Reflections on a Critique of Jacques Maritain

Extract

Not a little interest has been aroused by the publication, in a recent issue of the Tablet (18/8/1945), of a review by Mr. T. S. Gregory of M. Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy. Even more hostile in tone than an earlier critique (see Tablet 18/11/1944) of the author’s The Rights of Man, its manifest aim is to belittle, if not wholly to discredit, the reputation of the distinguished French philosopher. 6) Maritain has never escaped criticism even’ from his warmest admirers; they have noted a tendency to over-simplify complex historical issues, an occasionally unpersuasive manner of discoursing as it were from a great height, an uncertainty of judgment in aesthetic and literary matters. But these and possibly other limitations have done little to diminish their respect for him as a noble Christian intelligence and perhaps the ablest metaphysician of our day. His writings now have their recognized place as source-books of modern Thomism, to which professors of theology and philosophy are accustomed to refer their students. For this reason, if for no other, Mr. Gregory’ remarks merit serious consideration.

The worth of a political essay may fairly be judged on its own account, without reference to its author’s views as expressed elsewhere; but when it is made the occasion for a radical attack upon a philosopher’s system of thought, we have the right to expect from the critic familiarity with the philosophical standpoint in question. Mr. Gregory offers little to justify this expectation; he knows that Maritain has somehow achieved considerable fame, but betrays no inkling of that upon which it is based.