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Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), French philosopher and political thinker, was one of the principal exponents of Thomism in the twentieth century and an influential interpreter of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas. Philosophy of History For Maritain history cannot be rationally explained or reconstructed by virtue of necessary laws, because nature is contingent. Historical events take place in existential, concrete, individual reality open to interfering lines of causation. This is true for nature and history. While in nature one deals with contingency, in history one deals with the free will of the human being. Thus no philosophy of history is valid if it uses as its general philosophy a view that diminishes the notion of free will or even the existence of God. Philosophy of history, then, correctly sees two types of contingency: the transcendent freedom of God, and human free will tied up with natural accidents and vicissitudes. The subject matter of history is the succession of time. While singular, it consists of a mass of particular events. Each event is singular and non-repeatable. The formal object of the philosophy of history is the intelligible meaning derived from the unrolling of history. Time, itself, has an inner structure. Each successive period of history has an intelligible structure. Maritain calls them "historical climates or constellations" in human history. The structures include moral and ideological characteristics, social, political and juridical characteristics in the temporal life of human community. Maritain's attitude toward modernism was not totally negative, however. There is a double movement in historyin the direction of good and in the direction of evilbut in history, good is not divided from evil; rather, according to Maritain's philosophy of history, they grow together.12 Maritains 1957 book On the Philosophy of History further developed the themes of providence and progress, with specific emphasis on the ways in which the philosophy of historydealing as it does with the final application of philosophical truths . . . to the entire movement of humanitymirrors moral philosophy. What he terms the law of the two-fold contrasting progress testifies to the simultaneous growth of good and evil in history. Drawing on biblical metaphor, he looks to Jesus parable about the wheat field sowed with tares, not to be separated until the final harvest (Matthew 13:24-30). For Maritain, the mission of todays Christians is not to resolve this tension, but to contribute to it by taking up the cross in the historical events of their time. Maritains emphasis on the tension between good and evil in history was accompanied by a greater softening of his antimodernism. His discussion of ambivalence in history emphasized both great spiritual errors in modern times and great truths . . . discovered. For example, despite Rousseauian excess, the Enlightenment offered the first modern rationale for a democratic philosophy already anticipated by the gospel. According to Maritain, no human event is absolutely pure, no human event is absolutely evil. Historically speaking, the good can be found in unexpected places. The law of the progress of moral conscience, referring to humanitys ability to grasp natural law, also figures prominently in Maritains mature philosophy of history. Coming just a decade after the end of World War II, this affirmation of progress might sound rather odd if not for

Maritains previous remarks about persons and groups unwittingly pursuing a good not readily discernible in any given era. Humanity achieves understanding much the same way that the individual person doesthrough the habits of living virtuously and participating in truth. This progressive education of the species is historically driven and depends on changing social conditions more than any intellectual achievement, for in general, the work of theoretical reflection cannot replace in moral matters the slow advance of consciousness, conscience, and experience in mankind. Maritain does not take a sanguine view of the human cost of this collective experience: The devil hangs like a vampire on the side of history. History goes on, nonetheless, and goes on with the vampire. If the world can receive the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, then history, despite its ambiguity, cannot be left to the devil.

CHAPTER I: The Philosophy of History in General


Is any Philosophy of History possible? The Hegelian Delusion Spurious and genuine Philosophy of History Philosophy of History and Moral Philosophy adequately taken

CHAPTER II: Axiomatic Formulas or Functional Laws


The law of two-fold contrasting progress The ambivalence of history The law of the historical fructifications of good and evil The law of the world-significance of history-making events The law of prise de conscience The law of the hierarchy of means

CHAPTER III: Typological Formulas or Vectorial Laws


The theological notion of the various "states" of human nature The theological notion of the various "states" in the historical development of mankind The destiny of the Jewish people The false Hegelian and Comtian laws of various states or stages The law of the passage from the "magical" to the "rational" regime or state in the history of human culture The law of the progress of moral conscience The law of the passage from "sacral" to "secular" or "lay" civilizations The law of the political and social coming of age of the people

CHAPTER IV: God and the Mystery of the World

God and history The world and its natural ends Christ's mystical body The mystery of the world The good of the soul and the good of the world Thy Kingdom come

CHAPTER V: Final Remarks


Philosophy and History Philosophy of History and supra-philosophical data

Philosophy of history attracted Maritains attention when he tried to justify his vision of mankinds future in Integral Humanism (1936). The panoramic view of history was for him a necessary prerequisite for developing his ideal of integral humanism that was gradually completed and remodeled in accord with the change of cultural and political situation in the world. However, when he wrote this book, Maritain was not too much concerned with the problem of epistemological foundations of history and the place of the philosophy of history in the totality of mans knowledge. The significance of this task became apparent only later when he was working on another book On the Philosophy of History (1957), which shows the influence of hermeneutical interpretations of the nature of historical knowledge. Dealing with unique events, Maritain claimed, history should never pretend to uncover the universal dimension of social reality. A historian should understand that his job is quite different from that of a scientist, and at the same time he should keep in mind the special role played in his art by the richness of human experience, as well as by questions of principles and values and philosophical issues. Maritains own vision of the historians art was thus very close to that of H.-I. Marrou. In this respect, like Berdyaev, he openly confirmed that historical knowledge can be understood only with reference to the engagement of the historian in the flux of time (Maritain 1957: 6-7). At the same time, unlike Berdyaev, he tried in the spirit of Aquinas thought to include history in the totality of degrees of knowledge and to subordinate it to a philosophy of history nourished by moral philosophy and metaphysics. The Meaning of History and the Destiny of Man In his book On the Philosophy of History, Maritain tried to summarize this vision of universal history working on the assumption that the course of events is rooted in human activity and thus unexplainable and rationally non-deducible on the basis of necessary laws. Any sort of determinism was unacceptable for him, and this platform served as a basis of sharp criticism of Hegel, Marx, and Toynbee. However, he believed that it is possible to work out a set of ideal types that should be used in the interpretation of

