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Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain Biography

Philosopher

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“Authentic Christianity has a horror of the pessimism of inertia. It is pessimist, profoundly pessimist in the sense that it knows that the creature comes from nothingness, and that all that issues from nothing essentially tends of itself to return to nothing: but it's optimism is incomparably deeper than it's pessimism; for it knows that the creature comes from God, and all that comes from God tends to return to Him.”

ReligionChurchChristianityOptimismTheologyCatholicismPessimism
Book:True Humanism
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“If we interpret St. Augustine in material terms, by the pure light of a reason which is not truly theological but geometric, his teaching seems to annihilate the creature. As a result of original sin man is taken to be essentially corrupt; that is the doctrine of Luther, of Calvin, of Jansenius. Is not this the purest pessimism? Nature is corrupted in its essence by original sin; and under grace it remains corrupt, grace being here not life, but a covering cloak. Yes, it is the purest pessimism: but there is a singular result. Human nature before sin possessed as its due all the privileges of Adam. Now this corrupt man, who can merit nothing for Heaven, and whom faith covers with Christs grace as with a cloak, has nevertheless a value here on earth, even as he is and according to what he is, in the very corruption of his nature. Make way there for this sullied creature, since man must live in the hell which is this world! Such is the dialectic, the tragedy of the protestant conscience, with its admirably vivid and aching sense, but too purely human, too darkly human sense of mortal misery and sin. The creature declares its nothingness. But this declaration is its own. Man is a walking corruption; but this irremediably corrupt nature cries out to God, and the initiative, do what one will, is thus man’s battle cry.”

ReligionChristianityHumanismCatholicismProtestantismCalvinism
Book:True Humanism
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“Modern civilization is a worn-out vesture: it is not a question of sewing on patches here and there, but of a total and substantial reformation, a trans-valuation of its cultural principles; since what is needed is a change to the primacy of quality over quantity, of work over money, of the human over technical means, of wisdom over science, of the common service of human beings instead of the covetousness of unlimited individual enrichment or a desire in the name of the State for unlimited power.”

PhilosophyChristianityTransformationCatholicismReformationCommon GoodSocial Ethics
Book:True Humanism
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“In the final analysis, the relation of the individual to society must not be conceived after the atomistic and mechanistic pattern of bourgeois individualism which destroys the organic social totality, or after the biological and animal pattern of the statist or racist totalitarian conception which swallows up the person, here reduced to a mere histological element of Behemoth or Leviathan, in the body of the state, or after the biological and industrial pattern of the Communistic conception which ordains the entire person, like a worker in the great human hive, to the proper work of the social whole. The relation of the individual to society must be conceived after an irreducibly human and specifically ethicosocial pattern, that is, personalist and communalist at the same time; the organization to be accomplished is one of liberties. But an organization of liberty is is unthinkable apart from the amoral realities of justice and civil amity, which, on the natural and temporal plane, correspond to what the Gospel calls brotherly love on the spiritual and supernatural plane. This brings us back to our considerations of the manner in which the paradox of social life is resolved in a progressive movement that will never be terminated here-below. There is a common work to be accomplished by the social whole as such. This whole, of which human person are the parts, is not ‘neutral’ but is itself committed and bound by a temporal vocation. Thus the persons are subordinated to this common work. Nevertheless, not only in the political order, is it essential to the common good to flow back upon the persons, but also in another order where that which is most profound in the person, its supra-temporal vocation and the goods connected with it, is a transcendent end, it is essential that society itself and its common work are indirectly subordinated. This follows from the fact that the principal value of the common work of society is the freedom of expansion of the person together with all the guarantees which this freedom implies and the diffusion of good that flows from it. In short, the political common good is a common good of human persons. And thus it turns out that, in subordinating oneself to this common work, by the grace of justice and amity, each one of us is trill subordinated to the good of persons, to the accomplishment of the personal life of others an, at the same time, to the interior dignity of ones own person. But for this solution to be practical, there must be full recognition in the city of the true nature of the common work and, at the same time, recognition also of the importance and political worth--so nicely perceived by Aristotle--of the virtue of amity.”

FaithPoliticsChristianitySocietyEconomicsIndividualismCollectivismSocial EthicsPersonalism
Book:Person and the Common Good
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“Boh sa svojím Slovom a svojím umením dotýka všetkého, čo koná, svojím umením všetko riadi a uvádza do bytia. rovnako tak sa má aj umelec svojím umením dotýkať celého svojho diela, svojím umením ho riadiť a uvádzať do bytia... teológovia nám hovoria, že všetko bolo stvorené PER VERBUM, skrze Božské Slovo, ale aj napriek tomu je pravda, že všetko bolo stvorené celou nerozdeliteľnou Trojicou: spôsobom úplne zbaveným sebanajmenšieho zainteresovaného záujmu, ničmenej pre určitý cieľ, pre cieľ, ktorým nebola jednoducho dokonalosť diela, ktoré malo byť dosiahnuté, ale pre cieľ vyššieho rádu než je umenie - pre zdelenie Božej dobroty.”

