Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was an influential Catholic neo-scholastic philosopher and many-faceted public intellectual. Raised a Protestant, he became an agnostic, A student of the natural sciences at the Sorbonne, he became disillusioned with scientism and even entered into a suicide pact with his wife, Raïssa, to be carried out if they had not discovered a deeper meaning to life within a year. The lectures of Henri Bergson helped them find some deeper meaning to life and prompted Maritain to study philosophy. In 1906, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. The following year, he discovered St. Thomas, and would dedicate the rest of his life to promoting and applying the Aquinas’s thought. Ambassador of France to the Holy See from 1945 to 1948, he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus in 1970, three years before his death. An influence on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Second Vatican Council, and the Christian Democratic movement, he is one of the most important twentieth-century Catholic thinkers. In this episode, Prof. Matthew Minerd discusses his pick of five of Maritain’s books.
Matthew Minerd is a Ruthenian Catholic, husband, father, and a professor of philosophy and moral theology at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. His academic work has appeared in the journals Nova et Vetera, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Saint Anselm Journal, Lex Naturalis, Downside Review, The Review of Metaphysics, and Maritain Studies, as well in volumes published by the American Maritain Association through the Catholic University of America Press. He has served as author, translator, and/or editor for volumes published by The Catholic University of America Press, Emmaus Academic, Cluny Media, and Ascension Press. He has published academic articles and book chapters related to Maritain and is the Secretary of the American Maritain Association. For more information on his work, visit philosophicalcatholic.com
He recommends that new readers of Maritain start with the following five books.
- The Angelic Doctor by Jacques Maritain
- Prayer and Intelligence by Jacques and Raïssa Maritain
- The Primacy of the Spiritual by Jacques Maritain
- Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain
- The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time by Jacques Maritain
Read the interview at www.fivebooksforcatholics.com/jacques-maritain/
For more interviews like this, visit www.fivebooksforcatholics.com
Sign up to receive updates on the latest interview.
Become a premium subscriber to listen to the full interview.
You can also support this podcast by making a one-off tip or donations. Just click here.