history, something which will lead to the discovery of regularities and even laws, without appealing to the category of necessity (Maritain 1957:32). Maritain is trying to balance theoretically between the poles of a speculative and a critical philosophy of history. One such set of regularities he called axiomatic formulas, or functional laws, should interpreted as an attempt to apply moral philosophy to the understanding of history. As a result, Maritain coined a number of general statements: the Good in history is always related to God and contradicts evil that is related to matter; the activity of the Catholic Church in history is aimed at promoting Good; in the long run, the Good always triumphs over evil; there are events that create history, global changes in mankinds life; there is a certain progress in public consciousness related to the understanding of Good; non-violent actions in the realization of the ideal of Good are preferable and more effective than violent ones. Another set of typological formulas, which he called vector laws, was aimed at describing general tendencies in the course of the universal history. These included the law of the transition from magic to the reason, something which he believed pointed to the necessity of the peaceful coexistence of religion, science, and art in the context of contemporary culture. The development of an ever more adequate understanding of natural law was also among the major trends in human history. Maritain believed that the transition from the sacral to the lay civilization should be also listed among the main vector laws. This law of the coming of age of the people pointed to the necessity of a new type of Christianity of the sort he put forward in Integral Humanism. In the final instance, his attempt to reformulate previously reached theoretical conclusions in terms of a systematically developed philosophy of history sounds like a strategy for justifying of his ideal of integral humanism.

Chapter 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN GENERAL


We must first consider the philosophy of history from the point of view of the theory of knowledge. For many years the very notion of the philosophy of history was held in bad repute, because of Hegel, who was its putative father. (Before Hegel, however, there was Vico; and before Vico, St. Augustine . . .) Hegel regarded himself as a kind of philosopher-God recreating not only human history bat the whole universe. But as happens more often than not, error was the usher of truth in the human mind. Despite the errors of Hegel, and even, in a way, because of them--because of the way in which he was led to emphasize too strongly the aspect he had discovered in things--it is through Hegel that the philosophy of history was finally recognized as a philosophical discipline. And we are now called to a constructive task. The crucial problem to be tackled is: what can be a genuine philosophy of history? Second, grace neither replaces nature (because human nature is so corrupt that grace, no longer

able to transform it, merely replaces it altogether), nor leaves nature untouched. In other words, Maritain argues that it is from within that grace forms nature, and, far from replacing it altogether, or leaving it untouched, raises nature up, in order to make it serve its own ends. As Maritain puts it, I have long insisted on this pointthat as a result of the achievement of grace, as a result of grace [penetrating and] perfecting [and transforming] nature, nature is superelevated in its own order. In my opinion, the temporal common good of the body politic, for instance, will be superelevated in a Christian society. Brotherly love, Christian love will play a part in civil life itselfit is not restricted to the interrelation between saints in the kingdom of God. From there it superabounds and quickens civic friendship. To my mind it is very important that we admit this superelevation in the very order of nature. If we do not admit it, we are led willy-nilly to a kind of separatism between nature and grace, to a kind of naturalismnature will have its own course separately from any contact with grace.30 Third, life here and now, nature in general and culture specifically, is not merely instrumental with respect to the attainment of the supernatural end. It is by no means extrinsic to the kingdom of God. Maritain puts the point this way in a passage worth quoting in full: [T]he world, as the entire order of nature, is in actual fact in vital connection with the universe of the kingdom of God. Hence it appears that in actual fact it is ordained, not only to its own natural ends, but also to an absolutely supreme end that is supernatural and that is the very end of the kingdom of God. But I would also insist that the natural end of the world, though it is not the absolutely supreme end, is, nevertheless, a real end [in the order of nature]; it is not a mere means. In other words, temporal things are not mere means with respect to the attainment of the supernatural end. Of course, they are ordained to it, but not as mere means ordained to an end. I would say that they are intermediate or infravalent endsthey are possessed of an intrinsic merit and goodness in themselves, and they are therefore worthy of attainment in themselves, though they are also means with respect to the supernatural end. I am but applying here what Saint Thomas says about civil life, to wit, that the common good of civil life is an ultimate end in a given order.31 Maritain holds that the natural end of the world is threefold. There is first man's mastery over nature and his conquest of autonomy. Maritain understands the mastery over nature in the biblical sense of subduing the earth. He adds to this a mandate for self-mastery. Man is a rational agent rooted in animality. In this respect, man's end is his conquest of autonomy, that is, "his conquest of freedom in the sense of autonomyliberation from bondage and coercion exercised by physical nature on this being who has an element of spirit in him, as well as liberation from enslavement by other men."32 Second, there is the development of man's manysided, self-perfecting activities, which are intrinsic goods such as knowledge, creative activity in art, and moral activity. This aspect captures the important truth in the Calvinist position that we have received a cultural mandate as well. Finally, Maritain affirms the unfolding of all the potentialities of human nature as the third natural end of the world. This, too, follows from the understanding that man is embodied, not a pure spirit but a spirit united to matter. "It is normal for a spirit to manifest itself. And because man has so many hidden potentialities, it is normal that he reveals progressively this inner universe that is man himself."33

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