FilozofiaDobrotaMaritainUmenieDieloBohCieľDokonalosťTrojicaZámer
Book:The Responsibility of the Artist
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“každé umelecké dielo zasahuje človeka v jeho vnútre. zasahuje ho hlbšie a záludnejšie než každá rozumová propozícia, nech už ide o presvedčujúci dôkaz alebo o sofizmus. zasahuje totiž človeka dvomi strašlivými zbraňami, intuíciou a krásou - a to v jedinom koreni všetkých jeho energií, rozumu a vôle, predstavivosti, emócií, vášne, inštinktov a temných tendencií. ide o to, ako tvrdil Léon Bloy, netĺcť tichšie než srdce. umenie a poézia prebúdzajú sny človeka a jeho nostalgie, odhaľujú mu niektoré z priepastí, ktoré si v sebe nesie. umelec o tom vie. ako sa k tomu postaví?”

FilozofiaMaritainUmelecPoéziaSrdceBloy
Book:The Responsibility of the Artist
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“podobne ako umelec miluje pravdu a svojich ľudských druhov, potom nič z toho, čo by v diele mohlo pravdu znetvoriť alebo poškodiť ľudskú dušu, sa mu nebude páčiť a stratí pre neho potešenie, ktoré prináša krása. úcta k pravde a k ľudskej duši sa stane objektívnou podmienkou či požiadavkom.. takéto prekážky, ak sú to prekážky, nikdy nenútili umelca, aby ohýbal alebo krivil svoje umenie. zaväzujú ho, aby učinil svoje umenie správnejšie a mocnejšie.”

FilozofiaDušaMaritainUmelecUmenieKrásaPodmienkyPotešeniePrekážky
Book:The Responsibility of the Artist
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“tu zostáva pre umelca jediným problémom nebyť slabý v úlohe prijatej od Boha, ktorá je jeho úlohou: mať umenie dosť silné a dosť správne, a tak byť vždy pánom všetkého, s čím pracuje, a nestrácať nič z čistoty tvorby: a vo svojej činnosti horieť iba pre dobro diela, nedopustiť, aby tiaha ľudského alebo Božského bohatstva, ktorá naplňuje jeho srdce, poklesla alebo sa odchýlila.”

FilozofiaDobroMaritainUmelecUmenieDieloTvorbaSrdceTiahačIstota
Book:The Responsibility of the Artist
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“čo sa potom stane, ak na druhej strane - a teraz z hľadiska ľudského dobra - mravné svedomie umelca za predpokladu, že ho má, prehlási, že niečo v diele, čo je umelecky dobré a nutné, pokým môže súdiť, je mravne zlé a musí sa teda zmeniť? ..potom sa umelec musí snažiť, aby očistil svoj prameň. nie je to pohodlné a je na to treba veľkú trpezlivosť. iné reálne riešenie neexistuje.”

FilozofiaMaritainUmelecUmenieDieloPrameňRiešenieTrpezlivosť
Author:Jacques Maritain
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“The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, that is to say, the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection, and is not perfected by what we shall learn to know as a scientific habit.”

KnowsDoeLightNaturalCommonReturnHabitReflectionCriticalIntellectCommon SenseNot PerfectNatural LightCritical Reflection
Book:An EPZ Introduction to Philosophy
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“Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.”

MenHumansMatterSpiritDesireImpossibleIntellectualInfinitePropertyIntellectThirstMetaphysicalPhysical Things
Book:Approaches to God
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“Thus society is born, as something required by nature, and (because this nature is human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will, and freely consented to. Man is a political animal, which means that the human person craves political life, communal life, not only with regard to the family community, but with regard to the civil community.”

MenHumansMeanPersonsReasonPoliticalBornCommunityAnimalHuman NatureRegardAccomplishedCravePolitical LifePolitical Animals
Author:Jacques Maritain
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“It has never been recommended to confuse "loving" with "seeking to please"... ...Salome pleased Herod's guests; I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist... ...she certainly did not envelop him in her love.”

BelieveI CanPoorPleaseSeekingBurningGuestsBaptistsJohn The BaptistSalomeHerod
Book:The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time
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