur l'être et les premiers principes de la raison speculative , Paris 1934
• Frontières de la poésie et autres essais , Paris 1935
• La philosophie de la nature, Essai critique sur ses frontières et son objet , Paris 1935 (1948)
• Lettre sur l'indépendance , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1935.
• Science et sagesse , Paris 1935
• Humanism intégral. Problèmes temporels et spirituels d'une nouvelle chrétienté ; initially Spanish (1935), Paris (Fernand Aubier), 1936 (1947)
• Les Juifs parmi les nations , Paris, Cerf, 1938
• Questions de conscience: essais et allocutions , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1938
• La personne humaine et la societé , Paris 1939
• Le crépuscule de la civilization , Paris, Éd. Les Nouvelles Lettres, 1939
• Quattre essais sur l'ésprit dans sa crudition charnelle , Paris 1939 (1956)
• De la justice politique, Notes sur le présente guerre , Paris 1940
• Scholasticism and politics , New York 1940
• A travers le désastre , New York 1941 (1946)
• Conféssion de foi , New York 1941
• Ransoming the time (Redeeming the time), New York 1941
• La pensée de St.Paul , New York 1941 (Paris 1947)
• Les Droits de l'Homme et la Loi naturelle , New York 1942 (Paris 1947)
• Saint Thomas and the problem of evil , Milwaukee 1942;
• Essays in Thomism , New York 1942;
• Christianisme et démocratie , New York 1943 (Paris 1945)
• Education at the crossroad , New Haven 1943
• Principes d'une politique humaniste , New York 1944 (Paris 1945);
• De Bergson à Thomas d'Aquin, Essais de Métaphysique et de Morale , New York 1944 (Paris 1947)
• A travers la victoire , Paris 1945;
• Messages 1941-1944 , New York 1945;
• Pour la justice , Articles et discours 1940-1945, New York 1945;
• Le sort de l'homme , Neuchâtel 1945;
• Court traité de l'existence et de l'existent , Paris 1947;
• La personne et le bien commun , Paris 1947;
• Raison et raisons, Essais détachés , Paris 1948
• La signification de l'athéisme contemporain , Paris 1949
• Man and state , Chicago 1951
• Neuf leçons sur les notions premières de la philosophie morale , Paris 1951
• Approches de Dieu , Paris 1953.
• L'Homme et l'Etat (English: Man and State, 1951) Paris, PUF, 1953
• Creative intuition in Art and Poetry , 1953
• On the philosophy of history , ed. JW Evans, New York 1957
• Truth and human fellowship , Princeton 1957
• Reflections on America , New York 1958
• Pour une philosophie de l'éducation , Paris 1959
• Le philosophe dans la Cité , Paris 1960
• The responsibility of the artist , New York 1960;
• La philosophie morale , Vol. I: Examen historique et critique des grands systèmes, Paris 1960
• Man's approach to God , Latrobe / Pennsylvania 1960
• On the use of philosophy , Princeton 1961
• A preface to metaphysics , New York 1962
• Dieu et la permission du mal , 1963
• Carnet de notes , Paris, DDB, 1965
• L'intuition créatrice dans l'art et dans la poésie , Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1966 (1953)
• Le paysan de la Garonne. Un vieux laïc s'interroge à propos du temps présent , Paris, DDB, 1966
• Challenges and renewals , ed. JW Evans / LR Ward, Notre Dame / Ind. 1966
• The education of man, The educational philosophy of JM , ed. D./I. Gallagher, Notre Dame / Ind. 1967
• De la grâce et de l'humanité de Jésus , 1967
• De l'Église du Christ. La personne de l'église et son personnel , Paris 1970
• Approches sans entraves , posthumously 1973.
• Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raissa Maritain , 17 vols., 1982-2008.

German

• Antimodern. Reason in modern philosophy and in the Aristotelian-Thomistic order of knowledge, Augsburg 1930 (orig. 1922)
• Thomism and man in time, (orig. :) Cologne 1931
• From Christian Philosophy, Salzburg-Leipzig 1935 (orig. 1933)
• Religion and Culture, Freiburg 1936 (orig. 1930)
• Social order and freedom, Lucerne 1936 (orig. 1933)
• From Bergson to Thomas Aquinas, Cambridge / Mass. 1945 (orig. 1944)
• The stages of knowledge or through discernment to unification. Mainz 1954 (orig. 1932)
• Christianity and Democracy, Augsburg 1949
• Christian humanism. Political and spiritual questions of a new Christianity, Heidelberg 1949/1950 (orig. 1936).
• Upbringing at the crossroads, Berlin 1951 (orig. 1942)
• Human rights and the natural law. Bonn (Auer) 1951 (orig. 1942)
• Ways to knowledge of God. Colmar 1955 (orig. 1953)
• America, Land of Hope, Mainz 1959 (orig. 1958)
• Truth and Tolerance, Heidelberg 1960 (orig. 1957)
• Contributions to a philosophy of education. Paderborn 1966 (orig. 1942/1959; German 1951)
• The Farmer from the Garonne. An old layman worries. Munich (Kösel) 1969 (orig. 1966).

