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Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Pluralism in Political Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Joseph W. Evans
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Extract

The problem of pluralism in political life causes contemporary man much anguish. Many and varied, difficult and challenging are the peculiar problems posed by the hitherto unrivalled heterogeneity within present-day political life. These problems have to be lived daily by every man at the level of prudence. And they must be continually examined and sifted by social scientists and philosophers. The social scientist must pursue them with his empiriological or phenomena-minded analysis, that is, ananalysis that is primarily concerned with the controlled observation of the facts, and with the formulation of hypothetical generalizations based on presumed facts; the philosopher must pursue them with his ontological or being-minded analysis, that is, an analysis that is primarily concerned with the fundamental principles that must guide the resolution of the problems. Among contemporary philosophers who have grappled with these problems, Jacques Maritain, the distinguished Thomist philosopher, is surely one of the most discerning and illuminating. I wish to consider in this essay some of the main tenets in Maritain's positio vis-á-vis the problem of pluralism in political life, with particular attention to his views on the problem posed by religious pluralism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1960 , pp. 307 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1960

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References

1 Cf. my “A Word on Maritain,” The Review of Politics, XIX (1957), 132–133Google Scholar.

2 Pol., 2, 2, 1261a17, trans. Jowett.

3 Cf. Simon, Yves. “Notes sur le fédéralisme proudhonien,” Esprit, V-Part 2 (1937), pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

4 Maritain, Jacques, Man and the State (Chicago, 1951), p. 11Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Maritain, Jacques, Humanisme intégral (1936; Paris, 1947, new ed.), pp. 223–224Google Scholar.

6 This advance, however, is ambivalent: “… the life of human societies advances and progresses at the cost of many losses. It advances and progresses thanks to the vitalization or superelevation of the energy of history springing from the spirit and from human freedom. But, at the same time, this same energy of history is degraded and dissipated by reason of the passivity of matter. Moreover, what is spiritual is, to this very extent, above time and exempt from aging.” Maritain, Jacques, On the Philosophy of History (New York, 1957), p. 47Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 35–36. This central intuition in Maritain's philosophy of history goes hand in hand with his metaphysical intuition of being and of becoming. Cf. his A Preface to Metaphysics (New York, 1939), Chapter 3Google Scholar; Existence and the Existent (New York, 1948), Chapter 1, and especially pp. 44–46Google Scholar.

8 Heraclitus, Fragment 89, Diels.

9 Cf. Maritain, Jacques, Neuf leçons sur les notions premières de la philosophie morale (Paris, 1951), pp. 79–81Google Scholar.

10 Man and the State, pp. 61–62. Cf. Humanisme intégral, pp. 221–223.

11 Maritain's analysis of this particular example of that gradual growth in awareness which he considers to be a characteristic of the human spirit, is very discerning: “A general progress of prise de conscience of self … characterizes the modern era. While the world turned away from spirituality par excellence and from that love which is our true end, to turn to exterior goods and the exploitation of sensible nature, the universe of immanence appeared on the scene, sometimes through sordid doors: a subjective deepening revealed their own peculiar spirituality to science, art, poetry, to the very passions of man and his vices, and the demand for freedom became all the more clamorous as men moved farther and farther away from the true conditions and the true notion of freedom. In short, in virtue of the ambivalence of history, the reflex age, with all the diminutions and losses which this word connotes, involved in other respects an undeniable enrichment, and one that we must hold for a definitive gain, in the knowledge of the creature and of human things, even if this knowledge was to empty into the interior hell of man a prey to himself. This murky way is not without issue, and the fruits that have been gathered while traversing it have been incorporated into our substance.” Cf. Religion et Culture (1930; Paris, 1946, new ed.), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

12 Maritain, Jacques, Truth and Human Fellowship (Princeton, 1957), pp.23–24Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Principes d'une Politique Humaniste (New York, 1944), p. 153Google Scholar.

14 Man and the State, p. 109.

15 Cf. ibid., p. 110.

16 Ibid., p. 111.

17 Cf. Principes d'une Politique Humaniste, pp. 158–159.

18 Cf. Maritain, Jacques, Christianity and Democracy (New York, 1944), Chapter IVGoogle Scholar. Maritain's teaching on the role of the Gospel leaven in awakening the consciousness of men to the fundamental practical tenets of democratic life, is a hard saying for many political theorists. I suggest that this is largely because they are seduced by essences and by their own abstractions. They do not know the synergy of man's being, that is, the dynamic and pulsating one-ness of man's being. They do not know that man's different knowings are not the knowings of a static and compartmentalized essence, but rather the knowings of a throbbing existent, and that they therefore fortify, stimulate and quicken one another, however slowly, however ambivalently.

19 Man and the State, p. 111. Maritain's essay on “The Immanent Dialectic of the First Act of Freedom” is certainly relevant here, and it would have to be considered at length if one were pursuing a complete analysis of his views on how men opposed in their theoretical conceptions can nevertheless agree as to the practical tenets of democratic life. The following excerpt will give an idea of the riches to be found in this essay: “To anyone who is in the least familiar with human psychology it is clear, moreover, that between the conscious and the unconscious, between the world of conceptual assertions in which conscious reason is engaged, and the secret dynamics of the pre-conscious life of the mind, there can be all sorts of cleavages and discords, schisms and secessions and contradictions unknown to the subject himself. Let us therefore suppose a pseudo-atheist, say a child permeated with the formulas of an atheistic education but who has not been able to realize the content of atheism, or else a man who is not really an atheist but who sincerely believes he is…. It is not impossible that in a first act of freedom, he may decide upon the moral good and by the same token turn his life toward the Separate Good, toward the true God Whom he knows in a certain manner without knowing it.” Maritain, Jacques, The Range of Reason (New York, 1952), pp. 83–84 (Italics mine)Google Scholar.

20 Cf. The Range of Reason, pp. 169–170.

21 Modern Philosophies and Education, The Fifty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, Edited by Henry, Nelson B. (Chicago, 1955), p. 74Google Scholar.

22 Cf. ibid., pp. 75–76.

23 Cf. Humanisme intégral, p. 145. For an extensive analysis and defense of this and other tenets of Maritain's teaching on the problems of Church and State, see Church and State in Maritain's Thought, by Anicetus Tomasaitis, S.J. This important work, submitted as a doctoral dissertation in the Faculty of Theology of the Gregorian University in Rome, has been published by the Jesuit Fathers (Chicago).

24 Man and the State, p. 162.

25 Maritain insists that body politic (or political society) and State must be clearly distinguished: “… the basic political reality is not the State, but the body politic with its multifarious institutions, the multiple communities which it involves, and the moral community which grows out of it. The body politic is the people organized under just laws. The State is the particular agency which specializes in matters dealing with the common good of the body politic, it is therefore the topmost political agency, but the State is a part, not a whole, and its functions are merely instrumental: it is for the body politic and for the people that it sees to the public order, enforces laws, possesses power; and being a part in the service of the people, it must be controlled by the people.” Ibid., p. 202.

26 Cf. ibid., pp. 172–173.

27 Ibid., pp. 178–179.

28 Cf. Du Régime Temporel et de la Liberté (Paris, 1933), p. 73Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Humanisme intégral, p. 180; Du Régime Temporel et de la Liberté, pp. 76–77.

30 Man and the State, pp. 167–168.