literature

• Peter Ehlen; Gerd Haeffner; Friedo Ricken: Philosophy of the 20th Century. - 3rd edition - Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2010, pp. 131-133
• Hans L. Bauer: Creative Knowledge , The Aesthetics of Jacques Maritains. Munich 1969 (Diss. 1968)
• Oscar de Castro Sarria: The Political Teaching of Jacques Maritain and the Problems of a Christian Politics . Munich, dissertation 1971
• Heinz Hürten : Jacques Maritain's influence on political thinking in Germany , Yearbook for Christian Social Sciences 26 (1985) 25-39.
• Fernando Inciarte : Jacques Maritain in the political-philosophical and political-theological context of Germany , Giornale di Metafisica 4 (1982) 475-485.
• Tobias Licht, Benedikt Ritzler (Ed.): Jacques Maritain , Philosophy and Politics from Catholic Faith. Karlsruhe 2002 ISBN 3-7650-8289-9 .
• Peter Nickl: Jacques Maritain , An Introduction to Life and Work. Paderborn 1992 ISBN 3-506-76819-0
• A. Reichel: Jacques Maritain , attempt on the structure of his worldview. Delft 1954
• Josef Reiter : Intuition and Transcendence , The ontological structure of the doctrine of God in Jacques Maritain. Munich 1967 (Diss. 1965)
• H. Riefstahl: Jacques Maritain , On the 5th anniversary of his death, Journal for Philosophical Research 32, 1978, p. 103 ff.
• Benedikt Ritzler: Article Maritain, Jacques , in: Berger, David and Vijgen, Jörgen (Ed.): Thomistenlexikon , Verlag nova & vetera. Bonn 2006, columns 426 ff. ISBN 3-936741-37-9 .
• Benedikt Ritzler: Freedom in the embrace of the eternal lover , The historical development of the understanding of the person in Jacques Maritain. Bern 2000 (Diss. 1999) ISBN 3-906764-37-0 .
• Martin Schewe:  MARITAIN, Jacques, Catholic philosopher. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 829-835.
• Hermann Steinkamp : Personalism in Jacques Maritain's Social Philosophy , Bonn 1966 (Diss. 1966)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Honorary Members: Jacques Maritain. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 15, 2019 . 
2. ↑ See the section on Maritain in Jan-Werner Müller: "Making Muslim Democracies" , Boston Review, Nov./Dec. 2010
3. ^ Jacques Maritain: Existence and the Existent . Paulist Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-58768-241-4 ( google.de [accessed June 23, 2020]).
4. ↑ James G. Hanink: Maritain & Ratzinger: Puzzles about the Person . ( academia.edu [accessed August 26, 2020]).
5. ^ Benedikt Ritzler: JM Political thought leader and representative of a renewed philosophy of wisdom . ( convivio-mundi.de [PDF]).
6. ↑ The Daily Mail: The Daily Mail. May 18, 2016, accessed on August 26, 2020 (German). 
7. ↑ Heinz Hürten: The influence of JMs on political thinking in Germany . In: JCSW . tape 26 , 1985, pp. 25-39 (file: /// C: /Users/ulric/AppData/Local/Temp/576-Artikeltext-1168-1-10-20130104.pdf [PDF]).
8. ↑ Phillipp Saure: Christian natural law in pluralistic modernity: Jacques Maritains criticism of the universal declaration of human rights . Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017, ISBN 978-3-657-78765-4 ( schoeningh.de [accessed on August 26, 2020]).

Web links

• Literature by and about Jacques Maritain in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Jacques Maritain  in the German Digital Library
• Cercle d'Etudes J. & R. Maritain, Kolbsheim (France) (French)
• Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . (engl.)
• Maritains life, work, events (German)
• Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame .
• Internationales Jacques Maritain Institute / Rome (ital.)
• bibliography